Fraser Darcy

I finished off last week’s post hoping to report on more running than rest days in my subsequent update. Well, to not leave you hanging, I can confirm that I did that. I ran on Friday, Saturday (twice!), Sunday (twice again!), Monday (twice again again!). But it’s now Wednesday.

What happened to Tuesday? Oh wait ‘two steps forward, one step back’. I see. Geez, do you think it could’ve been the whole running twice thing that tipped you over the edge? Maybe. Before we get too deep let’s back it up and go through the play-by-play of the two step forwards.

On Friday I ran 9km’s and felt pretty good. It was all without a break and although my heart rate was up higher than it would’ve been a month ago for this run I still felt ok. The Saturday morning run I went on did not go as well and I broke it up by running for something like 2 minutes with 30 seconds, or a minute off in between. Pretty clear to the breaks I took from my heart rate data below.

This wasn’t great for my confidence but I reasoned it was important to continue loading my tendon in probably a safer, disjointed manner, than a straight continuous run. I jumped on the bike for an hour afterwards and it was my first ride since the weekend prior. The difference in pain between this ride and the last one five days before was immense showing that even though I hobbled through 4km’s about an hour before, I was still progressing overall in my return back to full strength. I watched the Bombers win their first match of the season for the majority of the afternoon and then used the motivation from that for another ride. I kept chasing the high from that ride and the fact it was a Saturday afternoon and I wasn’t working at the pool to head out for another run. I got greedy here and went to go for 6km’s but instead turned early at 2.5km’s to only make it 5km’s. It still felt better than the morning run.

Sunday was almost a repeat of Saturday’s efforts, just with a second longer bike ride and the nature of my runs switched (longer one in the morning, short one in the arvo purely to flick the mind from cycling into running).

Come Sunday evening I thought I was in a good spot. I’d managed more running this week than last week and walking around the house felt pretty normal, especially by the end of the day. I had been telling the people at the pool who were enquiring as to how my running was going that if I could make a half decent week the following week (this week) I’d be confident in getting fit enough to enter Clare half marathon off what could then be three half decent weeks of training.

Leaning into that hope, I started well on Monday. A 10km run with only a few safety breaks to ensure I wasn’t doing anything too dangerous. It also only took me twenty-ish minutes of walking and mobilising activities to get started too, down from about thirty minutes on Saturday/Sunday. With my redemption building progress I was also now starting to focus on bringing my Suunto Training Load stats back up so went on an hour ride to get some more training stress. That was the plan at least. Instead, I got a flat tyre with 7km’s to go and had to run back home in order to leave enough time for lunch and to re-collect my bike before I started work at the pool.

Running straight off the bike never feels as good as I want (hence the little run I did on the weekend after my bike rides to switch my body into running mode). This one was no different but having already run in the morning my legs just started moving a bit faster. At the time I thought, mmmm not sure this is a good idea, but it is a good test to see if 4:00/km’s is doable. It was nice to have something to run back for (lunch, work etc.) but it was not nice to feel a bit stiffer than I had been later at the pool.

That’s the two steps forward part covered.

The one step back is the fact that on Tuesday, I did my twenty minutes of trying to get ready for a run but didn’t progress past doing little jogs out my driveway. I’d won the battle for about five days in a row of deciding whether it was a good idea to push through for a run so it was probably about time I said nope, not today, too sore. An hour bike ride and a haircut later and I thought yeah, what about a run now? But still no good. I begrudgingly went off to work at the pool thinking if I didn’t have to work at the pool today I could’ve fit in another hour bike ride or gone for a walk. That would’ve been nice. Do I really have to work at the pool, it’s cold anyway, oh well…

There I was though, sitting in my chair and earning my $40 an hour as a lifeguard right at 2:30pm when the pool opened, when suddenly, the power went off! No power, no pool pumps, no work! The excitement of getting work cancelled early was balanced out by the disappointment of loss of income and loss of power (forecasted at that stage) until 8:45pm but still, there was excitement I could do some more exercise considering I had a meeting at 7:30pm that night too. After a bit of waiting around to see if the power definitely was off I was able to leave work and get out for an afternoon walk. Running was still too sore but walking was manageable. By manageable I mean enough pain to stimulate the tendon into repairing itself but not too painful that it’s doing more damage. Reminder though that I’m also not a doctor or physio and am talking about an injury that I’ve had for pretty much a month so really shouldn’t be the one giving myself any advice (but that’s what happens on fraserdarcy.com).

The arvo walk was great though, up and down Devil’s Peak for about forty minutes, felt a bit uncoordinated after having not been on any trails for a couple of weeks but didn’t feel too unfit. Probably a pretty good thing to have some variety in my walking to strengthen a few things up. Was also a good mental refresh. By Tuesday night I felt like I was back on again and my nightly check-in as I walked around the house felt better again.

Which of course leads to me to Wednesday. Would I get a run in today? Well, it started off very promising but unfortunately I lost the battle for a second day in a row. Momentum is very hard to find at the moment and when I do find some in my running, I hopefully won’t get a flat tyre and choose to run 4:00/km’s home! Nevertheless I’m still buoyed by the fact that the strength exercises I’ve been doing have improved in ability and decreased in pain over the last week since I found a couple more exercises to elicit some pain (high step-ups which causes pain right at toe-off and also single leg pistol squats which were just weaker than normal). Having these exercises almost back to normal gives me hope that maybe later today* (Wednesday) I can got out for a run and maybe by Friday I can run without any pain. We’ll see though.

If I can get to a point where on Sunday afternoon I have zero pain when running I will be happier than I probably would’ve imagined even from last Sunday. I have my older sister Emma’s wedding this weekend (where I am the MC) and come Sunday arvo, I will have no more obligations towards that taking up my time and mental capacity. My pool commitments and swim club duties will also wind down so I can start to refocus on my running. Hence, if I can do that with a fresh body then I can start to string together some training again, then I can start to look at races, then I can start to race, then I can start to claim world dominance muhahah. Yeah yeah yeah, take it one day at a time and don’t think about that yet I hear you say, I know. But, I’d rather try to hold myself back from continually thinking in that overly simplistic and positive manner then be in the opposite camp of will I have get back into full fitness or racing again and have to drag myself out of the mental quagmire. As long as I keep taking some steps forward, like I have in these past seven days, it doesn’t matter if I take a step back or get knocked down along the way… I’ll always get up again (must watch youtube video below…)

By this Sunday it’ll of course be two weeks until the Clare half marathon, which if you remember from last week’s post, is the timeframe I believe I require I need to get fit. Hopefully that’s an exciting little scenario to think about (will Fraser race Clare??!) to keep you on the edge of your seat until next week when I report on hopefully more steps forward and less steps back! Thanks for reading!

*After I wrote the first version of this post and let it simmer for a few hours on the keyboard I did run and had my best one since forever. Almost stopped thinking about my sore tendon for a bit and disconnected on the run. Is this the third step forward? Next week’s post will again come out after the weekend due to the wedding festivities. Plenty of time for more steps forward and more steps back.