A few weeks ago, our first brick in Santa Monica was pretty low effort for me since I was doing IronTeam staff duties, plus San VIcente isn’t much of an incline. Today, we had our second brick at Zuma Beach near Malibu, which was a lot more challenging with rolling hills. The views were spectacular though, when I would just look over to the left and see the ocean waves, plus beams of light coming through the clouds. It was slightly overcast with a crisp cold, which was ideal in my opinion. We headed north on PCH until the road closure due to the rain storms from weeks past, then back, but looped around one more time for a total of 31 miles in 2 hours. The 30mph downhills were scary since I’ve never done that before. Being on PCH was pretty scary in itself because there’s cars & trucks zooming VERY close by at 60+ mph! According to my Garmin stats, I averaged 15mph and cadence at 80rpm (gotta work on that, to get it to 90!).
Immediately after the ride, we went to our transition areas. Oh man! Now I know why they were called “brick” workouts – my legs felt like bricks! They were soooo heavy, kinda felt like I already ran a marathon! I might of pushed it a little TOO much on the hills, but now I know, to ease up on the hills leading up to a run! We ran for 2 miles along the boardwalk, and it was surely difficult! Midway through the run, we experimented with taking an energy gel shot, then after the run, we experimented with taking recovery drinks. It wasn’t too bad as I’m already used to the weird tasting fluids from marathon training.
Overall, our team is actually coming together nicely! As you can see above, we formed a tunnel for our teammate coming back from the run. I’d have some nice chats on the ride, getting to know them better. On the out and backs, we would cheer each other on. There’s a lot of good socializing before and after practice, as well as good turnouts on post-workout breakfast!