Monday’s brick workout – how kick ass on your own terms

It feels a bit cliché to take out your day’s frustrations in a workout. There have been many days where I wouldn’t feel like going to the pool, but a couple hundred metres into a workout the background noise would just fade and my workout would become my only focus.

Let’s just say today I had a little harder of a time to focus. It was very tempting for me to sit on the couch and crack open a beer, but instead I pulled out my new love Dana and took her for a hard ride.

I rode down to my Cherry/Commissioner’s/Leslie/Unwin loop and started off with one medium intensity lap.

Home to Loop: 7.18k – 16:26 – 26.2 km/h – 128 AHR
Lap 1: 6.36k – 11:55 – 32 km/h – 151 AHR

On the second lap I dropped down a gear (the loop is nearly completely flat) and kept the same cadence (in fact I kept an average of 103 for nearly all laps).

Lap 2: 6.36k – 12:04 – 31.5 km/h – 150 AHR

Lap three I felt like pushing a more of a high intensity lap. Back up one gear.

Lap 3: 6.36k – 11:34 – 33.0 km/h – 160 AHR

Lap four was my time trial. I went up one more gear.

Lap 4: 6.36k – 11:05 – 34.4 km/h – 172 AHR

Lap five was a cool down lap, then I intended on going home. But by this point I couldn’t get myself to go straight. There was some unfinished business—I pushed for another strong lap. Aside from the heart rate variation (cardiac drift?), it was an identical performance to the first lap.

Lap 5: 6.36k – 12:34 – 30.4 km/h – 157 AHR
Lap 6: 6.36k – 11:55 –  32.0 km/h – 162 AHR
Loop to home: 7.16k – 20.5 km/h – 138 AHR 

Total: 52.5 km – 1 hour 48 minutes.

That was all I was planning on doing until I saw the front door of my apartment. I wasn’t ready to call it a day, so I ran in, dropped off my bike and threw on my running shoes. 

I was just going to do a quick 2k loop around the block. I wanted to just get a short brick in to get a feel for it, but once I started running I had this uncontrollable need to keep going. I started running south toward the lake, but when I got held up at a light I made a right turn. 

For the first 3k I didn’t look at my Garmin at all. I had no idea where I was going, when I was going to stop, what my heart rate was, and I didn’t care. I just kept running. It started to drizzle and rain. It wasn’t nice out at all. I didn’t pick a pretty route. I kept on running.

There was another runner on the opposite side of the street. I was slowly gaining on him until I caught up, passed him, and crossed the street right in front of him. That felt good.

Around the 5k mark I had a look at my average speed—11.2 km/h. I didn’t think I had held that kind of speed for so long before, but I wasn’t sure (since the bike computer has no pace display). This is where I set my goal of 10k.

There are a lot of things outside my control right now. But right there, right then, the only thing I could do was take the one thing I had control over and own it. I was going to finish that 10k run.

With 2.5k left I ran past the point in the road where I felt my tendon rupture last year. I tried to maintain my form as well as I could—I wasn’t going to let that happen again. It started raining harder, and the sidewalk ended. I ran down a big hill, trying to contain my speed. Trying to take advantage of the hill without making my injuries worse. When I got to the bottom of the hill my stride was so long I couldn’t control myself anymore. I had 1k left, and everything started to hurt.

From my IT bands to my tib post, to my quads to pretty much everything below my waist—everything was screaming out in agony, but the only thing I could do was keep running.

When I got back to my apartment there was no crowd, no cheering, no medal, no chip time. It didn’t matter that Thursday I’m getting the results of my MRI, which could very well keep me from running ever again. It didn’t matter that I had my personal best 40k bike split or my best 10k run ever. It was just me sitting in a puddle with steam coming off my body. All that mattered was that I finished.

10k – 54:49 – 5:28 pace

Fuck you Monday—I won this round.

3 responses to “Monday’s brick workout – how kick ass on your own terms

  1. Um, you didn’t just win – you blew Monday’s brains out!! Way to smoke the ride AND run! Killer speed.

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