Hello and happy Sunday, friends!
Matt and I have had a great weekend here in Chapel Hill. Yesterday, we did our first “brick” workout for triathlon training! A brick workout is just a bike workout followed immediately by a run. I’m not sure why it’s called brick, but I’m guessing it’s because that’s how your legs end up feeling 😉
To make the bike to run transition more like the actual triathlon will be, we set up a little transition area with all of our stuff ready to go — that way when we got back from the bike ride we could switch straight into running gear and head back out.
Here was my transition set up:
A new pair of shorts and a tank top, a running visor, running shoes/socks, sunscreen, and some fuel (we only ended up eating the stinger chews on the right).
Here was Matt’s transition area, lol:
Boys are funny 😉
During the actual triathlon, I won’t be changing shoes — I’ll just wear the same ones during the bike and run to keep things simple. But yesterday I wanted to wear my Merrell Pace Gloves because I heart them 🙂 I’m not sure what I’m going to wear yet otherwise, though — we went to look at tri shorts yesterday and they are crazy expensive, so I’m debating.
Anyway! We were pumped and ready to rock. Our plan: an 11.5 mile bike ride, followed immediately by a 3 mile run.
My hardcore pose:
And then we were off! It was hot and sunny but beautiful out 🙂
Matt mapped out an 11.5 mile route from our house, and we were feeling good. By the time we hit 1 hour, we had covered 10.6 very hilly miles and were nearing the home stretch. Bring on the run, we said!
And then…
… Matt went over some gravel and his back tire popped. FAIL!
At least we were only like a mile away from home 🙂 We ended up walking our bikes back the last mile, and ran into these adorable baby goats in someone’s backyard randomly along the way.
Are they not the cutest things ever?! Totally worth blowing out a tire to see, haha.
When we got back home, we decided that a minor bike snafu shouldn’t hold us back from finishing our brick workout. 3 mile run or bust! We quickly changed, ate some of the stinger gummy things for some fuel, pounded some more water, and we were on our way.
Not gonna lie — the run was HARD! Our legs felt a little heavy but not too crazy tired (I’m sure the random 1 mile walk helped stretch them out, haha) — but it was REALLY hot outside. By the time we ran it was already about 1 p.m. and heat is totally my running kryptonite, as we found out during my torturous first half marathon last year. I was impressed with how we did, though — we ran the 3 miles in 26:04 for an average pace of 8:41. Yay!
Splits:
- Mile 1: 8:37
- Mile 2: 8:39
- Mile 3: 8:47
Brick workout success! We are hoping to do another one next weekend minus blowing out a bike tire and having to walk home the last mile, haha. We also need to work on staying better hydrated next time — I’m not skilled enough to drink water and bike at the same time, so I think we might bring a CamelBak in the future. We both felt SO thirsty by the end of our run.
Once we were cleaned up, we took Matt’s bike to the shop, learned how to repair a tire, and bought a little repair kit to bring with us on the road from now on so next time we’ll be ready!
Have you ever done a brick workout? How did it go? Any tips?
