Fraser Darcy

I left you on a cliffhanger last week citing a sore hip and the promise that if it didn’t get better any regular or irregular readers could get on the text line and send some shade. Well put your phones on hold for the minute and keep your texts in draft format because the sore hip isn’t any sorer, is marginally better and didn’t restrict me from training or racing at all this week. Some may even say me referring to a sore hip is just me being soft but nevertheless I got on with it last week.

Mentioning my hip issues to start with is a great way of keeping another solid week of training humble and within context though. I did what I’ve done every Monday for the last three weeks and ran along the Sturt River for an easy 16km. It all felt pretty easy too as I wore a relatively new pair of Asics Novablast’s to jog along in. Being relatively new, they have a bit more cushioning and hence were going to protect my sore hip a bit more. They did, I ran well and then I jogged a pretty easy afternoon run as well on Monday.

Tuesday’s session at RunAsOne was a simple progression run where the crew runs in circles getting faster each lap for thirty minutes. It’s not as boring as that sounds, the circle is 1.25km’s big, and I play some music on the bike to make it interesting. It is straightforward to set-up for though which means come my own 9:30am session with Connor and Adam, I had a good amount of energy. Having ticked off some k’ reps last week we were back doing mile reps this week. There was 5 of them with the 2nd and 4th ones consisting of (400m hard/400float)*2. Adam and I ran the first four together and then on the fifth and final rep I progressed a bit faster throughout the rep to give me some confidence that I am in good shape. I was a bit sore afterward and decided to see what an afternoon without an easy run would do to my hip so instead of jogging for thirty minutes I did thirty minutes of foam rolling and stretching and seeking some advice from Emma (an actual physio, and not just a Google trained physio like me). Emma prompted me to think about how much single leg work I’ve been doing lately, which is none, which then prompted me to do some single leg work and ipso facto my hip felt better. Physio advice works, who knew?

I could’ve gone ‘gently gently’ and ran only 90 minutes on my Wednesday mid-week long run but after suffering through the first 60 minutes still feeling my hip and questioning my life decisions for why I was even running on a sore hip… BUT instead I ended up feeling no discomfort in my hip after 60 minutes so continued on to 2hrs and then continued onto 30km. On this little adventure of mine I also investigated the course for Saturday’s Ekiden relay. A teams event, the Ekiden relay is a marathon (42.2km) broken up into 6 different legs run by a team consisting of 4 males and 2 females. It was good to check out the course and get excited about the 8km leg I was running. After that, I was pretty jovial considering my hip wasn’t that sore and ran an easy afternoon run down Shepherds Hill Rd. The downhill and off camber nature of the footpath I run along on Shepherds Hill Rd I think does contribute to my hip being sore so I felt it a little bit more on my afternoon run than I would’ve like but I did some more of my single leg exercises and plenty of foam rolling at night afterwards and was confident I was progressing with this niggle.

Thursday. Easy trails at Belair. I considered doing a small session before Saturday’s race but for the third week in a row opted against it. 14km’s along the trails at Belair was good for the body and the soul. A sauna afterwards, the second one for the week after another session on Tuesday, and then I wrapped up this fortnight’s issue of The Blue Line.

Friday. Coaching at RunAsOne kicked off my day and it was a busy session. With the founder of the business Izzi Batt-Doyle due to run in the 5000m heats at the Olympics the following morning we were all up and about in full on cheer mode. To add to that, we had an Asics Rep, Sam Hopper (who seemed very interested in my blog when I mentioned it to him earlier today so may even be reading his own name here!) visit with a truck load of shoes for the crew to try on. AND the session was a fartlek with multiple whistle blasts from yours truly. Busy session and good to get through successfully. I was glad I only had an easy run afterwards to focus on and borrowed a pair of Superblasts from Hopper and took him for an easy hour around Adelaide. Great run and great start to my day knowing as well I’d published the latest version of The Blue Line. For the rest of my day I didn’t do too much, got on top of some admin jobs, went for an easy arvo run in Victoria Park and watched Georgia run. She’s going alright, could be faster but I’m a hard judge. Good thing is she’s motivated to train. The other highlight on Friday was the Olympics athletics program getting underway. Having got through the swimming it’s now nice to watch some real athletes compete. *Tongue in cheek*.

Saturday was of course race day. It was great to be apart of a team for a change as that was an extra motivator. My leg was 4th in the context of the relay so I was able to watch the first few runners go, do my warm-up and then get underway myself. I aimed to run under 24 mins for the 8km’s knowing that only Riley Cocks had done that in the last five years so it was a good benchmark. It would also help put our team in a strong position. We were going in as the defending champions and also underdogs with Izzi and Riley both overseas. I took off on my leg, ran the first 2k lap in 5:53 (7 seconds quicker than needed) and thought I’d blown it early. I slowed to 6:00 for the next lap and didn’t feel too bad.

The little hill was stinging on the third lap and I had to really concentrate on accelerating out of the turns but again I clicked 6:00 for the third lap. I had 7 seconds spare essentially in the last lap to hit sub 24 minutes for 8k. I had a few carrots to chase on the ‘back straight’ which helped spur me on to the finish and eventually ran 23:52 to tick my goal and give the team a big lead. With the way the other closest team to us chose to order their males and females (differently to us) we didn’t actually know how far in front we where and needed to be in order for our last runner to be in the lead. The way it worked out was perfect for the theatre of it. The last runner of our team and the other, as it turned out, equal first team both started off together. They came in together at the end of the first lap, the second lap and pretty much the third lap of their own 8k leg. The opposition’s runner was definitely the favourite while our runner was an U/20’s weapon who doesn’t have much of a resume but what is on there is a 14:20 5k. Everyone loves an underdog getting up or a champion team who is up against it finding a way to win and on Saturday that was our Flinders team. The young fella torched second place on that last lap and our underdog team set a new CR. A great experience to be a part of.

Having gone pretty hard in my effort I was a bit amped up for the rest of the day so hit the sauna to try and get a bit of a reset on my body. It worked well but because I was so amped as I entered the sauna I found it incredibly difficult to stay in there for my usual 30 minutes. I had to drop down to the lower level 20 minutes in to make it through. I blame the race effort for making it difficult as the theory goes that this was my 14th session in the space of three weeks so I should be well acclimated to the conditions. I ended up going back in for another fifteen minutes after a few minutes break and achieved the reset I hoped for. An easy 45 minute jog on the trails in some terrific sunshine capped off a great day and led into a great night of Olympic watching.

Which finally brings me to my last day of the week, Sunday. A shorter long run, only 90 minutes (22k’s) for the week considering I want to freshen up a bit for the Sunshine Coast Half Marathon next weekend. That’s the next major race and has been the goal for a while so it’ll be good to taper for a race for the first time in a while and see what I’m capable of. I have been racing regularly over the last few weeks but none of them have actually involved me running in race mode with competitors right by my side for the continuity of the race. The reason of travelling to the Sunshine Coast is that I should be able to get that competition up there as the race is the National Half Marathon Championships. Because the race is the National Champs I’m also technically representing South Australia for the first time (and getting free entry, accommodation and $150 for travel expenses). So it should be good and I’m looking forward to putting my interstate trail race experience (9 different times I’ve raced interstate on the trails) into my first interstate road running experience.

The Sunshine Coast Half also means next week’s blog will come out slightly a bit delayed but hopefully not by much. Thanks for reading this blog and I look forward to reporting next week.