Fraser Darcy

Committed readers of this blog will have been sitting on the edge of their seats all week wanting to know the answer of ‘when will Fraser race next… Brisbane… Pichi Richi… Cross-country (XC)?’. If you are in the majority of being a committed reader and member of my family or follow my Instagram page you will know the answer. If you’re in the minority of the readers on this site then excellent to have you here and if you’re not already, move to the edge of your seat and read along to find out the answer!

We’ll pick up where things left off firstly, on Wednesday, an ‘easy day’. I was feeling a bit cooked from the heavy volume of training I’d put myself through over the long weekend so gave myself an easy 40 minute run to start the day before I went climbing with Liam from Hawker. I actually felt pretty good and wished I’d started earlier to fit in a full 60 minutes but, I can’t time travel so had to just suck it up and run 40 instead. Climbing with Liam was looking a bit iffy as we wandered up the ascent track in light drizzle. I wouldn’t have been too mad not to climb, and neither was Liam considering he’d just worked 12 days straight, but we figured we may as well check it out.

In the end things were dry enough for me to coax Liam into doing some climbing while I belayed in pants and a down jacket. The climbing was a little more engaging in the slippery conditions and my new climbing shoes were very painful but we made the most of the conditions. It was also good to catch up with Liam and hear the new developments in his workplace arrangements (hint: it’s more exciting than an Australian sit-com). I still pulled some hard moves but didn’t really climb that much. It was probably the effect of the ‘easy day’ mindset. I carried that ‘easy day’ mindset all the way back down the hill, back home and on to the phone for some conversations, almost putting off my afternoon run. I am pretty tired, it’s probably better if I rest right? Nah, keep the ball rolling I thought. I made it out for an easy 40 minutes again and was glad to have done so.

A large factor in forcing myself out the door was the knowledge that I’d be pushing it to get a good hour run in the next day so I may as well bank some km’s while I had the opportunity. Thursday brought with it the last day of climbing with Quorn Area School and my last day of official work at Warren Gorge for the foreseeable future. In a perfect world the session would’ve run as normal. However, the world is not perfect and instead Wilderness Escape (a large organisation offering outdoor ed programs to many schools) were there. I don’t particularly like working near other schools. Not that I’m scared there’ll judge my work (that’s a small part yes, but not the main reason) but more so because it detracts from the ‘aura’ that you get from having the place to yourself. It wasn’t as bad as I thought though, the Quorn students followed my instructions of keeping out of their way and were a much better group of climbers and students than the other school present. We actually looked like we knew what we were doing which helped. It also made ‘the product’ I’ve been delivering to Quorn look very good (for far less cost) in the eyes of the teacher who organised it with me.

Overall it was a good way to finish the four sessions with Quorn. A little cherry on top was that the night before, my phone had blown up with the release of an Instagram post that featured me & RunAsOne. Rather than be at home within phone reception and checking for updates/comments every ten minutes I was instead out at Warren Gorge, away from phone reception and with a group of people who couldn’t care less about my newfound popularity. I can draw a connection from that to remind myself that success in running or whatever doesn’t matter about what’s on Instagram, it only matters about what you’re doing at the time. At that time, I was a climbing instructor, a pretty successful one, but that doesn’t matter as much to the world of Instagram.

Following the climbing I did return to the land of mobile reception and to a message from friend of the blog Karl Finlay of Quorn asking if I was around in town. I said yep and headed out for a run knowing I’d catch up with him afterwards. One plan for this run was to just run easy, maybe sneak down to Adelaide that night for a session with RunAsOne on Friday morning, or my own solo session later on Friday and make it a two session week. Or another plan was a light session on Thursday night and then either a solo session on Saturday or a XC race (so a three session week). I was keen for a light session on Thursday and the names on the start list of the XC race didn’t invoke too much of a ‘race’ mindset in me so wasn’t too concerned about how hard I went. I had pretty much written off racing at this point.

The session ended up being a light 3 lap tempo run around the North Quorn parklands loop. It felt pretty hard to be honest but that was probably because the last continuous ‘tempo’ run I did was the Barossa half marathon almost three weeks ago. It was good to blow the cobwebs a bit.

Back at home, I caught up with Karl, heard how his injury’s going and talked about various Quorn related things. I gave him a brief run-down on my plan to probably not race XC but didn’t entirely rule it out either. Once he left I gave the start list one more look and there were now a few names on there that warranted a ‘race’ for me. My attitude shifted immediately. My previous four races have all been somewhat personal time trials and I know that to be a better runner I need to put myself in races with more competition, hence, racing XC against people who have run similar 10km times to me this year is one way I can do that. The other benefit of doing this XC race was it was a hit-out at XC before State XC on July 20th which has been on my radar since competing in it last year. So, I entered this 8km XC race, slightly regretted doing a tempo session and had a couple of beers to relax myself after a busy ten days or so at Quorn. For now, it was time to head to Adelaide.

On Friday morning of course. After a light 10km run on the rolling hills at the base of Dutchman’s Stern. With that done, then it was time to head to Adelaide.

I arrived in the late afternoon and thought about heading out for an arvo run but I was still pretty tired. Great, I can use the fact that I’m racing tomorrow as an excuse to take this afternoon off, something I should’ve probably done on Tuesday or Wednesday already. By 8pm that Friday night I felt a lot more refreshed and was glad to have not run that arvo.

Saturday morning I kept it pretty low-key, went for a 20 minute jog, did some work on the computer, relaxed, you know, kept it light ready for the race at 1:30pm.

I was pretty excited to race. 8km’s is a funny distance where it’s too long to be a real short, sharp 5km style race, but not long enough to worry too much about pacing. With the course being a 2km loop it also suited my ability to lock into 2km loops like I do on the North Quorn parklands loop. The game plan for the race was to treat the first two laps as ‘relaxed’ and just run with the front runners. Then, in the next two laps, pick it up slowly and make a race of it. I want to improve my confidence in races when I am running with other people and have a mindset of ‘you’re doing great, you’re with these guys, they won’t be able to keep up when you surge’ which is kind of how I feel when training. Instead, usually my thoughts drift to ‘oh fuck, these guys are with me, they must be doing it easy’. So that’s how I approached the race and on the first lap I could feel myself being very conscious of not wanting to let anyone get a lead on me. But also not pushing too hard to get a lead on them.

It continued like that for the whole first lap so that was a success. On the second lap I maintained the same effort and began to pull away slightly. Oh shit, should I drop back and run with them to practice my racing tactics? Or just be confident and run my own race? Fuck it, I’ll just do my own thing. I was pretty confident I hadn’t changed my pace but the others had just slowed down. This was supported by the fact my lap splits for the 2km laps were all within 1-4 seconds of each other across all four laps.

On the third lap, still on my own, I began to feel a bit tired like I’d almost gone out too early. I relaxed a little bit, knowing I had a bit of a lead and wanted something mentally in the tank if the others came back at me. Having not done many XC races, I didn’t know if I was pacing this right or wrong. By the end of the third lap I still had a big lead and knew that things would have to go drastically wrong for me to lose. I still picked it back up though and tried to push myself to the end, ensuring I got the most out of my race. With my lap time being very similar it shows that even though I felt like I closed hard, my fatigue meant that I actually ended up just running the same time for that last lap as the other laps. Still, it was a good consistent performance (and one in which I never actually looked at my watch while I was running) and I got the win by almost forty seconds in the end! Pretty good.

From there I warmed down with the other racer’s and then headed to the Cremorne as part of Georgia’s, sister of the blog, birthday celebrations. Her birthday drinks, the XC race and the ensuing Sunday long run the following morning were all enough cumulative factors to warrant a visit to Adelaide which, given I also ran a quality 31 and a bit km’s at the Sunday long run this morning, meant it was a successful weekend.

From here, into the following week it’ll be back to Quorn eventually to relax knowing I don’t have any climbing work organised and I can focus on getting ahead with some writing/computer based work. I’m in the process as well of putting in an entry to the Brisbane Trail Ultra 20km (which is actually 25km) in two weeks time so I will be focusing the next two weeks on that. I’m putting in the effort to get to Brisbane in the plan that it will; be a competitive race and help me become a better runner, will also help improve my ITRA score and will be an easy comparison for me when I consider how I raced it last year (albeit in the 35km). More on that comparison later though, same for the ITRA implications. Perhaps I’ll save that for the Brisbane race report if I get there.

Other than that folks, both the majority and the minority of you, you now have the answer of what race I ended up doing and what my next race is most likely going to be (still hasn’t been booked yet but I’m in the process). As a reminder, you can always subscribe if you’d like to become a committed reader and join the majority of readers…or you can do whatever the hell you like actually, don’t let me be the boss of you!

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