In Motion Asia: Outdoor Adventures in Taiwan and Asia

March 2011 - Clive Saffery March ARA

Editorial Bit

It’s fast approaching London marathon time and a large number of charities are eagerly rubbing their hands for their annual bumper payment. I’ve got mixed feelings on the subject to be honest. Thanks to my corporate position I’m able to raise thousands of dollars a year for charity via my races but there are plenty of times I’m racing for performance and personal achievement. I still remember the face of a BBC interviewer a couple of years ago asking a runner who they were running for. He replied “myself’, a perfectly sensible reply but somehow in the context of the London marathon it seemed self serving and the interviewer hurriedly went in search of someone else.
There is often a thin line between races and charities but I would contend that line gets crossed when charities start to organize races themselves. The good ones equip themselves with advisory boards including athletes: the bad ones think they organize a race as if was the same as any other fund raising programme they operate. And, when things go wrong, they often hide behind the excuse that it’s not meant to be taken that seriously, it’s a charity event after all and the fact that we publish records is just incidental.
My wife broke the women’s Master’s record at the recent Green Power 50k, but then again she didn’t. Let me explain. If you finish the race in under six hours you get an elite entry form for the next year. We’ve been getting these for years: it’s an invite and there isn’t the option to opt out. But here’s the problem: if you get an elite invite you are automatically entered in the open category irrespective of your age. Green Power have admitted this is their problem and will sort it out for next year and although I can understand why they have refused to award my wife the winner’s trophy for the Master’s Age Group (tough to swap trophies and prizes etc), it costs them absolutely nothing to acknowledge a new age group record. I can’t think of any race in the world where simply doing well one year effectively disqualifies you from winning your age group the next.
I’m quite often asked for my advice on such events and I’m constantly staggered by the fact that the organizers often seemed completely baffled by simple comments about food and drink. Amateur race directors simply haven’t got a clue about such matters and I have to admit to being agitated at Hong Kong’s Green Power race where every aid station was heavily marked with signs asking athletes not to take the food and drink. All of which begs the question what the hell is the food and drink for?
Back in October the Raleigh people were a complete disgrace in cancelling the Wilson Trail race and they again demonstrated their complete incompetence in the recent two day mountain marathon. Fortunately most Hong Kong runners were competing in the King of The Hills race and missed this shockingly poor event.
Now I appreciate that the sort of endurance events we love to do clash with today’s risk adverse society but surely race organizers need to understand that we are prepared to accept that we want to have some adventure. If a simple waver is sufficient in the US why can’t it suffice elsewhere? In the UK it is now impossible for a cyclist to pick up their race number in advance: you have to pick it up just before the start so you can also receive the latest risk assessment of the course which the race director has to compile immediately before the start. When my dad retired from racing he became a race director and as he eloquently put it: “I’m 75 years old, it’s a hundred mile race and the risk assessment people demand that I ride the whole course during the night and note any pot holes immediately prior to the race start. If I could do that I’d be f*****g racing not drowning in paper work”.
All of which brings me back to the Raleigh Mountain Marathon. Now this is an event that takes place never more than 5k from a main road but it has the most extraordinary mandatory kit list. I’m ok with all the usual stuff (compass, torch, tent, cooking gear etc) because this a two day over night race but can anyone explain the following: a whistle (truly pointless), travel document (are we going on holiday mid race?), one litre of water and 500g of food (we’ll come back to this one), a raincoat (!!!), a pencil, a radio and a mobile phone that had to be kept on the whole two days. I’ve left out the pathetic mandatory medical kit (why can’t we be trusted to look after ourselves?) but let’s talk about the food and drink bit. This isn’t what you were expected to start with (I’d be ok with that), this is what you were expected to FINISH with. Absolutely and completely barmy: racers were actually checked at the end of the race and if they didn’t have a litre of water each they were given a four hour penalty. Forgive me, I may be a bit stupid here but surely the point of any rule on water capacity is to protect athletes against dehydration: you dehydrate by not drinking. Forcing competitors to have a mandatory amount when you cross the finishing line actually discourages drinking the stuff: completely ridiculous.
It will take an awful lot to persuade me to race again in any event organized by Green Power or Raleigh: these people need to leave it to the professionals.

News Bit:

But then I went to the Hong Kong Marathon Expo and decided even running organizations do not have a clue. Yes, there was a New Balance booth, yes there were a couple of booths vaguely related to nutritional products but apart from that it was a cross between a New Year fair and a kid’s carnival. It was unprofessional, childish, nothing to do with running and a complete embarrassment. However the race itself was immaculately organized. It’s easy to dismiss the Standard Chartered marathon as the cross harbour fun run and many of us have had the odd run in with the HKAAA over the years but credit where it is due: it is exceptionally well organized and handles a very large number of people effectively.
A presentation at the recent Cape Town FEAT focused on a couple’s sea to summit adventure in South America. This has got me really thinking: we could devise a worldwide series of go it alone sea to summit multisport routes and have great fun inventing new routes, posting them on a website and thereby create a great database of training routes for global nomads like me. I must get on to this as soon as get a spare minute J
What a surprise…Richard Ussher won Speight’s Coast to Coast.
This newsletter has always had an eye for the absurd but this one is up there in the barking mad category. Running 45k round Tokyo just to make a Hello Kitty shape on a map. Oh dear http://tm2011.com/2011/01/art-of-running-45km-hello-kitty/
Stand by for the re-emergence of an iconic adventure race.
The IAU and World Masters 100k championships return to Winschoten in Holland. Ten laps of the town with an increasingly boisterous crowd (there are a few pubs en route) may make it sound like an antidote to the loneliness of the long distance runner but as Darren Benson and I both know reality is a bit different. Quite simply Winschoten is the most boring place in the world and even the excitement of being in the world champs can’t save it: if you do go take my advice and arrive late and leave straight away. Alternatively go as a spectator and watch from the pub.
A friend of mine serves on the committee of the Athens Marathon. Also on the committee is former Greek women’s marathon champion, Maria Polyzou. In July last year at a committee meeting Maria told my friend she was thinking of coming out of retirement to celebrate the 2,500th anniversary of Pheidippides legendary run. Modestly she said she was aiming at simply finishing in four hours. The next day she woke up and decided it would be more appropriate if she actually replicated the whole legend rather than just run a marathon. So she left Athens for Sparta and then ran back to Marathon, a mere 520k. She finished in six days but her lack of training made it a painful run: when the actual marathon came around a few months later she was still hobbling.
La 555, the non-stop 555k desert run put on by Alain Gestin is planned for 29 October in either Niger or Egypt depending on the political situation. All very sensible you might think, except Egypt is the “safe” fall back in case Niger doesn’t work out. Ooops. La 444 takes place on 9 January 2012, also in Egypt.
Also impacted by issues in the region: the Libyan Challenge was cancelled.
New Zealand’s Southern Traverse team which created the Adventure Racing World Series and Championship has passed on the event to Australia’s Geocentric Outdoors.
It hasn’t been updated recently but a good download magazine is available at www.ultrarunningworld.co.uk

Calendar News:

As usual I’ve updated the next three months. There are more cycling ultras than usual in the lead up to Paris-Brest-Paris in August.
Registration for the China leg of the North Face 100k series has opened. This year’s race is on 7 May and details are at www.thenorthface.com.cn/tnf100
Fed up with missing out on the UTMB lottery? Then try the new UTMF race in Japan on May 20. Apparently the race filled up immediately on the Japanese website but English entry forms were not due until after February 14 www.ultratrailmf.com
Trailwalker Spain kicks off on 7 May and it seems a brilliant course ending at Montserrat. Brisbane also now has a Trailwalker event: June 17
Yet another desert stage race. The Jordan Ultra is on 3 September and gives racers the choice of eight marathons in six days or four marathons in three.
A new iron distance triathlon in England: the Challenge Henley is on 18 September www.justracinguk.com
Staying in England there are a few interesting races at www.xnrg.co.uk
The second edition of the Ultra Trace de Saint Jacques takes place in France on 20 April, 725k in 12 days www.ultratrace.fr
An interesting new race is being promoted by a Shanghai based company but don’t think this is a slog around Pudong. In fact it could hardly be further away. June 11 sees the inaugural Amazing Maasai ultra and marathon: very tempting www.amazingmaasaiultra.org Apart from being a race the event is also a fund raiser for girl’s education in the Maasai communities of Kenya.

As always train hard, race smart and be careful with those charitable race directors 

ARA Calendar Mar 17