Gatorade Brighton Race - A Race Report

So yesterday I completed my first race for 2012 - it was the Gatorade Race 3 - Brighton. It consisted of 500m swim, 20km ride and a 5km run. I haven't done a race since Noosa and this was just a training session to see what I needed to work on before Geelong Race on the 12th Feb 2012.
Nutrition
The day before the race was my cousin's wedding. This meant that I was not able to rest my legs, drink my electrolyte/water requirements and consume enough carbohydrates. At least this race was only a sprint distance as I would not have enough energy to complete an Olympic if it was the case. The only carbohydrates I had for the day was a bread roll during dinner.

Swim
For once, I was not nervous about the swim as part of the triathlon. I had done plenty of ocean swimming over the last 2 months and have done several distances over 500m (having done several 1km swims). I knew the 500m course which supersprint sets up as I had done several of their swims at Elwood having to compensate for the duathlons.

My swim time was about 12 minutes or so. I know that I had completed the 500m quicker as this time included the run up the beach and also the run up the ramp into transition which would have been about 2min or so.

My sighting was better and I actually swam past people during the course which felt great. I did also swim past several swimmers which were in the age group before me too (but that is probably due to their swimming and not mine). NO asthma attacks and I was comfortable throughout. I even increased the intensity from about 300m onwards and swam over a few people who looked like ther were slowing down. I know that I need to swim faster in the water but this is attributed to pushing my threshold and also better at swimming through people.

T1
There was nothing I could work on in this leg as I did everything I would do usually. My wetsuit removal was good and went according to plan. I would just have to do things slightly faster.

Bike
To be honest, I could have pushed myself harder on the bike but I knew that I had to save energy for the run leg. There was a southerly so a head wind was felt when we rode towards Black Rock. Coming into Brighton was a great ride as I reached speeds of up to 45km/h. I overtook several people on the bike. I swam faster than both Kerri and Kathryn but they overtook me on the bike by a few seconds.

T2
I didn't have an opportunity to dismount properly due to the crowds. In transition, putting on my shoes and cap I had to remember to take the Garmin off the bike and put it on the wrist. I could have gone through T2 faster but at least I remembered everything I needed (such as my gel and my Ventolin).

Run
I felt better on the run this time around compared to previous races. After the initial few hundred metres or so, I could keep my pace to < 6min/km. I tried to keep the pace around 5:30min/km throughout and made sure that I didn't drop well below this pace. This is something which I will need to work on and ensuring that I am able to push to closer to 5min/km during the last km or so before the finish line. Legs are ok from the run and only a slight pain around the groin area was felt but it wasn't too much of an issue. Gel was taken at the 3km mark which gave it plenty of time to kick in and also enough energy to finish.

My overall time for the triathlon was 1:22:55 which was about 3 min slower than what I calculated (my ride and run was 1:08 and I was counting on a swim to be < 12min) but overall I felt good throughout and had fun for the day. These sprint distances should be taken as a fun race as they are used to indicate what I need to work on.