SG Daily | Oct 2021

【SportsPower】Swimrun: an up-and-coming sport that challenges your stamina

Those who first came across the up-and-coming sport of Swimrun may confuse it with Aquathlon, where the former is significantly more challenging for athletes, in terms of stamina and endurance. However, satisfaction is guaranteed for those who excelled in it.

No wonder Stan Tang, Chairman of Stan Group, Howard Yeung, Executive Director and Chief Financial Officer, and Jim Ip, Executive Director of H. K. Sources Finance Limited, are so fascinated by it. The sport is promoted in and outside the Group, hoping to attract more people into the exciting world of Swimrun.

It is interesting to know that the muscle groups used for swimming and running are quite different with little overlap. The former involves 24 separate voluntary muscles, including those around the neck, giving swimmers a full-body exercise. The latter, however, mostly only engages five main muscle groups located in the runners’ legs. Swimrun is way more than a crossing training session, switching back and forth between swimming and running is a huge challenge on one’s ability to regulate – breathing when jumping into the water after a long run, and leg muscles when running as soon as one exit the water.

Different from the Aquathlon we sometimes watch on television where athletes change to their running shoes during the swim/ run transition, Swimrun requires athletes to frequently switch between swimming and running, so all equipment has to be carried from the start to the finish line, meaning that athletes have to swim with shoes and run with equipment such as paddles and floatation aids.

Swimrun is a combination of two sports that challenges one’s stamina and perseverance. It is worthwhile to note that virtues of resilience, determination, passion, and confidence arisen from strength training are in fact the essence of the entrepreneurship that Stan Group has been championing.

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