June to December

All Sonic boys and girls, we have been training all year round in 2015.
After the successful first half of the year, we took a few easy training week in June, then we continued our hard work along the summer, merging the training back into our lifestyle, persistence on a hard day in the office, then off for a 8pm run at Happy Valley every Monday, 8pm swim at Wan Chai, and a few hours of swim bike run on Sunday just because we love this sports!

CROSS-TRAINING

Is it a yoga pose?

We always want to do something difference to cross train on top of our cross-trained-sports. In the middle of the season we joint SUP Yoga Hong Kong for special session at Stanley, it was a real fun yoga experience with the mix of stand up paddling despite the fact that we may only attempt a few yoga pose on the board! Thanks Gigi for organizing this!


RACING

Coach Kenneth and his Sonic angels

We like Repulse Bay Aquathon. It's in the scenic location with calm water and flat run course, it's close to home and we could enjoy a nice coffee and breakfast after that, so we did it! With a lot of happy faces and podium finishers!

Nice breakfast to follow

MORE RACING AND CHANGING VENUE
Organizing a triathlon race is not easy, you need a venue with a proper service road for bike and run where also adjacent to the water as a baseline. Support from the government and local community is especially important in organizing long distance triathlon. READ THIS STORY FROM THE IM703TW crew. Hence the Ironman 70.3 Taiwan became the last edition of Ironman 70.3 Taiwan at Kenting. Team of 11 went there to chase for the PB! It The south peninsula of Taiwan is very sunny, laid back and remains very windy. The swim course was changed to a new venue that lead to some adjustment on the bike and run course from the original plan. The wind bring us a better swim split and a shorter 77km bike course. And the real race is still on the run. We congratulated to the 11 tough souls who spent 4 months of hard training towards the finish line. Namely Marc Geddes and Paul Tam for their first Ironman 70.3 experience! In our oversea race, it's all about the post-race! In Kenting, we enjoyed a very warm hospitality and post-race BBQ hosted by the B&B owner!
The venue of 2016 Ironman 70.3 Taiwan will be changed to TaiTung on 29 March. Marc and Paul definitely need another proper distance 70.3 to claim for a real record. However we are more looking forward if they could move the race back to Kenting?!

BBQ in the street

Back to HK, we also took New World International Triathlon to tapering down to off season. The race become another signature race in the recent years featuring swim bike run just next to our beautiful Victoria harbor. In this urban triathlon you could keep IFC and North Point in your sight, you could ride and run in front of the luxury 5 days hotels in TST or smile with the people who are just half-awake in the bus. However the swim portion will be suspended due to the rapid development at the water front, race format will change to duathlon in 2016.

Yingho running in front of the 5 stars hotel

New Wan Chai Swimming Pool

Speaking of rapid development in Hong Kong, another noticeable work is the Shatin-Central MTR link that bring us the new Wan Chai Training Pool. Since November, our swim training held in the new all season in-door pool. We miss those date when we see the laser show, or onsen-alike pool at the winter time. We look forward to develop more PB at the new pool! At the time we say goodbye to the outdoor Wan Chai pool, we also farewell to our good friend Frederic Beaujean!

Frederic last swim session

Michael Lam in elite junior

Development work of new Disney Hotel also began, altogether with the construction site for Hong Kong - Zhuhai link, the annual Hong Kong ITU Triathlon was being scale down to Hong Kong ASTC Sprint Triathlon at Sunny Bay. The limitation of venue is not stopping us. The race was in the same weekend of IM703TW so for the Team Sonic in Hong Kong to test what they've trained for. 

Time Trial 2015 - Shek O Sprint Triathlon
Something we never change, it's our Sonic Time Trial. The calendar has been filled by training and racing. We only can do one Time Trial in Shek O in short distance triathlon format. We picked the date with strong East wind that pick up a lot of waves that made the swim very challenging, well done to all members finishing the time trial especially the top 3 men and ladies!
Top 3 men: Edwin Wong, Eric Chan and Paul Tam
Top 3 ladies:  Janice Lee, Gigi Wong and Gloria Poon

Chris finishing the swim

Garden Sisisic Triathlon Challenge is by far the only long course triathlon in Hong Kong, many of us took this as warm up race before IM703TW. Happy to see some new members Johnson Kong, Chris Lee, Paul Tam and Lydia Tsui achieved their goal and congratulations to our podium finishers namely Triathlon Queen Janice Lee for Champion, Sonic No.1 veteran Eric Chan for 2nd and Sonic swimmer Idy Chiu for Champion on sprint distance! Marc Geddes's DNF with the damage bike parts provided a very sweet reason for a brand new Cervelo P5 upgrade. 

Race season of 2015 closed by EAST Aquathon, the race for the people who love mountain and swimming! They started with 1.5k swim in South Bay and 7km trail running plus another 7km road run finishing at Taikoo Place where beer, wine and ice-cream waiting to serve! You won't be surprised to see some pretty Sonic faces and a few selfies by our cool man Johnson. 

Johnson and Party twins

George and Teresa new addition
We all know George and Teresa as a good friends and triathlete couple for long. In May, the couple have a new addition of their family, the couple have been training and racing with Sonic since 2005, may their new chapter with little Ethan fill with joy and happiness!

George, Ethan and Teresa

Ivan and Stephanie second addition
Second addition of Yeung family Anika also arrived before the Christmas time, Stephanie has quickly recovered and very soon they might schedule a family trip to visit our training in Shek O!

 

Looking forward 2016
Now we can enjoy a bit of break! Please follow #teamsonictriathlete Look for 'Team Sonic' at Strava. Let's expect new trisuit new website new PB to come in the year of 2016!
 
For the first half of 2016, there are few races close to home that already in our calendar, some of us signed up 70.3 Taiwan on 27 March, some aim at 2nd edition of 70.3 Vietnam on 8th May, some also signed up Challenge Taiwan half in Taiwan on 8th May(Taitung), or 70.3 Hawaii, those staying in town will aim at Festival of Sports Triathlon at Plover Cove in May, certainly including Duathlon 1 and 2 by Tri-HK as training race. 

That's enough for keeping our life back to the discipline!
Sonic training will resume on 3th January Sunday!

Don't forget to sign up our End of Season 'S' Party on 8th January Friday night!
Thank you for being part of the fantastic year of Sonic!

The Secretary

See you soon Frederic!!

We are saying goodbye to our long term member, our close friend Frederic Beaujean who joint us since 2007! What a great 8 years he shares with a lot of laughs and fun, tears and sweats, pain and safistaction, lot of races and parties and many more quality time with many of our Sonic veterans and freshmen! All the best in Norway! We will miss you heap and we will see each other again!!

Time Trial 2015 - The one and only!

We usually plan the Sonic Time Trial in September and October when the Shek O traffic became more reasonable. Ideally we should do one time trial in short version and another weekend for longer version. However, we have a few racing weekends got filled up by SportSoho or TriHK, so 4th October is the best weekend we could do one time trial for 2015 season! We hope to see many of our members show up for this sprint triathlon time trial and we are sorry if this is not fitting your schedule.

Here is the detail!

It will be a sprint triathlon in Shek O beach. (600m swim/28k bike/4k run)

Registration: 7:30am
Briefing: 8:00am 

Distance & format:

Swim: 2 laps in Shek O Beach;
Start from lifeguard tower,  to swim around 3 platforms, back to beach and head for 2nd and 3rd lap.

Bike: 2 laps on Shek O Road;
Start from T1 > Big Roundabout > Tai Tam roundabout > Big Roundabout > Tai Tam roundabout > T2

Run: 1 lap Shek O >  Big Wave Bay Carpark > Shek O carpark

So What is Sonic Time Trial all about?!
Sonic Time Trial is an internal race, members of Sonic can score point from each Time Trial and overall Top 3 men and ladies will be awarded in the Sonic End of Season Party in December! It's a chance for Sonic members to meet and social especially whose don't normally see in our regular training! And you can also see these Time Trial as your pre-race preparation!!

• We have three categories: Junior, Female Open and Men Open.
• Junior category for all male age under 20.
• Female Open category for all female at all age.
• Men Open category for all male at age 20 or above.
• Only member of Sonic will be scored at each time trial. (see Member List on Sonic website)
• Participation without finishing the race will earn 1 point (DNF)
• Relay Team is welcome! More the merrier!!

Now, save the date, get your Sonic Trisuit prepare! See you this Sunday!

January to May 2015

Hi all Sonic boys and girls! Are you ready for the summer? Let's quickly recap what we've achieved in the past few months!

Challenge Taiwan
Three months of training leading to our race in TaiTung, the season opener of 2015, Challenge Taiwan half iron distance and Tri-Asia standard Olympic distance on 25 April. Team of 15 Sonic living and having fun together for 5 days!
Many congratulations once again to our podium finishers and first time triathletes! Your consistent training and dedication in the winter paid off!

We are Ready!

Half distance:
Janice Lee on AG champion
Eric Chan on AG champion
Adelyn Cheong on AG 2nd

Olympic distance:
Gloria Poon on AG 2nd
Josie Ling on AG 3rd

All podium finishers with Coach and B&B owner

Festival of Sports Triathlon

Since many of us raced Challenge Taiwan and Ironman 70.3 Vietnam the week after. Festival of Sports Triathlon in Plover Cove, which traditionally a season opener, had fewer participation from Team Sonic. 

Nevertheless our representative did race well with impressive result. Andy Lai and Gabriel Lau raced at 2:27:36 (AG 5th) and 2:56:16 at Olympic distance; whiles Tsoi Ka Cheuk and Tam Nga Man both crowned their junior AG champion, Lai Chun Ming also won 1st runner up at male elite junior at Sprint distance.

Ironman 70.3 Vietnam
In the first weekend of May, we have Alex Marly, Andrew Li, Ian Ngai and Idy Chiu went to Da Nang for the first Ironman 70.3 in Vietnam. Per their report, the swim was calm and great, pancake flat bike course could bring you a faster bike split, the run always the most challenging under the heat and high humidity. It was a tough day in the office we hat off to Andrew, Ian and Idy for their debut Ironman 70.3 despite the ankle twist on Alex before the race.

Idy approaching finish line

Ian jump over the finish line

Aquawiz Eco Charity Triathlon

It's definitely a place to make ironman! It's a steel mill where you see all the steel and heavy duty machine like in the movie of Transformer! Few of us from Sonic entered the 'turbo' distance consists of a sprint triathlon plus a super sprint triathlon in the enduro format! It could be similar to what we did at Shek O brick training, however you pushed more than that in the race mode. 

It's the great race organization we can see Aquawiz had been putting a lot of effort to setup themselves as a boutique race organizer to bring us the alternative race format, they even offer coffee, coconut water and popcorn after race! Their next signature race is on end of November, Duathlon at TST, yes you will able to run and ride next to our famous Victoria Harbour!

Well done to our junior Chris Kwan finish his first Tri! he is now officially a triathlete!

Wan Chai Training Pool emergency mainteance

Due to the under water side mirror leakage, the pool is closed until further notices.

We have considered an options such as swimming in public lanes at other LCSD pool however we have developed a proper swim etiquette, the swim at public lane will be very unpleasant...

Dryland and circuit training at Happy Valley is the best alternative, for this short-term arrangement, we move the training to THURSDAY because of the horse racing on Wednesday evening at Happy Valley (HV).

Mon 8:00pm - 10:00pm: Run at HV

Thur 8:00pm -10:00pm: Run/Dryland/circuit training at HV

Sun 7:30-10:30am: full triathlon brick Shek O

You may also import the Team Sonic Training Schedule (Adult & Junior) into your calendar by clicking this

New Technique Swim session
Additionally, we launch the weekly technique swim integrate with junior swim training every Saturday 5:00pm - 6:00pm at Sun Yat Sun pool at $500 per calendar month or $150/session.
Please email sonicsports@gmail.com for inquiry.

Your next goal
It's important to set your goal so you may keep yourself in sharp and push yourself to the next level! After your successful first half of the 2015, what's next? It's the season of Open Water Swim and Aquathon in Hong Kong, week after another. Be wise to plan ahead so you have adaptive race and training in your schedule. Certainly our Shek O training on Sunday if it's not a weekend for Tri-HK race.
See the upcoming race later this page. Well... looks like your only Triathlon race is HK Triathlon, it could be just a sprint distance race at Sunny Bay per the talk of our bike ride..., otherwise we need to go oversea...

Ironman 70.3 Taiwan

70.3 Taiwan is one of our flavors race that close to home and challenging race course! Some said its like "our own version of Ironman World Champion at Kona" since we all train very hard for this race in the summer, Kenting could be sunny and windy as well! 

Some of us already signed up this race, we will also organized accommodation and transport only for Sonic members. Please let us know if you also want to join!

Training for Ironman 70.3

Long course triathlon is very well established and popular in Asia nowadays. It's also very tempting for newbies triathlete to sign up when all the people around you are going. We'd suggest do reality check on your commitment before you take out the credit card and click the button.

1. Can you commit at least 12-15hrs weekly training volume in the next 4-5 months consistently?

2. Would you able to organize your life to cope with that training load?

3. Do you love riding on your bike for 3-4hours?

4. Would you able to support the traveling costs? 

5. Your motivation and passion to this sports.

Read this: 8 things to consider before signing up Ironman

If you tick all the boxes, then we'd suggest you to start setting the training plan that works for you. 

Meanwhile, we'd share this article from TrainingPeaks one more 10 things endurance athlethe need to stop doing

Our coach Kenneth does offer training plan that could tailor for you, he charges additional costs but he would assist you to prepare the race progressively and finish strong!

Ironman Tri-Club program
Ironman is launching the program in Asia. This community based program has been quite successful in North America. I've registered Sonic Sports Associations as the part of the affiliated club, let's see how it roll, maybe we may attracted a few more Ironman triathletes drop in our sessions when they travelled in HK?
"

Your next step is to help us get to know who your club members are. Please ask your members to go onto IRONMAN.com and create their athlete profiles. Your members can select their TriClub by clicking on the “My Athlete Profile” tab and entering the name of your club in the drop down menu.

 

Once your athletes are registered as members of your club in our athlete data base, any time they race an IRONMAN or IRONMAN 70.3 anywhere in the world they will generate points that will go towards your TriClub Ranking.

 

Read full details on the IRONMAN TriClub Program and the Ranking System online, spread the word amongst your club members and start earning TriClub Ranking Points, to determine who will be ranked the number one TriClub in the Asia Pacific Region and the World!!

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Junior Summer Training Camp
We are organizing a Summer Training Camp for Sonic juniors. It would be a swim and run focus training in the south part of Taiwan. It would take place in August, more detail to announce when we ready! Stay tuned!

Junior Training Camp venue at Kaohsiung

Junior Summer Training Schedule
To make our junior ready for the summer race season, we will expand the junior training session on Monday. It will become two sessions a week effective from 1st June.
Mon: 6:00pm-7:30pm Run at Happy Valley
Sat: 4:00pm - 6:00pm Run and Swim at Sun Yat Sun Memorial Park & Swimming Pool
Import into your calendar by

Sonic Time Trial Series
Last, we are also planning the Time Trial series for 2nd half of the season. It is the Sonic internal race practice, we will organize 3 races from Aquathon, Triathlon and the Mixed-Relay to end the season. Each member will score point according to their ranking at each race, point will be accumulated to determine the Top 3 male and female. Awards will be presented at the end of the season party!

Thank you for reading!

Upcoming Race
June 7: TriHK Aquathon Challenge - Science Park
July 12: TriHK Aquathon 2 - Repulse Bay Beach
August 16: TriHK Aquathon 3 - Sun Yat Sen Memorial Park Swimming Pool
August 23: Aquawiz Open Water Swim Science Park
September 13: TriHK Aquathon 4 - Tseung Kwan O Waterfront Promenade
September 19-20: Beijing International Triathlon (SOLD OUT)
October 4: TriHK Aquathon 5 - Golden Beach
November 1: TriHK Hong Kong Triathlon Asian Cup
November 1: Ironman 70.3 Taiwan
November 8: Aquawiz New World Duathlon
TBC: Sonic Time Trial Series
TBC: Ocean Swim Serie
TBC: EAST Aquathon 16.3
TBC: Sports Soho Triathlon Challenge