Laguna Phuket Triathlon - TriathlonOther

My brother and I had decided to wear 'budgie smugglers' as homage to the origins of triathlon and this proved to be a huge bonus for me. The ones we were wearing over our tri-suits were fluro green and made it easy for me to pick my brother out in the mass of swimmers. As my aim was to try and stay as close to him on the swim as possible I decided to draft off his feet. What I found out is that my brother is extremely directionally challenged and we basically zig-zagged our way through the whole course. If it had been anyone else I would have stopped drafting! When we reached the beach which you run up and over to get to the lagoon he turned around and said "I knew it must be you tapping my f#%&ing feet the whole way" which made me giggle. Unfortunately the lagoon was quite murky and he was able to lose me in the crowd so I ended up getting out of the water about 30 seconds behind him.

Nothing as it was my strategy just to minimise the time I lost to my brother on the swim which worked well.

As per usual my brother set up a picnic in transition which meant that we left the area together.

The ride starts with my brother in sight although in parts it is quite curvy meaning I can't see him the whole time. We went over some speed bumps and my gatorade bottle got launched from my rear carrier which led to me throwing the stupid thing out when we finished the race. At about the 12km mark you hit the big hills which everyone talks about and it is seriously steep. At this point I'm wishing for the bigger rear sprocket that the race organisers recommended as I had to do all the climbing out of my saddle. In contrast I come up on my brother who is comfortably sitting in his seat with his rear granny gear laughing at me for how hard I was doing it. I actually passed him on the hill because I couldn't go as slow as him without falling off the bike. We took the descent together and then across the flat I realised that I was going to have to work harder than I planned to stay with him so I chose to let him go. The rest of the ride is pretty flat and goes through some interesting terrain with farms, villages and then finally on the highway for the run back to the transition area. There was a hydration station where I was able to pick up some sports drink to replace the one which had been rocket launched and I settled into a comfortable pace for the last 15kms thinking to conserve myself for the run.

Hindsight is a beautiful thing but the question for me after this race will always be what if I'd stayed with my brother. He ended up putting about 5 minutes into me on the bike which proved to be too much for me to catch on the run. But if i'd done that would I have run as well as I did?

Got through the transition quickly and made up about a minute on my brother who struggles with a bad back making it difficult for him to get his shoes on and off.

Started the run feeling pretty ordinary with the stitches hitting me. Could see my brother at the turn arounds and he was looking ordinary as well. About the 6km mark I came good and even though it was hot I started to really enjoy the run and felt like I was flying. I'd worked out that I needed to run fast (by my definition of fast, obviously not the same as everyone elses) if I wanted to break my goal time and I was ticking the kilo's off in under 5 min pace and felt so good I stopped to give the wife a kiss on the course. As I was running down the shute I got the budgies off and celebrated by swinging them wildly round my head stoked that I'd finished in under 3:30 which had been my dream time.

Nothing, felt great to finish feeling good. Ran well, executed the plan perfectly even if I'll always wonder what if I'd tried to stay with my brother on the ride :)

All three of us got together at the end and thought that we should have a beer to celebrate a great day. Then we were joined by another couple of blokes from Australia and that one beer quickly multiplied into 8. Definitely not the kind of warm down which is prescribed in the magazines but it was great sitting there shooting the breeze, comparing race experiences and hydrating. We headed back to our hotel very wobbly on our bikes and crashed before resurrecting for the after race party.


Need to find out how to get rid of the stitches.


Without a doubt the best organised race I have ever attended. There were shuttle buses running every 5 minutes, they had boats waiting to take you from the pre race briefing to the carbo loading dinner which had a fantastic array of food. The race day itself was smoothly organised again with boats waiting where they needed to be and plenty of volunteers around to answer any question which you had. I would unreservedly recommend this race to anyone.