W-W-W-Wilke!

It was only a matter of time, and this week we returned to Wilke for the hill repeats. Frank, Jennifer, and I met at RunTex for the long warmup/cooldown version of the workout, which I prefer. By the time I get done with the longer cooldown run, I've forgotten the actual repeats. :-)

The weather was nice, overcast and mid-60's with some breeze. We had fun going over to Wilke, and merged with the others at the parking lot nearer Wilke. 2.7 miles at about 9:30 pace, nice and easy. Drills done, Gilbert gave us our prescription: Boston people had to do 10xWilke, the rest of us "only" 7xWilke, then 3 backwards hills and 3 shorter uphill striders. That's an extra backwards repeat, but what the heck.

I did the first repeat hanging out towards the back of the pack, finding my form and my pace. During the second repeat, I was moving up a few spots, when Gilbert called to me and said "Why are you running with the back pack?" Dammit, I was caught. So, I picked it up a little during that repeat. By the time we were on the 5th repeat, I had moved ahead of all the regular people except Brian and Frank, who were just ahead of me. There were, of course, some truly fast people ahead of us, about 3 or 4 of them, but I'm speaking of the normal Gazelles, not the superhuman ones. That was pretty satisfying, to actually seem to be stronger than some of the troops for a change on this difficult workout. I started the 6th and 7th repeat with Brian and Frank, but finished each of those just behind them. Except for some gasping on the last two repeats, I didn't hate this too much today.

The first two backwards repeats felt fine, except for the burning in my quads as the hill kicked up at the end of the repeat. The third repeat was going to be a challenge, though. My quads were truly cooked by now. I almost made the last repeat without walking, but I broke just near the crest of the hill and took a few walking steps. Emily, ahead of me on the hill, gave me a few words of encouragement, and I managed to pick it back up for the finish of the repeat. We finished things off with the very short (maybe 20-30 yards) uphill striders at the top of the hill, which actually helped settle my legs down and gave some relief to my quads. It was a serious workout, though, and I think I did well. It may have been my best Wilke performance ever. My times on the main repeats were extremely consistent, with a spread of only 2 seconds between fastest and slowest repeat.

At the bottom of the hill, we recharged with Powerade and listened to Gilbert's hilarious recap of the birth of his second daughter, Grace. There were indeed plenty of people there to help his wife, but it sounds to me like he just hung out until it was time for him to cut the cord.

Frank and I ran back together, and did the slightly longer version that was along the trail all the way to RunTex. 2.8 miles, 9:19/mile. Altogether, about 7.6 miles to start my running week. As I said before, I'm pleased with how this workout went. I always dread Wilke, but maybe I'm getting stronger and figuring out how to do this one finally?