How many times a week should a brick? I’m doing sprint triathlons right now and doing a half and IMAZ in November. I swim 3 times a week and run 4 with a long run on sundays. I I normally brick on Sat. Just wondering if it would beneift me to brick midweek?
How many times a week should a brick? I’m doing sprint triathlons right now and doing a half and IMAZ in November. I swim 3 times a week and run 4 with a long run on sundays. I I normally brick on Sat. Just wondering if it would beneift me to brick midweek?
Once you’ve done a couple bricks for the psychological adjustments, the only training reason to do back to back workouts is time crunch. In which case you should do the workout you are focusing on the most, first.
John
There are different schools of thought. I try to do a couple per week. I do at least one 5-10k brick run on the weekend at an easy pace. But I’ll also get off my bike and run 1-2 miles at a near all-out pace when the mood strikes…no more than 1x per week.
I will agree with Devlin…the longer one is more just trying to get all my workouts in. The short hard one is the more for getting my legs acclimated to running hard off the bike. I won’t even bother with that one if it was an easy bike. I’m talking after a 2 hour plus, hard bike ride.
Once you’ve done a couple bricks for the psychological adjustments, the only training reason to do back to back workouts is time crunch. In which case you should do the workout you are focusing on the most, first.
There’s something to be said for learning to run with tired legs. Devlin might be trying to say that you can get more run specific benefit(s) from running only, versus with a brick workout. I have read that if you only do brick workouts then you may lose run speed.
Matt Fitzgerald has published many articles regarding running for triathletes. Here’s one related to bricks.
It sounds like you’re a bit newer to triathlon, not that I have a ton of experience either, but I’d recommend doing at least a brick a week. That’s what I’m doing right now. One week is a long brick Saturday, the next week is a short brick Thursday. There are a couple days of bike and run, but not as bricks along the way. Before my first half I didn’t do many, if any, bricks. During that half I didn’t run a whole lot and was pretty bummed with the run performance.
I do a brick workout at least 2 times a week. One is a bike followed by the run. Meanwhile, the other is an interval session consisting of bike then run multiple times. For example for speed (5 by 5km bike tempo, 1km at race pace) This could be adjusted depending on the focus of the workout.
Once you’ve done a couple bricks for the psychological adjustments, the only training reason to do back to back workouts is time crunch. In which case you should do the workout you are focusing on the most, first.
There’s something to be said for learning to run with tired legs. Devlin might be trying to say that you can get more run specific benefit(s) from running only, versus with a brick workout. I have read that if you only do brick workouts then you may lose run speed.
There’s nothing to be said for running on tired legs. After a mile or so, you’ve gotten all the benefit out of it that you might, after that it’s a mediocre run workout. Running well off the bike is a matter of fitness and pacing. Nothing more.
John
Bricks are good for practice and good for fitting in workouts in a time efficient manner. But doing both segments as quality workouts is a bad idea. One or the other (or the other if doing all three disciplines) can be quality but the rest should be easier.
Crazy how much people “brick” - never heard it used as a verb before. I usually do 2-3/year and then tell myself how awesome I am. But I’m also someone who loves doing a lot of races and will use a local sprint as a fun, hard training day.
http://forum.slowtwitch.com/gforum.cgi?post=1816193
post 30 is the best answer i think
.
I would echo what others have said and say that I will do a long bike and short run, 10-20 minutes usually once a week just to kind of get that feel for running off the bike. But I will do one longer brick with race pace efforts on the bike and run. But this workout is to really just nail down nutrition and make sure I am getting the right amount of calories during the bike to transition to the run. But other then that, as others have said, the quality of the second workout is pretty much crap. But if it works for you keep doing it! And good luck at AZ.
I was thinking more along the lines of decrease in plasma volume, glycogen depletion and perpherial fatigue.
You don’t have to over-complicate things here. If when you’re racing you run off the bike, then you should do that when training. I know of at least one reputable coach that has his athletes running off the bike for at least 3 times a week.
for better specificity, I only run off the bike on Sundays. Since virtually all triathlons are on Sundays, it follows that for the optimum training adaptations to occur, you should focus your brick running on Sundays.
Quoted for posterity - effing perfect. 
John
Shit. I’m doing Wildflower long course and it’s on Saturday.
Let me be the lone dissenter and admit that doing some specific high intensity bike run bricks has improved my run off the bike in short course racing. Maybe once a week for 6-12 weeks leading up to a major race I would do stuff like 2 x 15:00Z4bike + 15:00Z3run transitioning to 1 x 12 high Z4 bike + :60Z5 run + 10Z4 run. I would even do some super short stuff like 4:00Z5 bike + 3:00Z5 run, but I think the threshold work helped more.
I really liked the super fast :30 - :60 work right off the bike. Transitioning to Zone 5 right away and then backing down. This ain’t science but I have notoriously run poorly off the bike and this was a bigger part of figuring it out then was easing off on the bike.
For long course guys I can understand the reticence as there is far less utility.
For some context I am racing Olympic distance in around 2 hours and riding mid 300s, and I think the high power may have something to do with it. The stronger I got on the bike the worse I ran. I wouldn’t say I did extra damage to the legs, but they sure seemed to take longer to “make the switch” to run mode when I did not do bricks. It was almost like the muscles were still firing in bike mode for the first few minutes. Very clumsy.
Geez, I wonder if there is any science to back that up…
Anyway, the bricks helped me.
Thanks for that thoroughly entertaining thread!
Why does everyone worry about bike to run but not swim to bike? That horizontal to vertical thing can be tough.
Why does everyone worry about bike to run but not swim to bike? That horizontal to vertical thing can be tough.
You are quite right Tigerchick,not ehough people worry about it,especially the weaker swimmers in an Ironman distance.
I think bricks are fun sometimes, and they can save time (and you only have to take one shower).
I think bricks are fun sometimes, and they can save time (and you only have to take one shower).
I agree,I do lots of multisport sessions. Swim/bike…swim/run/swim/run/swim/run…run/bike/run…etc.etc…
I think that for those who are just trying to finish races and are doing it for fun these types of sessions can teach a lot and prepare you for race day…
Now I will wait for the flame-throwers to be fired in my direction…
–
you know last summer I hadn’t run in a year or done much of anything and so entered the local sprint… 20min off the bike. I didn’t even trip.
month later I did another local sprint. no bricks in between, only about 20 miles of running that month. 19min off the bike.
maybe some day I can learn how to brick.