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…
Today I did my first aquathon race this year (as the previous race at Repulse Bay was weathered out), which was 3 years after I started doing aquathons and the first race since I joined Tritons. The race was at Tai Po Waterfront Park, the format was swim 1.5 km (3 loops of 500 m) then run 6 km (3 loops of 2 km). The swim:run ratio was 1:4, which I consider the perfect ratio, i.e. for an athlete with…
Now I have already done my first marathon swimming and got my name listed in the LongSwims Database, and everything about the trip has been settled, so it’s time for me to review what I have actually done in my progress from starting swimming to become a marathon swimmer now. I tried to start doing OW swimming back in December 2014, but it was a struggle in the initial years which I nearly gave up, until I got myself enough…
My trip ended with an early morning flight from Istanbul to Hong Kong the day after doing the cross-Bosphorus race on a stopover. To conclude, the objectives of my trip had all been completed, including becoming a marathon swimmer and also getting my best result in TrailO world ranking races. However, the trip was a total hassle dealing with all my planning mistakes and incompetent race organisers which were totally not helpful at all, and totally not worth the money…
It was the day for the final race of the trip. Since the race was early, the travel agency arranged with the hotel to have an early breakfast starting from 06:00, because we had to check out before 07:15 if we were not staying afterwards. We were then carried to Cemil Topuzlu Parkı for the race. We had to board 2 specifically-prepared athlete boats at Cemil Topuzlu Parkı, which carried all 2500 of us stripped down to only our swimsuits,…
This day the tour schedule was to do the compulsory race registration in the morning, which we took our race pack, containing most importantly the athlete badge, swim cap and the timing chip, and also got the wrist strap on the hand. After the registration, we got on the boat tour by the race organiser which went through the course once and explained it. We were told that we should swim towards Europe to the centre first, to find some…
This day was the last day of Fin5 competition, but I didn’t join because I was going to Istanbul to join a group tour starting on that day. That tour was a race tour by SwimTrek, an award-winning travel agency based in the U.K. doing swimming holidays tours around the world. The race was the Bosphorus intercontinental cross-harbour swimming race, which is held annually, a current assisted 6 km race from Asia to Europe. This race is the best open…