Time Out Talks: Virginia Lo, the city’s fastest female runner at the 2025 HK marathon

If you’ve been following Hong Kong’s running scene, Virginia Lo’s name is hard to miss. In late 2024, she smashed her personal best (PB) that had stood for nearly two years at HK Airport's Three-Runway System 10km International Race, clocking in at 35 minutes and 34 seconds. Then, at Japan’s Sanyo Ladies Road Race, she blazed through the half-marathon in one hour, 15 minutes, and 42 seconds – another PB. And though she didn’t set a new PB at the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge (Hong Kong Section) Half Marathon earlier in the year, she still dominated as the top local female runner. (The Standard Chartered Hong Kong Marathon 2025 was held on February 9, where Virginia became the fastest local female runner with a time of two hours, 39 minutes, and 56 seconds, breaking yet another PB.)

"I didn’t realise people would actually pay attention to my time," Virginia laughs. Rather than worrying about what people expected of her, she takes a page from Siobhan Haughey’s book: "Other people’s expectations aren’t my goals, haha."  

After winning the 10K and half-marathon at the Standard Chartered Marathon in 2021 and 2022, the full marathon title was the only thing missing from her resume. To outsiders, it seemed like a no-brainer. But Virginia isn’t one to take anything for granted. 

 "I used to think a full marathon was just like a longer training session. But the more I train, the more I realised the importance of humility," she admits. "You can’t go into it thinking you've already got this in the bag. Runners rarely do the full 42km distance when training because it's easy to get injured, so you can't accurately predict your race time. If something goes wrong in a 10K or half-marathon, you can tough it out to the finish line, but in a full marathon, you'll be in trouble."

Virginia’s running journey hasn’t been a straight shot to the top. Growing up, her dad got her into trail running and training. In university, she joined the Hong Kong Polytechnic University running team but always hovered around third or fourth place. “It made me doubt myself,” she recalls.  After graduation, the pandemic hit, and the world slowed down. She juggled teaching with running, squeezing in workouts before and after work. It worked, for a while. But the lack of rest meant she never attempted to tackle longer distances.  

Talking about taking on a full marathon back then seemed like a crazy idea, but in 2022, she decided to take the plunge. She quit her teaching job to focus on running full-time. It was a scary decision, but it was just the beginning. In the year after quitting, Virginia was not achieving any breakthroughs despite competing in numerous races. Last Year's Standard Chartered Marathon was a major setback for her. "I didn’t mind finishing fourth locally, but my time of two hours and 53 minutes... it was bad. Things didn't go to plan, so I knew something must have gone wrong." That’s when Virginia made another bold decision – to train under a Japanese coach. 

Enter Shinsetsu Murao, aka the devil coach of the running world. Known for his brutal training methods and obsession with detail, he’s shaped some of Hong Kong’s best runners (and scared off plenty of others.)  

“I’d heard the stories,” Virginia says. “I knew what I was getting into. But I didn’t want to have any regrets.” In September 2023, she officially started training under Murao and joined the Hong Kong Sports Institute. She admits that his ways of coaching have certainly put pressure on her, but only the right ones that would make her grow. Life became a rigid routine, all for that one goal – to become a professional athlete.

After the Paris Olympics, there was a lot of chatter about what makes a great athlete. For Virginia, it’s not about medals or records, it’s about attitude. "Being an elite athlete isn’t just about results," she explains. "It’s about dedicating your entire life to this one thing, like your routine, your diet, everything. That’s what it takes.”  

Since joining the institute, Virginia’s life has been a masterclass in discipline. "You put away your phone at night and go to bed early. It’s not glamorous, but it’s what you have to do." This disciplined life has led to remarkable results for Virginia over the past six months, but she remains unfazed. "Results matter, of course," she says, "but they’re not the end goal."

For Virginia, running is about more than speed or distance. There’s no point in burdening yourself with other people's expectations or the weight of results. It's just not worth it. Over time, you'll slowly realise that it's about looking within yourself. Running is not just about speed and endurance, it's also about having the tenacity to keep going.

And as for those numbers – distance, speed, time – Virginia has learned to take them with a grain of salt. After all, as Takeshi Kaneshiro once said in Chungking Express, “Running is such a personal thing. Why would you just run aimlessly for others to see?"