Fraser Darcy

People, yes the all-encompassing mass of normal humans inhabiting society, often say it’s great having kids and pets. No matter how good or bad your day is they’ll always love you when you walk in the door. I have no kids or pets (and am happy that way at the moment) but instead I have the dishes. I can have a good day, a shit day, win a race, have a shit run or something else happen and at the end of the day the dishes will still be there waiting for me.

Porridge from the morning, tuna can from lunch, the evidence of my day all there in the sink. Hence, the dishes, or insert any other random house job, are my grounding in life keeping me honest. And that is why it’s one of the best parts about living in Quorn. The independence and self-reliance that comes from being a predominantly one-man band out in Quorn help ensure I don’t get ahead of myself and develop big-headitis. Cadel Evans, 2011 Tour de France winner, once spoke about how the independence he gained from living on the land as a boy benefited his professional cycling career. It’s great to draw on the same bow as Cadel then with the independence I have in Quorn and hopefully my arrow lands in a similar place to his (in terms of world domination…)

Speaking of bike riding, this week in my training I felt very professional (and almost in complete contrast to everything above ^^^) and had a mate from Quorn join me on my Sunday long run. Karl Finlay, a born and bred Quornie, goes down as the best athlete to come out of Quorn in recent years as he plays for North Adelaide in the SANFL. But really, he’s just a top bloke who was keen to join me on my Sunday long run on Easter Sunday for as much as it was for his training benefit as it was to do something different on his weekend back home. Karl jumped on his bike and rode the first 11km’s along the road out to Dutchman’s. This is real big dog territory to have a mate help pace and keep you entertained during a long run and we were flying along for the first 30-40 minutes without me even realising. Great news! On arrival to Dutchmans Stern Karl then got off the bike and did the loop with me, getting deep in his pain cave on the way up. Always helps to train with people who are pushing themselves to their limit. On the way back home Karl was back on the bike, keeping my pace honest when the going gets tough past the 2 hr mark. Finally, to cap off a great run Karl even cranked out, unprompted, the Rocky theme song at one point! At the end of the run I’d done about 35 km’s (my watch jumped around a bit sadly) over 2hrs 45 mins with 770m elevation. Statistically and psychologically it was my best long run this year.

And the rest of the week? Well the rest of the week was also pretty top-notch. My first week at school as a teacher was a good experience that left me walking out on Thursday afternoon before Good Friday with a big smile on my face. Yes, there’ll be some challenging moments to come with classes that are very behind the 8-ball but the community of staff and the ability to get into a routine in one week was pretty good. A sign of how good my routine was is probably the fact I cranked out 173km’s this week with 3000m of elevation, my best training week yet.

But returning to Cadel Evans, complacency is often the biggest undoer of people and I’ll be doing my best to ensure I don’t fall into a complacent routine expecting every week to be the same thing. Or expecting things to just get done by themselves without putting the effort in. And who’ll be there to remind me of this? The dishes of course. And the washing. And the vacuuming. And the grocery shopping… How good’s life in Quorn?!