W-W-W-Wilkie!!

Today was my least favorite workout in the Gazelles repertoire, the steep hill repeats at Wilkie. I've come to terms with it, at least, but I still fret about it for a week ahead of time. Since Gilbert told me that it's all about form and high knees, and not necessarily about speed, the workout is much more tolerable, but it is still a lung-scorching event.

Frank convinced me to run from RunTex to the Wilkie hill, which is longer than most of the folks ran. Sean pointed out that he ran from there because of Gilbert's comment that "advanced runners" should leave from RunTex. :) I like the longer warmup and cooldown, especially when the weather is nice like today. Nice and crisp, temps around 52 degrees. Perfect running weather. Frank, Margaret, Caitlin, Jan and I ran from RunTex, and covered the 2.75 miles at around 9:41 pace, comfortably. Drills were drilled, and then we gathered for the Word. Gilbert suggested between 7 and 10 repeats. Okay.

I concentrated on form and ignored the pace of those around me, and the first 3 or 4 repeats went pretty well. I was gasping at the top of the long hill, but I didn't hate life too much up there, either. During repeat 5, I was starting to feel it, and after repeat number 6, I'd had enough. My form held together through all 6 repeats, but I was really working hard at the end of that one, and it was time to end that portion of the festivities. During repeats 5 and 6, I was passing some people going up the hill, so that made me feel better about myself.

After the straight repeats, we did 2 backwards running repeats up the last 2/3 of the hill, the steeper bit, and those felt like you're towing your car up the hill after the other repeats. I really struggled on the second one, and right when I was going to quit, Gilbert jumped in and ran with me to force me to push over that last hump. It was a relief to be done with those. After the two backwards repeats, my quads were so used up that I wobbled going down the hill.

I thought we were done at that point, and went on down the hill to get Powerade. Once I was at the bottom, I noticed some runners doing something extra up at the top of the hill, but I couldn't figure out what that was. Suddenly, I heard Gilbert yelling from the top of the hill, "I didn't see Jay Clement doing these!" Shamed into it, I trudged up the hill to the last bit of the hill, where Gilbert had us doing a seriously exaggerated high knee form sprint just for maybe 20-30 yards, concentrating on all the form stuff we're supposed to use on hills. Those weren't that bad, and I did the requisite 3 repeats of those.

Sean, Frank and I ran back to RunTex (others in our group either ran back earlier or hitched a ride with folks who had parked halfway to Wilke), and had a fun conversation. That return trip was a bit slower after all the hill stuff, at about 9:52 pace.

I saw Alex at RunTex, waiting on his PT appointment next door, and we talked about his trials and tribulations on the path to return to running. I'm rooting for him to get better, because I can tell he really misses being out there with us.

Once Alex left, I did some stretching and then did the post-run exercises, 4 x 25 crunches, 2 x 20 back raises, and 2 x 10 pushups. Those are getting a little easier, but there's still some grunting and groaning on the last 5 reps of the ab stuff and on most of the second set of pushups.

Total day running was around 8.5 miles, a good full day. I'm thinking that it would be a good idea to do a nice easy 30-45 minute run tomorrow before I go to the gym, instead of doing the indoor cycle thing. We'll see how that plan goes.