Double-brick anyone?

Sunday's coached training session was a landmark in our training program. The double-brick is a step towards the infamous triple brick which we will undertake in the summer. A brick, if you are wondering, is a bike ride followed by a run. A double-brick is a ride-run-ride-run session. To add to the fun, we had to get ourselves out to Danville for a 08:00 start. Never having been to Danville, nor having any idea where it was, meant that I had to get myself out of bed at 6 AM the morning after my birthday party. For some reason nobody seemed to want to go home on Saturday night despite professing to that the fact that they usually went to bed at 10 PM. Anyhow, I didn't feel too bad getting up which I put down to the extra ice cream that I had in preparation.
Danville, is a quiet suburban town on the East Bay a little west of Mt Diablo. It is cold there. The temperature was at least 10 deg F lower that it was when I left San Francisco which made for a rather chilly ride. Still, the surrounding countryside is rather pretty and the roads were quiet which made for a good ride. I remained a little cold for the whole ride as we were told to keep our pace down at 15 mph to simulate a long ride. Riding slower meant that my heart rate was below 100 bpm and I didn't generate any additional heat. After the first ride, we quickly tranisitioned into our running gear and hit the Iron Horse trail for a 40 minute run. Foolishly I hooked up with three of the fastest runners in the team and ended up running a hard 5 miles. My heart rate jumped from sub-100 to the low 140s where it stayed for the duration of the run. I vowed to ease off for the next run. The run was followed by an 80 minute spinning session which we did in the carpark on an Albertson's. Spinning is no easy option. It is like cycling with no stop signs or downhills. It has added hazzards such as one-legged cycling, which is supposed to build power, and invisible hills. The final run was quite nice in comparison. I hit the trail on my own for the first 20 minutes and hooked up with John G and Kim for the return leg. We ran maybe 1/2 min/mile slower that the way out which made all of the difference.
In all the session lasted about 5 hours and I felt pretty good at the end of it. My only concern was that I felt like I couldn't drink anymore sports drinks. I have been experimenting with a variety of drinks. The one that I used the most on Sunday was Sustained Energy which is widely used by triathletes. It has the advantage of being very calorific, and you can mix it up to give you 1000 cals in 750 mls. The downside is that it has the consistency of, and tastes like wallpaper paste. After drinking 1.5 litres of this, my stomach was telling me no more!