This Year’s Barefoot Brick Triathlon Training

My triathlon training has been approved by my coach. I thought he might tell me I needed to scale back. Instead, he told me I might have to increase certain efforts. I guess I can say I have his support? Or something. I suppooooose certain compliments like, “You are in the best shape of your life.” moderate any sense of tyranny. Seriously, though, he is nice and knows just how to encourage me.

I decided I needed 4 brick workouts a week, 2 of each type. Then, I needed one day of just running a longer distance and one day of just swimming in a more relaxed way. This doesn’t leave any time for core or strength training beyond yard work on my acre, so I am adding some upper body isotonic exercises to the spinning bike times. Music seems to naturally stimulate some of that anyway, as I found out when I turned on my daughter’s Pandora station based on “Gonna Make You Sweat.”

Possibly you are wondering what a “brick” workout is. I know I wondered for a long time. It means including 2 parts of the triathlon in the workout in quick succession, so that the body gets used to both the effort and muscle transition. Very important. As I have mentioned previously, this book in my review: Time Efficient Triathlon Training has been very useful for me.

The first question was what group rides do I want to be involved in. There is a women’s only ride Monday evenings from Rolling H bike shop in Nampa. I have ridden with them on co-ed rides and think this will be a good opportunity. There is also the chance for a group ride with Nampa Cycling on Saturday mornings, but I don’t know if there is a category that will fit me well. Even if there isn’t, it is a good day for being on the road bike because my husband will at least be home for rescuing me if needed. 🙂

Next, I tried to space the brick workouts so that all 4 would NOT be in a row. Just letting myself run in the middle of the week sounded refreshing. Plus, I’d like to try to keep up some on my running distance gained from my recent half marathon.  It would be too much for me right now to do a long run as part of a brick workout. There is a reason I’m not attempting an Olympic distance triathlon.

When I had all this outlined on a piece of paper, I started adding distance and time ranges that I would be starting from and aiming for in a particular workout. Each brick workout would have a different emphasis. For instance, I wouldn’t want to try to run a long way after the group ride on Monday evening. Also, I don’t need to swim a long time before each biking session.

With rough times allotted, I added it up for the week to see if it was manageable. It is nice to have a better idea of what 8 – 10 hours of working out per week feels like already. Knowing that, 9 hours average doesn’t sound too bad. I think I am starting off stronger overall this summer, even if I am a bit weak on swimming at the moment. Last week’s test brick workouts were not super hard.

Here is my projected schedule:

Monday –            Bike => Run:

evening group road bike ride (I expect this to be 1.5 – 2 hours) followed by 3 -4 mile run. Maybe I can get someone to pick up my bike so I can run home from the shop; or if the route for the group goes near my house on the way home, I’ll head home and run from there.

Tuesday –           Swim => Bike:

afternoon swim (30-40 minutes), then about 45 minutes on the spinning bike. Biking to include isotonic exercises, some of which will be similar to those for working on swimming form.

Wednesday –    Run

8 – 10 miles in the morning, barefooted before it gets hot.

Thursday –        Swim => Bike:

same as Tuesday

Friday –             Swimming in the afternoon

Saturday –         Bike => Run:

road biking for an hour, then run 5-6 miles or a speed workout. If I get up and ride early enough, I can do my running barefoot, before the pavement gets hot. Quite possibly dancing some evenings….

Sunday –           rest!

Now, I am ready to print my blank calendar pages on which to log what I actually do. I only have 10 weeks and I need to slow down a lot the week right before the event. Let’s see if I can beat my time last year on the same course of 1:27:45. Or let’s just see if I survive. 😉