I participated in the Dock2Dock event the 3rd consecutive year, which is the 10th anniversary of the event. There was a 20 km event on this year, which was the first time this ultra-marathon distance was available. This year I decided to do the 10 km because I felt it was too much for me last year, and hoped that I could get a better result. Apart from me, I also got a few friends doing it as well: Ingrid Chow also for the 10 km, and Sarah Liles for the 20 km.

As usual, I registered for the mass start. The course was identical to last year’s.

Unfortunately I messed up my timing and entered a wrong time into my journey planner, combined with a late-running rail replacement bus and a missing service bus, I missed the mass start wave and ended up in the rolling start instead.

When I raced in the 5 km regionals and 7.5 km nationals, I could keep an average of 3 km/h all the way. Therefore I hoped to complete this event in 3 and a half hours. As there was no lap timing, I used my watch to get some split times. I used 29 minutes to get to the first turn, 32 minutes back to the bridge, 23 minutes to the second turn and 22½ to complete the first lap, totalling 1 hours and 46 minutes.

My fate was exactly the same as last year. In the second lap, the sections took me 34, 36½, 25½ and 22 minutes, totalling 1 hours and 45 minutes for the 2 laps, the same as last year. However, because the official time counted from the mass start, my official result was 3:51:28, 44th out of 115 overall finishers, and 26th out of 61 males.

My fast-improving friend Ingrid Chow, who now swims much faster than me in pool races, was about 24 minutes behind me. She was officially on the rolling start and her time was 4:09:24. On the other hand, Sarah, who is a very strong North Channel swimmer, couldn’t complete 20 km in time before the cut off and UOF’ed at 15 km.

Given my performance this year, I will probably stick with 10 km next year until I can reasonably keep a sustainable speed for the two laps like when I raced in the regionals and nationals.