Share a Build Week: Day 4

Today was a brick workout - tempo bike, easy run.  Thursdays are my hard bike workouts so I do tempo, threshold, hills, etc.  A lot of times it's just a bike day and I go out and crush it.  But as races draw near, it becomes a brick day.  Today's plan was for an "easy" tempo ride followed by a fairly easy run.  I put tempo in quotes because tempo is never really easy.  

The plan for the bike was to ride at the bottom of my tempo zone.  I wanted to get in some good, hard work on the bike but not wear myself out too much for the weekend.  It gets tough when my volume is high and I have key workouts on the weekends.  I like to still get in the hard work, but I have to dial it back a bit sometimes so I don't beat myself into the ground.

Bike:  2:55.  61 miles

15 minute warm up @ 165 watts
2 hours 45 minutes @ 226 watts.

I tried uploading my workout and it appears the file may be corrupt.  Garmin, you continue to disappoint me.  A $500 bike computer and you can't even count on it.  I've been let down by Garmin so many times it doesn't even upset me anymore.  It's business as usual.  I should have gotten a Joule....or maybe I should go back to the little yellow computer.  I never once had a corrupt file with that computer.  I still have it.

Another corrupt file.  It's always tempo rides or centuries.  The short, easy ride files are always good.

Luckily, I watch my power meter closely so I knew my numbers before I hopped off the bike.

I felt decent on the bike, but the heat (90 degrees and humid) got to me a little toward the end.  I'm not used to it.  But other than that, it was a good ride.  Not too hard, not too easy.

Edit:  I managed to get my file to upload this morning.  It turns out the history stopped saving halfway and this morning it saved completely when I plugged in my Garmin.  The numbers didn't change for my warm up and tempo.  Here are the numbers for the overall ride:

Ave watts: 221
Norm watts: 225
VI: 1.02
KJ: 2342 (that's also how many calories I burned)
Elevation Gain:  1861
Ave HR: 137
Cadence: 86
Distance: 61.03
Ave Speed:  20.8 
TSS: 171.4

Much better.

I used this workout as a sweat rate test, so I'll be blogging about that in the near future.  I've been doing some testing with my nutrition and hydration lately - it turns out I sweat a lot more than I thought and haven't done a good job with hydration the past 36 years.  Live and learn. 

After the bike, I headed out for a quick run.  The plan was to start slow and build the pace on the second half if I felt good.  

Run:   30  minutes.  3.75 miles.  8:03 pace.

I started easy and ran an 8:15 pace for the first 15 minutes.  By then I had settled in and had my running legs under me (I have two sets of legs - cycling and running....if swimming legs exist, I'm pretty sure I don't have them) so I stepped it up and ran a 7:50 pace for the second half.  

Overall, it was a decent workout.  I'm happy with it.  I hit my goals and got in some hard work without beating myself into the ground.  My legs feel pretty good post-workout. 

Daily Total:  3 hours 25 minutes
Weekly Total:  10 hours 13 minutes


Tomorrow:  Easy lunch run, open water swim.