Chilly Wilke Repeats

Well, my friends, it was chilly this morning in the pre-dawn darkness! A fairly small group (about 10-15) of us met at a parking area on Barton Springs for the Wilke repeats. It was brisk, about 38 degrees and breezy throughout the workout, and it was difficult to figure out proper running attire. Most went with some sort of running tights, and gloves were a necessary thing. Most also had on hats. We eased over to the base of the Wilke hill, cruising along at something like 9:40 pace as we took longer to get loose than usual. By the time we did the drills, a second group of runners had arrived who had run all the way from RunTex (naturally, Alex was in the Extra Mileage Group ), so we had a good sized group after all.

Gilbert emphasized that the goals for this workout are strength and form, not necessarily speed. The hill is just evil, 300m with a gradual start, then a transition upward, and finally it really steepens for the last bit of the hill. After cresting that last chunk, we were to finish it off on a flatter upper part for an additional 20 yards or so. He wanted marathoners to do 10 repeats, but since I had only done 5 the last time I did this workout, I set a goal of adding 2, for 7 x Wilke for the day. After that, we were to do 2 x 200m backwards repeats, running backwards up the steeper 2/3 of the hill.

I concentrated on form this morning, trying to keep my pace down just a little so that I wouldn't blow up early. Still, my first repeat was about the same pace as my average pace last time out. I stayed in the 1:29-1:34 range throughout the workout, and was surprisingly fresh after 5 repeats, and even the last 2 weren't terrible. I ditched my running vest after the second repeat, needing only the long-sleeved running shirt during the hard work. I was pushing hard on the 7th repeat, but I held form on all of them. Average pace for the repeats was 1:32 (compared to 1:28 last time), which was just fine. That calibrates to 8:14/mile pace up that nasty hill. The backwards repeats felt like I was towing my car up the hill, and my quads were burning like they've never burned before. Wow!

At any rate, the recovery run back to the cars felt just great, and Frank and I were pretty happy about the workout as we chatted on the way. It was a good day at the running office, and I think I'm over my phobia/hatred of the Wilke workout, although I certainly still respect the hard work that it requires. It is a serious muscle builder, and I know it will help me at Buda when we tackle the big hills late in that 30k race.

Tomorrow is an easy recovery run, and maybe I'll get going on formal weight work at the gym (provided I join one today ). Thursday will be the 4 mile tempo run, so we'll get a chance to see if we're improving. I hope to improve on my 30:30 performance of 8 weeks ago at that time.

Overall, 6 miles, average pace 9:16, but some serious running in there! Oh, yeah, I was checking out the numbers in the running log, and I noticed that I exceeded my total mileage for last December by last Thursday (9 days!). By this Thursday, I will have doubled last year's monthly total. That says a lot more about how lackadaisical I was about my running before I joined the Gazelles than anything else. Even with the 6-8 weeks that I was either out of running with my injury in May and June or in very low mileage recovery mode afterwards, I've done more miles this year than last already, and I'll probably go over last year's totals by a hundred miles by the end of the year.