It’s the third new year since I moved to the UK, and in the past year I settled my life in London and recovered from some of my past failure in my life.

Achievements in the year

Career

As my business didn’t take off, I returned to the job market, and started my role as a software engineer at Jnction in March. It is a rail consultancy with a number of innovative projects using rail data which I worked on a number of them. The company really liked my work and now I am a permanent staff of the company.

Swimming

Living in London allowed me to train properly as there are a few outdoor swimming pools opening year round. I avoid swimming indoors because they are too hot to the extent that my training is affected. I decided to exclusively swim in London Fields Lido, a 50 m outdoor pool heated to 24°C, in the 2022-2023 winter and did the training which was missed in the pandemic. After a winter of training, I made a PB of 25:35.17 in 1500 m Masters LCM in March, and completed the 5 km Regional Open Water Championships in 1:31:00.55 in July, although I still wasn’t fast enough to qualify for the age-group nationals.

As I was envious of my friends who swam the English Channel in 2022, knowing that my training was back on track, I booked a slot in August hoping to remove my regret 2 years ago. It was delayed to early September and I finally swam across it, becoming the third Hongkonger to swim the English Channel, although I wasn’t totally satisfied with my time (18 hours 21 minutes). Furthermore, I also participated in Dock2Dock 10 km as well, but I wasn’t in my best shape due to the delayed English Channel swim. I completed it in 4:08:07.

Orienteering

I also got good results in trail orienteering as well. My world ranking improved from the 155th place, 49.25 in the old 0-90 system, on 31 December 2022 to the 110th place, 4979 points out of 6000 on 31 December 2023. I got my best ever ranking score of 953.94 (out of 1000) in Stadi TrailO PreO on 6 May at the 10th place in that race. I didn’t participate in the World Trail Orienteering Championship because I didn’t have confidence in obtaining a good result, while Louis Tse would likely perform better than me as evidenced in 2022.

Locally in the UK, I only participated in 3 out of 6 events in British TrailO League (BriTOL), where the best 4 counted, due to a lack of races in London and South East. I scored 237 out of 400 and placed at the 33rd in the year-end ranking, while in the Southern England Orienteering Urban League (SEOUL), where 7 out of 19 counted, I scored 562 out of 700 and ranked the 6th.

Review of the list

The following is the list copied from last year’s review, with the bracketed item my achievement in the year:

Active list

• To get into the top 3 for the 19+ age group in the London Region Open Water Swimming Championships, 5 km. [I ended up the 8th place.]
• To complete at least 1 marathon swim, in order to continue my streak of completing marathon swims every year since 2019. [I completed Dock2Dock 10 km.]
• To get at least 10 L% improvement in my swimming in terms of race times. For 1500 m SC, this means I will target 24:53.91 next year, which is very challenging. [My best time in 1500 m SC in the year was 27:15.60 .]
• To halve my placing (counting from 0 instead of 1 starting from the winner) in British TrailO League and Southern England Orienteering Urban League. This means I aim to get into the top 6 in BriTOL and top 3 in SEOUL in 2023. [I ranked 33rd in BriTOL and 6th in SEOUL.]
• To earn £30k (pre-tax) for my limited company. [I didn’t work on my company much in 2023 after returning to the job market.]
• To lose weight to 65 kg. [My year end weight was 72 kg.]

Deferred list

• To swim the English Channel as a soloist. [I completed it in September.]
• To swim the English Channel in a relay team composed of solely Hongkongers living in the UK.
• To complete my first running marathon.
• To complete a swimming marathon (10 km) within 3:40 (pro-rata for longer races).
• To complete a running marathon (42.195 km) within 3:40 (pro-rata for longer races).

Unfortunately I only got 1 item in the active list completed, however I also took an item off the deferred list as well.

I plan to renew most of the list in 2024, with minor adjustments in it. The major new item will be to become an ice swimmer. The following is the new version of my goal list in 2024:

Active list

• To get into the top 3 for the 19+ age group in the London Region Open Water Swimming Championships, 5 km. [carried over as-is]
• To complete at least 1 marathon swim, in order to continue my streak of completing marathon swims every year since 2019. [carried over as-is]
• To swim the English Channel in a relay team composed of solely Hongkongers living in the UK. [moved from the deferred list to the active list]
• To complete a swimming marathon (10 km) within 3:40 (pro-rata for longer races). [moved from the deferred list to the active list]
• To get at least 5 L% improvement in my swimming in terms of race times, which are 24:20.29 for 1500 LCM and 25:55.83 for 1500 SCM [10 L% improvement seems unachievable – adjusting to 5%]
• To halve my place behind winner in British TrailO League and Southern England Orienteering Urban League. This means I aim to get into the top 17 in BriTOL and top 3 in SEOUL in 2024. [carried over as-is]
• To complete a 250 m ice swimming race in the 2023-2024 Northern Hemisphere winter. [new goal this year]
• To lose weight to 65 kg. [carried over as-is]

Deferred list

• To complete my first running marathon.
• To complete a running marathon (42.195 km) within 3:40 (pro-rata for longer races).