Fraser Darcy

Big week last week in the life of Fraser. I turned 29 and ticked off another solid week of training. Entering the last year of my 20’s really sharpens up the focus I have on maximising my youth. Every day from here is a day closer to being past my peak. Slightly morbid thought but that’s life.

On the flip side, passing over a birthday always creates a good opportunity for reflection. In the 12 months since my last birthday I have; pretty well finished up working in the outdoor ed industry, started teaching, started racing interstate, represented Australia, won some more races and generally maintained my house and garden. Pretty good bag of achievements but even more so, a good stepping stone to now push the limits for another 12 months before I turn 30 and go through the eventual reevaluation of my life that that milestone tends to bring.

How does a birthday start and end though when you’re living by yourself in Quorn. Started like any normal day I guess. Woke up, did some strength exercises, quick half an hour jog and then into breakfast. All done with a big smile on my face knowing that it’s my goddamn birthday! Very weird to think that even without someone physically, or through technological means, saying Happy Birthday I still had an undeniably positive attitude. Shows how if you build something up in your head for so long (the birthday) and do it once a year you’re just conditioned to having a generally good time on your birthday. There’s obvious power in that for other facets of life.

Once at school, the positivity continued and even though some students and staff didn’t know it was my birthday I was still in a good mood. When they did find out I was in full champion mode, double arms up in the sky, ‘YEP THAT’S ME, THE BIRTHDAY BOY!’. One of my classes even sang me Happy Birthday without any prompting which definitely goes down as one of the best teacher moments I’ve had this year (and I will probably be sad when I don’t have that experience next year). I had to maximise the physical interactions of celebrating my birthday at school because having my family and friends in Adelaide means I was technically by myself at home on my birthday after school (but messages and phone calls over technology does make it feel the opposite to that I am definitely thankful and appreciative of, don’t get me wrong).

The great thing about being by myself on my birthday is when I finished school the world was my oyster. Do a little bit of running newsletter work, other life admin and then off I went to have a nice easy run in some warm weather. With no-one expecting me home for dinner I could run as fast or slow as I wanted and soak up the atmosphere on a nice night in Warren Gorge. Several of my previous birthday’s in my late 20’s have involved working on outdoor ed trips on my birthday so having the freedom to do what I wanted this year felt like the complete other end of the spectrum. I finished my run off with a nice chicken wrap, a beer, some TV watching and then went to bed pretty tired from all the smiling I’d done.

Having such a good day on my birthday despite it being such a simple standard day in the eyes of many I think is a measure of how pleased I am with my current set-up. For me to still be able to find a decent amount of joy in going for a run, driving to work, getting through work like a schmuck (but a happy schmuck), driving home from work and going for another run plus a simple meal is a sign that I am still on the right path to being content with the simple life, and not falling for consumerism despite my increasing wage this year.

To say my birthday ended there though would be a lie. Ma and Pa visited on the Sunday of this week for an encore of the birthday festivities. I received my presents from some of my siblings, Mum and Dad heaped praise on the presentation of my home and garden and most importantly, I was treated to a beer, burger and hot chippies at the pub… and a gin at Flinders Gin! After a 2.5hr run in the morning of Sunday I was cooked by the end of the day, hence why this post is coming out a few days later.

It’s all good though because it’s probably tempered my own excitement from my birthday a bit into a bit more of a recount while still touching on the important message that having a birthday by yourself can be a good thing to properly reflect on your achievements since your last one (both good and bad) and to also measure how happy you are with your current set-up. I’m doing good at the moment however I am not sure where I sit as yet with being totally comfortable in being happy with the simple life. If you’re happy with life that simple, what pushes you to get out of bed? Extrinsic motivation to seek more money, fame and glory? Or intrinsic motivation to enjoy more running, work towards my goals, do good for the community etc.? Always a good topic to ruminate on and lucky for me I have at least 15 hours of exercising each week plus travel time to work/run locations to do so.

The 15 or so hours I spent training this week went well too while I’ve segued into that area. The goal was to maintain the ‘more training’ mindset and maintain the week I did last week while adding a tiny bit more volume on. Consistency in my preparation towards the 50km (and the subsequent races I have planned for 2024) is the aim in this first big block since I called time on my 2023 season.

The highlights of what I added on to this week are:

• Tuesday’s 4*steep Mt.Brown reps were followed by a 2km hard finish back to the car at 3:00-3:30/km pace. I felt like I was finishing off a TRSA race or an old 30 minute run around the Eden Hills trails so I really enjoyed this. Also lengthened out Tuesday’s intensity to around 30 minutes of effort.

• Wednesday’s mid week long run was pushed out to 18km with a bit more intensity on the downhill. I think my ability to run downhills has increased due to the work I’ve been doing on my climbing wall leading to a stronger core. I think. More investigation required.
• Friday’s threshold session had a slightly longer warm-up and warm-down to make it a 21km session in total. Would like to do this again for this week or increase the threshold rep but we’ll see how the mood is come Friday. I skipped my Friday morning easy and added those km’s to the afternoon because of my birthday fatigue from the day before.
• Sunday’s long run was again 2.5hrs but a few km’s longer. Time to start increasing the intensity a bit on this one with a few more faster finishes while also practicing my race nutrition again (which will then help me finish stronger). I listened to music for 2.5 hrs straight on this run and mentally wasn’t cooked at all by the end which is a good sign for the ‘ultra’ mindset that the Kosci50 will somewhat need.

Overall another good week in the bag. It’s stating the obvious but I’ll do it anyway to wrap it up, next week’s looking very similar. More steep browns on Tuesday, more threshold on Friday and another long run on Sunday. After this week I’ll have ticked over 4 solid weeks of training (plus a 5th week of pre-training if you count the TRSA race week) and will only have 4 more weeks plus the taper/race week to go. Not having a birthday this week will be a bit of downer but at least I have presents to keep my spirits high! Thanks for reading!