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Bricks
By Rich Strauss
When you schedule a brick, you need to ask
yourself four questions:
- What is the purpose of the
brick?
- What amount of recovery
is required after the brick and will it affect other quality
training sessions?
- What is the rate of return
vs the risk for injury and overtraining?
- What is the opportunity
cost of the brick?
Purpose. The three most common are:
- Develop a personal strategy
for how to get your legs back, and then practice this
strategy. Most people feel as normal as they're gonna
after about the first 15-20 min of run. I think this kind
of brick is the most important. Typically, a 15-30 min
run off the bike is all that is required.
- Teach you how to run fast
on tired legs. This is a function of getting used to the
"feeling" and simply getting tough enough to push through
it.
- As part of a race rehearsal,
for example, a 5 hour bike and 1 hour run. This is an
opportunity to practice your pacing, nutrition, and hydration
plan, to see if they work for 6+ hours. I will also show
you what it feels like to "go" and have to maintain yourself
for that long. I think that the training value of this
brick is primarily mental.
Required Recovery
Let's talk about that 5/1 brick above. A long
brick like that will require a good amount of recovery time.
How will this affect your other training, in particular
your quality sessions? Always balance the need for the brick
with its potential impact on your next, possibly more important,
quality session.
Rate of Return vs Risk of Injury
I always hear of monster bricks: 5-6 hour bikes
and 2 hour runs. In my opinion, there is very little return
on running over one hour, while the risk of injury, overtraining,
and required post-brick recovery increases greatly.
Opportunity cost of the brick
The opportunity cost of doing a short brick
after every run might be a good quality track session. Or,
when you did a 30 min run after a hard Tuesday bike, you
missed the opportunity to do a quality 60 min run that day.
This is especially true for slower runners. For these folks,
a brick is often just another opportunity to run slow. I'm
big believer that you need to run fast to run fast, and
for these athletes I feel it is better to have well-rested
quality runs. Save the bricks for later in the season, or
just put a short 20 min brick after your long bike.
In general, for people with real jobs and limited
recovery time, I don't think that a long brick of 6-7 hours
is good for anything other than as a race rehearsal and
a mental exercise. Do it once or twice, learn a few things,
then stick to shorter bricks.
Rather, for most athletes, I prefer to do one
brick per week: 20-30 minutes after the long bike.¾ This
is just long enough to force you to develop a strategy,
but not so long that it affects your other training.
Strategy for Bricks: Half and Ironman Training
- Make your transition from
bike to run as short as possible. This makes the training
realistic, and also gives you less time to talk yourself
out of it :)
- Do every brick in training
exactly how you plan to do the real thing on race day:
have your shoes, hat, nutrition all set up and ready to
go. Put your head in the game and think.
- For most people, it takes
about 10 minutes for issues to work themselves out. During
this time, hold back and let your body settle in to running.
Run with a high cadence and quick strides.
- After about 10 minutes,
start to accelerate and feel out your pace. After about
20-30 minutes, you should be running at your goal race
pace.
- Do bricks on an out and
back course. Hold back and settle in the first half, then
negative split the second half.
- Finish the run with a quick
acceleration, so that you feel good about your speed and
your ability to run off the bike.
Bricks for Shorter Races
If you are trying to be competitive in shorter
races, you don't really have time to let your body adjust
and settle in. This strategy above is good for most training
bricks. However, as you get closer to race day, I recommend
Interval Bricks.
Interval Brick
Set up a transition area at a track, in your
garage, or in a relatively secure area. Warm-up with a 10-15
min spin. Main Set: 3 x Interval Brick (ride 10-15 min as
an out and back, allow your heart rate to rise to Zone 5a
on the second half. Finish the bike at your transition area
and quickly transition to the run. Run 5-7 min as an out
and back at goal race pace, negative split. Immediately
repeat the interval. 10-15 min easy spinning as cool down.
This is an intense session and should replace
either your BT bike or run session for the week. You can
play around with the length of the bike and run segments
to better fit your goals and abilities. The purpose of this
brick is to teach you to just push through the difficulty
of running fast off the bike. If you want to be competitive
at the shorter distances, you don't have time to settle
in. Your legs just have to catch up.
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