MetaMan Bintan Triathlon - Half Course - Triathlon1/2 Ironman

I was jammed in with a small pack for the first few hundred meters but finally broke away. There was a lane rope leading out to the first turn. That part was easy and I got to the turn in distant second but pulling away from the swimmers behind me.

Then it all fell apart. I couldn't see any buoys for the remainder of the swim because they were just too small. I went off in the wrong direction and another swimmer followed me but we both got caught by the pack. I should have finished second, 2 minutes after first and 2 minutes clear of the next swimmer. Instead I was fifth.

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There is absolutely nothingh I can do to improve this except find a cure for my vision condition or hire a paddler to navigate for me. The time difference wouldn't have made much difference to the result but as swimming is my best leg it would have been nice to come in 2nd.

I wore jammers for the swim and did a complete change to bike shorts and jersey so this took a long time.

If I can handle very long rides in tri shorts I could possibly cut 10 minutes off my T1 time.

An awesome bike course that will test you. There is traffic and the drivers are idiots so you need to be careful. There are also thousands of school children wanting hand slaps as you go past and you have to be careful to not be taken out by one.

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To go faster on this course I have to improve my climbing. I simply can't descend any faster safely.

Quite slow but I changed out of my bike shorts into runing shorts and becasue of the rain everything was dripping wet so it took longer than normal.

If I had worn tri-shorts and run in them I could have taken about 5 minutes off.

I started lap 1/3 with a couple of minutes of walking to get my legs working then went into a 1min jog/1min walk interval. The first lap felt strong and at the start of the second lap I went to 2/2. I felt very strong and fast all through this lap and changed up to 3/1 at the start of the third lap.

That was my fatal mistake. It started hurting near the end of the first 3 min run but I kept going on this interval. By 3Km I had blown up and had to drop back to 2/1 but after that I didn't recover and it cost me quite a bit of time.

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I would probably stick with 1/1 or 2/1 all the way. It might also help if I do some run training.

A post race massage was pretty much it.


Lack of fitness and some bad decisions.


This is a race I can highly recommend to anybody looking for a good solid challenge. If I get through Busselton Ironman in December I am considering trying the full at Bintan in 2015.

Overall it probably wasn't the most sensible choice for my second triathlon and first half but I got through and had a great time. Going in I was under the impression that it was a pretty flat cruisey course but I'm happy it wasn't. The difficulty made it much more satisfying to finish.