When The Word Brick Is Followed By An "S"

First, a little Linky Love because Blogland is so awesome right now:

• Have you seen Benson's Swine Flu post?? OMG - I've had this open on my desktop for days now and it cracks me the hell up every, single time I see it!!
• If you haven't already - head over to Brian's for the chance to win the Big B Swag Bag (including a piece of The Wall!) from his upcoming Great Wall Marathon on the 16th. He needs some songs for motivation and you can help. BTW, how freakin' cool is that for a marathon??
  
• Don't go to DCRainmaker's blog unless you want to see some gorgeous pictures of Seattle and the first ever picture of his elusive Girl. Jeanne once called him the enfant terrible and that name totally made me chuckle. I love his blog even though it puts mine to shame. He travels and trains and eats gorgeous food 10 times more often than I ever will and he blogs about it all practically in real time with amazing pics. Good thing he's so nice or I might have to hate him.
• I've found two more B2B peeps! Missy is doing the half and KrissyGo is doing the full. Yay!
  

Now about those brickS! Bricks - we all know and love bricks. What's not to love about jumping off the bike and trying to run when your ass feels like lead and your legs may or may not even be down there anymore - oh wait, you can see them and there's a vague thudding sensation nearby so your legs must be kinda sorta working? Some bricks are better than others. I don't really mind swim-bike bricks. (Those are still called bricks, right? I know the races like that are called aquabikes but the training plans I've read still call those workouts bricks.) See, all of this talk about bricks plural and it's no big thing. But then our training plan (that I may begin to hate Formulaic for) called for bricks plural on Sunday. Us - two bricks, one workout. As in "15 mile bike followed by 2 mile run, times two." (BTW - we're doing this 18 week plan twice through - once at the "beginner" level and then after a two week break, a second time at the "intermediate" level to end at our first half iron in good shape. The double brick is the beginner level. Next time through it will be a triple brick. Help me, Sweet Baby Jesus.) Do you get the idea that this thing scared the kee-rap out of me? We'd already had a big day on Saturday so I was not sure at all I could do this workout as prescribed.

Guess what? We KICKED it. As in a) we finished both bricks and b) the pace of our final two miles on the run was 30 seconds faster than pace of our first two mile run - which was already slightly faster than our "normal" pace to begin with!! Boo-yah! (So, Form, you are safe from my wrath - in fact, I may owe you a great big, sweaty hug!)

All through the first brick we kept looking for ways out of the second. It wasn't happening. The weather was great, there were no mechanical issues, and even me leaving my bike glasses at a bathroom stop couldn't be turned into more than an excuse to ride an exta mile out of the way. So Donna and I started talking about how we didn't have to do anything but finish the second one. It didn't have to be as good/fast/easy as the first one. It merely had to be done. We could do that - just finish it. Every wheel revolution and run step taken on that second brick was gravy. Every bit was pushing into new territory - doing something we'd not done before. Gravy, gravy, gravy we kept telling ourselves. We were more than a little punchy at the end. Can you tell? Guess those endorphins had finally kicked in. The second brick turned out to be smoother, stronger, and faster! Forget it being plain old gravy. It was transformational gravy! (Which we decided would be a great name for a folk group but would suck as a punk band name.)

I'm still not sure how we did it but I'm beginning to trust and love the training process. Of course, I might not feel that way for very long. I still have an hour worth of sprint, hill, and leg drills on the bike trainer this afternoon. Peace peeps!

TODAY I LOVE: transformational gravy and recovery days (like yesterday - still savoring it!)