Fraser Darcy

Another week of the school term goes by and another solid week of running to match it. Getting very much stuck into the monotony that full-time life expects. Gee it’d be nice to have a day off in a Monday-Friday block. using one of my seven sick days is tempting but against the internal values I have (for now).

I foreshadowed last week that I would have to make some alterations to the training plan for this week. Monday and Tuesday went by the same as usual, easy runs, steep Mt.Brown hill reps (nailed the 2km fast finish) and combined these days with hosting a successful Airbnb visitor (who didn’t leave a review, bastards…).

I chose to use Wednesday as a good hit-out knowing that on Thursday I was having an easy day, followed by easy on Friday and then long on Saturday. So I did my mid week long run with some faster running at the end and got pretty tired which was nice. Mentally I was a bit cooked to start with too so to have this run in the bag and know that it’s another long-ish run that I wasn’t too excited about but did it anyway is good mental callusing.

To hold 3:31/km pace over hills, in old shoes on dirt roads (with overall downhill though so I won’t be patting my back too much) was pretty nice. I was giving it ‘marathon like’ effort, which, I spoke about last week is just nice to do and run semi-fast and hard. It’s the type of running that gets my endorphins flowing by the end as opposed to hard short reps. Shows I am a true marathoner. After finishing this run, having started mentally cooked, I was now even more cooked physically and mentally. Threw on a movie at night (Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade), had a couple of beers and some meat and then relaxed. Only three weeks to go until race day.

Thursday was a bit of a meh day at school, I spent most of it preparing The Blue Line for next week’s issue. The meh day did not follow me home though because just after 4pm Dylan, older sister’s fiance, rocked up!

Yeah Dylly boy works for SA Tourism Corp and decided to make an appearance in the Flinders Ranges in person instead of on Zoom. Taxpayers cool your heels, SATC did not pay for his stay and tour of Quorn with me (that came from the goodness of my heart… and he cooked me dinner and bought me some gels…).

Having Dylan up was another good circuit breaker in my week and allowed me to disconnect from my day at school. I took him on a similar route to Karl’s easy hour from last week with a minor variation to include more sightseeing. Dyl was on the bike mind you, not as fit as Karlos. Again, running with company made the hour go by very quickly and left me feeling like I hadn’t trained at all which is kind of a sad feeling at times (I hate the grind of low motivation at the start but love the reward of getting it done).

Friday after Dylan’s visit was another easy day but I switched up the scenery a bit and went on the single track towards Mt.Brown’s summit. Felt kind of light and cooked on this run like I hadn’t eaten enough since Wednesday. Not a great thought before my Saturday long run but just a reminder to eat a lot of pasta at home I guess. This run was kind of special too as I cracked 100,000m of elevation gain for 2023 which averages out to around 2,000m a week. More than most.

No beer to celebrate though, just some pasta, bread and a continuation of my Friday night tradition of watching Harry Potter on free-to-air (up to movie number 7 now!).

Saturday. The final big long run before I should probably wind things up a bit (2.5 weeks out from race day now). With a whole day up my sleeve and nothing to get back home to (no pool work, no Airbnb guests, no family visits) I used the extra time to take a drive out to Alligator Lodge and do my long run in Mt.Remarkable National Park. This is the type of running I dreamed about a bit when first deciding to move up to Quorn. Driving out to good trails nearby and doing good 2-3hrs run. Sad to realise I haven’t had the time to be doing this as much in the last 8-10 months but that will change next year a bit I think.

Doing a long run on Saturday on one hand is good because I don’t spend Saturday stressing about doing it on Sunday. On the other hand though I go straight from working all week to no big sleep in and getting 2.5 hrs done. I had to do it on Saturday though because I’m busy from 9-3 (I was going to say all day but it’s really only 25% of the day) doing my lifeguard update. Yes, the school teacher who sacrifices his weekend time to ensure there are enough qualified lifeguards. Where’s my fucking medal.

The long run though. At the start I was like, ah let’s do it on the road most of it, get some good fast road hills in. Driving there though I fell into the trap of letting negative thoughts about the run take over. That’ll be hard and boring. Good training, but hard and boring. I’d much rather plod on the fire tracks. I parked my car at Alligator Lodge instead of Wilmington because I wanted to just get straight onto the trails. I’d also done long runs from Alligator Lodge before so was tapping into some familiarity to hopefully let my mind wander more easily.

Jogging along the flattish fire track to begin with I began to relax into the fact that I’m started now, the hard part is over, school is done for the week, just embrace the Fraser who moved to the Flinders to be a better Outdoor Athlete vibe. The trail I chose helped with that because after a gentle 3.5km’s flattish start it rolls down hill for 4ish km’s and then another gentle 3-4km’s of flattish down hill running. I’d done almost an hour with about 11 km’s and had built up some steam.

A long uphill followed though which made for good practice (and hence why I chose this route in the end) for Kosci50k and I was happy with how strong I was taking it compared to previous efforts of running up it (almost 10 months ago). Cresting ‘The Battery’ I for some reason settled into 50km race effort. It was enjoyable and took me to the 20km mark but it was a little unnerving to think I still had to hold this effort for 10ish km’s today and 30ish km’s in 2.5 weeks. My mind is always trying to throw doubt into the equation and the more I just run and listen to music the better my running is.

I crossed the 2hr mark at around 25km’s which was the goal I had set to ensure I break 160km’s again for the week (provided I get some easy running in on Saturday arvo and Sunday around the lifeguard update). Like last week, crossing that 2hr mark filled me with a bit of motivation and I powered up the last uphill getting my heart rate to sit in the high 160’s for almost twenty minutes.

I made it back to the car under 2.5hrs and added on a few more km’s to get to 32km’s for the run. Pretty happy I put another good long run in the bank and very happy with the realisation at the end of it that it was probably one of my easier long runs in terms of how banged up my body felt. Cardiovascular wise, according to my Suunto, it was actually the same amount of training stress as my previous three Sunday long runs (that have all been more on the road) so the comparison that my body actually felt quite fresh at the end of it was a nice feather in my cap. It is also nice to tick off the most stressful thing of the weekend (the long run) and enjoy the rest of the weekend in the Fraser who moved to the Flinders to be a better Outdoor Athlete vibe.

On the specificity of this long run compared to my race in 2.5 weeks, the Kosci50k is pretty much 30km’s of nice easy trail followed by 20km’s of uphill/downhill stuff. This route was more similar to the last 20km’s than the first 30km’s (which is more similar to what I’d been doing previously). I’m now more confident that given I’ve been doing 30-35km long runs on the road more so than the trail, my body actually feels quite prepared for the first 30km’s of Kosci so I can attack the last 20km’s. More so especially since this good long run. Guess we’ll see though in 2.5 weeks.

Which is still a long way off. I suggested that a week ago I may have tried to aim around 150-160km’s for this week but it turned out to be more like 160-170. This week should probably be 150-160 because by the end of it I’ll only be 10 days to go which is the most common tapering off point for marathoners. Next Sunday’s long run might only be 2hrs but we’ll see.

Having completed my main priority straight up at the start of the weekend the rest of Saturday involved a lot more chilling than usual. I was able to slip into the mindset where I realise that the weekend is where I truly go ‘ah shit, wouldn’t it be nice to have more time like this all the time‘. I can ponder about anything and get real settled in my seat on the train of thought that I am on. You probably realise it too if you’re a long term reader because the quality of these weekly blogs suffers from the Monday-Friday routine I’m at the moment. There’s no time to go deep into my brain on some thoughts I have on Saturday and Sunday, explore the philosophy around what I’m doing and why and so forth. Or is by raising that point now in this paragraph contradicting my own damn self because I am having philosophical thoughts about not having philosophical thoughts. You can tell I use the blogs to talk to myself can’t you!

To finish off the weekly description and honour the title of this blog, I kicked off the rest of Saturday with a surprisingly long double run in the arvo because I was feeling good and can do whatever I want. So I ran 10km’s to good music. Then, Sunday, I slept in till 6:30, ran for half an hour, got ready for the day and then spent it doing my lifeguard update. Pleasingly I passed the swim test (200m swim in 6 mins) in my best ever time of 3:56 and Brett Robinson (The Blue Line boss, Australian elite runner) gave me kudos for it (little plug for Brett and The Blue Line there…). The first time I did my pool lifeguard course I had just moved to Quorn. This time, two years later, it was nice to look back on that fact. I passed the course, nutted out another 13km’s, did some mobility work half hearted-ly, cooked a pizza and then phoned home like E.T wanted to so badly. Another week in the bag and another week closer to the race.

I am getting excited for it, the race, now though. Recently there’s been a fair few races around Australia that I was interested in entering but skipped to focus on this training block. It’s given me some extra motivation to race hard at Kosci as a result of missing out on those opportunities. It’s also given me the time to realise how mundane just working and training is (especially working on the weekend as well) without racing. There’s no real opportunity to go to the sword mid-week or on the weekend because I’m either too tired to give it full effort or conscious of what going to the sword will do to my training the following days. The closest thing to going to the sword was doing my lifeguard update (semi-stressful). When I was climbing and going to Uni though, or climbing and working I could easily get a very tough life experience after work or uni out climbing. You can be tired and climbing at your limit or climbing below your limit and then suddenly be in a situation where you have to pull a lot hard than you thought or wanted to too avoid falling and hurting yourself. There’s consequences if you don’t. There’s no consequences in running if I fall off the effort I’m trying to give. It’s probably an overall good thing to help keep me below the risk of injury by overdoing it in training but it’s sad to live so many days in a row of just running and having no real ‘gggGGZAHHH‘ experience. That’s what I live for in a funny sense. I get it a bit in my long hard runs (like Wednesday) or pushing the end of a long run but I’m really looking forward to filling my cup on Thursday December 7th with 4hrs of it.

Thanks for reading this week. We’re 1 subscriber off making to 50 subscribers which was an initial goal of mine when I first started this website and blog in Feb 2022. There’s a few bots in the subscriber list but still, to hit 50 would be cool so if you’re reading this and you’re not subscribed what are you doing! Help a mate out! Thanks!