My workout for day six was a brick workout.  This is a bike ride, followed immediately by a run; just like in an actual triathlon race. I don’t do a lot of brick workouts, so today was a little bit different for me.

I spent the morning tuning up my bike and installing the 11-32 cassette, that I have decided to run at Oceanside.  With my bike all ready to go, I set off on my ride early this afternoon.

The ride was an endurance ride for three and half hours.  An endurance ride is basically a long ride, with no intervals at higher effort. I just ride.  My coach did ask me to chose a hilly route if possible, so that is what I did.  You can see the profile of my ride in today’s photo.

Riding hills is good for me.  They are like big gear work on the trainer.  They develop strength and endurance.  Riding hills today was also good practice for my upcoming race in Oceanside.  There are several challenging hills on that course, so the practice will definitely help.

Over the course of my ride today, I ended up with an elevation gain of over 3,700 feet.  The ride also included a hill with an average grade of 11.3%.  That grade matches almost exactly the grade of ‘Hell Hill’ on the Oceanside course.

Overall, I had a solid ride.  I could feel the accumulated fatigue in my legs, but it didn’t seem to impact me too much.  Once I arrived home, I changed into running gear and headed out on my short, 20 minute, brick run.

Brick runs are always a fun adventure and today was no different.  My legs felt terrible as I left my neighborhood, but by the time I finished the run, they felt good.  My pace for the run was quite good too.

Day six totaled to just under four hours of working out. A good solid day, that sets me up for another big day tomorrow.