Sick and Brick

This past weekend I was fighting a bit of a cold.  Monday it hit it's peak and totally knocked me on my ass.  I took the day off from work and tried to sleep as much as I could which was complicated by the fact I'd wake up periodically because I couldn't breathe.  Training wasn't an option on Monday or Tuesday.  I wanted to get up Wednesday and try something, but sleep seemed like better choice at the time.

Before leaving for work Erin had expressed an interest in doing an evening run Wednesday night.  We've been running in cold weather for the past few months, and with most of our runs being early morning we haven't dealt with warmer temps yet.  With the marathon less then a month away we needed to start getting used to heat in case we have weather like last years marathon. During the day I decided I'd take this opportunity to do a brick workout.  A brick workout is when you involve 2 sports of a triathlon in a single workout.

When I got home I wrote a note for Erin explaining I needed her to get ready to run when she got home, put the running gear I would need to transition together in our foyer and headed out on the bike.  It was a windy day for biking.  I normally hate biking when it's windy, but I figured that I wouldn't be able to control the weather the day of my event and this would be an easy approximation of hills.  Erin and I have a 5 mile loop that we normally run.    We head towards the golf course and then run around it, once we're on the far side there's a block that is a 1 mile loop.  I followed this route and decided I would just get mileage by making multiple loops of the 1 mile block.  This worked out really well as the loop is much longer in the North/South direction then East/West and the wind was straight out of the North.  I would have the wind at my back for half of the loop letting me recover and then right in my face for the other half making me work hard from a crouched position. When I finished up biking I had gone just a hair more then 12 miles and had timed it so that I got home just after Erin did.  I transitioned to my running gear a bit faster then she was able to change from her work outfit and had to wait a couple of minutes before we headed out on the run.  The first thing I noticed was how slow I felt.  I'm guessing I got used to the speed I was going on the bike and now things were flying by at about a third of the speed.  Even though I felt like we were crawling, we were actually running a good bit faster then our easy run pace.  We managed to keep a solid pace throughout the 5 mile run.  I was a little surprised when I got back and looked at the data from my workout.  The bike leg went well, a bit faster then I'm hoping to do at Liberty and it was a fantastic run for Erin and I.  Even though I wasn't completely over the cold, the extra rest I've been getting helped me through this fantastic workout.