Fraser Darcy

A bit of housekeeping first. Last week’s plug of the blog on my Instagram story garnered several new subscribers (we cracked the 50 mark!). Welcome to those new people but now know that just because I invited you here does not mean I will be pandering to your requests and taming it down on the keys. No. Things will still be very fraserdarcy.com and I’ll go on the occasional rant and if you don’t like it well then unsubscribe and see if I care. Or maybe you actually like the dirty talk, the stuff that doesn’t get seen on Insta, the ‘did he really just say that on the internet’ communiqué and you’ll share it to your enemies as well as your friends.

The sharing of last week’s blog on Insta is actually a good segue into an update on the Insta experiment. So far, it’s going well. Here’s the facts:

• Put my profile in the minds of the FTK fellas a bit more. Might have played a role in them bringing The Blue Line back and giving me the keys to that publication.
• Got a mention on a coaching platform that then led to Georgia (younger sister) getting some running coaching from said platform. Georgia now runs faster.
• Received a couple of follows/likes/messages from some big dogs in the elite running scene. Mega fanboy moment.

The pace of my actual Instagram posting has slowed up in recent weeks. I don’t take any interesting pictures and find the whole, setting up the camera for myself, putting it on self-timer and then reviewing the image very much similar to the feeling you get when trying to finish a warm beer that is definitely one too many for the night but you don’t want to waste your money so you have to do it. I’ll get back to posting actual stuff once teaching is done I reckon. And when I’m doing races.

Race? Yes, another segue! Here’s this week’s recap of my training as I get closer towards racing the Kosci50k on December 7 (amongst the big picture scheme of getting better as a runner of course but let’s just keep our focus in our eyesight for a second shall we) Some very interesting moments.

Monday. Easy day. Felt especially easy compared to other Monday’s because it was two days past my Saturday long run as opposed to a normal Monday being only one day after my Sunday long run. So yeah, nothing interesting to report. School ticked along nicely. Got my groceries and $10 off using my Everyday Rewards card. There should really be more fanfare at the checkout when that happens. If I ever ran Woolies that’d be the first thing I’d change. That and make it illegal to put trolley’s back in the rack that have broken fucking wheels. *rattle rattle rattle*. Yes that’s me, I’m the idiot who grabbed six broken trolley’s in a row looking for a seventh broken trolley to go and make loud noises in the store with…

Tuesday. Not an easy day. This is the day where the dementors suck my soul out at school. Two doubles of maths in the back end of the day with only a fifteen minute break between them. Sometimes I can remain positive all the way through. If I haven’t had enough lunch though I crash early and my eyes glaze over for the last half an hour. This was one of those weeks. I snuck in ten minutes of napping in my break between the doubles to try to perk up a bit. Nothing doing. On the drive home I pulled over for another ten minute nap. Tuesday is the day I put energy into my hill workout of the week. It would be wonderful to be firing on all cylinders, revved up, excited, back slapping myself, bringing the fucking psychotic Nedd Brockman ‘wooh’ energy but this ain’t Kansas out here Dorothy.

Got home and I was definitely consigning myself to the fact that perhaps I should rest instead. It was also the Quorn Swim Club’s (of which I am President, a story for another time) first training of the season and I should be a good committee member and go and have a watch (it’s also a bit weird though because I don’t have any children like everyone else…). A good little Fraser would have got home, put away his things, changed into his running clothes, maybe have a glass of water, head out to swimming, watch, head off for a run with a smile, go run really fast and then come home, have dinner and then rest from having such a nice rainbow filled fun-fairy-tastic day. Yay.

You can tell I did not do that because we do not live in a rainbow filled world. There is still a good ending though.

I got home, thought about doing all that, jumped on the couch and fell asleep for the third time of the day for an hour. Great. Now I was late for swimming and my energy to run was even lower. If I had stayed at home now nobody would’ve died or maybe even cared that I didn’t visit the swim club but it was the right thing to do to show my face. It was also the right thing to do to ‘pretend’ I was going running afterwards. Don’t think about the run, just go through the motion of pretending I’ll stick to the plan. I rolled out to the swim club and was impressed with the first turnout for the season (over 15 swimmers!). Phew. Part of me was worried that there’d be no-one there. Awesome to see people had turned up for swimming lessons. I made some conversation, enjoyed being at the pool not in a lifeguard capacity and before I knew it, it was just past 6pm. Still time for an hour and a half run? Yeah, give it a go, what’s the worst that can happen.

Drove out to Mt.Brown and went through the usual process of preparing myself for a steep hills session. Podcast on, warm-up, get to the hill, music on, start. The first rep was a bit slow. Oh well, a slow rep is better than no rep. The second rep was slow too. And the third. I might be tired from my nap and the cumulative effect of six weeks of training and I also felt I was taking the downhills slower than usual because my shoes have lost their cushioning. On the fourth and final rep it was again slow but I kind of felt like I had good energy. To finish off the ‘session’ I put in a 2km blast of running that is just about trying to run fast, get back to the car and enjoy powering it round on the trail. The music that had been playing for my hill reps was alright. Good classic rock. About 200m into this last fun 2km part (I say fun because it’s the 6-7 minutes of the week where I put myself to the sword in some aspects like I mentioned last week) an all-time great came on the playlist. Thunderstruck (a ‘live’ version) by ACDC. The last few times I’d heard this song it’s been the non-live version on Spotify. Good yeah, but not as good as this OG to me version in my actual iTunes library. The crowd noises and pyrotechnics you can hear for the first thirty seconds sound like my next door neighbours muscle car engine revving up. Put that in your ears when you’ve had a bit of shit, long, tiring day and you’re within touching distance of being finished off all the ‘hard stuff’ for the day at just past 7:15pm, then yeah, you’re being revved up alright.

I smacked the pace a bit harder when the actual guitar intro came on and started dropping below 3:00min/km. I was pushing but also felt it was coming out naturally. The slight downhill might have helped. As the song continued on my pace increased to around 2:45/km. I was holding it well around the slight bends too. I ticked over the 1km (halfway) mark and kept holding my effort high. There are 1440 minutes in a day and most of them are pretty meh. These 6-7 minutes are what I live for mostly. Running hard, not that it means anything to any of the kangaroos watching me, and trying to get the most out of myself. It’s a shame it only goes for 6-7 minutes but that’s what makes it special as well probably. I hit ‘lap’ as I crossed the little finish line I have and had nailed my fastest 2km split on this section. Yeah that might’ve been because I took the hill reps easier than usual but even so, it was a nice confidence boost to know that despite feeling like a zombie three hours ago, I was able to get the day done to a good standard. Had a late dinner at home and went straight to bed.

Wednesday. You might nail one run and think you’re a king but the next day you start all over again. Easy day at school this time though. Got home and had another solid nap. Last week I thought I was over the post-school napping phase. Appears not. Again, I battled with some thoughts about not bothering with my run, resting instead but having been in this position just yesterday (and multiple times before it) I knew if I just got started I could get it done. So I did. 17km’s on mostly trails over an hour and a half. Once this run’s done then I start to relax for a day or so. I’m at the 2-week to go mark as well by now so all the ‘hard’ training should theoretically be over.

Thursday. Easy day and quite the opposite of Tuesday/Wednesday. Instead of feeling like a nap at 3:30pm I was buzzing. The weather wasn’t amazing or anything I just felt good. Could’ve been the extra sardines on toast I had for dinner last night or the extra peanut butter sandwich for lunch (had to make some changes so I would stop napping). Whatever it was, I enjoyed a good hour run and got myself to the pool early this time for swimming training. Second session and again a great turnout, even more so because the pool had been shut on Thursday due to poor weather (but being President and a lifeguard I can open it up for the club at any time). Things were all going well.

Friday. Stressful kind of day. Hit send on The Blue Line and realised afterwards I made a mistake with the first word. It should be coffees not coffee’s. Fuck me. Do I hit update and risk the Substack platform sending another email to 2000 people unnecessarily? I can’t stop thinking about it until well after lunchtime. I eventually let go of it as good feedback rolls in and no-one seems to mention it. Not the end of the world and a good lesson that despite proof-reading it a billion times I’ll still spot an error when I release it.

The Friday run this week was my second hard fast run of the week. Previously I’ve been putting in 40-45 minutes of effort in these ‘marathon’ like workouts. Being less than two weeks I dropped it back to 30 minutes of effort this time. I also read once that famous runners in the 80’s used to run a hard 10km two weeks out from a marathon. This Friday night was ticking that box. My PB for this out and back section on Pinkerton Rd is somewhere around 30:30. A quarter of the way into this effort I thought I was running well but the wind was blowing a gale so a PB mightn’t be there. The effort was all that mattered though and I knew I was putting in a good job. Barely looked at my watch as well as I cranked over the rolling hills into the stiff breeze. Another indicator I was giving it a good crack was I felt pretty cooked by halfway.

But you know you’re having a good day when even if you’re cooked your first thought is ‘yeah but go harder, more training’ instead of ‘recover on this hill and then finish strong like a conservative little runner’. The music wasn’t as amazing as Thunderstruck from a few days ago but I still had that ringing in my head. A PB was still maybe off the cards but my heart rate was definitely a PB. I don’t think I’ve seen it that consistently high since May so either I’ve got a good ability to push myself or I’m actually getting unfit. Either or, I kept running fast, got a bit lactic in the final 400m and gladly finished just under 31 minutes. Not a PB time but given the wind and that it’s at the end of six weeks of training I’ll take that. I don’t need a time to tell me that I’ve done a good job. I can feel I’ve done a good job. If I was training appropriately this run would be done at a slightly lower intensity and I’d easily warm down with 3-4kms of jogging home. Because I pushed it hard the warm down was terrible which wasn’t very fun for the actual running part but was fun mentally to get to know ‘wow, I can go to the well in training and this is what that feels like, that was fun’.

I of course made it home, enjoyed my now normal Friday night routine and finished Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2. An interesting and long Monday-Friday report but possibly one of my best ever.

Saturday. The weekend. Relaxed a bit more on the Saturday morning because I felt pretty poor and lethargic after Friday’s effort. Took it easy up and down Mt.Brown for an hour. did some jobs around the house and then worked the afternoon at the pool in Quorn. Went alright. An older lady got shitty with me because she asked for a lane rope to be put in and I said ‘on a Saturday’ thinking she was kind of kidding. She wasn’t kidding and I had to immediately jump on the back foot and apologise. We can all debate who was right or wrong till the cows come home but she left before any debate became reasonable and everyone else had a fun time. I kept up my movie watching with Fight Club for my Saturday night viewing. Very good as always. Great selection me.

Sunday. Last 2hr long run. Took a trip down memory lane and went back to Alligator Lodge again. Felt comfortable and not too cooked by the end of it too. Nice weather helped. Headphones are dying on me at the moment which was the only annoyance. I finished off the day with a mostly relaxing few hours by the Hawker Pool in the capacity of a ‘lifeguard’. Chatted to the local head volunteer (Julia) which was good after not seeing her for a while. Told off a kid for crying too much and not listening to his parents. Go me. Then I overheard a serious discussion around the possibility of sterilising people so they don’t continue to have children that are repeatedly taken away by the government. This was not being discussed as some sort of ‘oh just bloody sterilise them all’ it was more coming across in a way of ‘what else can we do, it just keeps happening and our communities our getting worse and worse for it’. That’s the real life problems that some people experience (not these people who were discussing it directly mind you, but they had been exposed to it) in Australia. Ear-opening stuff and makes this little weekly blog that I have here quite self-indulgent and pale in comparison. If only those people were regular readers maybe they wouldn’t need sterilisation…(I told you new subscribers I say the things I think and you can work it out if that’s a joke or not…) Anyway, back to the training, things are another week closer to race day which means… I’m going away the week after next!

As each week has ticked by the excitement to race has built. I’m now at the point where I am considering the competitiveness of the race less and less and more interested in my own performance and enjoyment. That’s a good sign to me and is probably a reflection on how I have deemed the Kosi/Thredbo area a cool place to race (the environment demands my full focus) and also because I haven’t raced in seven weeks now so I’m just keen to get an opportunity to test myself. Yes I will obviously still be interested in the competiton of the race but at the end of the day when I reflect on my race I want to be proud of the effort I give on race day given I’ve spent a considerable amount of time and energy focusing on doing my best on the actual day.

Something that will help me give my best on the day is the fact that I’ve afforded myself the luxury of completing the race on the Thursday and don’t have to drive back until worst case scenario the Sunday. Most other big races this past couple of years (basically everying besides the World Champs) I’ve had to rush back home a few hours after the race and usually had to work the next day. This time though I can be fanging it for the last 10km’s knowing that I can be absolutely wrecked at the end and have the ability to relax for a day or two before I have to do something stressful like drive or work. That’s exciting to look too.

I may be excited 11 days out from the race but there’s still a bit to tick off in these next seven days. 120ish km’s of mostly easy running this week, a full week of work (including tests, marking assignments, writing reports etc.) two separate airbnb bookings, swim club bbq/update of the club constitution sign-off and some writing work for The Blue Line on the weekend before the race. Sounds busy but it’s probably a blessing in disguise as I’ll need the other activities to distract me while I run less and I’ll still have 2-3 days before the race where I am just chilling with nothing to do (besides working on TBL which I enjoy). But for now, thanks for reading and the next time I write a weekly update may be the last one before the race!