Fraser Darcy

Mid-April isn’t a season change by most people’s definitions but in the world of fraserdarcy.com it is. Pool season ended for me a week ago, I took a ‘holiday’ down to Adelaide last week starting with the Clare 10k and then wrapped it up with the Australian Athletics Championships. The holiday in Adelaide is over and I’m back in…. Quorn, wahoo. Without any pool commitments, double wahoo.

It was nice breaking up my transition from pool season to ‘winter’ with a trip to Adelaide. It meant when I returned on Wednesday this week I was refreshed and ready to set some new routines that didn’t revolve around fitting everything in my day before potentially working at 2pm at the pool. Pleasingly these routines have involved more running than the last 8 weeks or so as I continue my build back to full fitness.

On Monday, still in Adelaide, I made it through a 12km easy jog around Belair. I was a bit cooked from the weekend’s events covering Nationals so was just pleased to get through it without doing too much damage. The only negative from my media involvement at Nationals was that each afternoon/evening I was doing the opposite of recovering by standing on my feet. From this Monday onwards I was able to dedicate more afternoon time to chilling out and letting my sore tendon repair itself. It wasn’t all recovery though as I still got out for an afternoon walk because I find it hard to sit still all afternoon.

Tuesday, RunAsOne session day. I was excited to give a Tuesday session a crack as opposed to just jogging through them as I had been doing over the past month when I could attend. I didn’t have any fast shoes with me as a bit of a way to try and hold myself back from running with the front runners so was in my own world a fair bit back. It was good though, I was able to train to feel a bit better. The session was 800 on, 200 jog, 400 on, 200 jog, 200 on, 200 jog (on = fast) which is definitely a style of workout I wouldn’t normally do/rarely do. Hence, if I could do it, it should give me some good benefits. I had my pace turned off as well so was going all in on the training to feel method but at the completion of the session was very surprised at how fast I was considering how far off the back of the from group I felt.

Despite the positivity in how fast I ran, I suffered later on in the week with my Wednesday plan to run 90 minutes having to be aborted to a 30 minute shuffle instead. On Tuesday I did some weights and went for a bike ride which may have overcooked me even more but really, the paces I ran in the morning gave me some serious DOMS in my calves.

Oh well, disappointing to not get in a full 90 minute run but good to know that my calves/tendons received a big stimulus on the Tuesday to get their shit together. After my ‘failed’ run I drove back to Quorn and got out for an afternoon walk at Devils Peak. I’d incorporated walking up Devils the last few weeks as a way to get some extra cross-training and loading up of my feet/ankles without the running impact and given I recorded a PB up Devil’s on this Wednesday afternoon’s efforts, it was starting to pay off.

Thursday, easy 60 minutes in the morning, easy hour walk in the middle of the day and an easy thirty minute run in the afternoon! My ankle was feeling pretty good in the late afternoon and I was curious to see what a second run would do. It didn’t feel too bad throughout the run but by the end of it I felt as if I’d overstepped the mark a bit. It wasn’t sore but it just felt ‘big’ if that makes sense. I had learned my lesson that two runs a day was still a day or two away.

Friday, time for a second session. This time a tempo around the North Quorn parklands I love. 3-laps is what I usually do but considering that’s the recipe for a 3 session week and this week was only a 2 session week I decided to try for 4 laps (or 8.4km’s worth of work). To start with I felt stronger than the last time I attempted this a fortnight ago a week before the Clare 10k so knew I’d be able to make it 4 laps. Again, I had pace turned off but every kilometre I received a notification telling me what my pace was. If I could manage no slower than 3:35/km and no quicker than 3:10’s I think that would be a success. Faster than 3:10’s is probably me over-reaching.

The data shows that I improved over the 4 laps which is always nice. I probably could’ve gone a fifth but mightn’t have continued the progression. Warming down after this session also didn’t feel as terrible as it did a fortnight ago. All the more evidence that I am improving in fitness and strength. I was very tempted to go for a walk or second run this arvo but refrained so as to give my foot plenty of non-impact time to recover. I feel as if I’m so close to being back to full strength so when I skip a walk/run opportunity I’m desperate for it’s as if I’m negotiating with my body to say ‘hey, I could’ve gone for a run but because I’m not you owe me some extra repairing!’. So instead of walking or running I went for a very windy ride and got just as cooked. Good one idiot. The most annoying thing about a windy ride isn’t the headwind on the way back I ride into for thirty minutes, it’s the fact that I can’t hear anything in my headphones it’s that windy!

That’s where the ‘week’ ended though which is always nice. I wound down on Friday reading the freshly released blog I wrote for RunAsOne, watching Essendon hold on for a last minute win and tidying up after some Airbnb guests throughout the week. Just a normal day in the life of a full-time ‘freelancer’.

The weekend for me was back to as normal operations as it could be. An easy hour at Mt.Brown in the morning on Saturday, some washing, gardening jobs around home and then an easy walk up Devils before spending some time putting this recap together. I spent the rest of the afternoon deliberating about a second run. I felt this way on Thursday and then regretted it when I did run, had I learnt my lesson this time? No not really, I went out anyway on a very old loop of mine. It started off sore but then got a lot better. So much so I actually started to smile and relax and think it was a good idea to do a second run. When I finished it certainly didn’t feel as ‘big’ as it did on Thursday’s attempt so I was pleased I did make it out.

That brings me to the climax of the week though, Sunday’s long run. I had been managing some tempo work and hour runs over the last two months around this injury but a 2hr run was the last piece of the puzzle to get through. Make it through 2hrs (and the days after it) and I would feel as if I was definitely improving. The trouble, or challenge, with commiting to a 2hr run is you first have to make it past a 1 hr run.

In the first hour of this Sunday’s run I was constantly assessing my foot and my gait. Was it sore? Hmmm, not that bad. Was I running well? Not really, I’m still a bit stiff. C’mon though, you’ve been making it an hour every other day, just get to that first hour and then re-assess. So I did, spending most of time trying to distract myself from how not fit I felt with little internal monologues. At the hour mark I was pleased to get there without feeling any less banged up than when I started. I made it 1.5hrs last Sunday, that should at least be the benchmark. When I did that 1.5hr run I also noticed that I started to feel less pain and run smoother the closer I got to the finish. It’s as if my body fights with itself for an hour, like a screaming child who doesn’t want to be put in a car seat, but then once I’m in the car seat after just over an hour, my body relaxes and realises ‘ohhhh, you’re doing a long run, my mistake, *unlocks smooth running technique*’.

This Sunday was no different, I made it 1.5 hrs and started feeling more like how I did in late December/January when I first started stringing 2hr long runs together after my Kosci 50km race. I cruised through the last ten minutes of my long run in 4:20/km pace feeling the best I’d felt in two months. That’s very counterintuitive to feel that way after running over 110km’s for the week but it’s how I felt. The brain and body works in strange ways. It’s moments like these though that make me glad I’m a self-coached athlete as it’s probably not that wise to progress past 1.5hrs if you’re feeling shit. The chances you magically start running a lot smoother are minimal, but, because I coach myself, I’m prepared to experiment a bit with what I know works for me. Benefits of knowing my own body I guess.

At the end of the run I didn’t feel too cooked, it wasn’t like I’d done a hard long run, I only averaged 4:45/km. My calves were a little bit sorer than usual but that’s to be expected as they get themselves use to the load of running 100+km’s a week. Which, given I ran around 115km’s this week is where I find myself! I did manage to run 106km’s a few weeks ago and then reverted back to a 40km week the following week so it’s not all sunshine and rainbows until I string together consecutive 100+km’s weeks. And that’s part of the real aim at the moment, get as many 100+km weeks together and even nudge back up to 160 then 180km’s. There are plenty of races appearing over the next month as well that I’ll use to build more fitness too. I find getting on startlines the best way to gauge how fit I am and use them to build even more fitness. Races are the number one stimulus I can use that make me a better runner which, as I created some new, or switched back on some old routines, has become the number one goal again. Every time I err from ‘becoming a better runner’ by focusing on times, or results at specific races I tend to not go as well. Focusing on ‘being a better runner’ removes the stress about hitting a time goal or beating someone in a race. As long as I prepare appropriately, give myself the best chance of racing well and then go and give it my all, the time and result will take care of itself. If I lose to a runner I thought I should’ve beaten that sucks in the immediate timeframe, however, it means I placed myself ‘in harm’s way’ you could say and was challenged to be better than I would’ve been if that runner wasn’t there. That theory is easier to understand with an example. If I focus on winning a small local race then I’ll stress out about who’ll rock up on the day and what their fitness is like. If I focus on being a better runner I’ll rock up on that same race day looking for extra competition from faster runners so that I can dragged to a harder race effort than I would’ve had if they weren’t there.

So that’s that really. The season’s have changed up in Quorn, I’m continuing my progression back to full fitness and confidence and again looking forward to being able to make myself a better runner. Thanks for reading.