Fraser Darcy

Pre-Race:

If I mentioned climbing and running on this blog it would not be the first time. You’d even be forgiven for rolling your eyes, not another f****** climbing reference. But dear reader, this week’s revelation is a new climbing metaphor.

Often I think about having to try hard, like really hard, in climbing to make the climb. If you don’t try hard enough, you don’t get the climb. I translate that learning to running where I make sure I try really hard and don’t just run along at half rat-power as a football coach of mine used to say. What about the scenario in climbing though where everything clicks and you do the hardest climb of your life without having to give it everything? You’ve got juice still in the tank by the time you reach the top. What do you do with the juice? Nothing really, you can just sit back and relax knowing you pieced together an absolute masterpiece of climbing. Moments like that in climbing feel great but also a little empty, if I was on a harder climb would that effort have been enough to tick a new grade? I missed out on having to fight tooth and nail for that…

Well, that scenario might happen in climbing but it certainly never happens in running if you choose to make it so. Yes you can run a race and hit a PB with plenty of juice in the tank but there’s always the possibility you can keep pushing and run a little further outside your comfort zone right up until the finish line. And with that sentiment, I am preparing to run the Barossa Half Marathon tomorrow at a maximum effort and see how fast I can go.

Yes, pre-race on this Saturday morning at the time of writing I am feeling good and excited. The weather looks good and my training indicators have been promising. I still would’ve run fast if they had not been promising so it’s an extra bonus that my recent 6 weeks of training has gone well. Following last week’s 30km long run on the weekend this week I ran easy on Monday in Belair, did a little afternoon run on Monday, did some ‘k reps’ with RunAsOne on Tuesday morning at my fastest average pace ever and finished off the day with an easy double back in Quorn.

Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday morning were all easy runs of progressively shorter in distance (16km, 13km’s, 11km, 7km’s). It constitutes a good little taper where given I’ll run close to 30km’s tomorrow will put me at 120km’s for the week. For tomorrow’s race the idea is I believe I am in PB shape (which is 67:26, McLaren Vale 2023, 3:12/km) and hope to run a faster time than that and average around 3:10/km. The Barossa course is faster (positive), there might not be any company in the race for me though (neutral) but there has been 12 months more of training (positive) since McLaren Vale. On paper there’s enough to suggest it’s possible. Paper doesn’t matter when it comes to race day though.

The game plan is to run the first 10km’s at around 3:10/km to set my race up. At the Salisbury half a few weeks ago I got a bit distracted in the period between 10-15km’s so I am focusing on that as the ‘premiership quarter’ for this weekend’s race as it is often referred to in a football sense. From 16km’s on it’s a straight 5km’s down the road to the finish line pretty much. Here is where I could stick to my 3:10/km goal and execute a PB (if I’m on track) like I’m executing the moves on a climb. Or I could focus on performance not the goal (as famous climber Tom Randall says) and run as fast as I can to ensure there is no juice left in the tank. If I execute those three aims then I’ll be successful no matter what the time is.

If I’m not successful, well this scene below from The Eiger Sanction, which I watched for the first time ever this week (hence the scene drop) will be rolling through my head. It’s all about style.

The climber who isn’t Clint Eastwood and drops the ‘continue with style‘ line is also referred to as someone ‘who doesn’t give a rat’s ass about anything but climbing‘ which I can relate to with running hence it stuck with me.

Race Recap:

Enough waffling on though, time to get into the details of the race. Good weather conditions greeted Georgia** and I as we arrived at the race start. Cold, crisp, no wind, a bit of cloud cover would’ve been nice but not everything can be perfect. With a record amount of entries signed up I knew it was going to be busy and it was. I bumped into a plethora of people from all different areas of my life before the race which was cool and getting there early meant I had enough time to do the bumping into, find a tree to piss behind (and skip the toilet queue) and warm-up.

After my warm-up, I put on my new race shoes, Asics Metaspeed Sky+, which was the first time I’ve used them in a race. I was in two minds about whether they were a good choice as they were brand new and yet to be proven in a race. I could’ve used my old, trusty Alphafly’s however they’ve been showing a lot of wear & tear recently so weren’t that much of a promising option either. Hence, for something different, I chose to race in the Asics.

A few strides, chats with other fast runners and then after a 5 minute delay to the start (which I thought might happen given how busy it was so I wasn’t surprised) we were finally off. Thank god. The build-up to a race takes forever some times and this was one of those times.

In the first few km’s I felt great, cruising along at or under 3:10/km pace as I had planned. The course has a slow rise to it over the first 8km’s so I was pleased to be covering the ground well and feeling confident. After about 7-8km’s I started to catch the back of the Marathon runners and continued hitting my 3:10/km average without too much trouble.

There was a slight downhill between 8-10km’s which helped a lot and made me click over the 10km mark right at 3:10/km as planned feeling pretty good. Now it was time for the premiership quarter. Back up the slight rise and into a bit heavier Marathon traffic things started to feel uncomfortable and I dropped some slower km’s. Don’t worry, it’s just a bit uphill, keep your effort consistent and you’ll get that time back in the last 5km’s I thought.

My glances to my watch were increasing as I moved through the premiership quarter. By the 13th km I was telling myself it was only 7km’s plus 1km to go. That’s only 20 and a bit minutes. I tried telling myself that there were runners up the road I had to catch to try and race so I couldn’t drop off too much but in reality there wasn’t and my brain knew that.

After the 15th km it was time to focus on performance not the goal. I wasn’t doing the mental arithmetic in my head to work out how fast I needed to run the last 5km’s because I was: a) focused on performance and b) pretty cooked.

If I was in a race with someone else at this stage (I was solo for the whole race) things would’ve been interesting. I felt a lot worse through 15-19km’s then I did at the Salisbury Run a few weeks ago so I was definitely well and truly outside my comfort zone. It’s nice to be there in a race, it’s the main reason I like racing actually because every other part of my daily life is all pretty plain/within my comfort zone. A race gives you those moments where you’re really up against it and have to hang on for dear life, much like what happens in climbing regularly.

And that’s how that 15-19km’s felt, like I was hanging of for dear life. I ran past a mate* from outdoor ed work days who was in the full marathon and gave me a much needed rev-up in the 16th or 17th km. From there I knew I was going to make it to the finish line but my dream of my PB had all but disappeared. Cue the continue with style scene in my head. As someone who represents RunAsOne and their own personal values I believe it is important to always try and finish the race or project with style no matter the result. To me today that meant wringing myself dry over the last two km’s.

In the end it resulted in a 1:08:00 half marathon time and first place by 48 seconds. The result is 34 seconds off my PB (so about 1.5 seconds per km slower over 21km’s which isn’t much per km but it adds up!) and is my second fastest time ever so I can’t be too disappointed about it. Plus, it earned me $750 which is always nice…

Post race:

Things that went well:

• I got the most out of myself on the day. To be feeling cooked and still push on without dropping too much speed is pretty good. Every race is just a training session for the next one. Given that, I got some pretty good training out there today!
• Happy with how I was able to settle into a rhythm solo.
• I seemed to have recovered ok in the few hours after the race. My calves aren’t that tight, my joints don’t feel sore and I could probably have run this afternoon if I needed to but I was a smart boy and just walked instead.

Things that could’ve gone better/ I learnt/Room for Improvement:

• Obviously be less cooked. Did I under-fuel the day before? No not really, given I followed my usual method. Maybe I could’ve tapered more? Yeah, that and the climbing work might have taken a bit more out of me than I had hoped. Will try and taper an extra day or two next time and see if that makes a difference. Nice to know I can get 68 minutes done with only a couple of easy days beforehand.
• The other theory to investigate is the volume of km’s in my training. Aerobically I felt good in the early stages of the race and also the back end. My legs felt better than they did in the Salisbury race (much stronger, less sorer) but they lacked the ability to change gears a bit late. Is that an efficiency thing that comes from running the amount of km’s I was doing in February? Or a taper thing? It’s actually probably a combination of a lot of things really of course. I’m leaning towards, in order of most relevant to my result: volume of training leading to efficiency (60%) , taper (30%) and fuelling a bit more in the morning (10%).
• I was probably over-ambitious with my hopes to run 65/66 minutes. Yeah a PB I think was still possible or somewhere a bit lower in the 67’s but to run 65/66 would’ve required me to average 3:08 or faster. I’d like to see how things go in another half with another couple of months under my belt again but to be capable of running 3:08 or faster per km I probably need to smack another 5 or 10km’s out at PB pace first. Yeah I’d been doing km reps at sub 3:00/km for the past couple of weeks but my 2km reps a few weeks ago at 3:06/km probably was the writing on the wall that I wouldn’t be able to run around that for a half. If I had a 10km result of 3:05/km or faster to look back on in the previous few weeks (post-injury lay off) that might’ve made the prospect of running faster than 3:10/km for a half marathon a bit more realistic. But I didn’t. I didn’t even have a fast parkrun to reflect on, just a slower half. Good food for thought for next time then that it’s nice to roll through the gears with shorter races before going all out on a half.
• So overall that last point can be summarised as I was naive to think I could run such a PB. Hence why I included the pre-race comments in this article to remind me of where my head was at.
• Not having anyone to run with is probably a bit more disadvantageous than I give it credit for. I trimmed my 5k PB down by 25 seconds because I had people to run with. I set a 10km PB running next to someone for 5km’s. My half marathon PB was set running with someone for 12km’s. My marathon PB was set with me running solo for 30ishkm’s until Robbie (2nd place today as well) caught me and spurred me on to drop 10 sec/km off my pace. So my own results are enough evidence to say that to set a PB I need people to run with. Mentally visualising that they’re there or listening to music or having crowd support is not enough. It must be a evolutionary thing or a competitive thing that I run faster when I’m chasing someone. Given this then, it’s pretty cool to know that I can run 68 minutes in a personal time trial.
• Lastly, post-race I felt a bit discombobulated by all the people at the event and tried to do my best at saying hello and chatting with people with my coach hat on, my friend hat to others and then my family hat too. Being the first time with the full RunAsOne group at an event was great for the most part (having somewhere to place my bag, see familiar faces, not viewing them as rivals etc.) however I underestimated in my head as to how many interactions I would have post-race. I know for next time now how busy it will be though and I was glad to get the opportunity to chat to other runners so I’m not complaining about the discombobulated-ness, just acknowledging it so that next time maybe a better strategy is to sort my shit out (get changed, eat some food etc.) away from everyone and then go and chat rather than trying to do both at the same time and doing neither very well…

There you have it though folks, another win in the bag and a good (but not exceptional) result personally. In the end, I didn’t have any juice left when I finished this morning’s climb/half marathon. In a climbing sense I probably either juuuust made it to the top absolutely pumped out of my life or I fell off at the second last bolt. Still, it was pretty good running up until then and it is always nice to know you finished with no juice in the tank.

Up next in my life is some days in Adelaide, attending the RunAsOne training on Tuesday morning, hotfooting it back to Quorn for some climbing on Wednesday and Thursday before hotfooting it back to Adelaide late Thursday/early Friday for a potential trail running race on Sunday. I say potential as I’ll wait a day or two for my body to recover before I pay my entry fee but at this stage I’m 95% confirmed. I’m excited to race on the trails for the first time in almost six months given my last race was the Belair Adelaide Trail Runners Summer Series race. After not running with headphones this weekend I feel like next weekend will be very much a ‘get in the pain cave, put some headphones on and go running through the forest for 1.5hrs‘ type fun. Till then, thanks for reading!

Once again, here’s that video if you didn’t watch it above (it’s only twenty seconds!) Old mate also dies about twenty seconds later too in the movie for your information.

*Fun side-note. The mate I ran past at this moment is Shane Porteous. When I last raced at Barossa in 2017 I was doing the full marathon and started to fatigue at about the same point (with 5-7km’s to go). In 2017, Shane Farley (who’s a great guy too like Shane Porteous) passed me at this point and went on to finish 2nd. Today though, Shane Porteous did not pass me and instead I passed him so I got one back on the Shane’s at Barossa today!

**Very, very lastly, for those that were wondering whatever happened to Georgia at Barossa after she appeared in the start of the race recap but not in the rest of the blog, well, let me tell you that Georgia finally prepared herself adequately to run a half marathon and earned herself a PB of 1:26 (4:06/km average) and 5th place. Highly commendable result from Georgia and something that shows if she continues to train diligently she could run under 1:20. Whether she wants to or not is always the question with Georgia though but this result is at least nice to reflect on if she does decide to retire.

• Race pictures will be added when they get released. I needed to publish/email this before I kept adding to this post any longer!