It’s now January 2021 and my Channel training hasn’t gone back to the right track yet. Everything is still wrong. Today I have come closer to giving up. Last month, December 2020, I tried to ramp up my training from 18 km / week before my head injury to 28 km / week in Christmas period. I got too tired and had to reduce to 20 km / week in the first week of January, and this week I should…
2020 has now come to the end. As in past years, it’s now time to review my goals from beginning of the year, and set up new goals for 2021. The goals of 2020, ordered from the highest priority, are the following: to qualify for the World Trail Orienteering Championship (scheduled for 2020-11-08 to 2020-12-05 in Hong Kong) as a Hong Kong representative to remain in élite classes in sprint orienteering and trail orienteering in Hong Kong in 2021 to…
In the past 10 months, my training went completely wrong. I could not do my desired training from February to September. I could only get back since October. Despite that, I didn’t believe my situation to be bad enough to give it up outright, so I tried to adjust my second training block (November to April) to compensate for my missing training previously. In my original plan, I would do a 30 km rehearsal swim in February, or alternatively my…
Continued from the first half of the year. July 2020 I didn’t continue the training in the swim clubs. Instead, I was waiting for my coach, Chung Ho, to resume teaching when the situation of COVID-19 improved. My swimming was at an all-time low since I started in 2018, normally only getting in the water 2 times per week, less than an hour each time, as everything including the pools and the ocean were too hot for me. Then, in…
Now, a lot of people already know that I’m going to swim the Channel in September 2021, so it’s time for me to share my training progress. The beginning At the end of 2018, the idea of swimming the Channel during a working holiday in 2021 appeared in my mind. It would be a fun and extraordinary thing for me to do, to make my working holiday special and unregrettable. Morever, at that time, there weren’t any Hongkongers who had…
I did DWB TT, my first swimming race today since the COVID pandemic began in February. It is a race using interval start that drafting is not allowed. The actual course length was 2.67 km and I completed in 0:57:39, 62nd place out of 111 completed participants. By cross-comparing the results of MMIC last year (there are 23 participants who did both), I remained at the same level. My original training plan before the pandemic was to do technique and…
On 12 August, Isaac Yuen did an experimental swim near his home observed by me, which became the inaugural MSF documented swim (currently pending ratification) in Hong Kong. The swim itself is only a small challenge, especially for an experienced ultra-endurance athlete which has done more than 50 marathons / ultra-marathons / trail running races. What’s valuable is that by doing this swim, we have got a lot of experience in swim planning, crewing, observing, etc. according to the internationally-recognised…
Within a week, 4 Hongkongers made history in the English Channel as the first ever solo Hongkonger and the first ever Hong Kong relay team to swim across it. The solo crossing was done by Chun Kong Mak. He lives in Czechia currently. He is a seasoned marathon swimmer and ice swimmer. Last year he also became the first ever Hongkonger to complete an ice mile. He started at 23:39 1st September and got it across in 13 hours and…
Hongkongers are going to make history in the English Channel soon. In a few days’ time, there will be a solo and a relay team attempting to swim the 33-km crossing from England to France. Chun Kong Mak will likely depart tomorrow on a spring tide, weather permitting. He will attempt to become the first Hongkonger to swim the English Channel solo. He is a very accomplished open water swimmer. He raced a lot of marathon swimming races in Czechia….
Open water swimming in Hong Kong is now becoming increasingly popular. In the recent few years more and more people have escaped from the confinement of the walls and got into the sea, with a surge in these few months caused by pool closure as well. However, I feel that our potential of taking this to the extreme has not developed yet. In élite level, we have young kids like Bill Thorley who are really doing well. Now marathon swimming…