Fraser Darcy

Yes that’s right ladies and gentleman. The 8 week build towards the Kosci50k in early December is on track and past halfway. To bring you up to speed or refresh your memory as to the first half:

• Week 0: First week of school holidays, 4-day bushwalk, TRSA Race, 85kms.
• Week 1: Second week of school holidays, 2-day bushwalk, 120km’s.
• Week 2: First week of school, 145km’s
• Week 3: Birthday week, solid Friday workout, 152km’s
• Week 4: Sore hamstring, still good, first pool shift, 163km’s
• Week 5 (this week): Slight tweaks to routine, hot week, 163km’s.

All of these weeks have had solid long runs on the Sunday which has been the most pleasing thing to string together consistently. I mentioned last week how sometimes they can be a bit ‘ehh‘ and others they’re a bit ‘yeah!‘. Today was a ‘yeah!‘ one. Probably because I realised I’m over the hump of this training block and starting to feel strong and fit. This week had some key moments in it that demonstrated that fact to myself.

Key Moment #1: Tuesday’s steep hill session. The past three weeks I’ve done this at Mt.Brown and enjoyed it. On my way out for a 4th week in a row I was hit by the knowledge that Mt.Brown was closed for feral pest control (goat hunting). Damn, should’ve realised that considering Dutchman’s was closed on the Sunday two days earlier… Off to Devils Peak it was then! At Devils there’s two sessions I’ve done there before, go bunta up to the top, go down, bunta again, go down, bunta again. Pretty technical and the downs take a while. The other variation is just do what I do at Mt.Brown’s but faster because there’s not as much elevation gain. Last time I did this it was pouring rain and I was worried my car would get bogged.

Not this time though. Nice summer vibes despite a bit of wind being around. Ended up completing 6 solid ‘1 km’ reps off 60 seconds of rest at the bottom. The key moment in this session was how strong and fast I felt coming down the hill each time. Legs are definitely much better than the middle of year period.

Key Moment #2: Thursday’s hot run. Temps got up a bit this week in the Flinders. Heat brings some extra training stress which is great for the overall fitness benefits but the management of how hard to push has to be careful. My Thursday arvo run is usually pretty relaxed but with this being in 35 degree heat I knew it was going to get a little hot under the collar no matter how relaxed I felt. After a good twenty minutes I actually felt pretty fine and the body was very loose. Great! This flow continued for another forty minutes and I felt like I stole some extra training on this run without having to work too hard. As the run progressed and my heart rate crept up my mood stayed very relaxed so I was getting two birds with one stone, a relaxed Thursday run and heat adaptations.

Key Moment #3: I needed those heat adaptations for Friday’s run. Usually my longer road/tempo session I instead did that on Wednesday because Dutchman’s was still closed. Basically I switched Wednesday and Friday’s runs. Good thing as well because Friday was forecasted to be above 40 degrees in Quorn around 4-5pm (when I go running after work…). But hey, more training right? Could be worse too, could be 50 degrees. The best part about training in 40 degree weather is learning to deal with the anticipation of running in 40 degrees all day. People at work going ‘oh geez, it’s hot today, you still going running?’ add to the excitement and somewhat trepidation. ‘Yeah, of course’ is my reply, always.

Shuffling down the road at Dutchman’s I know from previous running in 40 degree weather experiences that as long as I don’t cook myself over the edge I’ll be fine. Uncomfortable maybe, but fine. If I go past the edge it’ll put me out of action for a few days afterwards (which jeopardises the rest of the training program!).

First 6km’s done which brings me back to the carpark and I felt fine. The sun was going in and out of clouds and it probably wasn’t as hot as forecasted. The next part of the run is 4km’s uphill and as I worked my way up to the top there were a few instances where I thought, ‘better to just be smart here’, so I held it in. Good thing I did because by the top my stomach was starting to turn on me and I had stopped sweating a lot as well (running out of moisture maybe?). The half an hour of heading back down the hill wasn’t going to be hard running wise but more so mentally wise to stay sane in the heat whilst my stomach tried to explode on itself.

Going down I managed to find an ok rhythm that felt good. I tried to spit some saliva out of my mouth and, if this sounds disgusting then I’m sorry, but it didn’t really go anywhere. When you’re dehydrated your spit is really thick so instead of being spat, it just sort of fell on my arm. Great. A few more minutes went past and I got the urge to spit again so had another crack. Even worse. I spat but nothing really happened. I thought, ‘oh no, it’s not just siting on my lips still is it?’. Sure enough, put my hand up to my mouth and I could grab my spit like it was slime and wipe it on my singlet. Greaaaatt. No more spitting from now on. Like that rule even mattered. My mouth was now starting to get so dry I barely had enough saliva to keep my lips and mouth from drying out. This is the type of stuff that makes people not want to run in 40 degree heat but it’s also the type of shit that if you can deal with it and just keep running then running in 14 degree perfect weather is really easy.

Finally back at the car I towelled myself off, had some water and drove home. A good indicator I didn’t feel well after this run was that I drove home without any music on just trying to concentrate on getting cool. Aircon was blasted at home, got some electrolytes into me and got on with my Friday jobs to trick my brain and body into being in a routine and being ok. By 8:00pm I was feeling better enough for a pizza but not much else apart from that. A liquid diet of electrolytes, beer and water was going to do the rest for me. Part of that method was also probably because I’d read earlier in the week of a famous marathon runner Toshihiko Seko only being able to drink beer for dinner after some of his gruelling workouts. If it was good enough for Toshihiko it was good enough for me.

Key Moment #4: I pulled up pretty flat the next day as a result of the Friday arvo heat chamber run. Didn’t matter though because Karl Finlay was back in town on Saturday so I had a very good reason to get out for 60 minutes with Quorn’s favourite son. Very nice to chat and run with Karl. Last time I did this was on a Sunday long run around Easter time and comparing my fitness and confidence in my fitness to then I feel better now. Nice little thought to have.

Key Moment #5: The final big moment of the week. The Sunday long run. Like I said at the start this time I was up and about for it. Reason why is probably a combination of; the run with Karl gave me some good energies, I worked the arvo shift at the Quorn pool yesterday and took the arvo run off as a result so I was fresh, this one should probably be my biggest long run before I start to back things off, I’m getting fitter from so many longs in a row ANNNNDDDD, I cleaned the house to Led Zeppelin on Saturday and I thought ‘shit, how I have not listened to Led Zeppelin in a long time, this is definitely going on my Sunday playlist’.

And that’s where things started. Had my vest on again to continue practicing and whacked the iPhone in the front pocket with Led Zeppelin’s 1969 self-titled album on. That got me to 40 minutes and my legs were feeling very fresh and very different to the past few long runs. I rolled into ‘The Very Best of The Doors’ for the next forty minutes. Again, great tunes and both of these bands were on heavy rotation on my iPods during my teenage years and early twenties. Diving back into their music allows me to dive back into those mindsets from those days where running was less like a scientific calculated training program and more just go out there and go long or go hard and enjoy the suffering. The other mindset it helps me relate to is that runners in the 70’s used to do these Sunday long runs every week of the year and were absolute badass marathoners before sports science came along and this music came from that era. The connection I make to it then is that if you’re powered by Led Zeppelin or The Doors you can do anything.

I throttled back the engine for a bit and played a bit of Creedence Clearwater Revival for 40 minutes to bring me to the 2hr mark. Last week’s Sunday run I finished off with a solid push and really enjoyed doing that. So I did it again. This time to an old playlist I used to run hard up Dutchman’s too and, even after my appreciation of the first two hours of music, I managed to bring the playlist to another level. This type of running is very fun. You’re tired, it’s starting to get hot, you’ve got two hours under your belt and not much fluid or energy left and now you’re fanging it to see how much you do have left. I was pretty comfortable running at 3:40/km into a slight headwind for about 30 minutes in the end with a little sprint finish to dip under 3:20’s thanks to the intro of Money For Nothing spurring me on. A few km’s of cooling down and then bam, 35km’s, 2:42 later and my sixth solid Sunday run in a row was in the bag.

Five weeks of solid training with five key moments in Week 5. Nice symmetry in that. Other highlights this week are that The Blue Line Issue 18 was released and I received some very positive feedback. If you’re not subscribed The Blue Line you are going on Santa’s naughty list. That’s the rules.

To follow up from this week I’m going to tick off another week of 150-160km’s to get me within 2.5 weeks to go until race by Sunday of next week. From there I’ll start to wind things down a bit and freshen up. Next week also will have some slight variations in it due to not having Sunday available to do my long run (lifeguard update course) which is sad to break my routine but it also means I can keep the body guessing and shock the system a bit with a Saturday long run instead. Don’t want to get too comfortable in ‘training’ mode to not be able to adapt to ‘race mode’. Final note to add is somewhat of a disclaimer in that yes, I know I’ve focused on this 8 week build recently however while working at the pool this arvo in Hawker I realised there’ll be days after the race and another whole training block again, and again, and again. So yes, it’s nice to be doing well now but it’s all just one piece of the puzzle in the really big picture…

That’s all for this week then. Thanks for reading as always and enjoy some Dire Straits on my behalf.