Today is the big day of Alex Fong’s round Hong Kong circumnavigation swim, a 45 km charity swim for A Drop Of Life which set up infrastructure to give clean water in under-developed places. The first recorded round Hong Kong swim was in 1976 by Linda McGill, an Australian female swimmer, from Repulse Bay rounding the island anti-clockwise in 17:06:00 (that swim was sponsored by Cathay Pacific, and she was notable by swimming topless most of the way). In recent…
Today I did the MMIC, a 3.8 km open water swimming race in Deep Water Bay around Middle Island. This race last year was my first proper open water swimming race since I started training seriously, in the first week I joined a swim squad, and I completed in 1:25:45, which was my longest swimming race in my life at that time, establishing the starting point for my adventure in open water swimming. In the year afterwards, I trained a…
Innothon 10 km was held on 2019-10-26 at Hong Kong Science Park, which was my first running race after my 1-year break in running. I did it as part of my plan to run a half marathon in November. I started serious training 3 weeks before the race, running about 2 – 3 times per week, most commonly including a long run and an interval run, and another format if I ran 3 times in that week, with weekly mileage…
I started swimming because in the past I didn’t want to run too much but want to maintain my fitness, and I’ve got addicted since last year I joined the OW swimming groups regularly. As in the past, I believed that my swimming was not as good as my running (judging by 1:4 ratio for distance covered by swimming:running for the same time), so I trained intensively in swimming last year and earlier this year, and I have become a…
After the Clean Half last Saturday, I felt that I needed some rest (although it was a relay of 30 minutes on the support kayak, 30 minutes of swimming, the distance was still significant which I swam about 7 km in the 14 km course) so I didn’t swim on Sunday, but after a day of rest I was ready again! On Sunday Edie announced that we were doing an adventure swim from Shek O with varying distances, maybe to…
Today I did a marathon swimming race, Clean Half, in Hong Kong despite the escalating social unrest which effectively put the city under martial law as the MTR was destroyed (but nearly all buses still ran as usual), malls closed, and many events (including scouting activities, orienteering races, triathlon training, lifeguard exams) cancelled with a short notice. It is a 14 km (claimed to be 15 km by the organiser, but satellite image showed the course to be about 14…
On the day after mid-autumn festival, I did the race “The Polson 5”, which is a 5 km (4.7 km measured on Google) swimming race from Stanley Blake Pier to Repulse Bay. This is the first time that I did the race, also the first time for my idol Alex Fong (who is doing a Hong Kong Island circumnavigation in November) as well. On the days before the race, I was really worried because the marine current prediction said that…
Last Sunday I did my first swimming race after returning from my Europe trip, DWB TT, the 2nd race in OWSHK race series this year. DWB TT stands for “Deep Water Bay Time Trial”, unlike normal races, time trial means that drafting is not allowed, and interval start is used such that it’s a race of individual effort. As an orienteer, I’m very familiar with the race format because most formal orienteering competitions are in interval start to minimise following….
30 years ago, when Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia were still under Soviet occupation considered illegal by their people, people formed a chain with their hands all the way from Vilnius to Tallinn to demonstrate their unity and solidarity for the hope of independence. The images of the human chain, known as the Baltic Way, shocked the whole world. One year after that, Lithuania became free and independent, soon afterwards were Latvia and Estonia as well. The 3 countries, known as…
On a forum, I left a short response to Iron Mike‘s comment about his DNF rate, saying from my heart that 44% DNF rate?! I would have already given up the sport. I then discovered he has written a blog article responding to this sentence, and happened to read it! Although my open water swimming experience is very little and I haven’t got a single DNF yet in my 7 open water swimming competitions (I got a DNF in an…