My fourth triathlon and first half iron distance race. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect given that I hadn’t attempted anything like this before, so had set 6 hours as a time I’d have been happy with and 5:30 as a stretch target.

• Swim (1.9km): 00:33:11
• T1: 00:02:32
• Bike (90km): 02:43:31
• T2: 00:01:57
• Run (21.1km): 01:48:45
• Overall time: 5:09:58

Needless to say, I was pretty thrilled with the result.

Despite getting pretty hot on the run, the conditions were just about perfect for racing; sunny, calm water, not much in the way of wind. There were, however, quite a few jellyfish floating about during the swim and I copped a couple of stings - one on the wrist and one on the face. They don’t freak me out as much as they used to, though.

Thanks have to go to coach Ollie and all the Tri Alliance coaching team who did (and do) an outstanding job in preparing everyone in the squad for racing. And thanks also to all of the crew who made the trip down to Geelong to cheer us on… the signs, messages on the road and high fives around the course made the day so much better.

Just wandering around, checking out the transition set up for Sunday, and I ran into World Ironman Champion and defending Geelong 70.3 champion, Craig Alexander. He was nice enough to take a photo with me.

A very hot (35-odd degrees) and windy (40-50km/h winds) day at the office today and it was definitely not my best performance; having said that, I was only 30 sec slower than last time. I did an 18.8km run yesterday as well, so it was probably a bit ambitious to want to come out and blast a good run leg today.

• Swim (500m): 9:54
• T1: 1:21
• Bike (20km): 36:23
• T2: 1:30
• Run (5km): 24:15
• Overall time: 1:13:22

On the whole, my times were fairly consistent with the last race over the same course, but in harder conditions and with a very different training load, so all up, I’m not too disappointed with today’s result.

And I didn’t do myself any damage leading into next week’s race, which is awesome.

Not a bad hit out - a 1,200m 1,500m (apparently someone lost their tape measure) open water swim around the Brighton Marina (and no jellyfish!). Not especially fast, but a solid effort leading into Geelong in a couple of weeks’ time.

• Overall time: 00:26:58

My bike, all set up and prepped for Geelong in just under two weeks’ time. I am pretty psyched for the race, but freaking out a bit as well.

For those who are interested, it’s a 2008 BMC Time Machine TT02 with Ultegra running gear and a set of Fast Forward F6R wheels.