W-W-W-Wilke & The Gang of Four [Entered 5/18/06]

Monday, I reported to RunTex, as ordered, and joined a very small group for W-W-Wilke hill repeats. As I said on the Saturday entry, Gilbert had given me "The Look" when I kept trying to convince him that we didn't need to do Wilke today, and so I was resigned to my least favorite Gazelles workout. It was moderately cool, under 70 degrees, so at least we had that much luck. Rich, Brian, Shannon and David Mitchell joined me for the long warmup version of Wilke, and we had a fun warmup over and up to Wilke. We saw no cars in the close parking lot to Wilke, and once we got to the base of the hill, we realized that we were the only people there today. Everyone else had interpreted Gilbert's instructions the other way, and had gone for circuit workout at Austin High. We did the drills, and despite my suggestion, Shannon said we couldn't cut the workout short. Darn it! Shae showed up to check on us right when we were ready to start, and told us that Gilbert wanted 7 x Wilke, 3 uphill backwards Wilkes, and 2 uphill striders to finish it off.

And we were off. I focused on form, as I usually do on this workout, and ended up trailing the entire posse the whole morning. No worries, though. It's tougher when you don't have more people there, because if you're like me, you need other paces of runners to chase and/or run through as the workout progresses. Schade. Anyway, David left after 4 Wilkes, which wasn't a shock since he raced both weekend days. That left me definitely as the trailer on every repeat. I had a case of the "go ahead and quit, Jay" disease at about repeat number 5, but after I fought through that one, I knew I had to finish. It just wouldn't do to be the only one not completing our assignment. The other 3 stopped for water after number 6, but I went ahead and finished up right away, because I'm not sure I would've done it if I had rested.

That completed, the three backwards Wilkes were even tougher. Not so much as a gasping thing, but your quads get pretty toasted on this workout, and the backwards running uphill really finished them off. We were all groaning on those. The uphill striders at the end are actually pretty fun, as they loosen things up after all that agony that came before.

We were pretty chuffed that we had finished the workout when no one was there to yell at us. We decided that we needed a name, like superheroes. I suggested the Wilke Warriors, and I think some of the other suggestions weren't exactly printable in a public blog. After another last drink of water, we enjoyed our return jog home.

All things considered, I guess I sort of enjoy the feeling of completion for this workout, but I sure get stressed out during the deal. Total mileage for the day 7.2 miles or so.

Full stretching afterwards, and that's the whole deal.