The Triple Brick

The peak of our training program came this last Sunday with us taking on the triple brick. The event was held in Danville in the East Bay which had been experiencing some super hot temperature over the last few weeks. The previous time that our group had a training session here, the temperatures were above 100 which took it toll on several team members. Fortunately for us this time the temperatures didn't get beyond the 90s - which was hot enough.
A brick, in case you were wondering, is a bike and run done back-to-back. A triple brick is a bike and run done back-to-back three times. In this case each brick consisted of a 30 mile bike ride followed by a 50 minute run. In all this translated into 90 miles of riding and about 18 miles of running.

Here is a picture of me on the second run trying to keep up with Kim who ultimately left me in the dust! I am wearing our teams racing vest which we will all be wearing when we do our Ironman.

And the beat goes on....

The weeks go on and on and on....and the training goes on and on and on....it seems almost endless. But the end is almost in sight. This week will finish with us doing the infamous triple brick - a day long event where we ride for 2 hours and then run for an hour, and then do it all again, twice. The bonus is that we get to do it all in Danville which has been experiencing temperatures about 110 degrees F. Nine hours of fun in the sun. The triple brick is the peak of our training after which we get to taper until the big day.

On that note, some of my team buddies competed in IronMan USA at the weekend and completed their first IronMan. Congratulations to Cesar, John and the rest of the team.

And I moved it back again!

Well, I tried a new blog site but as much as I like how it looked, I must admit that it is much easier to maintain this one.

So what have I been up to for the last few weeks? The good news is that I have made my minimum fundraising total!!! Thanks to all of you that have supported me. My total is just over $7500, and our team total is up to $537,000 which is quite amazing.

A quick update on training - we still have another month of heavy training before we start tapering off. Last week was another landmark training session. We set off to do a 104 mile ride around the vineyards up in Santa Rosa but due to some dodgy map reading ended up doing 120 miles by mistake. The last 15-20 miles were rough as it was quite hot out there which made it hard to tolerate the liquid energy drinks. I think that I must have been running pretty low on energy.
The following day we had an interesting pool session where we simulated a mass swim start in the pool. Basically, this involved trying to swim down a lane lined with the rest of the team trying to bash you with their swim belts. I woud heartily recommend it as a hangover cure.

On July 4th, I swam 2 miles in Aquatic Park in an hour with Steve and Cesar, and managed to keep up with them. Maybe I am getting the hang of this swimming business.....