Almost 50 and training in Vietnam!

Did I hear my name?? Welcome! Maybe we can get the number of triathletes in this country into the double digits now! (Actually, quite a few do come out of the woodwork when there's an event.) Where are you based? Guessing from the "swim in the ocean" comment, Nha Trang or Danang? Or a beach resort somewhere? Congrats on setting a high goal. you might want to consider entering the Vietnam IM 70.3 (half ironman) in May--first official IM event in Vietnam--as a stepping stone. To my knowledge aside from some pretty casual off-road stuff offered by Le Fruit, that's the only tri in country right now.

As for equipment.....sigh....Good luck finding shoes in Saigon. There are a few stores with supposedly genuine stuff but only Nike and Adidas. You probably won't have much luck with larger Western sizes. I bring all my running shoes from the US, or in a pinch restock in Singapore or Bangkok. Even the latter are tough for larger sizes, particularly larger women's sizes if, like me, you have narrow feet and can't wear men's. The other big issue is electrolyte tabs/powder. They don't sell them here, period. There's some kind of import regulation that causes this, so if you want to do anything more ecofriendly than buy cases of Revive, you have to cart them in from somewhere else. If you are headed to Saigon, there's a good bike shop in District 2 (called The Bike Shop!), Nike and Adidas stores downtown, and a couple of stores with running shoes in Crescent Mall in District 7.

Feel free to PM me with anything Vietnam-related. I'm based here in Saigon. Heading out to run now before it gets too hot.