Larry's Blog Pages

January 18, 2010

Building it up brick by brick.

Lately, it has been tough to slide in two workouts per day due to a number of things going on right now. Nothing bad, just a lot of real work and family stuff that needs to be priority.

That being said, I have gone back to a recommendation from a brief conversation I had with a very highly ranked Ironman. I asked him what should I really focus on to run better off the bike.

He said that I needed to lay down more than just one brick workout per week, if I wanted to be a solid runner off the bike. He also mentioned that even a 5 to 10 minute race pace run right after a cycling session can be helpful so it doesn't always need to be a full run in the brick. This can be a long enough effort to get the legs use to coming off the bike in a tri of du situation.

To get some workouts in from all three sporting elements the last week, I have had to go back to this philosophy and put in a few more bricks than usual as the night seems to be the only available training time. This is not a bad thing as I really enjoy the brick workout. I was not riding the bike as much as I should have been due to the running races and the weather in December so it is good to find the motivation to ride, even on the trainer. Now I just have to increase the attention span to go past that 1 hour ride barrier. 

As for the runs off the bike, they have been the best runs after a bike session since I started multisport training. I usually put down a 10k run after the bike workout and they have been very strong with decent form (I have never been a pretty runner to watch) so I am very happy with the progress since the fall when I seemed to have found the next gear. Luckily, there are many more gears to find so I just need to keep up the running and wait for the track sessions to begin.

Hope everyone else is enjoying the start to 2010!

Talk soon,
Larry

2 comments:

Syd Trefiak said...

HMM. Not bad advise. Not necesariy practical to the average AG'er. If you are time crunched it is a good way to get a run and bike in the same day. Beauty is you don't need to warm-up for the run.

There are a few different schools of thought on the matter. Some say lots of bricks, some say very few. I hover in the middle. If I get a solid brick in once a month I am happy. I used to do them once a week or more, but stopped on advise of another coach. I haven't seen a major difference in my ability to run off of the bike.

To each their own though.

LARRY BRADLEY said...

I agree Syd. Everyone is so different from each other. I guess that is what makes coaching so challenging. It would be too easy if there was a proven formula.