Brick Workouts for Triathlon: How TrainingDojo Supports Bike-to-Run Sessions

Brick workouts are one of the defining sessions in triathlon training. Instead of training each sport in isolation, a brick asks the athlete to move from one discipline into another with little or no recovery. The classic example is bike-to-run, but swim-to-bike and longer multisport combinations can also be useful.

TrainingPeaks has a helpful overview of why these sessions matter for triathletes. The short version: bricks are not just extra volume. They teach your body and mind to handle the awkward, race-specific moment when one sport ends and the next one begins.

Why Brick Workouts Work

Running well off the bike is its own skill. Your cadence changes, your posture changes, and your perceived effort can feel wrong for the first several minutes. A brick workout creates controlled exposure to that transition so race day feels familiar instead of chaotic.

• Neuromuscular practice: The legs learn the bike-to-run shift through repetition.
• Pacing feedback: Athletes learn what race effort feels like after cycling fatigue.
• Transition confidence: Bricks make equipment flow, fueling, and pacing more automatic.
• Specificity: The closer you get to race day, the more useful race-like combinations become.

How to Progress Brick Workouts

Early-season bricks should usually be short and controlled. A simple 45-minute endurance ride followed by a 10-minute easy run is enough to build familiarity without creating unnecessary fatigue.

In the build phase, the brick can become more race-specific: include a block at goal bike effort, then run off the bike at target race effort. In the final race-prep phase, some athletes benefit from longer simulation sessions that include fueling, gear setup, and transition rehearsal.

Common Brick Mistakes

The biggest mistake is making every brick hard. A hard bike plus a hard run is expensive training stress. Use that tool deliberately, then recover. Another mistake is writing bricks too vaguely. "Bike then run" is less useful than a clear prescription with duration, effort, and the transition goal.

Good brick description:
20 min steady bike into 15 min run off bike at 80-88% threshold HR | 10 min easy cooldown

Vague brick description:
Bike/run brick

How TrainingDojo Supports Brick Workouts

TrainingDojo now treats Brick as a first-class TrainingPeaks workout type. Brick rows resolve to the TrainingPeaks Brick type, can be generated as structured workouts, and can be uploaded in the same bulk push as swim, bike, run, rest, strength, and custom calendar entries.

That is different from Day Off, Strength, Custom, and Other rows, which TrainingDojo keeps calendar-only by default. Brick workouts are structured-capable because they often include clear duration, intensity, and transition instructions that athletes need to execute.

Writing Brick Rows for TrainingDojo

A good TrainingDojo brick row should name the sport as Brick, include the planned duration when possible, and describe each segment plainly. If the workout uses one primary target across the whole session, threshold heart rate is often a practical choice because it works across both bike and run.

day,sport,subtype,title,duration_minutes,tss,description,phase
8,Brick,,Brick HR Build,45,50,"20 min steady bike into 15 min run off bike at 80-88% threshold HR | 10 min easy cooldown",Build

When uploaded, the pipe character becomes a paragraph break in TrainingPeaks, so the bike/run instruction and cooldown note are easier to scan.

When to Split a Brick Into Separate Rows

A single Brick workout is useful when the session should appear as one race-specific prescription. If you need separate bike power targets and run pace targets that sync differently to devices, splitting the session into a Bike row and a Run row can still be the better operational choice.

The practical rule: use Brick when the transition is the point of the workout. Use separate rows when the device execution of each discipline matters more than keeping the session grouped.

Build Bricks Into the Calendar

Use bulk structured workouts to convert a triathlon CSV plan with Brick rows, or use the single workout builder for one bike-to-run session. TrainingDojo will preserve Brick as the workout type and upload it to TrainingPeaks with the right calendar behavior.