Fraser Darcy

I’m back on somewhat more of a normal blog program coming out earlier in the week rather than later. What that means is that there’s less running commentary than a whole week but still enough to warrant continue reading.

After publishing last week’s blog on Friday afternoon I finished off my last pool shift for the week with a busy one. It’s always nice ticking off the last pool shift for a week no matter how busy it is though, so I carried that positivity into an attempt at an easy Friday evening double. Remember, I had been having a great week of running so far, building up my volume and running with some intensity on the Thursday, would this easy double mark my successful return from injury? No it would not. I was stiff and sore and didn’t loosen up. Oh well, it was Friday pizza night at my house and I was done working for a few days.

On Saturday morning I slept in a bit and skipped the unofficial Quorn parkrun so I could focus on putting together a second faster run for the week. At first, I didn’t feel as fresh as I did the two days prior when I completed 3 laps of the 2.1km circuit I run on with a minute break between laps. I still started anyway and planned to run the same 3 laps at about the same pace just without the minute breaks. If I could finish the last one faster that would’ve been a bonus.

Without the freshness in my legs, and in hindsight still probably sore from Thursday’s run and my attempted double on Friday, I didn’t run as smoothly as I hoped but still ticked the box. I didn’t get the bonus fast finish either. Oh well, it was the weekend now and I could relax a bit without the thought of having to get everything I wanted done for the day completed by 2pm before heading to the pool.

Instead, I did the washing, some watering of the garden, cleaned the house ready for two German guests to stay with me over the weekend and planned the next week. With all of that out of the way I let myself enjoy the afternoon off from the pool with a walk at Devils Peak. It’s not the greatest trail Devils Peak, but, it is a nice steep walk that makes me feel like I’m getting some ‘training’ done whilst also enjoying being out in the bush a little bit. I walked up it on Friday as well and it felt fine so I didn’t have any qualms about walking up it again the day after on this Saturday. I even enjoyed myself so much on this walk that I went back up for another ten or so minutes to make it a full hour of activity. Another measure of how much I enjoyed myself on this walk, as opposed to some of the runs I have not been enjoying lately due to too much discomfort, is that I became fully absorbed in my music and felt a lot more relaxed. Similar to how I used to feel when running an hour and a bit loop through Belair. It was a good reminder to me that while I may be running a bit more than I was a month ago, I’m still a bit off tapping into that same groove I fell into on this walk but I am looking forward to getting back there.

After my walk, I had the Bombers match on in the background for the rest of the afternoon and much to my surprise, we actually won a match despite being behind all game. Miracles do happen so maybe I could channel that miracle into a good 90 minute run the next morning?

No I could not. Instead, I experienced a fair bit of regression and barely hobbled through 30 minutes of running before a walk of shame and disappointment as well. Oh well? Nah the rest of Sunday was not that oh well. I was pretty dejected actually. I’d had such a good walk up Devils, I was in my groove, the Bombers won, I wasn’t working this afternoon, give me a fucking break, I just want one run that goes smoothly. Moping around at home like this doesn’t change much so I moped out on my bike all the way to Warren Gorge and back for 1hr 45 minutes of riding. I didn’t have much time to mope for the rest of the day after that as I got stuck into some writing tasks for various Quorn community groups and started writing some coaching programs for the people I coach with RunAsOne. By the end of the day I was feeling a bit better about things but was certainly hoping to not regress any further on Monday.

Which, I did not. I managed a better 30 minute run in the morning, a less mopey bike ride (and shorter) and some better mobility exercises. For the last week I’d been facing a conundrum of my running is still limited by pain at ‘toe-off’ but the exercises I’ve been doing no longer seem to stimulate any pain and I’m actually at strength levels I was before my injury…what are the hidden exercises that will get me over the line? Well, if you keep digging and experimenting in the hole of injury that I climbed into (regular blog readers hopefully remember that reference) sometimes you do mine across a few gemstones. On Monday’s mobility I found two new exercises which I suck at and gave me something to target. Having uncovered these gems I went off to work at the pool on Monday a bit brighter than I was feeling all of Sunday.

When my pool shift ended early on Monday due to everyone leaving early I still had enough time left in the day to go on a quick walk up Devils Peak again. Look for that groove from Saturday. See if it was still there… It was! Slightly still limping, I did manage to loosen up and enjoy myself all the way up and down to a pretty much equal fastest time in the last two and a half years of walking up Devils. My heart rate was probably a bit higher this time however it does show that I am getting back to some sort of fitness. The way my body felt walking up and down also felt pretty good generally, more similar to the times I was doing it when I was a well-rounded climber/runner and not just a runner. Something that will be interesting to see in a few weeks time is how well the walking and cycling I’ve been doing to supplement the 75km and 105km (and potentially 80km this week) weeks of running I’ve been doing since I dropped off my volume at the end of March.

The only way I’ll be able to test that though is if I can get the confidence and power in my foot to properly run. This morning’s, Tuesday’s, run was going to be a faster one however after 30 minutes of jogging it still didn’t feel as good as it had on the Thursday and Saturday efforts the week prior so I just jogged ten minutes more to make it 40 minutes in total. That way it wasn’t my third day in a row of 30 minutes of jogging and I could latch onto the hope I was progressing again like a Koala latches onto a tree. I’m not letting that fucker go for a while hopefully. Post run I nailed my new favourite exercises and then, this is the best part, I got news that it was too cold for the pool to open today so I had the afternoon off! This meant I treated myself to a 1.5hr walk up and down Dutchman’s (with a rucksack on for extra training) listening to some podcasts and basically getting to live the simple life of run, eat, walk, eat, write blog, for the rest of the day. Which is where I am now, at the write blog part.

Each time I do the write blog part I enjoy the reflection of the previous week and at the moment that means I realise I’m better off with my injury than I was a week ago. Now, having ticked over the month of March and into April, it makes good sense to reflect on what has been 5.5 weeks since first experiencing enough pain in my ankle/foot to reduce running. By Thursday it’ll be 6 full weeks of managing it. Which, is about the shortest timeframe that a quick google of tendonitis (which I’m pretty sure is what I’ve had, aka bad inflammation, but again, I’m not a Dr.) indicates as a recovery to full strength in some cases. Each day of the past 5.5 weeks though I’ve hoped it’ll come good and be fine but really I should’ve just been hoping to get to the 6 week mark and then evaluate. Maybe it’s the curse of the blog and the daily updates of life on Strava, social media, the news cycle, Essendon winning etc. that condition me into thinking each day could be a miracle. Either way, through this charade, I still think I will come out as a better runner in the long term. My goals of doing the Clare half marathon and running a PB and then running Ballarat marathon in a PB time have shifted but I still haven’t had to adjust my medium or long term goals because I’m pretty sure I haven’t retired from running yet.

Instead, in the short term, I hope to run the Clare 10km this Sunday if I get through Wednesday’s (tomorrow) run in better shape. If I run that, can train for a few good weeks then I can still try and run at Ballarat in the half marathon. That gets me to May where hopefully I can have put my injury affected couple of months behind me and put together some good training in the back end of prime Flinders Ranges season of May/early June. It’ll definitely be a worser plan than I originally hoped for (running a marathon PB would’ve been a great start to the year on top of my 5k and 10k PB’s) but I’m sure I’ll be able to create some sort of enticing challenge to motivate to race well through the June/July period. The annoying thing about all of this in the running caper is that as much as I’d like to move the Ballarat Marathon to a few months later to give me the ability to simply carry on with my original plan I can’t. I could switch my focus to a different marathon, the Gold Coast marathon is in July, but that then means I miss out on other races I had planned to do in June/July in the lead-up.

This problem isn’t unique to running, tennis players miss out on individual tournaments quite frequently due to injury but still get to play tennis so it’s not entirely the same. If I choose not to run the Clare half and the Ballarat full marathon I may miss out on running a marathon until the next one I’ve had my eye on in August/September. I’ll still be running races but I won’t be running the same event. Chasing a half marathon PB and marathon PB on top of my 5k and 10k PB’s makes me realise that it’s almost like I’m chasing a higher graded climb with each race. When I was climbing and I had ticked a certain grade I’d either be keen to tick the next grade or tick an equally difficult climb at the same grade but maybe in a different area or style. The equivalent in running is ticking a new level in the 5km (i.e. 14:30) and then trying to get the corresponding 10k/half/full PB’s to match it. With climbing though I could keep banging my head against a literal wall until I broke through that grade or climb. It would always be there and I didn’t feel like I was in a race against time to get fit, I could just adapt my training and efforts to work, the weather and what I was finding difficult and then sure enough, after some form of time, 1 month or maybe 3 months, I’d tick the project. Diving into that style of goal setting and achieving perhaps opens a new door to how I should re-focus my efforts when I am confident I’m past this injury. Should I look to get myself into half marathon PB/full marathon PB shape through training and racing and then select an event when I’m ready? There’s always plenty of events within a month or two provided it’s not the middle of summer. It would certainly help contextualise some of the races I plan to do in May/June a bit better as opposed to just doing them for fun/prize money. If I could use them as stepping stones to getting back into the fitness I had in January/February and then select a race off that perhaps that’s a better strategy.

Or perhaps I should just stop writing and thinking so much and just get back to enjoying my running first? Nah, that option to me sounds like the equivalent of just going to the shops to enjoy wheeling the trolley around and buying stuff. I much prefer having a plan or something to aim for in training (and grocery shopping) but without having definite decisions about what races I would be doing (and for what reasons I might do them) I was a litle uncomfortable. Now, having waffled on long enough and done plenty of digging in my injury hole, I have a new ‘climbing orientated return to fitness’ plan that should motivate me until the next blog induced monologue about training and fitness. Thanks for reading this one and hopefully the next one involves a race report!