PURPOSE Ambassador: Dedy Bunyamin

For someone who thought doing an Ironman race would be impossible for him, Dedy Bunyamin has completed five full distance Ironman races (including the recent Ironman Malaysia) and nine Ironman 70.3 races in the last five years.

“A good friend of mine started doing Ironman first and I slowly picked up an interest as I found that it is boring to just cycle. Then I was influenced by this friend who managed to complete an Ironman even though he wasn’t sporty,” said the 49-year-old business owner.

Similar to our ambassador Hilda Novianti, Dedy’s first triathlon was a sprint triathlon in 2014 arranged by a local triathlon club called Triathlon Buddies and he came in third in his age group.

Getting hooked onto triathlon from then, Dedy went on to participate in more races, but unfortunately tore his anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) from riding the solowheel. That took him out for a significant amount of time as he underwent a knee construction surgery.

His comeback race was the Ironman 70.3 in Cebu, Philippines in 2015, but he had to walk during the run leg as his knee was not healed completely.

It took him a year to fully recover and that made the Ironman Malaysia (his first full distance race) in 2016 so memorable for him because he was so happy that he was able to race triathlons again.

A father of three daughters – the eldest just graduated from college and the youngest is in Primary 1 – Dedy owns a roofing company in Jakarta but still manages to find time to train every morning.

“I train about 1 to 2 hours on weekday mornings and I will do my long rides (up to 4 hours) on the weekend,” he shared.

Wearing the PURPOSE Flow Pro series (Transcend) trisuit at the recent Ironman Malaysia, Dedy was grateful for the trisuit as it helped him combat the insane heat on race day.

“This is a great trisuit – comfortable, great design, cooling material, good fit, gives me no abrasion and hence is very good for hot weather!” he said.

“It gives me a sense of pride to be chosen as a PURPOSE ambassador as it means recognition for my training efforts so far.”