Fraser Darcy

Last year I lived with a man named Guangyi. For a few months, Guangyi worked on the solar farm at nearby Port Augusta in order to satisfy his Visa conditions and apply for permanent residency. Up at 6:00am, out the door by 6:30am, back in the door at 6pm and then into bed by 9pm. Six (six!) days a week if you don’t mind too. Guangyi didn’t particularly enjoy the work but he was steadfast in his vision that he wants to live and work in Australia and so the daily grind is what he had to do.

This past few weeks, and last term too, I’ve been channeling my inner Guangyi. The only difference is my sixth day of the week is split over two on the weekend. See, if I count my running training as work I’m pretty much on the same schedule as Guangyi. It’s nice to have the structure and it’s nice to be earning a full-time wage. I’m not begrudging that. One thing I do realise though as Friday comes around is that I’m reminded of why I moved to Quorn. To spend my time doing stuff in the Flinders as much as possible. On weekends where I’m heading back to Adelaide for a race (last weekend) I lose sight of that and then the following week becomes a real Guangyi Grind. I see very little of Quorn and the Flinders and have little energy and time to exercise my free will during the week around my work and training schedule. I may as well be living in Port Augusta!

Come this weekend though, when work is done for another week and the allure of a weekend at Huia Park is on the horizon I get reminded about how fucking good it is to live around Quorn. Makes the grind worth it.

Looking back on the grind of the past two weeks it has been a productive fortnight. I shook off the down week I had previously in week 1 of term 3 to lay down a solid 140km-ish week with two quality harder ‘sessions’, a mid-week long run and a long run/TRSA race on the Sunday. The first of the ‘sessions’ was a typical Aussie distance runner’s favourite of 8*1km (with 60 seconds recovery between the reps). I did these on Arden Vale Rd as opposed to the dirt road and the spring I received from the better surface yielded some better times and some more confidence. On Friday I nailed a 30 minute effort at tempo pace on Pinkerton Rd and clicked a PB for that effort. Productive.

I followed that effort with a drive down to Adelaide to satisfy a few cravings on the weekend…

1) It was Father’s birthday a few days later, the best I could do to help celebrate it was travelling down on the weekend to say Happy Birthday a few times.

2) I wanted a quality long run over 2.5hrs. Could’ve done this solo but also knew it would be better quality if I entered a race.

3) And I wanted to venture out to a TRSA race for the first time this year. These races were the backbone of my year last year and I wanted to continue the consistency I developed and enter at least one for this year and this one was the most suitable.

Come Sunday evening I’d had a most successful weekend. Plenty of early Happy Birthday’s were dropped + an impromptu family dinner. I killed two birds with one stone with a good run out at Mt.Crawford in the TRSA race there. 1st place in the 23km and with an extended warm up and cool down and I collected 36km in 2:40 for my troubles (plus got to see a few mates and familiar faces). Lastly, I had a very spontaneous Sunday arvo bike ride turned volunteer session with a mate and his neighbour near Belair which was a great ‘living life’ type moment.

But Monday morning is harsh and I wore the ‘hangover’ of my successful weekend under a pair of jeans, a collared shirt and my jacket as I drove back to Port Augusta at 4:30am in order to arrive at school ready for the first bell. The fatigue from that effort stayed with me right until Thursday I felt. I still pushed out another 8*1km session and a mid-week long run during the Monday-Thursday period but it was all definitely a grind. Hence, when it came to Friday arvo and the pendulum of recovery was starting to swing back in my favour I started to realise how good it is to live in Quorn on the weekends. I brought this positivity to my 30 minute tempo effort and comfortably ran it with a result that was both a good time but also felt like it came a lot easier than the two weeks prior. Positive and productive training signs.

Being the weekend in Quorn now that I lusted for earlier in this fortnight it’s great to have a bit of freedom to do what I want when I want within reason. There’s some jobs around the house, some more training and some more sport to watch too. In reflecting on these past few weeks as to what gets me all uppity about being a Weekend Warrior is that I find it difficult to focus on the ‘how I want to be‘ in life when there is a lot of ‘what do I want to be’ type jobs and expectations on myself to complete during the Monday-Friday. Instead of focusing so much on executing the right level of training or the right lesson or task in school during the week perhaps I should try the process oriented ‘how I want to be’ style a bit more and see if that breaks up the Weekend Warrior feel I get. Or maybe bring the Weekend Warrior to work maybe? Dunno, but it’s a fun game at least to reflect on I can squeeze out a bit more improvement and progression with my lifestyle each week.

As for the rest of the weekend and the next week well it’s a bit of a running but not as much as the last few weeks. It’s time to taper off into the Adelaide Marathon on August 27th. Looking forward to it. Thanks for reading!