LOCH IT IN!

As it turns out, there is a Loch Ness monster.

Her name is Angie Ng.

Swimming the final 1,500 meters on a four-person relay, after already logging 6,000 meters on two previous legs, Angie (above) churned her arms and fluttered her legs faster than she ever remembered, cutting through the famous Scottish Lake Loch Ness, the seconds ticking away.

When she finally reached the end, tripping and falling on the rock-covered beach, the Seven Oaks resident had helped set a Loch Ness record for a 4-person relay team in the 23-mile long lake.

Not bad for a 52-year-old mother of two.

Angie, and her friends Eliza Chang, Ryan Leung and Chun Kong Mak, finished the July 27 swim in the frigid lake in 11 hours, 29 minutes, 27 seconds. The British Long Distance Swimming Association still needs to certify the record, but for now it tops the 11:38.20 mark set in 2019 by a four-person all-male team.

“Two days before the swim, we realized breaking the record was doable,” Angie says. “But our goal was just to complete a skin swim (without a wet suit) in the cold Loch. We tried our best and are very happy with the results.”

It was an eventful final leg. 

Angie, who didn’t think she would be needed again after her two previous legs, was told by one of the observers she needed to swim the final 1,500m. Oh, and she had to do it in roughly 38 minutes if they wanted to set a record.

“At that moment, I realized the burden to break the record has landed on a 52-year-old mom who has not been competing in 30 years, and who just re-started training barely six months ago,” Angie says. 

Those months of doing laps in the early morning at the Seven Oaks Clubhouse pool were about to pay off. It was a tough swim – the current seemed to be taking her to the right, so much so that, at one point, the boat had to move from her left side to her right to keep her from swimming into a channel where there were other boats.

“I sprint and I sprint,” Angie says, adding that she focused on her breathing and keeping her shoulders loose.

 She swam the final 200 meters alone, as the boat could go no further, due to the depth of the lake. 

 Because her luggage was lost when she arrived in Scotland, Angie was without her contact lenses and prescription goggles. She says that all she could see was a big patch of yellow, which was the beach, “and I was told just swim straight into it. So I swam and swam, yet the beach was so near yet so far, like it can never be reached.”

 She finally saw some rocks on the lake floor, and crawled and fell and crawled and fell again across the slippery rocks on the shore. When she was completely on shore and not touching any water, the swim was officially over.

 “I raised my arms, signaled to the boat and there, we completed our marvelous Loch Ness swim,” Angie said.

Not only did Angie finish her swim in borrowed goggles, she was fortunate enough to get the last one-piece swimsuit in her size from Primark, a discount store, for six pounds, or seven U.S. dollars.

Angie has been swimming since she was 3 years old, her mother starting her in the pool to combat her bronchitis.  She continued to swim as she grew up, competing on the Chinese National Team in international and Junior Olympic events.

She also swam competitively for two years at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, before work, marriage and children took her out of the pool.

Despite participating in the mile-long Hong Kong Cross Harbour Race in 2016 and 2018, the last year the event was held due to Covid (until resuming in December 2021), she barely has had time to get in the pool.

But, now that daughter Kristen is at the University of Central Florida and son Kelvin is at the University of Washington (in Seattle), Angie’s mornings are free for swimming.

She just needed a mission.

In January, she found one when Eliza called with the crazy idea to swim Loch Ness. Angie eagerly jumped into training to be part of the first relay team from Hong Kong to even attempt the challenge.

While Angie trained at the 89º Seven Oaks pool, the water in Loch Ness averages around 59º in July. It was 55-57º during her swim.

Because she was rusty, she could only swim 500 meters when she started training, but soon added more distance, with 24 laps becoming 250 laps and more this summer. Most days she swam 5,000 meters, or a little more than three miles, and even managed a few longer (10,000m) workouts.

In preparation for chilly Loch Ness, she filled her bathtub at home with ice and water 3-4 times a week, taking 15-minute soaks hoping it would prepare her for the lake.

 Angie and her team started a Facebook page documenting their preparation, and to raise money for charity. A nurse practitioner at the University of South Florida, Angie is donating 100% of her portion to Doctors Without Borders.

As for Nessie, Angie can’t be sure if Loch Ness’s famed monster was around or not, because she didn’t have her goggles. 

But, if Nessie was there, she wasn’t the only monster in Loch Ness that day.