The Triathlon Trio

There is an African proverb, “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.”

Adam Wong, Billy Choi and Argo Yeung began their triathlon adventures less than two years ago. They enjoy every triathlon race, not because they want to beat their competitors but because, as a team, they get to push their limits even further than they can alone. “There is no win or lose doing a triathlon; together we complete it or we don’t,” said Adam.

While Argo and Adam met when they were at secondary school together, Billy knows Adam from their time at HKU. Their brotherhood strengthened during a month-long trip to Tibet before the Qinghai-Tibet Railway was built. “We still joke about our overnight experience on the basic bus to Tibet from Qinghai. It seemed the guy sleeping next to us had never taken a shower in his life. We felt like we couldn’t breathe and we used up the oxygen pillows we had with us originally bought for altitude sickness.” Billy recalled.

Noticing his suits were getting tighter, Adam knew he wanted to take up exercise and chose to do the triathlon as the training requires greater discipline than other sports. A few months after starting triathlon training he persuaded Billy and Argo to join him and train to be triathletes too.

Triathlon involves swimming, cycling and running in immediate succession over various distances: Junior Triathlon, Sprint Distance, Olympic Distance, Long Course and Ironman, ranging from 100m to 3.8 km for the swimming section, 4km to 180km for the cycling section and 0.8km to 42.195km for the running section (more details here).

Working to a disciplined training schedule means Adam, Billy and Argo wake up at 5.30am during weekdays, do triathlon training for 45 minutes, and Adam is then ready to check the news at 7:00am for his work. At weekends, they manage fit in two to three hours of training. “Every day, we share our training records with each other via an app. There’s nowhere to hide,” said Billy, who was a lacrosse player while resident at Ricci Hall. By participating in the triathlon journey together, they have found their individual drive to keep up with their daily training is strengthened.

Although Argo, the newest triathlete of the three, remarked that in the past he “was just a guy who ran a few times a month” and “only knew how to swim breaststroke”, after daily training for almost a year he has become addicted to the adrenaline rush the triathlon brings. He, Adam and Billy completed a triathlon race in Taiwan in March 2017. “During the swimming section, I was so behind that my results had me in the bottom 10%. But I kept going and I made it to be in the top 20% in the final triathlon results!”

Anything can happen during training and the actual triathlon. Billy tumbled down a slope during cycling training. “I yelled for help and luckily caught the attention of the coach who was the last to pass by.” Adam was accidentally punched by another swimmer and lost a contact lens during the swimming component of a triathlon: “I lost my direction in the open water because of my blurred vision.” Water got into Argo’s goggles during one swim, which he had to try to clear, “It’s just so difficult to take a break out there.”

Despite all the possible yet unforeseeable risks involved, the triathlon still fascinates the trio as they get to experience how it pushes them to their physical limits while simultaneously strengthening their brotherhood. Billy has even done his swimming and cycling training with an injury, and when he raced in the Taipei Marathon last December, the pain in his leg caused him to lag behind. “But you know what? These two guys just slowed their pace down and waited for me so that we could cross the finishing line TOGETHER.”

Along with the triathlon training has come a changed mindset and the triathlon trio believe they are capable of so much more than they once thought they were. They feel others could benefit from the training too. “You might discover you are stronger than you thought after meeting incredible challenges,” Argo and Billy explained.

Adam echoed that the triathlon encourages them to eat a healthier diet, opting for more natural foods and less meat and less alcohol, even though his work often requires him to dine out with clients. “We are just more disciplined, determined, and efficient, with unlimited stamina.”

The trio has shared the useful information below quoted from Triathlon Plus July 2016:

50 Things You Need on Race Day