Fraser Darcy

The plan from last week’s blog was to continue another 180+km’s for the week and run a 10km race. Tick and tick. Things are coming along nicely.

The end.

What else do you want to know? What else do you expect? Wait, you can’t answer these questions, this is a one-way conversation so I guess I’ll just take it from here and if you don’t like it well then piss off somewhere else on the internet or go for a run instead.

I suppose though if you could answer you might ask:

How was your training this week? Yeah pretty good. Kept Monday easy. Had an Airbnb guest stay over for the night. On Tuesday, I did the same 8*1km repeats with 60 seconds rest. Wore my supershoes for some extra pop and to test them out again before Sunday’s race. My first rep was 3:05/km and my last rep was 2:53/km. At the time I thought if I could replicate that in Sunday’s race I’d be happy. (Remember these words.)

On Wednesday I went for a 2.5 hr long run knowing I wouldn’t get it in on Sunday due to the race. If I was tapering or freshening up as much as I did for the 5km track race I would’ve only run 1.5hrs if that. But the goal at the moment is marathon training so 2.5hrs on Wednesday was more important than potentially 10-15 seconds some fresher legs might have given me. This long run was great, did the first 16km’s easy, then progressed over the next 45 minutes before a cool down of 20 minutes. Great way to break it up.

Thursday was an easy day and a work day at Hawker. Made it to 10km in my arvo double which was nice. Did mean I got back home at 8:15pm which is late for Quorn life.

Friday was my final morning in Quorn after a good two week stint here. One option was for another easy session, dial it back and prioritise the 10km. Another option was a standard tempo session, 15-20 minutes of effort. Orrrr, go full pedal to the metal and do another 1.5-2hr marathon style session. Considering I was assured of thirty minutes of high intensity work on Sunday I didn’t want to overload myself with a long session (rules the marathon style session out as fifty minutes of intensity plus thirty minutes on a Sunday is too much intensity) and considering the 10k isn’t really an A race I didn’t want to spend my mental reserves so early in the year in a race that isn’t really that meaningful which makes going full taper mode not that great. So middle option it was, short tempo session. Felt good. 4km (2 laps of North Quorn parklands) into a float into a hard effort. I don’t usually do ‘floats’ where it’s still running fast but you’re able to recover, so this was good practice to see what that felt like. Felt good as I said. After the run it was straight to Adelaide, another easy jog in the arvo, some physio treatment from older sister Emma on a stiff ankle and then some relaxing on Friday night.

Saturday was an easy day of course. Watched the Adelaide Invitational track meet at night. Pretty cool, will write about it in The Blue Line. Spoke about it on Hot Takes podcast which you can all listen to at some stage for $16.50 a month from this link…. On track for 195km’s at this stage heading into Sunday’s 10km race. First tick done.

And then, how did the race go??!

Heading into the race my expectations were if I ran anywhere between 29:58 and 31:00 I’d be happy. If I was at that 29:59 mark, I’d be ecstatic and if I was at the 30:59 mark, more like the happiness you get when your AFL team beats the last placed team by only a goal instead of 5-6 goals. My body was in good condition, my recent 5km result of 14:29 indicates my fitness is there but the training load of the past two weeks was going to have an unknown effect. Just because I felt good at the start, did that mean I don’t actually need to taper?

The game plan to achieve the ball park I was aiming for was to start out at 3:05/km and then stay as relaxed as possible till halfway or just past it then go for broke to hopefully close in sub 3:00/km. Basically do what I did on Tuesday just without the 60 seconds of rest between reps. 3:05/km for the whole morning is 30:50 for 10km.

I didn’t follow that plan in the end. The first km out the gates was 2:53/km according to my watch. I was on track to do the reverse of Tuesday’s session. Did you remember those words^?. Riley Cocks was right with me and then after that I was pretty sure it was a big gap. Riley’s a sub 29 minute runner at his peak. He’s not there at the moment but he’s not far off it either. To have him next to me helped keep the pace at 3:00/km for the first few km’s so instead of backing it right off I just followed the second part of my plan, to stay relaxed, and just see where the morning took me. Who knows, maybe I was going to have a blinder? The fast first km is something I have a habit of doing and is only a case of having no-one, or in this case, one other, person to pace myself off. In bigger races where I am clearly not a podium finisher and I have more people to judge my pace off, like the 5km track race, I won’t have this problem as much. Need to translate the solution to these smaller races though.

Going through the first few km’s I was relaxed enough to look around, check out Semaphore a bit considering I hadn’t been there in a while. Apart from recognising a few unexpected familiar faces (Andrew Hough!) I didn’t have to to smell the trees. I was too busy running my fourth fastest 5km split ever. As we turned at that 5km mark Riley was still with me and I was happy with where things were at. Breaking 30 minutes for 10k is a goal for this year and to be turning around at 15:10 (or thereabouts) is right on the money. Like I said, fourth fastest 5k effort ever. Not bad for halfway of a 10k race.

Riley opened a gap on me at the turnaround though so I had a decision to make: keep rolling at my relaxed pace or dig deep early and stick with him. I know Riley’s fitter than me and I thought 5k to go is too early to start battling so I stayed relaxed and let him go.

With 3k’s to go the gap had more or less stayed the same which was nice. In a perfect world I’d write here that I was able to bridge the gap, run with Riley and we both finished under 30 minutes. In the real world we live in though I got lazy or tired and let the last three km’s drift out. I was hurting and didn’t want to blow up too early and bleed more time over the last three km’s. I didn’t really have the effort in me to try and race into the final three km’s so I let the pace drift to 3:03/km. Part of that is the heat/sunshine was probably taking an effect. Part was probably the fact that I didn’t taper that much so mentally I didn’t have a big ‘well’ to draw on when I went there. Partly too because I knew I was going to break my official PB of 32:00 and the GPS assisted PB on Strava of 31:00 whatever I did so I didn’t really have anything to fight for in the final km’s. Lastly, and most importantly I think it was because I haven’t raced too many 10km’s so don’t know how to get the best out of myself over the distance.

The last 10km I raced was the State Champs in May 2023 and that was a poor race from me but was where those PB’s were set. I didn’t taper but I also went out too hard and wore not great shoes compared to the other runners. I look back on that race and only think positively about how I sprinted in at the finish to not get passed. So, in essence, this 10km was really my first to get a good one under my belt to improve from. I now have a PB to fight to improve for next time essentially. The first 7km’s were good, I’d have them again, but the last 3km’s is now the new area for improvement. I’ve gone from having to improve over the whole 10km’s to just improve the last 3km’s. That’s a lot easier to think about mentally for next time. If I can break 30 minutes next time, and maybe run sub 29:45 the time after that then I can enter the National 10,000m champs one day. It was good to see Riley and me were level at the turnaround before he went on to increase the pace to just dip under 30 minutes. I got to see the effort that a sub 30 minute run requires for the first time. His last three km’s were also 2:57/km or thereabouts (i.e. 6 seconds per km faster than me…)

But my result, you still haven’t heard my result! I ran 30:25 to finish second, less than thirty seconds behind Riley and about a minute and a half faster than third. 15:15 for the second half 5k. Fifth fastest 5k effort ever. Good result overall. Right in the middle of my expectations as well. On a perfect day, with a more focused taper maybe I would’ve run 10-15 seconds quicker, maybe. I’m glad though the risk I took in not tapering so I could remain focused on my marathon training didn’t affect me though. 10-15 seconds faster wouldn’t have meant I beat Riley.

Cool cool, so you’re pretty content with the race then? Yes for 70% of it. Good PB to have on the board but if you look at my 5k pb (14:29) and acknowledge that I believe I’m better the longer races go (the jury might actually still be deliberating on that one) then maybe I should be a sub 30 minute guy. Or 30:10. I am content with the fact that it was nice to have a race where I went for it a bit (in a controlled manner) and lost time at the end. To me that shows I didn’t leave anything to chance out there as opposed to rolling through in 3:05/km for the first 7km’s and closing in 2:50 for the last km feeling like I had more in me. Next time I think I’ll taper a bit more, run the same pace for the first 7km’s and then be prepared to avenge my laziness in the last 3km’s and instead of losing 3 seconds per km hopefully gain 3 seconds per km on my 3:00/km pace. But who knows. One thing it’s nice to reflect on each time I run a race is I might get injured tomorrow and never run again. And maybe this is my lifetime PB. If it is, great, so be it.

Ok, don’t get too lost congratulating yourself buddy, what’s next on the cards? Still high mileage?

Yeah back to Quorn on Tuesday afternoon after a possible group session with Riley and his RunAsOne group which also includes the 1st, 2nd and 4th place finishers of the 5km track race from several weeks ago. From there, a few days of work, finish off The Blue Line, Airbnb guest on Wednesday-Friday. And lots of running. ‘Normal week’ this week of Monday easy, Tuesday fast, Wednesday long, Thursday easy, Friday long fast, Saturday easy, Sunday long maybe fast maybe whatever.

The next race I’m considering is a 3km on the track and a 5km on the road as part of a team on consecutive nights in about three weeks. I’ll probably be due for a bit of a down week by then and jumping in the 3km track will keep my speed capabilities accountable. It’s also the State Champs so the competition should be good. I can talk more about those races in a fortnight though. For now, I’m just enjoying giving myself the time and opportunity to run 180-200km’s a week like the marathon heroes of mine. Besides that stiff ankle I sought treatment everything is coming along nicely. A few more weeks of high mileage and who knows what things will be like. Subscribe and be the first to know! Thanks for reading!