Fraser Darcy

Kkkkk, I’m done with the road running for a bit after the Adelaide Marathon from two weekends ago. Time to get back on the trails for spring and summer. In the seven days since last Saturday I’ve run on the trails every day but one. In the peak of my marathon prep, it was the opposite way around. Specificity is a pre-requisite for being good at stuff and now I want to be good on the trails again. I’ve got the Hounslow Classic next weekend, potentially a Trail Running SA race in mid-October and then my eye on a couple of races in Victoria over December/January, a race in NZ in February and then some NSW races in March-May. Hence it’s time to start doing a bit more trail specific work which I’m pretty psyched for now that I’ve had a good period on the roads.

Switching back onto the trails has been a lot easier with the spell of warm weather that visited Quorn for the first part of the week. Warm (not at the hot stage yet), sunny days, running in just a shirt and not full thermals and gloves was very welcomed and started to remind me of how much I like training on the trails during the height of summer in my regular ‘pre-season’ time. The brief snap of cold weather to end the week was very sad but a good reminder not to take pleasant weather for granted. I will be cherishing it Billy, I will…

Helping to shed my winter road running coat has been the time spent flicking through my all-time favourite book, Born to Run (brief plot summary here). Not exactly sure when I first read it but 2012/13 rings a bell. I tend to read parts of it a couple of times a year for a bit of motivation and this is one of those times. Re-reading old books I feel transports you to different moments in time when you were reading it before. As such, this year’s reading has been flicking my mind back to 2017/18 summer when i was finishing uni and doing a fair bit of unstructured but enjoyable running. That summer culminated in racing Bogong2Hotham, a great race but one I hope to go back to one day to really nail it. Anyone looking for motivation to do more running should give it a read.

Anyway, we’re getting sidetracked down memory lane and running propoganda. Point is I’ve gotten pretty psyched to run on the trails again this week with the sun out and the grass still green from the modest winter rain. Good. It’s easy to be psyched but the tricky part of switching to trails is being comfortable in changing up the focus on metrics like weekly km’s to a mixture of weekly elevation, time and km’s. If I continue to chase weekly km’s of 160km and add in elevation gain of around 2000-3000m I’ll risk being a bit pooped (which is where I almost goto to pre-World Champs). So, as I switch back onto racing on the trails it’s important I monitor all the different metrics and ‘feels’ in my body to ensure I don’t chase the numbers and step over the edge. What is nice about this process is that my motivation to train is high so that’s something I don’t have to work on while I flick the switch back to focusing on the trails.

Another transitioning point worth discussing this week (it’s not really a discussion though if I just write a bunch of stuff and you read it but at least I get it out my brain that way and move on) has been the switch to a personal instagram page too. For a good 18 months I’ve just been using the huiapark_quorn moniker on Instagram for several reasons:

1. Didn’t have a personal instagram for a long time but wanted to share my house stuff. Didn’t care about my athletic stuff because it doesn’t matter how good your Instagram profile is if you can’t run so I may as well focus on being a runner first.
2. Didn’t want to be another sub-elite dude posting pictures from their climbing, running etc, trying to be all fancy and eloquent. Screw that. That’s why I like the blog so much, get to tell a bit more of a story, spill the beans and don’t have to fit into the prescriptions of what I saw Instagram being.
3. Although I didn’t see the value of having my own personal page I did see the research benefit in using Instagram to follow what others are doing.

And now I’ve switch to a personal page, as an experiment first off. Why?

1. Well, if I get value out of reasearching others Instagram’s, elites and sub-elites and family and friends, maybe others will actually get value out of what I do? (Counter to point 3).
2. Who said I had to follow the rules of Instagram. I can do what I want with my two cents, it’s my damn choice and if people don’t like it, they can not follow it. (Counter to point 2).
3. If I’m serious about getting better as a runner I’m going to run into situations where races or sponsors want/require me to share stuff. There’s already been instances where races or the Snowy’s blog want to tag me in pictures and tagging huiapark_quorn seems a bit wrong in these circumstances. If the stakes keep rising, it’ll be good to have a solution (a personal page) to solve that. (Somewhat of a counter to point 1).
4. If I return to one of the original purposes of this website it was to share my trips, ideas, outcomes a bit more with people hopefully encouraging them to do their own cool stuff and reap their own rewards. Now that I’m comfortable with sharing stuff on the blog (thanks to the friendly support from my loyal readers!) it could be good to open this up to a wider audience via Instagram.
5. Also wanted to dip my toe into a personal Threads page seeing as I run the For The Kudos Threads page. (Check it out).

So yep, that’s the explanation behind the new fraser.darcy94 instagram. Great thing about my blog is I get to explain it properly here. One factor I have to be wary of with my experiment back on Instagram is that I don’t fall into the trap of chasing the goddess of wealth (likes, comments, interactions, attention and of course moolah) instead of chasing the goddess of wisdom. This is a key element within Born to Run and something I’ve mentioned before on the blog. I’m not sure my involvement on Instagram is a direct chase of the goddess of wisdom but that’s not a reason to not be involved. Perhaps I can share some wisdom. Perhaps I can continue to glean wisdom from other elite runners and sportspeople on Instagram. Like everything, it’ll probably take a bit of time to get the balance right between it all, hence, it’ll start as an experiment. Hopefully it’s as fun and successful (in my mind and what it does for me) as this blog.

Anywho, that’s a fair bit of waffle here without much pointing to what’s next on the horizon. I wouldn’t leave you hanging without setting the scene for the Hounslow Classic next weekend, don’t worry. It’s 42km, on trails in the Blue Mountains with around 2000m of elevation gain. Hence, I’ve been transitioning back to the trails. My result at the Adelaide Marathon showed my aerobic system is finely tuned at the moment which gives me confidence. I haven’t nailed a full trail race in a while so I’m hoping to leverage off my aerobic confidence and now focus on the trail skills and mental side of the race in the Blueys in a weeks time and put together a complete race. Like I did a fortnight ago on the roads and at Hills2Henley. If I focus on that process goal the outcome goal, of winning and qualifying for the Australian team at next years World Skyrunning Championships, will take care of itself. If I nail the process goal and get beaten by a better runner well then that’s unfortunate for my Australian team ambitions but I should be fortunate that I was exposed to a level of competition that challenged me outside my comfort zone.

In addition to the Hounslow next weekend, I’ll be spectating the Sydney Marathon on the Sunday which my younger sister Georgia is running and then hot-footing it back to Quorn/Port Augusta on Monday morning for work. Going to be a good weekend whatever happens! Could be tricky to pump out a blog in the midst of it all and it might need a few parts but, as always, if I enjoy and believe in myself anything can happen right? Thanks for reading!