One-Hour Workout: 3 Indoor Brick Options

This week’s indoor brick workout (times three!) comes from Tony Zamora, a USAT Triathlon Level 2 coach and the founder of the Endorphin Hub based in Chicago, Ill. He says that as temperatures drop, he sees athletes start to pack in the gyms to get their workouts in on spin bikes or treadmills. The workouts he’s provided here are perfect for time-challenged athletes—you can do them all indoors in one hour or less. He says he too often sees athletes give up the brick workout once they’re forced indoors.

“People tend to push this work off until the spring, until it’s warmer outside and they can get in a longer brick workout outdoors,” Zamora says. “I think this is a vital mistake. As anyone who has done a brick knows, that spaghetti leg feeling is pretty bad! Why wait until the spring to train for that?”

Here are three options that you can do all within an hour! Shooting for once a week is best.

Option 1: Run Focused Brick

Warm-Up
Warm-up well, with a 10 min bike, slowly ramping up your effort over the 10 minutes. The last minute should be a hard effort, but not all-out sprint.

Ride an easy 5 min to recover, focus on high cadence.

Main Set
30-40 min run, structured as you’d like. It can be a tempo 5K run, 3×10 min run at threshold pace with a short recovery in between, or shorter 1–3 min speed intervals if you are lacking speed. Tons of options here!

Cool-Down
Easy recovery jog with some strides, then stretching and foam rolling

Option 2: Bike Focused Brick

Warm-Up
Warm-up well with a 10 min bike, slowly ramping up your effort over the 10 minutes. The last minute should be a hard effort, but not an all-out sprint.

Ride an easy 5 min to recover, focus on high cadence.

Main Set
Ride for 30 min at choice of pace, depending on your goals.

Some options include:
You can focus on 30×30 sec sprints with 30 sec recovery for a hard, sprint-focused effort.
15×1 min with 1 min recovery
5×5 min hard tempo intervals with 1 min recoveries. Or:
1 x 20–30 min time trial effort

Cool-Down
Easy recovery jog with some strides, then stretching and foam rolling

Option 3: Duathlon Focused Brick Workout

This option is good for variety, even for non duathletes!
Warm-Up
10 min bike, then 5 min run

Main Set
Go back and forth with a 10 min bike, then doing a 5 min run until the hour is complete. On each effort, up your pace/speed; the last effort should feel challenging and you should barely be able to finish it.

You could also swap the time and do 5 min bike and 10 min run if your training is more focused on developing your run.

Cool-Down
Easy recovery jog with some strides, then stretching and foam rolling