Fraser Darcy

It’s over three weeks since I first reported my ankle concerns to a medical practitioner. Last week I hoped that I would be back to normal-ish running loads and would be able to race on the Thursday and Friday. I did that. Woo hoo. But now I’m back to where I was a week ago. Not woo hoo but an interesting learning experience none the less.

Where I left off last week, besides dropping some absolute bangers of a Youtube video that not many I’ve spoken to actually chose to watch (watch them people! They may not appear as videos in your email but they certainly are!), was I planned to be a diligent little clever athlete and get back to running on the Monday with no more rest days. I managed to start that off well with a bike ride on Monday morning and a 3.5km jog after working at Hawker in the late afternoon. My ankle was sore but not terribly sore. It wasn’t improving or getting worse in the 15 minutes I was out there but 15 minutes was all I could handle of the annoying pain.

Tuesday was a little better. I completed 7km’s (double Mondays efforts!) and while the pain wasn’t that much better I knew that I had managed 3.5km’s on it the day before without it blowing up overnight so I reasoned with myself that the mental benefits of completing a standard run would be worth going an extra 15 minutes. I had to start building some momentum in my running. It’s very easy to keep a run or rhythm going but can be incredibly difficult to start one. At the end of this run I put on my super shoes and went for a few strides just to test how that felt. One way I’ve been looking at this niggle is that it’s all just an experience to learn from. I wanted to gather more data about what my ankle felt like in comfy fast shoes at high speed. Pleasingly, it actually felt normal! Great success! Do I go out and run a few more km’s to celebrate then? Nah not that day, it was already getting above 35 degrees.

Wednesday, the day before the 3km race, I went out for a 10km loop that felt just as painful as the previous two days. I’d hoped to maybe try a few minutes at intensity but it just wasn’t going to happen. A bit depressed about the lack of improvement, despite going further on it due to my stubbornness, I did some mobility exercises straight after the run. Stuff I’d been doing almost daily to try and promote a good strong tendon recovery process. Even though I’d been doing it daily, in Wednesday’s session something just clicked or ‘relaxed’ and my foot felt like normal. I’d maybe managed to get the tendon and all the little muscles around it to relax and stretch out under load instead of tensing up real tight. I could walk pain free and jogging around my shed afterwards felt like I wasn’t even injured at all. Hallelujah. To celebrate, I did go out and run an extra 6km’s just to remind myself what running actually feels like. The 3km race was definitely on if I could replicate this feeling again on Thursday.

I drove down to Adelaide later that night after a very hot afternoon at the pool and got to sleep just before 11:30pm. I went for a jog on Thursday morning and wasn’t totally enamoured by what I felt, this feels a lot stiffer than yesterday. A trip to the physio afterwards for some treatment and a metaphorical pat on the back for improving my ankle mobility picked my confidence up. All I had to do for the rest of the day was sit around and wait, keep up my icing, keep up my anti-inflammatories and keep it mobile.

That all happened fairly straightforwardly and come 7:30pm on Thursday night I was able to warm-up with probably the same amount of discomfort I felt in Wednesday’s second run. Having got through the warm-up and some strides in my spikes I was confident I would make it through the race. Now I could actually think about the race. Being a State Championship there was a bit more cagey-ness from my competitors as opposed to the 5km a few weeks ago on the track. Back then, there was a plan for a few people in the race, myself included to go out at a certain pace. Not so this time. I was hoping to run under 8:30 but wasn’t confident as to what a week of reduced running had done to my capacity to do that. The 8:30 goal was chosen because that’s the time that lines up with the pace required to run 14:15 for 5km which is something I want to do eventually. Despite not being sure if I could hold that pace I hoped to go out at that pace (68 seconds per lap) and just see what happened. Gather more data in the running experiment. Last year in this same race though, the first lap was 80 seconds I was told. It’s what can happen when everyone fancies themself for winning or backs their kick. Right. A slow first few laps isn’t going to suit me then. As we lined up on the start line I wasn’t a hundred percent sure what I’d do, there’s always a chance I have a pretty good sprint finish, but if it meant I had to set the pace at the front then I was happy to do so.

I didn’t start great immediately at the gun and was towards the back of the pack on the first bend. The positive of this though was that it gave anyone else the opportunity to take the pace out. No-one had so I made my way to the front and immediately quickened it up. Rightio, looks like I’m going to have to be the idiot who does all the hard work. Not being a track guy I had no real idea of what pace I was at and instead of hitting a 68 second lap I was more around the 65 seconds for that first lap and my legs definitely felt it. It meant I was distracted for another lap or two of the race because I was thinking about whether I’d even be able to make the distance. By about lap three I had settled into a bit more of a rhythm, was almost halfway in the race and knew I was going to finish. Now I could start to think about how to run the best second half of the race.

In an ideal world, one I hope to live in in the not too distant future, I’m fit and strong enough to jump on the front of a race at this pace and win it from here. How cool would it be to be able to absolutely ‘boss’ a race and lead from start to finish at a decent time? I don’t know how cool it would feel because in this non-ideal world I was only able to to hold my lead until about 1200m (3 laps) to go. Jacob Cocks was the first to pass me but was followed by a few others shortly after. I wasn’t too fussed, I wanted to latch onto someone who went past me with about 800m to go when I would really wind it up. It didn’t really happen like that though. Instead, over the course of the final couple of laps I kept getting passed by runners who had been racing over 1500m a bit during the summer. They were just a little bit more able than me to wind it up. Try as I might to latch on to them my legs, also maybe fatigued and not used to the pace I had been running at, just couldn’t. I wasn’t too distressed though, while I was watching runners pass me on my right I was keeping my eye on my left for the clock at each 200m interval letting my know that I was still on track for a sub 8:30 time, all I had to do was pretty much hold the same 5km pace I did a few weeks ago.

With 200m to go I was able to wind it up a little bit more and hold off some more fast finishing athletes behind me. I ran 8:28, ticked my sub 8:30 goal, and came 11th place. 11th place is pretty shit for what I thought I could do but 3000m is also at the far end of my event spectrum that I’m used to. To be better it would’ve been useful to run some consistent 400m reps in training, not just one or two sessions the week before. Also doing them on the track might’ve helped too. Oh well, finishing 11th gives me more motivation to beat those other 10 runners at an event I am more trained/suited to. A little warm down followed the race and then I hit the hay for another late night.

Friday. One race in the bag, another 5km race on the schedule for tonight. This race was as part of a 4-person team, each doing 5km’s. The other three members of the team had been doing some training, some more directed and consistent than others, so I was pretty excited to see what they were all capable of. The least I could do was put out a good 15 minute effort and try and see if we couldn’t match our podium finish from last year. During the morning of this race I went out for what I hoped would be a 12km jog at the beach. Normally, a jog like that is just great, easy, switch my mind off and relax. You guessed it though, instead I was broken and only hobbled through 2km’s before I had to stop and re-assess my life. The pain was the worst it had felt all week. I did some little exercises to try and get my ankle to warm up but also felt a lot of fatigue in my other leg muscles from the 3km race. The lesson here was that just because I only ran 3km’s doesn’t mean it hadn’t severely fatigued me and damaged my legs (especially my calves). I made it 6km’s in the end and went for a swim to wash off that terrible effort. Back on the ice and anti-inflammatories it was then.

In a perfect world I would’ve skipped the extra Friday night race given how poorly I ran in the morning. Being a team player though it’s not how I roll. If I didn’t race and threw a spanner in the works of the team’s plan that may have impacted the other members of my team’s performance. Can’t do that. So instead, I warmed up, did some strides, had my super shoes on for comfort and speed and got ready to race. The first member of the team, Rob Stillwell had run 20:05 at this event a year ago in an effort to break 20 minutes. 12 months later here he was again, trying to break 20 minutes. He had completed a short month-long training block and was forecasted to do so but like the weather, sometimes what we think might happen doesn’t. Without an official time on him through the first lap of the 2.5km course we weren’t too optimistic he was on track to break 20 minutes given how far back in the race he was. But, sure enough, he came storming home and into the hurt locker to nab a 19:10 finish time! How could I not race now I’d just seen that!

Our second runner, Tom Ruediger, went out and nailed himself a sub 19 minute time to leave us somewhere in the top-10 of teams. Last year I went out last and felt like I was too far back to make a real chase on the top teams so this year I put myself third. I quickly caught up to a lot of the teams in front of us and through having that to focus on I didn’t even feel my ankle being sore. I can race fine, I just can’t train at the moment. Clicking 3:00/km’s on the slightly windy course I felt pretty comfortable. My ability to finish with a blast of top-end speed wasn’t really there but I did manage to hold my form pretty consistently to the end to finish with 15:06. Not bad considering the race the night before. The last runner in our team, Chad, ended up finishing the race with a 17:02 to his name just outside the sub 17 minute goal we thought would be a good stretch for him. Yeah he didn’t get it but at least we had the environment and race to challenge him with the goal, something that I really appreciate about this event and made me want to do it. The other thing that makes me want to do this event is that as a team we’re actually pretty good. We finished second on the night out of all other teams (an improvement on last years’ third place).

Post-event my leg felt cooked. I couldn’t really walk on it and only made it through the cool-down out of stubbornness. That cooked-ness carried on over to Saturday where I had to jump back on the bike for some cross-training. It was the same story for Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning, which, given I haven’t run since Friday (as I write this on Monday morning) makes me look pretty silly. The goal was to be fit and ready for Ballarat Marathon, by running these two races you’ve maybe cooked yourself out of another week of training. Yes, that’s true but from an overall running philosophy the goal is to get better at running and get others to go running more. I easily ticked the get others to go running more side of things with Friday’s race and by learning about how to deal with this particular niggle I am a better runner and the 3km experience also adds to my running resume. If I can’t get back into full proper training within the next fortnight then maybe I’ll have to re-frame my expectations around Ballarat. I’ll still run it but instead of having the perfect 3-4 month long block I had dreamed of instead I’ll be racing off almost two seperate blocks, pre and post ankle injury. Which, if this week’s effort of having my back up against the wall and still being able to pull my goal time out is indicative of anything, mightn’t be a bad thing after all. Watch this space though, or my Strava, to see how the next week and a bit goes. Like the weather, the forecast of easy running and maybe some cycling for the next few days is pretty certain but beyond that it’s really just a guessing game. I’m obviously still not fully recovered yet but at least I now know that I shouldn’t race a 3km and then a 5km race when I am close to being recovered! Anywho, thanks for reading and thanks for any messages of healing/support!