I swam from Penarth to Clevedon on 5 September in 6 hours and 7 minutes, my second channel swim in the UK. Motivation I felt so bad in my English Channel swim. It was well beyond my ability at that time. I didn’t think of anything else and was hoping to get better in competitive swimming first, as good channel swimmers are all high level competitive swimmers. However, I started getting jealous seeing my friends swim more channels, like Wen…
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…
In London, although National Rail and London Underground are separate transport networks, it is possible to buy a ticket for travel for single or return journeys on the other network, including tickets for journeys involving both networks. If your journey starts at a National Rail station outside the London fare zones 1-6 and ends at an Underground station (or vice versa), it is usually (but not always) cheaper to buy a ticket for the National Rail portion and use Oyster…
I raced in the Open Water Championships again this year, in the London Region and in the England Nationals. My time improved compared to last year but my ranking didn’t. The Regionals The London Region Open Water Championships this year was held in London, at Docklands Sailing and Watersports Centre on 6 July, unlike the previous years where it was held in either Hertfordshire or Norfolk. It was easily accessible in urban London, with frequent buses connecting Canary Wharf stopping…
After my solo swim in 2023, I decided to form a team again for an English Channel relay swim. I found two other teammates, Rachel Jones and Terence Kwan, to join me and form a team, but Ingrid Chow couldn’t make her commitment to join. We booked a slot in September 2024 but unfortunately we didn’t have a chance to go due to persistent bad weather in the majority of September. Our team was not available for most of the…
In an ideal world, if you want to travel by train from A to B to C back to A, you can buy a ticket from A to B, then B to C, then C to A. However, by doing so in Great Britain, more often than not you will pay much more than people doing return journeys, A-B-A-C-A despite that the distance is much shorter. This is because of a historical artifact which effectively penalising off-peak single journeys. In…
It has been a while since I last blogged due to the race off-season. I did my first triathlon this year last weekend (8 June) in Weymouth, the WMD Classic, organised by Bustinskin Events. This is my 4th standard distance triathlon I have done. The race is in Weymouth, with a sea swim, hilly open-road bike ride and a flat run. I don’t fancy a hilly bike ride (I always avoid hills when cycling) however there aren’t any other better…
This is the 4th new year since I moved to the UK. I made some significant achievements in my career, but few things else. Achievements in the year Career At my job at Jnction, I introduced real-time National Rail train data into Aubin using GTFS-RT and OpenTripPlanner as the underlying technology, and made a lot of contributions into the real-time processing of OpenTripPlanner. Aubin has now grown into a separate business and is now in public beta in the UK,…
On 14 September, I did my longest swimming event this year in London, the Dock2Dock 15 km event. Last year I did the 10 km event but it happened just 2 days after I swam the English Channel so I was extremely tired and the result did not have a reference value of my actual ability, although it qualified me for the 15 km this year. My swimming ability was far behind most people I knew, and I believed that…
Last month, I went on a trip to Hel to do orienteering. Hel is a Baltic seaside resort in Poland at the tip of a peninsula, with convenient public transport links, which attracted me to go. The event The event was called Grand Prix Pomerania, which consisted of FootO and TrailO races. There were a FootO and a TrailO race on each of Friday, Saturday and Sunday. The FootO races were middle, long and middle races, and the TrailO races…