How Did This All Get Started? The Long Story - Part II.

In my last post, I ended with my introduction into endurance sports.   I ran the Las Vegas Half Marathon and was feeling great.  But, like any big race where you spend weeks of training, I needed a break.  Plus, my friend's wedding was coming up..in Hawaii :)

And of course, with Hawaii comes vacation, and LOTS of eating.

And we all know, Hawaiians love to eat their food.

After a nice long vacation, it was a sad time to leave the islands and head back to the Mainland.  Also, when I got back, there were some major changes going on at work and I would be transitioning to a different team based in Chicago.

January quickly came, and before you know it I went from beautiful 80 degree weather in Hawaii to -9 degree weather (with wind chill) in Chicago.  Talk about a vacation killer!  But, hey, at that point Chicago was all new to me so it was great!

It was a new job position, but with a team based in Chicago, and me being the only employee out in LA, let's just say it was definitely a challenge trying to build team dynamic.  And the drawback of having a remote team?  You don't really have any co-workers that you physically interact with on a daily basis.  Urgh.  This was going to be an adjustment.  So what did I do to help relieve some of that built in stress of this new remote position?  I ended up working out a lot more. 

During my running group days I discovered the meaning of a "brick" workout.  A "brick" workout is when you workout in one sport, and you do another workout of another sport on top of that first workout.  You basically layer your workouts like "bricks".

I had a mountain bike I bought a few years ago, but I never really put it to much use.  I decided to ride my bike more frequently to get some use out of it.  Then, just for the hell of it, one day I thought, "Hmm.  I wonder if I can try this 'brick' thing?"

I took my bike down to the beach, biked a slow, people infested, 30 miles, threw my bike into the car, then went for a 20 min run.  Completely weird, but it felt great!  I easily started doing this workout more often.

Ok, I was going to do this post in two parts, but if I add what's coming up in this next part, it might get long.  So In the next post I'll finally get into how this all lead up to triathlons (I promise)!