Cycling: HIIT me baby one more time.

Holy crap! Today’s ride ROCKED. I was able to commit to a full hour: a 10 minute warmup followed by 40 minutes of 30 second sprint/1 minute spin High Intensity Interval Training. And even though I covered the same distance – 16.83 miles in 59 minutes, the quality of those miles were outstanding. I felt stronger, faster, and better! Maybe it was shaving off all my body hair.

Brick: defined

Seth makes a good point – I should be defining the sport-specific terms I use. A “brick” is any workout that combines two sports. More often than not it’s used for Bike to Run (thus, BRick). It’s also named brick because frequently in the run the legs turn into concrete. This has much to do with position on the bike. Being properly “fit” to the bike is critical for multi-hour sessions, and when you add the need to transition quickly to another leg-centric sport, it’s even more important.

By the numbers.

Here are my basic stats. (For the super-long essay on how I came to endurance sports in my thirties, read this.)

Status:
I’m 33. I started running three years ago after being sedentary most of my life. The most fit I had been prior to running was losing 40 lbs on Weight Watchers and then going to Yoga classes three times a week for a year. The lowest weight I’ve ever been in my adult life is 183 lbs after plateauing with Weight Watchers.