Reen brought back the gold medal for the under 20s, courtesy of being the only finisher in his age group, but his time was still strong enough for 53^rd overall in the field of 580 finishers.

He completed his first crack at the 1.9 kilometre swim, 90km bike and 21.1km run in a time of four hours, 30 minutes and five seconds.

Reen's bike leg was once again a strong suit while his swim, despite remaining his weaker leg, showed great improvement over the longer distance.

"I'd say I'm happy but not satisfied. It's something that's a work in progress but it's definitely an indication of hard work and where I'm at," he said.

"Since I wasn't focusing on my age group I was out there just testing myself against everyone else in that race. If anything it shows that people my age are scared of the distance and look at the shorter races.

"That was my first half Ironman. You can do an Ironman with the swim and the run nearly every day but it's that run that always gets you. The swim and bike weren't too bad but it all fell apart on the run.

"The run from about 15km onwards was pretty grim. From that point on I was thinking to myself 'I won't be doing an Ironman for a while'."

But Reen is determined to get himself back into another half Ironman at some stage, and has an ultimate goal to make the distance something he can become seriously competitive over.

"Half Ironman will be a good distance. It's just difficult with limited races around and things selling out quickly. I think I'll give Olympic distances a good crack until more of the half Ironman races come around again," he said.

"I haven't done an Olympic race yet. Half in the future would be my preferred distance but with where my swim is at it makes things difficult in draft-legal racing when you don't have a good swim. You can't really beat 40 guys drafting off each other when you're solo."

Given it was Reen's first crack at the challenging distance he wasn't too disappointed when he fell short of his 'best scenario' time he had at the back of his mind.

"I had some rough times in mind but there's so many variables in triathlon you don't want to set yourself too many goals like that," he said.

"Though I thought something like 4:20 to 4:15 would have been good but that wasn't to be on the day," he said.

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