tempo and a brick...

Tuesday morning:

Woke-up bright & early this morning to absolutely picture perfect running weather to start the run at 5:30am; it was 54 degrees with no humidity with a very slight wind out of the North. This morning I scheduled a tempo run which was a 2 mile warm-up then 2 mile tempo and finishing off with a mile recovery for my cool-down. Total 5 mile run time was 41:31 with an average HR of 124bpm and below is my stats for the 2 mile tempo session:

2 mile tempo – 15:04 time – AHR – 133bpm – MHR 143bpm

I was very happy to see I held a nice pace during the tempo as I ran by perceived effort level feeling as I didn’t watch my HR values during the 2 mile tempo. Average HR was nicely placed during this portion and I hit my max HR at the end but I was not sprinting as I focused on slowly getting quicker as the distance went by…mission accomplished!

Tuesday evening:

I scheduled for myself this evening a brick workout which was to be an 1 hour tri-bike ride in our house via my Kinetic rear wheel resistance training and then immediately go our for a one mile run in the neighborhood to simulate a triathlon T2 transition. Gotta start practicing these things as the half IM is only now 44 days away…also the reason I train indoors during this time of the year for this situation is the area in which we live is not very good for quality bike rides, basically its just too unsafe due to vehicle traffic.

So with the a/c & fans going in the office room I started up my one hour tri-bike training ride using the first 12 minutes as a proper warm-up for the ride duration and then started to slowly push the pace by using more challenging gears on the rear cassette. I altered this consistently up thru minute 52 when I started a cool-down cycle especially since my legs where feeling fatigued from the tempo run earlier in the day. This was more of a level two ride for me this evening. The last five minutes of the ride I focused on using easier gears but keeping my cadence right around 100rpm to prepare my legs for the quick mile run…

I hopped off the bike at the hour mark and quickly changed into my running clothes as I grabbed my garmin 305. As I left the house I started the clock immediately along with my running to simulate a transition period. I was surprised to see that my legs felt pretty good right from the get-go so I was able to push the running pace during this one mile running repeat. Even thought the effort was strong to simulate running through the cycling legs fatigue the effort was very controllable…a very good brick workout it was indeed :-)

Below are my stats for the bike and run portions:

Bike 1 hour – 16.5 miles – Average speed 16.5mph – AHR 106bpm – MHR 133bpm – Average cadence 92rpm – Max cadence 103rpm

Run 1 mile – 7:22 pace – AHR 137bpm – MHR 155bpm

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