My upcoming marathon swimming race, Vidösternsimmet, which is originally planned to held on 8th August this year has been postponed to 14th August 2021 due to ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. It means that my 2020 marathon swim season is over because going to Europe this summer is now unlikely, and I will not do marathon swimming in Hong Kong before November (i.e. I will not do a Clean Half solo) because it is too hot for me. The earliest opportunity for…
3 HKU alumni lawyers Eliza Chang, Allan Che and Eugene Wong will form a relay team to swim the English Channel this July, named “The Rule of Law Swimming Marathon”. They are planning to become the first ever Hong Kong relay team to cross the channel. They have been preparing for this challenge in the past 18 months, with the initial idea of a 6-person relay, 3 lawyers from Hong Kong and 3 lawyers from Guangdong. However the Guangdong team…
Chun Kong Mak has announced that he will attempt to swim across the English Channel this October, hoping to become the first Hongkonger to complete this epic challenge in open water swimming. He currently lives in Brno, Czechia. He is an experienced long-distance swimmer and ice swimmer, the only ice swimmer from Hong Kong with his first ice mile in 2019, and his second this year in butterfly. He and 3 other Czech swimmers crossed Loch Ness as a relay…
What is a marathon? “Marathon” is a running term. It means a long-distance race with an official distance of 42.195 km. The name originated from a legend of Philippides that he ran from Marathon to Athens non-stop to announce the victory that the Persians had been defeated, then collapsed and died. The modern distance, about 40 km, was approximately the distance of that route from Marathon to Athens, and settled at 42.195 km using the length of the 1908 Olympics…
I have completed Cold Half on Sunday, which has become my second marathon swimming race. Here’s the race report. Race information Name: Cold Half Date: 2020-01-19 Place: Hong Kong (Stanley ➡️ Deep Water Bay, via To Tei Wan, around Stanley Peninsula, round Round Island and Middle Island) Distance: 15 km as claimed by the organiser (13.8 km as measured on Google satellite image) Website: http://results.racetimingsolutions.com/results.aspx?CId=16387&RId=6325&EId=1 Live tracking: http://live.dottrack.asia/coldhalf2020/ Result: 05:14:26 Rank: 6/6 in category, 11/13 in non-wetsuit, 15/17 overall (1…
It is only 4 days to my next race, Cold Half, which will be my 2nd marathon swimming race in my life. This has been my goal race from the very beginning when I started swimming seriously at the end of 2018. At that time I set up my goal to become a marathon swimmer by March 2020, which I planned to do this as my 1st race. However I did the Lake Geneva Classic in July 2019 which became…
As winter comes, the unheated university pool that I regularly swim in has now cooled down to my target temperature 16°C for my “cold” water training. (channel swimmers, please don’t laugh at me – 16°C is considered cold in subtropical Hong Kong, people put on their wetsuit here even in 22°C water) I consider temperature below 16°C as cold water swimming (which I don’t feel warm even when I’m swimming at race intensity, and can’t have long breaks in it),…
I have notice that, this year, I am now becoming more and more like an endurance athlete as opposed to having a “normal” lifestyle. Before 2018, apart from work and study, my life was prosperous and all-rounded. I did a lot of sports, mostly sailing and orienteering, and also running, swimming, and mind sports such as competitive programming, mahjong and bridge as well as long as they didn’t become too physically demanding. Among them, I achieved a high level in…
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…