My First Brick

This week marks the first official week of a 20-week training program to get me ready for the Timberman Half-Ironman.  Monday I did an upper body workout.  Tuesday I swam a mile and ran 40 minutes while pushing the boys.  Today the plan was to ride my bike 90 minutes (an hour before work and 30 minutes after).

Being that I was riding outside at 5:00am it was still dark, so I needed to use a headlight on the bike.  It works okay, but it doesn't give you long range visibility.  This was not too big of a problem except for spotting potholes in time...I hit one near the Saratoga Racino and slightly bent my front wheel, but all systems were still go, so I continued on.  About 9 miles into my ride I found myself on Henning Road and didn't see another pothole that was apparently a bit deeper than the first.  So deep, in fact, that I got two flat tires when I went over it.  I didn't wreck, luckily, but when I came to a stop I realized I was roughly 3 miles from home and if I were to walk there would be no way I'd be back quick enough to make it to work on time.  Also, it was only about 5:40am, so calling Becca to come pick me up was out of the question too.  And, for those of you wondering why I didn't fix the flats and ride home, it's because my seat wedge pack is still on its way in the mail.  So, with no other options left, I decided to run, which made this my first brick workout (a brick workout is when you go directly from the bike to running).

My running shoes for today

For anyone who's ever worn bike shoes before, you know that even just walking around in them isn't the easiest thing to do.  In fact, I don't think I've ever walked more than 20 feet at any one time in these shoes before today.  Pushing the bike along with my left hand I ran all the way home and managed to keep a 10 minute pace.

Surprisingly, none of this discouraged me this morning. I felt good and was in a great mood afterwards.  And, to my surprise, my legs didn't feel like jello when I switched from the bike to the run!

Have any of you had something try to get in the way of your workout?  What did you do to get through it?