Brick

The term "Brick" has had a lot of influence on my life. Billy used to call me that. My car was named the brick-mobile (thanks again Bill). My dad (and I in the summers) worked for a Brick plant. Now it means "a way to be uncomfortable for long periods of time". I took a day off after the marathon and then did a 50 mile ride with Dave. My knee still bothered me some, so I took 2 days off and then did the long brick with dave. Supposedly in the athletic world lingo, "brick" means "bike-run"? We did the 5 hour bike followed by the 2 hour run. I got up at 3am and ate breakfast then went back to sleep. Got up at 5:00 and was out at Moses Cone Park (on the Blue Ridge parkway) by 6 and we were off. We did loops up to Grandfather mountain and back, stopping each time to weigh ourselves (yes, we brought a scale) to try to figure out sweat rates. It was cool that day so it was easy to stay hydrated... but it still took more than I would have thought. The whole time we were concentrating on keeping heartrate low and salt, water, and blood sugar good...which justifies why we were slow! My blood sugar was between 70 and 130 the whole time and I was able to eat much more than usual because I took a regular lantus (12u) the night before. I have been the king of blood sugar lately. When we started running I thought my knee wasn't going to last - but after 3 miles or so, everything started to loosen up. There was still pain, but it didn't overshadow the pain of fatigue too much. We did 9.5 miles in just under 2 hours - by the end I was in some odd zone - just looking down at the ground and not saying much. I wasn't feeling much - good or bad. Dave was in a zone, too - but it was a good zone. At the end of 7 hours he was cracking jokes. The dude is becoming a machine. He is riding 100 miles right now to Asheville where his wife will pick him up on their way to the beach. Tomorrow I am going to follow suit and do a century... I'll swim today, I guess. 50 days to go.

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