Brick training sessions

crux

What's your favorite brick workout? Do you even do them?

Tonight I have an hours tempo ride on the turbo into a 30 min treadmill run (need to stay in the house for other reasons). Not my favorite!

Any ideas for more fun variations?

jacksonpt

long bike/long run.

Hill repeats (bike)/hilly run is the most beneficial though.

AZTrailRunner

For Olympic-length races I liked to do sets of Bike hard (4mi) to Run hard (1mi), then rest 5min and repeat 3-5 times.

For Half IMs, I'd up the distance to 10mi & 3mi, and repeat 3-4 times. I always pushed the bricks hard so I could get into running form quicker off the bike.

Kilter

BRICK = Bike Run ICK!

In 2010 I did a lot of brick work building for Ironman Canada. If you'd asked me what the number one thing that got me through the race was I would have said BRIcks, no doubt. When I was talking to all the folks who were pro/semi-pro though none of them were doing the number and intensity of bricks that I was dong. They were all doing Long Bike / Short Run, or Short Bike / Long Run work. Never Long/Long.

A bit of research indicates that the pro coaches are suggesting not to do more than 45 minutes run after a long ride anymore.

This is a quote from a Leanne, a coach at Pinnacle Elite Athlete regarding the build up to Ironman Canada:
<quote>
I think another question to ask is the frequency of these bricks, how often are you doing this in your program? I could see that doing these all the time would definitely increase the risk of injury. However, properly planned and purposeful brick do have their time and play. Currently, in your program you will do approx five "long bricks"

1. Oliver Half
2. Osoyoos Half
3. Multi Brick: 40km bike / 8k run / 30k bike / 6k run /20 bike / 4k run
4. Multi Brick: 45km bike / 5k run / 90k bike / 10 run
5. 100k bike/ 20k run
</quote>

Even the longest of the long bricks is only a 20km run which is half of the actual race distance.

This year I'm planning on following a similar system (I have a different coach actually and don't have my full plan, although I will be doing both Oliver and Osoyoos).

Your mileage may vary, but do take a look at what the coaches are doing for the pros as well.

That being said... I personally love gym bricks as a guide to how I'm improving. I'll do both sprint and olympic distance bricks going from the computer stationary bikes to a treadmill: 20km bike / 5km run or 40km bike / 10km run. I don't do these overly often (not this early in the season), but I do like to throw one in every month or so. It really helps me to see how I'm doing.

S

IronmanPanda

My understanding of the arguement against the long/long brick is not only does it increase chance of injury, but it also the increase in recovery time.
Most of us AGers work full time + family, its already hard enough to find time to train for a HIM or IM event but with the long/long brick you would need more downtime afterwards to recover.

For my HIM in December my longest brick has been a 70 mile ride/6 mile run and I don't have anything longer than this on the schedule. Mostly short intense bricks to work on the "jello" leg feeling coming off the bike.

FrenchMob

...... Mostly short intense bricks to work on the "jello" leg feeling coming off the bike.

That's my only reason for doing brick workouts. I don't do enough of them, but when I do, there usually a short 1 hr bike followed by a 2 mile run or until the crazy leg feeling is gone.

IronmanPanda

Also because I am genetically dispositioned to cramping, especially in the calf, I find them usefull to experience working through that on the run as well.

AZTrailRunner

Also because I am genetically dispositioned to cramping, especially in the calf, I find them usefull to experience working through that on the run as well.

I would get calf cramps after the bike during the first couple Duathlons I did. Then someone told me to stand on your pedals and drop your heels to stretch the calves during the last mile of the ride. Once I started doing that in my races I never got calf cramps again. Food for thought.

IronmanPanda

Also because I am genetically dispositioned to cramping, especially in the calf, I find them usefull to experience working through that on the run as well.

I would get calf cramps after the bike during the first couple Duathlons I did. Then someone told me to stand on your pedals and drop your heels to stretch the calves during the last mile of the ride. Once I started doing that in my races I never got calf cramps again. Food for thought.

I'l give it a go. I've found that no matter how easy I take it on the bike I cramp at least a little bit about the first 1/4 mile or so off the bike. After that I'm right as rain.

Kilter

Another thing that I've found works really well for reducing (never eliminating so far) that cramp feeling is to increase cadence and decrease power in the last few km. A couple of km from transition I'll go into superspin mode trying to keep the cadence up in an easy 100rpm range with little to no power output.

Mentally it is tough because it isn't as fast as cranking in the heavy gears for that last 4 or 5 minutes, but only slightly slower and I come off the bike with a lot more feeling in my legs and bounce in my step.

S

copa2251

I like to do some triple-bricks once a week for the last 2 or 3 weeks before an Oly, 25km bike, 5km run x 3.
I find I actually look forward to the run during these because the bike segments are all at hard effort.

engineman312

i've only done bricks twice. my first time i did just one 10 mile bike ride and a 3 mile run, and my second time i did a 7 mile bike ride and a 2 mile run repeated 3 times. i haven't done one in a while, because i've been concentrating on running.