After consulting the man himself, Victor Popov, he told me I’d be able to compete in the swim section of the tri but not the bike or run. Damn it, I’d been training for a while for this.
It left me with the 750m Ocean Swim on Whitehaven Beach as a practice for todays event, dragging one useless leg wouldn’t be easy so I opted for the shorter race instead.

I did ok for a first ocean swim you know, there were real Olympians, triathletes and fitness gurus all around so my level really would have no impact on the podium positions but I did manage to win my category of 30-39 males!

It was a cracking day out with perfect weather and around 130 swimmers, all of whom made it to the end of the course and looked happy but tired at the end. The 750m swim was won by Luke Henry with a time that was 5 minutes quicker than mine. Wow and well done!

The 2km event which was for the real athletes took the winner 23 minutes and 11 seconds to complete – Oh my goodness I have along way to go!

Onto todays event, the sprint distance triathlon made up of a 750m swim, a 20km bike ride and a 5km run, which I still entered but only the swim section. I’d managed to recruit a great cyclist, Evan Coddy and a Hamo runner, Sophie to make up the sections of the event which I now wasn’t allowed to do and so suddenly we all were one of the mixed entry teams in the competition!

After a superb swim to start the tri of 750m (which I completed in a minute less than at Whitehaven on Friday) I handed over the timing chip to Evan who raced away on the bike gaining on the field with every turn of the pedals! The handover to Sophie went perfectly and after a strong run down the sandy finish she came over the line to huge applause from the crowd.

Click here to see the team result

Click here to see my ocean swim result

The location of Hamilton Island is perfect for a sprint distance triathlon such as this, the course offers a warm water ocean swim, a testing bike circuit (the only one of its kind which utilises an airport runway for part of it) and a gruelling hill climb run. Next year the event will be even bigger and better but a huge thank you and well done to all involved in the events conception and delivery – I loved it and have vowed to be back next year to compete in the entire event.

Ben