Today is the end of 2019 and my life has drastically changed in this year as I have become an endurance athlete when compared to previous years. It’s time to have a review what I have done this year, referencing what I have written last year to see if I have achieved them. In orienteering, Remain in the elite class in local sprint ranking in 2020 Become a Hong Kong team member for the 1st Asian Trail Orienteering Championships, and…
Race information What? Garmin Tai Po Half Marathon When? 2019-12-08 How far? 21.0975 km Website? https://www.garmintphm.com/ Time? 1:41:50 Place? 13 / 71 in male 25 – 29 Goals Goal Description Completed? A under 1:40 No B under 1:45 Yes C complete my first half marathon Yes Splits Kilometer Time 1 4:43.5 2 4:20.5 3 4:33.7 4 4:39.7 5 4:50.2 6 4:40.5 7 4:49.5 8 5:00.9 9 5:03.8 10 4:30.1 11 4:48.2 12 4:41.5 13 5:01.6 14 4:52.9 15 4:55.7 16 5:12.1 17 4:50.8 18 4:41.3 19…
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…
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…