Fraser Darcy

I finished off the last blog indicating I was going bushwalking for a few days.

Well I’m baaaaaAAAaaack.

Neat little trip along the bottom end of the Fleurieu Peninsula from Cape Jervis to Victor Harbor following the Wild South Coast Way. My job is not to educate you about the details of the Wild South Coast Way (you can do that with a google search I have done for you here). My job is to share my experience along it and that way you learn what I’ve been up to for a week and how good bushwalking is too (main motivation for why I tell you about the things I do). On the trip there were lots of highlights, a few lowlights and some progression in the thought bubble I was alluding to at the end of the last post.

Highlights:

• Spending a couple of days walking with Dad. It was good to get him keen to do a walk again, do some training to improve his fitness (although this led to a minor calf strain and loss of confidence) and enjoy the first couple of days on the trail with him (see corresponding lowlight).

• Scenery. Yeah that’s what bushwalking is for and this one had some pretty good views. Gaze out to Kangaroo Island, The Pages, the flora and fauna and some interesting rock formations. I’ve paddled to KI a fair bit (and circumnavigated it) so it was nice to reflect on those memories while I walked along looking at it.

• Ticking off another section of the SA coastline. Having explored a very small bit of it through either driving or kayaking it was nice to build on that portfolio by adding this South Coast section. I’d always been keen to paddle it but it’s a lot of effort. Much easier and enjoyable to walk it over 4 days provided I had the time. Which I did (school holidays are great).
• Feeling strong as a bushwalker again. It had been over 12 months since my last proper bush walk and a little part of me was unsure if I still had the same skills and strength. I do. Guess the experience I built up over the preceding ten years takes a bit longer to wash off. I hadn’t bush walked since spring 2022 because summer is not bushwalking season and then I got deep into running training so I could adapt to that form of movement only. As such, I felt like there was a chance my back, feet and neck would get sore from carrying a pack but it didn’t really. I carried Dad’s pack about 10km’s on the second day because I kind of had to but if this possible scenario was suggested to me prior to the trip I would’n’t have been very confident about pulling it off.
• Getting back to the simple life. The four days spent walking were a good reminder that all I really need to be happy is a bit of physical exercise, some good equipment to keep me warm and dry and fed and maybe some phone reception every now and then to download a podcast or some different music.

Lowlights:

• Dad not making it the whole way. He contracted COVID from Mum a few days before the trip and we decided to still give it a go on the original time frame because that’s what suited my schedule best (I didn’t particularly want to hang around in Adelaide for a week). Plus, he thought he was feeling better. Guess it’s a Darcy trait to be optimistic at the start and then deal with the consequences later. I’ve done that a fair few times in ultras…
  
  The consequences were that Dad struggled with any uphills from the first day, struggled to stay warm at night and had no appetite for food (which further hampered his lack of energy). I hoped he might improve on the second day after a good sleep but I was wrong. About 2km’s in, after a hill, Dad looked exhausted. ‘That’s it‘ he said, apologetically, knowing he was waving the white flag with that sentence.
  
  Yeah that might be it Dad but you still have to get to a road. I carried his pack so all he had to do was walk and we managed to get to the next road at about 6km’s in for the day. Feeling better without his bag our option was to wait here for a pick-up from Mum or keep pushing on to the campsite (it wasn’t too difficult hill-wise). It was only 11:30am ish so we pushed on, saw the Deep Creek Waterfall, I had lunch (Dad wasn’t hungry) and then arrived at camp around 2:30pm. Mum arrived to collect Dad just after 4pm and I chose to continue alone. My options were to bail as well (and be disappointed about it) or to continue (and be disappointed about doing it without Dad). Not sure what was the right option out of respect to Dad (is it selfish to keep going in this scenario?) but I decided to finish it off because I didn’t know when the next opportunity to walk this section would come.

• Kind of a low light, kind of a highlight. I barely saw any walkers on the trail with me and had each campsite to myself. Great to get in my own little world but you also want to see lots of people enjoying the area the same as you. This trail should be heaving with people it’s that accessible.

• A middle section on the third day consisted of crossing lots of paddocks and fences. I had flashbacks to the Heysen 115km and the smell of cow poo (and flies) wasn’t great compared to the National Parks I’d walked through to get there.

What I learnt or thought about in my own little thought bubble:

The greatest thing about bushwalking is the conversations you can have with others, or yourself, without the distraction of modern day life. I had several conversations with myself and eventually arrived at these main take-aways below.

• I have no more bushwalking or outdoor ed trips planned for the foreseeable future. Ever since I left school I have always had either a planned outdoor trip or a work trip on the horizon. At the completion of this walk I have neither. I have races I wish to enter but haven’t entered yet which has filled the void but these don’t deliver the same outcomes and purpose as a bush walk/climbing/skiing/kayaking trip does. I need to get one planned given the other considerations below.
• Bushwalking and climbing strength is an underrated component of trail running training. It makes the body stronger, that’s obvious, but it also makes the mental effort of being in a race for longer than marathon distance easy. I need to re-incorporate more trips if I want to improve my trail running. It’s not a big factor for road running though.
• Doing trips is more enjoyable with other people. I am more likely to break into laughter or have a smile on my face when I am talking and sharing with another person. I can do that by myself but it can be easy to just get into a routine of ticking boxes (eat, walk, rest, etc.) when doing a trip by yourself. I live by myself and have no problems doing trips by myself I just think there is more to gain if you can share the experience with someone else. The only caveat to this is that if you invite someone along on a trip and then have to change the difficulty of the trip to suit them that’s not great. If the trip is intended to be a challenging one it needs to be at an appropriate level for both participants (I had not intended this trip to be challenging for myself).
• 2024 Plan. Spending the first 6 out of 7 days of my holidays doing outdoory eddy things with some running thrown in reminded me of how good it is to do that. On this walk I planned in my head what a dream 2024 could look like trying to maximise running aspirations and outdoor trips. The easiest way to do that is to not work so I have more time. I think 2024 is the year to finally commit myself to be a pro athlete/dirtbag. Each year for the past few years I have started out like that and ended up accepting more and more work because I like making money. I realise though that I need to like chasing my running and outdoor dreams more than I like making money. I have ticked the house goal and I don’t have any dependents but am aware those things could change as I move into my 30’s in a few years time. There is no better time than now I guess to really commit to the adventure of being a pro dirtbag.

Overall the purpose of this walk along the Wild South Coast Way was to have a good time with Dad, see some new scenery and give myself the time and space to reflect on 2023 and conjure up some plans for 2024. I ticked 2.5/3 with the Dad factor being the missing 0.5. Hopefully if I work less (or zero at all) in 2024 I will have more time to plan a redemption walk with Dad. That’s the idea at least.

Other News:

That’s not all I’ve been up to. Being in Adelaide it would’ve been rude for me not to run a Trail Running SA race if there was one on (which there was). I was interested and my body felt good on the Wednesday this week (Day 2 of the walk) so I threw in a last minute entry. Aim was to use it as a loosener to end my little Annual Leave period and kickstart disciplined training again. It’s also a fact finding mission to see how my body performs after 3-6 weeks of average jogging and running. My downhill skills felt the best they had since January (!) on a quick run in Belair on Friday after the walk and my aerobic engine doesn’t feel too bad either. 25km’s of trail running with 800m of elevation is a different kettle of fish though.

I won’t drag on for too much longer with a full race report I promise.

What I will say though is that: the race was fun, it went up a big hill at the start where I got a lead over everyone, my 90’s rock inspired playlist delivered some bangers and I charged through the first 10km’s like a bat out of hell. That got a bit tiring so I eased it off a bit. Either I was very fresh in the first 10km’s from not being in heavy training or the lack of heavy training meant the fatigue hit sooner. It would be good to have a definitive answer but that is also what makes the analysis game always interesting. Anyway, I backed it off and then found myself in a ‘race’ with the front runners of the medium and extra long course runners which gave me a good reason to push through onto the end (I was leading the 25km, long course). I won that ‘race’ and the actual ‘race’ and had a great time overall. Very nice to run without the pressure of it being a big deal. Plus it was good to chat with some friends before/after the race too.

And as Dad said on the bushwalk, that’s it. First week and the middle weekend of school holidays done. The focus on the second week is to get back into some structured training using the learnings and reflections of the last few months, plan term 4 a bit more and enjoy some time around Quorn and the Flinders. Talk soon. Thanks for reading as always.