On Saturday I experienced my first brick training. I was excited but nervous about it and my only goal that day was to finish at my own pace without taking breaks to walk during the run.

For those of you who don’t know – What’s a “brick” and why is it named so?
○Bike-Run-ICK!
○That’s how your legs feel for the first part of the run.
○Named by Mark Sisson and Scott Zagarino one day in 1988 after they completed a Bike-Run workout — “Just another brick in the wall”.

So there you have it! There are various variations of a Brick workout mainly used to build endurance for a triathlon, helps you engage various muscles and get an idea of what your body will feel like on race day.

I was lucky that my first was on a lovely 65deg Saturday morning in beautiful Concord, MA. I arrived on time at 830am geared up with my bike, helmet, riding gloves, running shoes, clip in cleats, 2 bottles of Gatorade, 2 bottles of water and a towel.

We were told by our trainer that the bike course was a little over 3 miles and the run course was a little over 1/2 a mile. I was like sounds easy enough then he said, you have to do it 3 times! ha! thats the catch.

I started out strong but bear in mind, Ive only been out on my bike 3-4 times and as much as I enjoy riding outside, Im not completely used to it yet. half way through the trail I was already feeling it in my legs, to be fair the trail was VERY hilly! after the 1st loop, i took a chug of Gatorade, changed into my running shoes and set out for my 0.5 mile run, easy enough and then I got back on my bike. woah! my legs were on fiyahhh! Luckily for us we have great mentors so at each turn, there were mentors cheering us on, stopping traffic for us to cross the street and so on, overall the energy was very great. I did my second lap of running and felt pretty good because I knew I was almost done. 3rd loop of biking and I knew the trail pretty well, knew how to avoid cars at the points were the bike lane pretty much disappeared and knew when the downhills were coming so i could rest my legs, running the last lap was brutal, my pace was very very slow and I kept repeating to myself – “don’t stop, don’t stop” At this point I realized I was the last to finish and the lady in front of me happened to be a mentor, she waited for me and we ran the last 1/4 mile together, when i got to the finish line, everyone who had finished was cheering me on!! It felt great!
Surprisingly I didn’t beat myself up too much about finishing last because I realized that the point was to finish and I did!!

The End.

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