52:30 + Brick!

Wow what a day. I felt so strong this morning. Whenever that happens, I always try to look back at what happened to cause such power. I did go to bed at a reasonable time yesterday and Alex did make some very delectable seafood pad thai so that may have played quite a role. So my commute was the fastest ever with an average speed of 31.9km/h. Thanks to MotionBased for the number crunching. I'll be sad to see that website go, hopefully they will change their plans to shutdown uploads at the end of the week.
Before anybody thinks that yesterday's winds kept going to make me go faster, think again. I checked and the weather network reports no winds at 7am this morning (with 6km S and 8km SW at 6am and 8am). That creates quite the benchmark to try to beat from now on. I'll have to go even harder. I'm pretty happy also about the even-ness of my speed throughout the ride. Thanks to RunSaturday for the speed heatmap. Hopefully they can eventually figure out a way to give me moving time and average moving speed.
The commute home was uneventful. I didn't push too too hard since I knew what was coming next: the Brick! Now, I don't know why it's called a brick. Maybe Bike + Run + ICK = BRICK? Or maybe it's the feel of your feet while running making them as heavy as bricks. Anyways, after biking my 25km in 1h04m (with sidewinds of 20km/h thank you very much for asking), I started out on a run. It took me about 2 minutes to transfer to my running shoes. I guess I should work on that before the race.

The first 300 meters of the run were great. I felt so bouncy in my running shoes and I thought that every bad thing I had heard about Brick runs was false. After 300 meters however, reality set in. My legs felt as if they were made of concrete. At kilometer 1 I was panting and feeling the pain. By kilometer 2 I was about call it quits (and I'm not usually a quitter!). Finally, at kilometer 3, I actually caught my rythm and was starting to have a bit of fun. However, regardless of all my efforts, I wasn't able to pick up the pace. It's as if there was no one in the engine room to add more coal to the boiler. I kept trying to get faster but the legs wouldn't follow my instructions. Definitively a new feeling for me. I still managed an overall pace of 4:51m/km which I think is pretty respectable for a first try.
My body doesn't feel too sore (yet?) so I'm thinking that I can push it a bit more. I still feel great and powerful like I did this morning although I also feel a bit drained and exhausted at the same time.

So with this Brick run, I think I can confirm my goal of finishing my Sprint tri in less than 1h45m. It gives me about 20 minutes for the swim (it gets messy with so many people), 55 minutes for the bike and 25 minutes for the run. With two transitions of 2m30s it should be feasible to meet the 1h45m mark. Of course, I may totally blow that goal out of the water being a race and all.

In the mix today was Thomas Fersen's 3 petits tours and Saiko-Pod's Phutures and Options.

Oh, and before I forget, I'd like to thank M-Rah for answering my questions (first two on this post) on her blog, Vegging Out. If you have any personal training type questions, feel free to leave some comments on her blog, she picks the most interesting questions and answers them every Sunday (or Monday when she can't get around to it on the Sunday!)