BRICK!

Brick – Bike, 15.41 miles @ 17.1 pace –and- Run, 1 mile @ 10:06 pace

With Friday being a holiday from work, I had a list of things planned to do – take the kiddos for Easter Bunny pictures, take Riley to the movies, dye Easter eggs, get in a bike ride!!!

I managed to get through all the stuff I needed to get done, but had a little help from the hubby on the Easter eggs. I'll post some pics of their masterpieces asap, lol!

And now on to the training...

This bike ride was my best yet. I decided to stay in my neighborhood, using both the 2 mile circle around the ‘hood, as well as some of the streets where there are still no homes being built. There was a little bit of a head wind on ½ of the circle, but somehow I managed to maintain a 17.2 mile pace each time I went around the circle. I did the circle 3 times, then went riding around the curvier streets of the neighborhood – that’s when my average pace dropped down to about 16.8. I am not brave enough to go whipping around those curves, so I tend to slow way down when I'm turning. After about 4 miles, I headed back out to the main circle and did a few more laps and managed to bring my pace back up with an end result of 17.1. Apparently the spin classes are working, because when I did a similar ride 3 weeks before, I was doing good to keep my average pace around 15 mph. Thank God for spin since I can never seem to find time to ride my road bike…well, at least not as much as I’d like.

When I made it back to the house, I dismounted the bike, jogged it up the driveway and into the garage. I threw off the helmet, grabbed some Gatorade, closed the garage door and then headed off for a run. My goal was to just make one mile. Hey, it’s my 1st real brick…I wasn’t brave enough to go any further.

Turns out 2 times around the little loop of our section of the neighborhood is a ½ mile. When I went out for my 1st loop, I looked down at my watch and saw that I was running a 9:34 pace and my legs felt a little jello-y, but overall not too bad. I knew I would not be running a 9:34 pace on race day and slowed it down a bit. I managed to finish my mile in 10:06…for me this is excellent even when I haven’t been on the bike 1st! I’m not expecting that pace on race day because 1) I have another mile to add and 2) I will be adding swimming to the mix…but, it made me feel a little better about this whole triathlon thing. I hope to get in a few more bricks before race day!