First Brick of the Year

As my plans start to gel, I'm having to focus my training accordingly. For the past few Saturdays I've been building my long runs back up, now at 13 miles. But this week I decided a decent brick would be a good status check for the Big Kahuna Half Ironman, and accordingly that's what I did. In short, I did 30 on the bike followed by a 7.6 mile run. Happily, it went very well. I am still dialing in my bike position, and so I stopped twice to tweak my seat height and position as well as my bar position. It's tough to stay down in the aero position for so long, but by the second tweak I was feeling pretty comfortable. For 13 miles, including a gradual 10 mile climb
(pretty flat but gaining elevation) a 1 mile climb over Bailey, and then the race back home, I maintained 18.7 MPH. When I got home, I took about 8 minutes to transition, and then ran my local loop up a short climb and then around into Los Gatos. Surprisingly I really hit my stride on the way back, and covered the last 3.5 at a pace of ~7:35.

good confidence builder, just what I needed. It's tougher now to be regular about my workouts, so knowing I have a decent run in me is a good motivator to make a push in the next month.