The Swim-Bike Brick

As triathletes, I think most of us do brick workouts regularly. Lately it's been twice a week for me... Bike 2 hours, run 30 minutes.. or longer on the weekends... Bike 5 hours, run 40 minutes...

We're used to doing those. In my mind, a weekend bike ride is not complete until the run is done.

But one brick workout that's easy to overlook is the swim/bike. Seems like that transition would be easy enough because you use your arms while you swim, but your legs while you bike. So no problem, right?

I don't know about that. Starting a bike ride after a hard swim feels differently than starting a bike ride when you're fresh out of bed. Or more accurately, freshly done drinking your coffee.

Anyway, I don't normally do the swim/bike thing. Probably because of logistics more than anything.I normally don't have more than an hour in the morning to train before Scott goes to work during the week, and on the weekends I guess we're all just more in a hurry to get that long workout done without dilly-dallying around in the ocean first.

But today, as logistics would have it, I didn't really have a choice but to get my swim/bike done as back to back workouts. I don't think they were planned to be that way, but I had Jenny here to watch Moana and because of the pool schedule and Jenny's schedule it just worked out that I needed to bike right after I swam.

And it was great.

It was 'sprint day' in the pool today. Not my favorite, but something I need to work on I suppose, given that my "sprint" speed is about the same as my hard 400 speed. Yeah, I don't really have a sprint speed. But I tried the best that I could in the pool today, and then immediately afterward jumped on my bike and started my 35 mile ride.

I could feel the swim in my whole body while I tried to adjust to cycling. I actually started off kinda hard, like I would in a race, but then settled in to my aero bars and the steady pace I was supposed to hold today.

I think there's a hurricane (or two) in the Pacific right now headed our way, which might have been part of the cause of all that wind... it was ferocious at times. But you know what? I felt stellar! My legs felt strong and I felt like I was going fast even though I wasn't pushing the pace. It was awesome.

I only have a couple more hard workouts coming up in the near future, and that's because in about a week and a half I'll be doing my second 70.3 of the season at Lake Stevens. In all honesty, I haven't given a lot of thought to this race quite yet... I imagine it'll hit me next week when it's Race Week on the calendar and I have to start to think about packing and leaving Moana for 4 days... oh I'm not sure how that's going to go... But I will say that today, while riding (flying/floating, whatever) home, it did occur to me that I can't wait to race next weekend! Bring on the 70.3.