I got up this morning thrilled to find we were back online almost business as usual, thanks to Zak working his late night his magic when he got home. It was like we had a visit from Internet Claus. After playing a little online catch up this morning I headed out for a run.

I ran just over 4 miles in about a half hour. It was such a refreshingly cool and comfortable morning I thought I’d take a cool down ride on my bike around the neighborhood.

My running buddy Shawn, who is training for a triathlon, has told me about this training approach they call The Brick. As part of your training for the back to back events and preparing your body to go from one event to the next, you ride your bike X miles and then you run for Y miles. X and Y would vary depending on how far your triathlon is and what you are hoping to accomplish. As the values X and Y increase your levels of sanity decrease.

Apparently it is called The Brick because, in short, riding and then running leave you feeling like you’ve hit brick wall.

Oh boy where I do go to sign up for that?

I was thinking about this on my post-run bike ride this morning. It is not at all hard to run and THEN ride, but I can easily believe it would be a lot tougher to ride 15 miles and THEN run 4. But running and then riding? Yeah, I think we can call that The Feather. A hot sweaty run and then coasting around the neighborhood streets while the cool air dries your sweat and you get to enjoy the breeze? Sounds like sleeping on a feather bed to me. At least compared to the idea of hitting a brick wall.

But then my cool down ride took a turn from down comforter to pillow fight as I ended up going 11 miles and another 45 minutes. The air felt just too perfect to turn around head home already so I kept going. Feathers and bricks aside, running and then riding is a fun and easy way to get a longer workout in. I highly recommend it.

“Hungry” is one way to describe how I was feeling when I got back. “Diving head first into a bowl of watermelon and cantaloupe” is one way to describe the first thing I did when I walked in the door.

Note that I said ALMOST business as usual with these internet shenanigans. The wireless networking is still not working but my hopelessly devoted husband scrounged up an extra long network cable so that I can have “wireless” access in my office, except with a wire for now. I’ll take it!

A breakfast cookie while sitting at my desk and being online?

What more can a girl ask for? A feather bed would be nice, but I’m not going to push my luck.