Yeah, that is pretty darn good! You are probably in PR run shape, I'd bet. Or, as you say, on the edge of getting hurt. Be careful!

This is always an interesting topic...so which workout is better:
3.5 ride hard ride w/ race simulation transition to a 90 minute run w/ the last 30 minutes at tempo pace

vs.

90 min run with 10 miles of race pace tempo in the morning then 3.5 hard ride in the afternoon

Oh yeah the brick is something that was talked about in the "Going Long" book. Both of these are for IM training and the last workout of the build phase.

Both workouts can be benificial, but I would definately choose the split workout. Gives better quality to both sessions, and I just think if you race fairly often, there is no need to try and duplicate race conditions. It was my opinion that I should do stuff faster than race pace to get faster, and bricking them did not do that. The only bricks that I ever did, were hard bike rides, with a 2k faster than race pace run on the track. I used to do that with Jurgen Zack when he was Ironman training. That was his brick session. His real running for improvement came on the track every week or so, where he would run 10X1K descending...

ANd to those that say you are doing bricks because of time constraints, that fine. You can only do what you can do, and the pros do not have those problems. If you have a two hour block, and all your work outs have to be done back to back, no problem. You will get a great training benifit either way. I'm only pointing out that at the pointy end of the needle, that it is not required to do bricks to get faster...As triathletes we will run into back to back workouts all the time, but in general I think that when targeting certain workouts to take you to the next level, they should be done fresh and at race pace+.....

i would not recommend either for ironman training. Choose a day that you dedicate for the tempo run and do a quality workout. Choose a day you dedicate to your long hard ride with lots of tempo work into it.

To put both in the same day is simply diminishing the quality of one of the two workout. Better planification would be a good idea to get the best out of the program and make bigger improvement.

And i would not recommend 90min run off the bike..ever. I simply dont see the point of such thing.

I would suggest you

tempo run on saturday, put a easy short ride and a swim

Do your long ride on sunday with key ironman pace work and finish it with a transition 20-40min run with some race pace in it. A lot more effective.

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Jonathan Caron / Professional Coach / ironman champions / age group world champions
Jonnyo Coaching
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"...plannification..."

sweet!

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blood, sweat...and big gears

I hated every minute of training, but I said, ''Don't quit. Suffer now and live the rest of your life as a champion.''
- Muhammad Ali

Damit... a french word...hopefully...people will understand it...it s such a good word!

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Jonathan Caron / Professional Coach / ironman champions / age group world champions
Jonnyo Coaching
Instargram

Interesting as I've been doing this all during my "build" phase with good success so far...

Hmm that seems to a pretty easy day. Maybe I just like torture or do you mean standalone marathon "race pace"?

I have been successful in working on my bike nutrition though w/ "brick runs" so bricks are good for that IMHO.

thanks..

either day are very challenging IF EXECUTED WELL.

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Jonathan Caron / Professional Coach / ironman champions / age group world champions
Jonnyo Coaching
Instargram

  

You run for an hour at HIM pace off the bike?! I have a run sometimes that includes that, it is by far my hardest workout of the week. I cannot imagine doing it after a hard bike ride. My hat is off to you.
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I'm an old (like, 9 years ago) Troy Jacobson-schooled lunatic who believes in the "suffer in training so that you can suffer even more in racing" school ;-)

It's not uncommon for me to do 2 or 3 bricks in a week. For instance, a Saturday 4.5 hour ride and then (after a 5 minute rest) a 50 minute run. Intensities are dependent upon what I'm trying to accomplish that week. Sunday will be a 1:30:00 to 1:45:00 run followed by a 30 minute to 1 hour easy effort bike.

My current favorite workout is a 2.5 hour HARD Computrainer workout (with at least one Spinerval session (1.0 or 2.0 are my faves) inserted and also two 40 minute IM race-pace "tempo" (maybe close to TT) blocks also inserted. Then a 45 minute run out on the roads. If it's prepping for an IM-distance race, it'll be at faster than desired race-pace and descending from there, with a negative split on the "back" of the "out and back." Shorter distance races are adjusted accordingly, though an Olympic distance race run wouldn't be close to what I can put out on the run leg in a race. That's just waaaay too much like actual racing, and the body doesn't know the difference between a training "race effort" and a racing "race effort."

BK

Again - in my own experience - I have found that many athletes I have observed and coached can run really fast on the track or on the road - but they dont optimize or translate that speed in a triathlon until they incorporate some brick training into their routine - especially before their "A" races. I am not advocating substituting brick runs for running speed work - I am suggesting that both are important. As an example if an athlete can normally run 5 by 1k on the track in 3:10 or better then I would have them do a workout like 2-3 by (1k run at 3:15 with a transition to a 4 k bike at 40km/hr plus and 1 k run at 3;13) with 5 min rest.

Call me crazy - but I really think this type of work helps athletes get off the bike are fly. Works for me and seems to work for the athletes I have helped or coached. I just think that there is merit to the study that is referenced that started this thread.

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Michael Hay - helped on the journey by the great folks at ZiZU Optics, (for the custom fit), and Bialkowlski's TRYSPORT

Do you know how many subjects were tested in this study and what was used to determine improvement/running performance (sorry but I could only get access to the abstract on-line)? The reason I ask is that it appears to me that many studies use very few athletes (e.g. 10), very gifted athletes, completely novice athletes and/or use a subjective endpoint (e.g. time to exhaustion). It is easy to draw too many conclusions on too little data.

One thing to keep in mind is that this article describes training for Olympic distance tris. Although nutrition and pacing are important for all distances, they do not seem to have as profound (i.e. ability to measure) impact on pacing. When training for HIMs & IMs, doing some quality bricks can help athletes at a variety of levels dial in pacing and nutrition requirements. Mental aspects of triathlon are especially important for long course racing.

Elite and highly experienced athletes may know exactly how hard to push, when to hold back, how much to drink/eat for 95F days and what adjustments to make for a 70F day but I speculate that this info has come from years of racing. Athletes who have not been racing for years at their current fitness level do not have this wealth of race experience, can supplement their experience with quality brick workouts. This is not to suggest that discipline-specific workouts are less effective than bricks but IMHO bricks can be a highly valuable tool to have in the training plan. You won't gain much from any workout that is just a check box or filler to add volume for volume's sake.

I was consulting with Simon Lessing in an attempt to get into shape after my latest knee surgery and the 2nd in the last 12 months. I was shocked to hear he never did bricks and believes it is of no value to a triathlete that has been in the sport for a long time.

That's exactly what I've been trying to say, if you have raced a fair amount, there really is no physical advantage to bricks. They won't hurt you if done in moderation, and many will get some psycological benifit from them. That's fine, but lot's of great athletes feel that doing quality workouts vs some brick that scales back that quality, is the way to get faster. This is not to say this is an either/or issue, but to imply that doing bricks is the best way to improve your race speed, well there is just no evidence to support that...

There are lots of people that can get faster doing lots of different things, but the one constant I have seen in all the programs is beyond race pace training.....

it seems to me that you could go one step further with "the constant". i haven't seen a (sensible and/or proven) training program for any endurance sport that doesn't mix in a beyond-race-pace workout, a longer race-pace-or-just-below workout and a notably longer endurance workout. you could do a lot worse for triathlon that just schedule 9 sessions, those 3 for each discipline, and forget anything else. bricks? i'm neutral. i think that non-elite athletes can gain quite a bit from the experiential side of them ("running on tired legs" blah blah blah), and its also a satisfying thing to watch your off-bike run pace slowly climb to get closer your standalone pace. but does it make you a faster runner? doesn't seem like the best way to approach that problem, certainly.

Curious about your opinion of this brick workout - don't think I've seen it on this thread yet - but was reading kinda lazy.

bike ~1 hr, like:
10 min spin w/u, 2x20 Z4, 5 min big gear cooldown - or- 30 minute Z4/Z5 over/under ride with warmup/cooldown, followed by,
400m @ 10k pace, then
4x800m @ Daniels I pace/800m recovery btwn
800m w/d

For me its ~1.5 hr brick. I like it for oly/sprint prep because you are running 800's at faster than race pace, but off a threshold bike so provides benefit of a longer quality sesion than one might usually get in single sport wkout. Added benefit of adapting to running fast off the bike. I did this last season as my only interval run workout, as the rest were threshold or lsd runs. I think I really adapted to doing fastest runs after a bike - so very sport specific benefit.

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some days you're the windshield some days the bug

Curious about your opinion of this brick workout -\\

I said this earlier, but the one brick I used to do with Jurgen, was a 4 hour ride, followed by 2k really fast on the track. Not a true brick in the sense I guess, but just like your workout, it incorporates faster than race pace running, so you can look at it from that perspective. I liked that workout, but we just did it once in a great while. So for a brick, I like your workout. I guess brick has come to mean a generic term, but it can be from A to Z in terms of actual effort. One that leans to faster than race pace for a short period of time, will be similar to a stand alone workout at that pace that was longer.....

I'm training for a oly in september and a coach has a plan for me that has tempo runs (3 building to 8 miles) after my "long" bike ride (about 30 miles). Is that a good idea or is it too much considering I'm doing speed work during the week as well?

Hi Monty,

I've been following the "anti-brick" threads for a while, and I understand and get the point.
(I've taken to doing my tuesday run intervals in the am, and hard bike in the pm, instead of as a brick)

I'll say one thing however in favor of the now out-of-favor brick workout:

They are time-efficient.

IF all you were going to do was an easy run of X miles (say 2-6, whatever you like) for frequency, then doing it after the bike is very time-efficient.
You don't need to schedule a separate time for another workout, you are already dressed, sweaty, warmed up, etc.
Saves a lot of admin time and effort.

Naturally for a Pro/Elite-level athlete, maximizing the training gain from eack workout takes precedence.
For piker AG'ers like me, just getting the damn workout in and done is the priority.
If I don't do the brick run off the bike, I may not get to do it at all. A "sub-optimal" run workout is better than NO run workout.

So - bricks are a great way to build run volume thru frequency.

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float , hammer , and jog

So - bricks are a great way to build run volume thru frequency.

This is really the only reason that I do them. Agree with the sentiments that they are not that useful for developing speed. Running "off the bike" is really not that big a deal anymore that needs to be practiced. Usually a matter of having only x number of hours in a day to train and throwing a 30-50 minute run on top of my ride. Running an extra 10 plus miles a week is what makes a difference.

Long run and tempo run never done off the bike, seems like a way to ensure a low quality effort.

This has been a very good thread.......lots of good pros and cons.

I agree that volume and frequency are key and that is first for endurance sport. However I believe that doing long runs and tempo off the bike is very effective for the time constrained who don't have seven days to plan out all the workouts.

It seems many have the assumption that doing a "brick" means one is too destroyed to run an effective workout, say a track session at specific paces. Unless one does a 40k TT all out, then of course. But say prior to a track session, for the warm-up, one rides the TT bike at moderate effort for 10 miles, say slightly less than max aerobic. That should have no impact on the run workout. In fact, in my view it is the perfect warm-up for a triathlete. If one is impacted, then perhaps base endurance needs more work.

Look at what a runner does prior to a track session. Slow running, stretching, slow running. Maybe a drill or two. 30 minutes warm-up for sure in order not to get injured.

Dan Emfield always advocated this approach. To ride the bike to the track or before a run. Mike Pigg would bring his bike and trainer to the track. He was probably the greatest Olympic distance triathlete ever. There was no drafting back then and the bike courses were usually brutal. You needed to be an absulute bike killer with the ability to run after those efforts. Now, you have to swim good enough to get out of the water into the lead bike pack and then wait for the run. So of course Whitfield and the current ITU guys train accordingly.

But anyway, back to the thread.

Long runs can also be warmed-up in similar fashion. 10-20 miles on the TT bike at a reasonable effort then right into the long run fully warmed-up.

In actuality, when I think about it, I don't brick either. It takes a couple of minutes to put the bike away and drink and maybe eat something before I T-run. The only time I brick and transition to the run in as little time as possible is during a race.

I T-run.......but often

triathlon is one sport, not three

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Eric Reid AeroFit | Instagram Portfolio
Aerodynamic Retul Bike Fitting

“You are experiencing the criminal coverup of a foreign backed fascist hostile takeover of a mafia shakedown of an authoritarian religious slow motion coup. Persuade people to vote for Democracy.”

I would posit that they aren't running to their potential until they learn how to pace the bike, or improve their bike fitness to match the pace they do chose, rather than the bricks being the reason.

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Eric Reid AeroFit | Instagram Portfolio
Aerodynamic Retul Bike Fitting

“You are experiencing the criminal coverup of a foreign backed fascist hostile takeover of a mafia shakedown of an authoritarian religious slow motion coup. Persuade people to vote for Democracy.”