Fraser Darcy

Another week in the life of fraserdarcy.com and another race report special. This will be the theme of my normal weekly recap for the next few weeks so soak it up ladies and gentleman. I am finding it easy at the moment to race as regularly as I am partly due to the fact that I have chosen to ‘indefinitely’ base myself in Adelaide. I’m not here to muck about on the weekend when there’s good racing to be had. I am here, as the title suggest, to do a job, and a good one at that. With that preface in mind, on Wednesday I ran…

Just kidding. The week always starts on a Monday. Which also means the vagaries of Monday’s moods are forgotten and a little less colour is involved on Monday’s recap. BUT THAT’S WHERE THE WEEK STARTS, so, on Monday, I ran an easy 16km’s along the Sturt River. 2 more km’s than last Monday’s efforts. Fairly good. Easier to do it a day after a long run and not a day after a trail running race as I did the week before. I followed up the run with a sauna, some jobs on the computer and an easy arvo run. The arvo run was at Belair just double checking the location of the RunAsOne (RAO) trail session so that made it easier to do as I felt like I was doing a job out there.

Tuesday was a session with RunAsOne where I was helping coordinate instead of actually training. There were some other coaches also keen to help so it was pretty straightforward in the end. The crux of the morning was working out when I should eat my breakfast. Before ‘coaching’ and risk getting hungry again before my own 9:30 session or after ‘coaching’ and risk it being too close to my own session. I opted for before and by the time 9:15 rolled around I felt I had timed it perfectly. I was again training with Jacob and Adam, the main characters from last week’s training sessions, and our session was 5*Mile repeats (1.6km) with only 1 minute recovery progressing from 5:00>>4:40 per mile over the course of the session. That’s 3:08/km to 2:55/km pace.

We started out bang on 5:00 for the first one no thanks to me as I was just going off the pace of Jacob and Adam as they are the two fitter athletes. My watch settings were also a bit cooked so I couldn’t really pace it if I tried. The second rep was 4:56 (one second too slow than planned), then 4:47 (three seconds too quick), then 4:42 (again too quick) and then 4:35. I felt strong on the first four. You know what that means though. I hung on a bit on the 5th one which is good because I certainly wouldn’t have been able to do that on my own. It was a pretty good session in the end.

I followed the session up with another sauna (7th day in a row so far) and had some strange sauna behaviour once again. A man was watching an electronic music concert in the middle of the sauna room while pacing the room holding a grip trainer in either hand. Not so strange behaviour if you’re by yourself in your own sauna room but with ten other people all facing you and watching you, it’s a little weird. Great entertainment for me, but a little weird. There was of course an extra arvo run on Tuesday as well. Sauna man probably would think I’m a little weird for running so much so it all evens out in the end.

Wednesday. Mid-week long run day. Last week I was happy to run just under 2hrs. This week’s goal was therefore 2hrs on the dot. I went out along the Torrens on the same path as last week but instead of spinning around at Port Rd, I just kept going. I was happy enough to have only one route choice decision to make instead of trying to find good loops in Victoria Park to keep me motivated. There was a fair bit more rain than I expected throughout the 2hr run. I was worried my headphones were going to get cooked but in the end we made it through. The presence of my headphones and music meant I got ‘rolling’ a bit towards the end which was an unexpected bonus. With Hills 2 Henley on the cards for next Sunday I was keen to see what 3:30/km felt like in my jogging shoes and whether it’s doable I could race it in them (to protect my good race shoes). It didn’t feel too bad so the option is definitely there (and I would’ve raced it in jogging shoes two years ago and been none the wiser). The pickup in pace meant I cracked 28km’s for the midweek long run in 2hrs.

Running 2hrs in the morning and then visiting the sauna afterwards and then knowing I’ve still got an arvo run coming means the middle part of my afternoon is pretty low key. Sometimes I don’t think it’s a great feeling to be just relaxing on the couch or my bed while most other people my age are working but I do reconcile that by making sure I focus on my own running and coaching as if it were a proper job. There’s not too many other people running 180km weeks so I feel like I’m doing ok at it but there are some people managing 180km weeks and working in other states around Australia so I’m definitely not patting my back. Another comforting thought came in reading an article on the ABC website about the Olympics.

I’m not an Olympian or even close to being one but that doesn’t really stop me from devoting myself to athletic pursuits. Reading little passages like this does give me a sense of yeah, it’s not a stupid thing to be so focused on running and not working that much, I’m just honouring the gods after all.

On Thursday I was in two minds about doing a short tempo session in preparation for Saturday’s XC race or just keeping it easy. I ran at Belair and felt pretty tired and cooked (I don’t think I recovered well enough after the sauna on Wednesday) so gave the tempo session a miss and instead rationalised that 14km’s through Belair over hills is a good enough stimulus. Gladly, I had a nice distraction from an arvo spent doing computer jobs and relaxing on the couch as I needed to visit Chad and Emily to collect some things they had picked up from Quorn for me. Visiting friends is always a good way I find to get a break from the monotonous nature of counting km’s and training sessions. An unexpected bonus was also catching up with former outdoor ed colleague and friend Jimmy who had been cycling all across the world for 7 months. It did mean I started my arvo run a bit later than normal (by about ten minutes) but the afternoon of conversation was worth it.

Fr- Fr- Fr-Friday folks. Another RunAsOne coaching session, this time a straight tempo so very easy to help set-up and ‘coach’ at. With my race the following day I also didn’t need to hang around and wait until 9:30am for my own run so was able to get out the door and run at 8am (and avoid the rain). Also, due to the fact I was racing the next day I only ran an easy hour and then I was done. And done for the day too… no easy double! And I avoided the sauna for a second day in a row to ensure I wasn’t too cooked heading into the race. So if you guessed that Friday was a pretty relaxing day with no sauna and no double then yes you are right. I got a haircut to fill in the time. I also watched Essendon tear my heart into small pieces on Friday night. And that was about it.

Saturday. Race Day. And RAO Trail day. I enjoyed having a reason to get up and go for a small jog before the XC race and that reason was ‘coaching’ at the RAO Trail session at Belair I’d scoped out earlier in the week. We had a good small crew out and it’s nice thinking how I know everyone who comes out to the RAO Trail sessions now considering only two or three months ago I was heading out to my first one. My own personal warm up jog went fine and by 9:30am I was back home relaxing on the couch having a good breakfast. A few hours of digestion later and we finally get too…

State XC! This was my first race against my training partner Jacob since late February. Was it going to be the day I finally held on to him for a few km’s and might even challenge for the win? I’d been holding onto him for half the training sessions I’ve done with him, if not more, so the evidence from training suggested it was possible. It is a goal of mine to eventually beat him (having never won in 16 years of competition against him) and if I never stand on a start line without a little bit of belief then I never will. Hence, I had a faint sense of hope I might be able to hang onto Jacob through the opening laps. I wasn’t too concerned about any other competitors unless I blew up from hanging on for too long or was just having a really bad day. I felt good in the warm-up though, stood confidently on the start line and even got a good start into the first corner.

That’s when things started to unravel a bit. Oh boy, on the first corner Fraser? Yeah… Holding onto Jacob up the first hill I thought oh there’s no relaxing it into today is there, he’s putting the foot down early. I didn’t know it at the time but moments earlier on the start line a comment from the official about Jacob being DQ’ed for not checking in wasn’t a joke like I had interpreted it but was actually serious. Jacob knew it was serious and wasn’t put off by it like some people might’ve been. Instead, it had the opposite effect and he took off with extra adrenaline. Which meant that poor me, hanging on for dear life only 500m in to the 10km race had to let him go much earlier than I hoped. Fuck me, same old story, get dropped even earlier than you would in training, what happened to the attitude of hanging of for as long as you can. Yeah that attitude dissipated pretty quickly simply for the fact that at that early stage of the race Jacob still had the energy to run very very fast over the course that I just couldn’t keep up. So despite having all this motivation to dissipate some of my own anger from watching Essendon lose the night before I had to just suck it up, let Jacob go and relax into my own race.

Which still went pretty well. I slowed down across the first three laps but the last three laps of the 2km course were actually all the same showing me that I judged my effort pretty well. Due to the nature of the course I was able to sneak a glance at the pack behind me in the early laps of the race and I knew that I was extending my lead which was a nice comforting factor. With a big lead heading into the end of the 4th lap I knew I had 2nd spot all sewn up so was able to drop the hammer a bit and try and close in on Jacob as much as possible. The beauty about racing compared to training is when it comes to dropping the hammer I don’t have to worry about ‘controlling’ my effort like I often do in training. Don’t go too hard in training, save these efforts for race day. It was race day! Time to go!

The context to dropping the hammer on the last lap and ensuring I race somewhat ‘uncontrolled’ through to the finish line was that at last year’s State XC, my first XC since high school, I finished over two minutes behind Jacob. Hence, my other goal, if I couldn’t hang on to him for as long as I hoped, was to not lose by more than a minute this year. At each lap I was able to get a glance of how far he was in front and with this final lap to go I had thirty seconds to play with. I made sure I did empty myself on the final uphills and downhills but noticed how, much like in a trail running race, my acceleration into and out of corner’s was a lot slower than the first lap. That’s just natural I think. My increased effort on the final downhills and flat helped make that lap the same time as the previous two laps and also meant I managed to finish in under a minute (around thirty seconds to be exact) behind Jacob to claim 2nd place in a proper State Championship. Pretty cool in that aspect but it also felt a bit hollow knowing there wasn’t a very strong field this year.

Right after the race I asked Jacob what his time was to see how close to my goal I came and was a bit confused as to Jacob’s non-reaction to the whole race, kind of staring off into space. When he said that the DQ comment wasn’t a joke and he actually was DQ’ed I was pretty disappointed. Yes he made a mistake by not going over and highlighting his name to ‘check-in’ but that’s a harsh penalty. And I certainly wasn’t going to feel like a winner because I know Jacob beat me so no-one would’ve gained anything out of it. In the end Jacob sorted it out and we all got our rightful medals.

I’m happy with my race for a number of reasons; being thirty seconds behind Jacob in any other State XC’s would’ve put me in the Top 5 easily, running 3:09/km as an average pace is over 10seconds/km quicker than the cross country I did a month ago, and 30:44 for 9.7km’s is actually pretty damn fast for a grassy, muddy, hilly course. I’m also sad or disappointed about my race as well because really, how can you be 100% happy with a race if you don’t win? I might never beat Jacob but accepting that as a fate now while I can still try seems a bit stupid. So that means my underlying theory is that one day I can beat him and that day was not Saturday so therefore Saturday was not a 100% successful race. Despite it not being 100% successful, I was still pretty happy when I had a couple of beers and hot chips at the pub afterwards with Jacob and other runners.

A couple of beers and hot chips followed by some pasta at home for tea and I was fuelled up for Sunday’s long run. Last week if you remember I ran 2.5hrs for 35km’s and felt pretty good after it. This week, same strategy, I started half an hour early before the group starts and then 2hrs with other people to reach 2.5hrs. This week I reached 36 and a bit km’s as the pace picked up once again in the final few km’s. All good training for the next few months worth of races.

Which obviously includes next weekend’s Hills 2 Henley 30km. I won it last year in a pretty fast time and am hoping to race it in a bit more of a controlled effort but will see who rocks up on the day. Having run 180km’s this week for the second week in a row, if I can nail another 180km’s and race Hills 2 Henley well then I will be happy. That’ll give me two weeks until the first A grade race of the next few months, the Sunshine Coast Half Marathon. Judging by my training, I’m currently in some of the best shape I’ve ever been so I just have to keep rolling these weeks out without too much fuss and maintain my consistency and positive attitude to racing. Having a purpose of doing well for the RAO group makes that very easy as does representing Team South Australia at Sunshine Coast or Flinders Athletics Club at State XC or the upcoming Ekiden relays race. I’m getting a bit too ahead of myself though forecasting all my next races and will cut it there for this week from a training perspective.

But that’s not it for this week’s blog in total. It would be rude not to continue with some commentary around The Great Sauna Project of 2024 of course. On Sunday afternoon I didn’t head out for an easy afternoon run and instead opted for a return to the sauna. It was pretty packed and none of the usual suspects were in there which was a bit disappointing. I started sweating alot earlier than I did on my last few visits which told me that maybe I’d lost a teeny tiny little bit of heat adaptations. Or maybe I was actually better heat adapted because my ability to sweat had improved. I could do some research to find out and be sure of the answer but at this very moment I’m only interested in publishing this blog. I lasted thirty minutes, went for a break, and then did another twelve and a half minutes. The game plan now with the sauna is to continue to do these sessions sporadically to maintain the head adaptations up until Sydney Marathon.

And now that’s where I’ll cut it for this week. Two weeks in a row of 180km’s heading into a hopeful 3rd week of 180km’s including a race on Sunday. Thanks for reading!