Q:
What’s your background?
A:
I'm 35 years old, born in China. The closest thing I did to sports while growing up was math olympiad. But I was so bad at math that I had to move to Canada. There I learned how to ski and worked as a ski instructor for a few winters as a teenager. A few years ago I moved to Sweden because of 30-årskris.
My work organised a team to do the Tough Viking OCR race and I signed up because it was free, and a good way to meet people. I started training. The first time I tried to run 5km, I only managed 4km, and couldn't walk for a week afterwards.
Soon after Tough Viking, some crazy person at work organised a bike relay for a small team to cycle from Stockholm to Berlin. It sounded like fun, and it was free, so I signed up. I only managed to ride a few segments of 50km, but it was really fun, and I made a lot of friends along the way.
Then the pandemic hit. I could either stay at home and watch TV all day, or, I thought, since I can run and bike now, why not teach myself how to swim? I heard some guys at work talking about triathlons, maybe this could be fun. They also talked about doing an Ironman. Something about swimming a lot, cycling a looooong distance, then finishing with a whole marathon?! WTF. Let's do it, why not?
The plan was to do a olympic distance in the first year, then a half Ironman the year after, and a full Ironman the year after that. Because of the pandemic, everything was cancelled except for Ironman Tallinn in Estonia. I guess fate had other plans for me. In 2020, after little over a year of training and many injuries, somehow I finished an Ironman in 11 hours.
I never knew endurance sports training could be so much fun. In the following years I finished a few more full-dance triathlon races, a Svensk Klassiker every year, and even got lucky enough to finish Norseman with a black T-shirt.
After I finally subbed-10 hours on Ironman in 2024, I actually decided to retire from racing. I didn't race at all in 2025. I loved training but never enjoyed the hassle and stress of travelling for different races with all the equipment. A few months ago, a colleague, who I'm convinced has schadenfreude, was travelling in Lofoten. He saw a poster for the Arctic Triple and sent me a photo.
Skimo 30k, that's not too bad. A full-distance triathlon, been there done that. But an ultramarathon... I used to think people who ran marathons were mentally challenged, then my first marathon was after a 3.8k swim and a 180k bike. I used to think people who ran ultramarathons were mentally challenged, then I find myself signing up for the Arctic Triple. WTF. Let's do it, why not?
Aside from sports, I work as a software engineer and recently started dancing bachata.
Q:
Have you done any races by The Arctic Triple before?
A:
No.
Q:
Why did you choose this challenge for 2026?
A:
I haven't mentally thought it through, but apparently I enjoy pushing myself. I also want that finisher jacket to brag to all my friends except nobody knows what 11/22/33 is. Like they say in Norseman: don't think, just jump.
Q:
What is your strongest and weakest disciplines?
A:
Before I started training, I was weak at all of them. It's been a few years since I started training, and results say that I'm relatively stronger on the run, pretty average at cycling, and quite useless at swimming. Ski mountaineering is new to me though, but I'm often ut på tur on skis so I'm not overly worried about it.
What are your expectations for the races?
I am scared of the 160k ultramarathon. The triathlon and skimo look tough, but seem doable with enough determination since they are not high impact sports. The longest I've ever ran was only 50km and I twisted my ankle at least 4 times during that run.
If the weather is nice, which is rarely is, I expect the skimo race to be a lovely day out in the beautiful mountains of Lofoten. The triathlon I would imagine to be quite wet, but I'm used to rain. The worse the weather the bigger the love.
The ultra... I expect it to be the best worst day of my life. It will be painful. There will be many low moments wondering how can I fake a reasonable injury to appear as if I had bad luck and quit the race. There will be so many twisted ankles. But I will finish.
How do you plan to prepare for the gold triple?
I live at a ski resort so luckily I can train for skimo all winter. I've been having a hell of a time finding ski boots that fit my weird asian feet, so that's an unknown right now. If I have to race in my heavy topptur equipment, I will.
I started preparing for the ultra a bit late, so I'm a few months behind on the ideal training plan from the book The Uphill Athlete. My goal is to just finish, so hopefully it's enough.
Right now I'm finally running 100k a week. The base building period is done. In december I start the build phase. This winter you will see me at the treadmill a lot.
Triathlon I will worry about if I can finish the ultra. One step at a time.
Do you have any specific goals other than finishing?
No.
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