Fraser Darcy

Well well well, I may not be Slim Shady, but guess who’s back.

Me. I’m back.

I went away over the long weekend on a Bucks weekend and didn’t make time to put out a blog on the weekly schedule I’ve been rolling with for the past several months. It’s now of course several days past the long weekend and almost encroaching on two weeks since my last blog. What’s been happening then in the world of slim shady, Fraser?

I did some more cycling last week, ran once again on the Wednesday and maintained consistency with my mobility exercises leading up to the Bucks. The rate of recovery of my sore foot/ankle/posterior tibial tendon was promising enough to suggest it would be better by next week but I would’ve liked it to be a bit quicker. Away over the Bucks weekend I went on a couple more rides but felt like the recovery process was somewhat stagnating. Recovery was made more difficult by the fact that I was doing a bit of beach walking, carrying esky’s and what not on the bucks weekend and also not getting the best sleep (which is where the best recovery happens). But that’s life. Literally. Enjoying a bucks weekend is a part of life and so I was glad to do that instead and have a distraction from not being able to run. So glad in fact, that come Monday of the long weekend and the culminating day of the Bucks I thought you know what, for me to fit in a bike ride today would require me to get up at 5am before our fishing charter, all just so I can cross-train for forty minutes or so. What would happen if I did no cycling for a few days, how would my foot respond then?

I’m glad to report that following that thought, I actioned it and didn’t do any form of cross-training, besides some mobility work, until this Thursday morning. That made it 7 full days off running since my last attempted run on Wednesday the week prior and in that period, 3 full days off activity. My foot wasn’t 100% on Thursday but it was better than any of the last probably ten runs have been on it (i.e. stretching back over the last three weeks) so it was time to experiment once again, give it a test and see if 30 minutes of running damaged it further or kickstarted the next phase of tendon re-modelling. So that’s what happens if I do no cycling for a few days and actually properly rest. The somewhat depressing mental image I think this recovering scenario creates is one of me trying to scramble my way out my injury hole by scratching at the loose edges and not getting anywhere (that’s the cycling part). If I just instead put my head down, have a little nap at the bottom of the hole and wait patiently for enough dirt to blow in, I might just be able to get up and walk (or run!) out of the injury hole.

If I am ready to get back out of the injury hole I am going to be leaning on a few different trains of thought:

• – The Heritage Steam Engine Train. Pre-blog in the first phase of my disjointed athletic career I used to have several large chunks of not running consistently. Two of these periods were the 2018 and 2019 ski seasons I completed at Perisher. Back in this era I used to believe that all I needed to get fit was two 100km weeks back to back and then I’d be right to go. My evidence for this is in 2019 I won the Five Peaks 58km in April off not much training around outdoor ed commitments and then again won the SA Trail Running Champs (25km) in October after only a couple of weeks of training post ski season. Hence, I will be boarding the heritage steam engine train of thought and only assessing my fitness once I’ve strung two good weeks together. Then I can re-frame my expectations on what races I will be doing. Whether or not it’s actually possible to rebuild my fitness in two weeks isn’t a question I know the answer too but the simple fact that I have believed it to be possible in the past is the important hope to hold on to.

• – The Overnighter. This block of recovery has been my biggest down period since probably seriously getting into running again in 2021. A positive that has come out of it is my average sleep HR and minimum HR has fallen back to levels I had previously recorded in early-mid 2023 when I was also very fit. Back then, I had average HR values of 44-47 (all values are bpm of course) and minimum values just above 40 while sleeping. The past few months I have barely recorded a minimum under 50 and most of my average values have been 52-55. I hadn’t changed the way I was sleeping or wearing my watch so the change had to be the fact that my body was just under serious load all the time or wasn’t as fit as I thought. Given the deload in training, my values have once again started to fall indicating I’m either finally recovering from a deep deep load of fatigue, or my heart is beginning to give up overnight (that’s a joke of course). I don’t think I’ll adapt my training to make sure I keep my low sleeping HR values (i.e. back it off when things get high) because it’s not the most accurate measurement but I will continue to monitor it. If I get injured again and the HR readings are high for a long period of time leading into the injury then I’ll take it more seriously. Once could be a coincidence, twice might not be.

• – The Future Express. It’s all just a big experiment sometimes and knowing how my body responds to three reduced weeks of running (including 7 days off running at all) will be good to know for the future. Having not known, it did, and still does, make me a little eager to get back to running sooner rather than later. If I had known that taking 7 days completely off, so straight after the Park Stampede or even the Dolphin Run, would’ve meant I would be right to go after that, then that would’ve been a smarter idea. But that’s how we learn though, do something dumb or incorrect, reflect on it, and don’t make the same mistake twice.

Bringing the Park Stampede back into the equation I was talking to someone in the pool last night about how my decision to race that and the 3km race probably tipped me over the edge a bit more than I should’ve. It’s disappointing that I got more injured after that event but as I said to them, it would’ve been more disappointing to not be apart of that event and miss out on sharing some PB’s with my teammates. Races are important to me but what is probably more important, and often comes out in race environments which can make it hard to seperate the two, is that people I know are getting better at running and enjoying it more (me included). By participating in the Park Stampede event I was able to enjoy that process three-fold with my other teammates.

The Park Stampede event was also the last event I had aimed to do for a while until the Clare Half Marathon. So while I have technically been injured (not that I like the term, I’m Fraser, not injured) I haven’t actually missed out on any races. Just training. My disappointment will grow if I miss out on a few more races but like I did with the last two races I won’t be making any decisions about reframing my expectations probably until I actually stand on the start line and start racing my upcoming events.

In the meantime I will be praying to all the gods (I don’t discriminate!) that the next time I post an update I will be able to report on more running days than rest days so in the words of Cypress Hill … ya better be ready (if reading this at work the song below will up your steezy points). Thanks for reading!