Fraser Darcy

Kicking off a blog with a song I know 99% of readers won’t listen to is a risky move. But like Austin Powers, I like to live dangerously, not that writing a blog is really living dangerously, but in the scheme of blog world writing towards references that people may or may not bother to listen is probably as dangerous as it gets.

If you haven’t already, now considering I haven’t actually said anything of importance yet, there’s still time to go and listen to the song above. I’ll wait.

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Ok, waiting’s over. Off the top the lyrics open up pretty sad. I ain’t happy. But then it’s all, I’m feeling glad. Kind of like the last week I guess, who would’ve thought?! Yes, since I last wrote, I have been running every day, slowly building up my volume and also adding one session of intensity in. I helped out with my older sister’s wedding, signed on as a coach with RunAsOne, continued earning good money at the pool, spontaneously helped in the outdoor ed world and finally, published the latest issue of The Blue Line. Despite all this, or maybe because of all this, I’ve felt like I’ve been in the trenches a bit until this Easter long weekend. That’s life though sometimes and it’s not all that bad. I’m not actually in any trenches.

Towards the end of last week I put together three consecutive days of running with the crescendo being Friday morning’s jog at the RunAsOne session. These runs, weren’t entirely pain free but were improving in that department. On Friday morning I even covered 14km’s at a good pace having had some company. Following that run I had to shelve some personal ambitions in how I was going to spend my time as I had offered to help set-up my older sister’s wedding. In a perfect world, I would’ve rocked up to the venue later that day, done my bit unloading the alcohol I was transporting and then relaxed all afternoon. The world is not perfect though and our adaptations to it’s imperfections is what keeps us alive. For me, that meant when I did rock up, all the hard work was yet to be done and I wasn’t all that happy about it but it’s what had to be done. I was glad when it was over. I tried to rescue myself from my grumpiness with a run, hoping to chase the feeling I had in my earlier run that day, however it was as if my ankle was broken I ran that poorly. Cue slightly more grumpiness more so at myself for attempting to run and also not being selfish enough to dodge some of the helping seeing as I was now a professional runner/coach on a very very small scale.

On Saturday, I tried and failed again in a run. Great way to start a wedding day, with a large serving of disappointment. ‘But at least you tried right?’ was how one of the groomsmen tempered my disappointment which was fair enough too. If I didn’t try I probably would stressed the whole day not knowing if my ankle was cooked or not. I felt useless but it was not for long. A quick visit to Westventure, my old work stomping grounds, and my car and I were requested to deliver a sailboat the next morning near where I was staying. It’s nice to have other ways of scratching my ego and importance other than just running which hadn’t had a good 24 hours.

Of course, later that afternoon I went through my duties as part celebrant-part MC at the wedding and had a great time doing so. It was just like I was giving a briefing as a teacher or outdoor instructor except people didn’t have to follow any instructions but just listen and clap at the right time (to which they did). Having a role at the wedding helped create the opportunity for me to remain focused on something at the event rather than the disappointing fact there was three different running races being held across this same weekend that I couldn’t attend. That, and the fact my ankle still felt cooked, all contributed to feeling as I was in the trenches but I was glad that it didn’t affect my performance. Maybe just my mood in the behind the scenes stuff.

Sunday after the wedding I carried this trench-like feeling all the same, completed my job for Westventure and then did a little bit more helping at the wedding. This was now my third day in a row of being on other people’s timeframes and it was starting to get to my thin fuse I now have after becoming mostly a recluse in Quorn. I escaped just after midday on Sunday and was back at Eden Hills for a rest and some life admin work. I snuck in a not so easy 45 minutes run that was better than the last two runs but still not great. Every run for every day of the past month has been a battle and not the stress releasing mechanism it usually is. Ding ding, another contributing factor then to my trench like slump that I’m fully aware of. However, like being in the actual trenches is due to being in a literal battle, having an injury or a niggle is simply a battle between losing hope and remaining positive. With my energy spread elsewhere over the wedding weekend I didn’t necessarily lose hope but also wasn’t that positive.

But come Monday and the next week I didn’t have to spread my energy around so much. Sure, there was more business I had to attend to on Monday in Adelaide, another RunAsOne session on Tuesday morning before I returned back to Hawker for a pool shift (squeezing in an hour bike ride in Quorn on my way there) but my obligations towards others were diminishing. The feeling that I thought was dead, that of progressing in my return to running, returned itself as a result. On Wednesday I ran a nice and easy 60 minutes around town and completed some exercises in my shed that didn’t trigger any acute sensations of pain. My future, is coming on.

Which brings me to Thursday. With a week’s jogging under my belt and less and less discomfort I knew it was the right time to increase the load on my ankle and see how it responded. Just how fast could I run after almost four weeks of jogging? And how much would it hurt in the short term and post-exercise? The answer is I can still run pretty fast. Mechanically, my strides and ability to run 3:00/km was fine which was something I was most worried about after having worked hard over summer to improve that skill. Cardiovascularly I was a little off but not as bad as it could’ve been. I ran a nice warm up of 30 minutes, put on some fast shoes and cranked out 3 laps of my 2.2km loop with a minute rest in between. I was hoping to run the loops at 3:30/km, then 3:20/km then 3:10/km or faster but instead on the first one I went out pretty easily at 3:20/km and didn’t feel like slowing down. I hadn’t run fast in almost a month, screw running slow now! I averaged 3:17/km for the first lap, went a bit quicker on the second one, 3:11/km, and then slowed to 3:15/km on the last and felt at my limit. Ankle wise, at the start of the second and third loops it felt very stiff and not very powerful but not too bad. At the completion of the run and for the rest of the day though it felt pretty sore and I didn’t go on a bike ride or another run, instead opting to just rest it (and I also had work and the end of swim club’s season BBQ to attend).

Having had my first fast run back now it meant that this morning’s run, Friday, didn’t have to be a dilemma of whether I should try and run fast or not. I could just jog easily like a normal Friday and see if I could get it done. At first, I needed some oval laps to unstiffen everything but by the end I was moving as smooth as I have been over the past week. Combine this positivity with the fact that I released the latest Issue of The Blue Line, don’t have any wedding preparation to do, have no pool shifts on the weekend and the future is really coming on.

What that looks like, optimistically, is I do some fast running on the weekend, pull up less sore than Thursday’s efforts, recover by Tuesday/Wednesday next week where I do one more fast run and give myself therefore three samples to adjudicate whether an entry at Clare is worth it still for my own performance analysis. If I can confidently race at Clare I can then start to plan what the next month of training looks like from that. Only a race scenario or parkrun time trial I think can give me a real good evaluation of where I’m at with my fitness so until then I don’t want to look to far into the future.

Overall though, this past week has certainly continued the trend of last week’s two steps forward one step back. Having been settled back into the Quorn life for a few days I’m out of the trenches and looking forward to report on further progression in my running potentially a lot sooner rather than later for next week’s blog. Until then, thanks for reading and Happy Easter.