BRICK!

Hi everyone – many apologies for the very long absence – I have been traveling quite a bit for work and also trying to fit in my tri training – the result has been very little time for blogging.

Yesterday’s workout was a 3/4 mile open water swim at Lake Nummy (seriously, isn’t that the best name?!?) – this was part of a swim clinic designed to help beginner triathletes get used to swimming outside of a pool. I wore my brand-new wetsuit (a sleeveless X-Terra Volt) and completely rocked the workout, even after a 3 week absence from swimming.

Today I did my first real brick workout. A brick is 2 workouts done back to back, usually bike-run or swim-bike. The purpose is to get your body used to switching between activities. Tonight’s brick was a 15-mile bike ride on flat terrain followed by a brisk 3-mile walk. Although I’ve started running again (my hip has finally healed, yay!) I found it incredibly difficult to get my legs moving faster than a walk after a long ride. As a result, I’ve decided that I will plan to walk the entire 5K during the actual triathlon, and if I am able to jog parts of it that will just be a bonus.

The entire workout, including transition time from bike to walk, took about 2 hrs and 20 minutes. I can do the half-mile swim in about 25 minutes in the pool, but since we’ll be swimming in the river I’m anticipating a 35 minute swim time plus another 5 minutes in transition between swim and bike. That will put me at about 3 hours for the entire event and I have set this as my time to shoot for.

I’ll spend the next week continuing to work on my bike and swim. I really need more practice handling my bike because I put new tires on a week ago, and they are much thinner and smoother than the knobby tires I had before. As a result, the bike handles differently and I fell off it last week and ripped open my hand and elbow. It took awhile to pick out all the gravel and I’d prefer not to have a repeat of that scenario! Needless to say I have relegated myself to riding only in areas with no motorized traffic until my skills improve. But everyone has to start somewhere, right?

The week after next I will be traveling on business again (sigh) and won’t have easy access to a bike or lap pool. I’m going to do some research to see if I can rent a bike and also find a local gym that will let me use their pool. Don’t want to lose momentum 3 weeks before the big event!