Sunday evening I suddenly found myself with time to slip out to the gym. Before I left, I was looking at BeginnerTriathlete.com, which hosts a terrific training log app that I use, and I saw a blog on a first-time tri, and "What they would have done differently." She said she would have done more "bricks."
What the heck is a brick? Googled "triathlon brick" and came up with this marvelous article:
http://www.beginnertriathlete.com/Enrico%20Contolini/Introduction_to_bricks.htm
Apparently, a brick is a workout where you combine two of the three events. This is critical for training because when you move swiftly from one sport to the other, the body has to perform a radical adjustment. Typically during the first moments of the switched-to sport, the body responds sluggishly and the limbs feel like "bricks," hence the term.
Practicing switching from one to another helps the body learn to meet the demand.
I was so excited because intuitively I was doing that already!
Enrico, in his marvelous above-mentioned article, suggested switching several times for max benefit, and I quote:
3 x (500 yards swim + 5 mile bike). I believe this is more useful and time efficient than doing a 1500 yards swim followed by a 15 miles bike, because you will switch sports 6 times instead of only once
Just thinking about Enrico's workout got my heart pounding! I couldn't wait to try it!
I even took it one step further - A DOUBLE BRICK!
SWIM
- DURATION:18m
- DISTANCE:500.00 yards
- PACE:03m 36s /100 yards
- TIME:8:49 PM
BIKE
- DURATION:13m
- DISTANCE:4.50 miles
- PACE:20.80 Mi/hr
- TIME:8:50 PM
RUN
- DURATION:14m
- DISTANCE:1.00 miles
- PACE:14m /Mi
- TIME:8:50 PM
There were lots of complications with regards to getting on the machines and learning to quick-start, but the overall result was absolutely fabulous. I'm quite sure I won't do a single workout very much anymore!
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