Fraser Darcy

Another day, another dollar, another year, another Belair Race win. Yep I’ll start from the mid-point of this blog post, Sunday the 14th January’s Belair race and colour in all around it.

Pre-race: My body was feeling good as I headed down to Adelaide on Thursday afternoon. I’d gotten my haircut, had my car serviced but didn’t make it to Moonarie sadly once again. Priorities and laziness got in the way. By Thursday afternoon the week at Quorn in the 30 degree plus weather, on top of the preceeding two weeks at Port Vic had me feeling pretty trimmed and fast. Ready for my annual Belair race on the Sunday.

I was hoping to continue training right through this race. The competition in the previous two races of the series that this Belair race is apart of for 2024 was good, but not in my division of good. If I could train through this race and still win I’d be happy staying focused on the 5km goals I have at the end of January.

However, I can’t control who enters and late on Friday morning I checked the entry list one last time to find a name sitting there I had expected I would see one day, but was hoping it wasn’t this day. Oh well. Instead of putting in a longer double run on Friday arvo I cut it short, cut out a bike ride on Saturday and some hill reps on Saturday’s run and pretty much took the general relaxing option to Saturday.

That was a blessing in disguise as it gave me the first real freshen up I’ve had since jumping back into proper training. It also allowed me the flexibility to be a bit more social on Saturday, the day before the race, catch up with Karl, talk to Georgia, Mum, Dad and give myself a bit of a reset. As I went to bed on Saturday night I had even had time to process the impact of having some good honest competition for the race. Was it really worth my time driving from Quorn for just a hard training run around Belair and the chance to claim three victories in a row? Yeah I guess so. Having someone pressuring me to run my best, putting myself in the ‘arena’ so to say to challenge myself was definitely worth it. Hence, I was excited as I clicked off the light at 9:00.

Race day: We all know the drill, toast, honey, coffee, stretch, poop, in the car and ready by 6:30. Like at parkrun the week prior, I felt pretty relaxed on race morning despite the pressure of competition which was absent at parkrun. I am getting better with race day emotions.

This particular race day had a slight spanner in the works. Some high winds had created a bit of concern amongst the event organisers so they disallowed the use of headphones. I had planned a ripping playlist for this race because I hoped to be on my own, therefore needing stimulation, and always run in Belair so again, needed stimulation to keep things interesting. I also don’t like being told what I have to do when I would’ve run in Belair in worser winds and been fine with my headphones. But hey, I can adapt and overcome this minor inconvenience by just listening to my banger of a playlist in the car, in the warm-up and while milling around. Also, being told what to do lit a little fire in my mind so that helps as well in a bad sort of way.

Off the start, I went out pretty fast at a pace that I aimed to conservatively run at for the first 7-8km’s. I heard Tom, my main competitor, just off behind me. Without headphones I could hear his footsteps which was a bit annoying. Pleasingly I settled into a rhythm that felt like I was in my own personal time trial, was running fast, but still had another gear to go to if Tom came up next to me. To help build the suspense, Tom and I have never raced each other but he has a faster 5km PB than me so he’s certainly got wheels.

After the first twenty minutes I stopped seeing Tom on any of the turns through the trees and so knew I had a good twenty/thirty seconds on him. My rhythm had also settled a bit and the little thoughts that enter my mind, even though I was pretty relaxed, that I was going too hard evaporated. Everything was fine, just keep running like you are you frickin idiot. Only if you do something stupid will you lose your lead.

At the 7-8km mark, where I had planned to pick up the pace and effort a bit I was actually a little bit cooked. It was at a steep section of single track and on looking back at my Strava segments it’s one of the segments where I was closest to Tom’s effort. Did being cooked here get my spirits down? Not really, I knew there was a downhill coming up where I could sit back and relax a bit and then there was some really good running from 9-11km’s where I could actually turn it on.

Which is what I did. I felt good and strong and came close-ish (13 seconds) to breaking a Course Record on Strava for that segment which is a section that is trained on by other runners. After 11km’s I hit a technical downhill section. Fanged it here too. Fanged it uphill afterwards.

Pretty much just fanged it everywhere from there. By 16km’s I had been fanging it for a while and was getting a little tired so had my emergency gel. It would’ve been stupid to have been still carrying it if I got passed (even though unlikely) but it was also probably too late to be of any use. Oh well, I used it, turned the fang boosters on again and got myself to the final 2km stretch downhill.

I remember this stretch in last year’s race and listening to Highway Star by Deep Purple through here. There was no Highway Star this year but I did run faster. I ended up finishing just inside 1:20 (1:19:15) which ticked my baseline goal of beating my time from last year (1:22ish) and breaking 1:20. Given this race is pretty much a half marathon to run 1:19 on trails (averaging 3:42/km) with about 500m of elevation is pretty tough. I’m sure it’s possible to run faster (could be a fun exercise to add up all the Strava CR’s for each segment along the course to see what’s possible) but in my current level of fitness I’m not sure I’m capable of too much more. Give me another twelve months of growing as a runner and maybe I can take another three minutes off though.

The win meant I claimed my third victory in a row at this race. That’s a nice feather in my cap. Shows my consistency. I’d love to keep winning at Belair but three is also a nice number to be proud of if I don’t get the opportunity.

Post-race: I hung out with some mates and chatted to several other runners. The first year I won I pretty much kept to myself. This year, I felt like I hit my limit with the amount of social chit chat I held post race. Grabbed a bacon and egg roll afterwards to wind down with some mates and then, after a few hours of rest, I hit the streets again for a Sunday arvo double.

The shit thing about a race is that for the couple of days beforehand, even though I say I am relaxed, my sphincter tightens up on all my pre-race runs stressing about the possible scenarios. I don’t enjoy those runs as much as my other runs. Obviously the race run is a different enjoyment altogether. Yes it’s very fun just running really fast and making sure you’re getting the most out of yourself. But it’s not a very relaxing fun run which I also enjoy. Hence, when I happily knew my body was pretty fine after the race I enjoyed a good easy run in the arvo with some more of the playlist I had curated.

That’s the main highlight of the past week of running and life in Fraser’s world. I ran a few other good sessions in Quorn the week of the race with the data below coming from Thursday’s tempo run. I put it in because I was happy with this and will read this blog myself at some point in the future.

Apart from that, the plan is to get back into heavy training through January focusing on being as fast and sharp as possible for the 24th January. The preceeding two weeks of exercsie yielded almost 20 hours on the go whereas last week, because I took my foot off the accelerator a bit, only had about 15 hrs of exercise. It’d be nice to crank it up to 18-20 hrs one last time for January but with some pool work (yes It’s time I earned some money again) being added to the schedule this week as well I might have to accept just maintaining a high running volume instead. We’ll see.

Overall though, I can talk and write about this race as if it was always going to end up with that outcome but honestly, there’s lots of ways it could have played out. I am proud that I have shown I can progress from year to year with my Belair efforts and ensure I always get the most out of myself in this race. If the rest of 2024 progresses in this fashion then I will be have some more results to be proud of. But writing this blog isn’t going to make that happen (a part of it is in the reflection), so it’s time I head out for another run…