Fraser Darcy

I didn’t know if I’d start, I didn’t know how I’d race and I didn’t know how I’d pull-up. That’s a lot of unknowns for a Sunday morning as I drove down to Clare for the 10k I’d entered. Listening to a podcast while I drove at 5:15am, I was not trying to distract myself from these unknowns like I had been all week, I was just passing the time until it was the last possible second before I had to make a decision if I would race or not. It felt as ‘adventurous’ as a 10k could get though, driving down in the dark, not having trained as much as I would’ve liked, carrying an injury etc. etc. Having had a week tapping into some climbing memories, where every day can feel like an adventure in that sport, I was relishing the fact I could translate some of the lessons I learned through climbing and the outdoors once again into a 10k. One of those lessons was being able to get myself up and ready for an early morning departure to an ‘adventure’ or in this case, a race. Driving down with my podcast on, the adventure really stepped up a gear when a kangaroo put itself in the path of my car. I broke, swerved a bit, not enough, clipped his back, bugger, checked the damage, maybe it’s only cosmetic? and kept going. Wake up Fraser, time to make this early morning trip worth the damage you have incurred.

I rocked up a couple of hours after leaving Quorn and felt pretty good out of the car. I had not run on Thursday and Friday last week to try and really speed things up with my injury. It had worked and the combination of cycling and walking I had maintained despite the lack of running still made me feel fit enough to compete. I collected my bib, gave out a few friendly nod’s and then started jogging to warm up. I had been struggling with the power at toe-off in my stride in the last week and was of course on high alert trying to work out if the power was back. To a certain degree it was, it felt the best it had felt since February, but I was also aware it wasn’t 100%. Would I damage it further by racing? Or would putting the foot under a bit more load give it the stimulus to repair itself quicker? *Weekly disclaimer I’m not a physio*.

I tried a few strides in my warm-up shoes and felt like I could confidently accelerate. Something I hadn’t been able to do even in my two faster sessions a week ago. In those session I was able to run just over 6km’s at 3:20/km pace so I knew given how I was feeling so far in the morning, I could at least do that. Add in some ‘race atmosphere’ to motivate me even more and I was confident I could race at 3:20/km for 10k’s. With those faster sessions the week prior I pulled up ok the day after the first one, kept jogging and then went again for a second session a day later, to which I pulled up miserably. That experience showed me though that I could probably race this 10k, take a rest day or two and then be back to jogging for a few more days. So that was that. I was going to race.

Cool. I like racing. Training is fun but you can’t replicate the race atmosphere in a training run where, like when you’re climbing, nothing else matters in life at that moment and you’re just trying to manage your attempt to go full bore. Whip on some music, put someone on a bike to chase and a few friendly spectators out on course and you feel a million bucks. Which is how I felt after jumping off the start line.

A smart plan would’ve been to just run with the other front runners and do the bare minimum to try and win however I also wanted to use this 10k as an experiment to see where my fitness was at and how much I have lost over the past month. If I ran with the others I may have held myself back too much to actually get that information. So, I went out at a pace that felt comfortable, got a lead and then backed it off a bit just to be on the safe side. I was very interested in this experiment as it’s not a scenario I’d ever knowingly put myself in (doing minimal training and then racing) so having been put in this position by my own mistakes I was not going to waste the ‘opportunity’ to see what results I’d get. After the first few km’s the early results indicated I’d win the race and run around 32/33 minutes for the 10k provided nothing bad happened of course.

Don’t underestimate my effort in these opening km’s though, I was having to work pretty hard to get into this position and didn’t feel as comfortable as the Dolphin Run in February. I wasn’t focusing too much on how I felt or my pace though so I don’t have too much more descriptions about how the race went. Instead I was on high alert for anything bad to happen which is probably the biggest lesson out of the race for myself. Yes it was fun to run fast, fun to race and, here’s the finish, fun to win, but I spent the majority of the time searching for feedback on my injury wondering if it was going to be ok. When you’re fit and trained you think the worst bad thing that can happen is you’ll blow up in a race and fall of the pace. When you’re not as fit though the worst bad thing that can happen is that you’ll injure yourself and have to embarrassingly call someone to pick you up. The only hope you have of avoiding this terrible disaster is monitoring the rate at which the pain is increasing in your injury. Is it increasing rapidly? Or is is still the same at the 4th km mark as it was a the 3rd km mark? I think it was? Oooh, there’s the 6th km mark, I’ve done 6km’s on this pain already, that means I can surely do 4 more km’s right?

Right. I finished in 32:34 in the end for 1st place and prize money of $175. Immediately after the run I didn’t feel as bad I felt at the conclusion of the park stampede race a month ago so that was a positive. I also didn’t feel too exhausted so I know that even with minimal training a baseline level of my 10k ability is 32/33 minutes which is nice (as long as I maintain my baseline). I didn’t bother with a warm-down as I’d already stopped following the status quo of runners by racing on an injury so why bother with going through the motions of a warm down just because it’s the thing to do. Instead, I jumped on my bike and rode for forty minutes back out along the course which also gave me another set of results to analyse about my injury (did it feel as normal on the bike as it did before the race? Yeah, pretty much).

To top off my ‘adventurous’ morning in Clare I walked down the main street in search of some food. Now, most people in their 20’s and above would entertain a little cafe, bakery or delicatessen of some sort for their Sunday morning brunch. Not the ‘adventurous’ or should I say ‘dirtbag’ operator though. Like an overweight person sniffing out their local golden arches of McDonalds I sniffed out the Clare Foodland for a couple of cold pizza slices and a drink for $8. Terrific value. I might have got just a coffee, half a biscuit and a inquisition by some young couple’s ‘fur baby’ for that type of money at a trendy cafe. Instead I felt like I had cheated the system once again to reward myself with a nice brunch.

Ok so you started, and you raced ok, but how did you pull up Mr. Adventurous/Dirtbag operator? Not too bad after I drove down to Adelaide. Yes, Adelaide folks, a mostly undisclosed fact until now is that I was always heading to Adelaide on Sunday so I may as well have driven past Clare and may as well have raced. On the rest of the drive I did my best to keep moving my foot around, keep it mobile etc. and by the time I stepped out in Eden Hills I felt ok. Not as good as before the race, not as good as Saturday but maybe as good as I felt when I took some rest days late last week. It was nice to be back in Adelaide having completed a race without the feeling of needing to get back to Quorn. I relaxed to some extent but also had to deal with my ‘cosmetic’ car bumper issue.

It was a bit worse than I thought of course with a few things out of shape and not connected any more but in a poetic way, the car was now starting to resemble it’s owner a bit more. I have never loved my Triton as much as I loved the Outback I used to drive but this new battle scar of it has certainly improved its lovability. It’s a reminder to me that I should’ve braked harder and swerved a bit more. More importantly though it’s a reminder to me of the adventure that was the Clare 10k.

Adventure in running is hard to come by, especially road running, so to be able to tap into some of those characteristics with this race was nice. I haven’t really done anything adventurous like skiing or kayaking or climbing or bushwalking for a few months now and as I began to do less and less I think it was partly because I lost a bit of that spontaneity and insatiable appetite to answer the unknown. I knew mostly what to expect from a hard climb or a trip so it became very routine. As I learnt more in the outdoors I became less naive and understood the risks a lot more and probably became more conservative. Nah I can’t be bothered doing that, it’ll be just like that other trip I did or that other climb, it’s not worth it... Essentially I began to adventure in my late 20’s very differently to how I did in my early 20’s. This thought didn’t just pop into my head with the Clare 10k, it actually originated from watching the Girls Can’t Surf documentary and this youtube video focusing on outdoor snobification. Gahh, those early female surfers lived so simply for their sport… Outdoor snobbery is something I never realised but now it seems like the explanation for all those ‘all the gear, no idea’ folk who say things like ‘better to be safe than sorry’. Yes you may be safe in your living room but you won’t have done anything worthwhile if you don’t take risks. Which is what adventure is all about and to some extent racing this Clare 10k. Being smart enough to take risks that challenge your previous beliefs about what you thought was possible. Whether those beliefs are held collectively by a group (no-one can climb that thing… until someone does) or by yourself (I can’t ran under 33 minutes for 10k off minimal… or can I) it doesn’t really matter. Taking the risks to challenge those beliefs and ideas is what innovation is. Without people pushing the boundaries of what was thought to be possible we’d be living in a very different world.

I’m not saying that racing the Clare 10k with an injury and off minimal training makes me some sort of person to celebrate because I took some risks. What I am trying to get into your head though is the mentality that led me to taking those risks. Screw always doing things by the book and just fitting in with what everyone else does, I’m just going to race it and see what happens. That aspect of my involvement supersedes the actual enjoyment of winning and racing. Fuck yeah, I raced like a bit of a dirtbag again. Hopefully I can maintain some of that dirtbag momentum I picked up this week, bring back the Outdoor Athlete vibe of being capable of doing cool outdoors thing any time, any where. In the immediate future of this week that hopefully looks like cycling, walking and running around Adelaide as I continue to show my face around at RunAsOne training and prepare for a big weekend at the Australian Athletics Championships in Adelaide. Unfortunately, that means next week’s blog will likely come out sometime mid-week again so for those who aren’t subscribed (which is free by the way) you’ll have to check back later on next week to see what I’ve been up to and find out if the risks I took racing at Clare meant I didn’t do any running the following week. Thanks for reading.

Shout out to friend of the blog David from Jamestown as well who spoke with me after the race at Clare and said he was an occasional reader! Great to know my content is continuing to make it to other people who live in regional SA.