Oxfam Trailwalker winners rely on team spirit to overcome emotional highs and lows on gruelling 100km race

Gone Running-Joint Dynamics take first place in the Oxfam Trailwalker despite having only one training session as a team before the race

One runner collapses at the finish line, physically and emotionally drained, as the four athletes help each other during difficult times to complete the race

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Katrin Gottschalk, Candice Lanzoni, Ann Cheng-Echevarria and Karen Tse win Oxfam Trailwalker 2021. Photo: John Ellis

Published: 3:13pm, 18 Dec 2021Updated: 1:21am, 20 Dec 2021

Team Gone Running-Joint Dynamics (GRJD) won the 100km Oxfam Trailwalker (OTW) in 14 hours and 55 minutes, despite having only one training session as a team. The four women – Ann Cheng-Echevarria, Katrin Gottschalk, Candice Lanzoni and Karen Tse – were relatively inexperienced when it came to OTW, and to team races, but quickly established a team spirit.

The OTW is a four-person team race, 100km from Sai Kung to near Tai Tong. Because of the pandemic, organisers decided to hold a “virtual” race in which teams run the course when they can within a certain period, and time themselves.

It is usually a physical event with 4,000 to 5,000 runners starting simultaneously. But a “virtual” race was the only option this year after the government revoked licences just before the event.

Gottschalk had never run a team race, and did not know the course well because she had only moved to Hong Kong in 2019. Cheng-Echevarria has supported a few teams in the past and run one unofficial OTW in 2019 when the event was cancelled but teams ran anyway. It was Lanzoni’s first team race. Tse won the last official OTW in 2018.

Their one team training sessions was just a week before the race.

(From left) Katrin Gottschalk, Candice Lanzoni, Ann Cheng-Echevarria and Karen Tse at the finish line. Photo: Richard Roper

“I have supported it three or four times and just thought it was a pretty amazing event, the camaraderie, the number of teams involved and the banter on the day,” Cheng-Echevarria said.

Oxfam Trailwalker winners rely on team spirit to overcome emotional highs and lows on gruelling 100km race

Gone Running-Joint Dynamics take first place in the Oxfam Trailwalker despite having only one training session as a team before the race One runner collapses at the finish line, physically and emotionally drained, as the four athletes help each other during difficult times to complete the race

Gone Running-Joint Dynamics take first place in the Oxfam Trailwalker despite having only one training session as a team before the race

One runner collapses at the finish line, physically and emotionally drained, as the four athletes help each other during difficult times to complete the race