Fraser Darcy

Well I was pretty cooked coming off the Sunshine Coast Half Marathon last weekend. Physically my hamstrings were the only things that were sore but mentally I was tired. It’s a busy weekend when you fly in, race and fly out in such a short time. Monday’s easy hour along the Sturt River was tough to get motivated for but thankfully due to the routine nature of running there every Monday for the past 5-6 weeks I didn’t need too much motivation to get it done.

Once I ticked that Monday run the ball was rolling again. I was one run removed from my Sunshine Coast race and the more runs I put down the closer I was getting to my next race and next opportunity to test myself. Of course, the next run was on Monday afternoon and seeing as it was such a nice day and I avoided the trails all last week I headed out for my easy arvo run along the trails in Eden Hills. In between these two runs was a fair bit of computer admin, putting together last week’s blog and preparing The Blue Line.

Tuesday. I was now entering the fifth week in a row of being in charge of putting the cones out on a Tuesday morning. I was glad I wasn’t training first thing and glad I wasn’t doing the session the group was of 8*400m, 200 float recovery as I didn’t have the mental capacity for that yet. The session went fine, I relaxed a bit afterward and then the 9:30 crew of Adam and Connor rocked up. I had every right to just jog instead on this Tuesday morning as most people don’t train straight after a hard half-marathon but seeing as I was feeling OK and didn’t want to change my weekly routine and had training partners there to make it mentally easier to switch on and do the session I just turned my brain off and decided to train.

The session was 6*800, 75 second rest between, 6*400, 60 second rest between. Not too bad a session. The aim was to keep the paces controlled with both Adam and Connor aiming to race hard at Fitzy’s 5 on Sunday. I usually train with or just behind Adam so because I felt cooked I opted to run at Connor’s paces. We averaged 2:55/km for the 800’s and below 2:50’s for the 400’s. Pretty good going and I was definitely proud I made it through. My right quad was a bit tight on the start of each of the reps and I thought oh here we go, you’ve cooked yourself but I didn’t feel it at all the rest of the day. Seeing as I pulled up fine from this session I entered Fitzy’s 5 on Sunday with the intention of just seeing how I would go and make it my last hard session before Adelaide Marathon.

I pulled up fine physically from that Tuesday morning session but mentally I was still pretty tired. Another arvo of easy jogging on the trails around home was good to do later in the afternoon but to be honest I was looking forward to some rest.

I didn’t give it to myself on Wednesday morning though. Instead, normal routine, drive to the city, park at the RunHouse, run to the Torrens and this Wednesday I went for 90 minutes. It was good and I wasn’t too tired by the end. I finished off The Blue Line for the week which was a big stress-reliever as being the Olympics Issue there was a lot of content to synthesise and discuss. With a bigger run ticked and The Blue Line 99% finished I was able to relax on Wednesday arvo and went to the sauna for the first time in a week and had the afternoon off running. It was great.

The freshen up of taking Wednesday afternoon off meant my Thursday run around Belair was a bit better than the last few times I’ve been there. I still ran just as slow but actually felt pretty decent. It was of course four days since my half marathon now so it makes sense. Thursday’s are always a bit of slow day because they are as easy as Monday but don’t follow Sunday’s harder efforts. With all my spare time I started writing next month’s training programs and also read my book. Pretty nice way to whittle away the day along with the addition of an easy arvo run.

With Thursday done though that means Friday is here! And with it, the return of Riley and Izzi to RunAsOne. Having been in charge of the cones for a while I relinquished the duty to Riley for his first session back so I could train with the group at 6:30 instead of doing it later at 9:30. It’s not like I don’t like the 9:30 session, I just missed jogging with the group in the morning. Being on the bike and putting the cones out can you make you feel like the odd one out a bit so it was nice to be back in with the majority. I only did 2*6min tempo’s (with one 6 min rep being a bit short) and felt pretty good. That was all I needed to be ready for Fitzy’s. With a reduced session and now being five days after from Sunday’s race I had a bit more energy to do some work on the computer the rest of the day. A quick easy afternoon run was a bonus as well.

Saturday. A real quiet day by my standards which was nice. Again, more computer work to start with, then an easy 40 or so minutes around Belair for a change of scenery on Saturday and then I took my sponsors, Mum and Dad, to the airport. House to myself for a few days. Brilliant. I relaxed all afternoon, cleaned the bathroom, made some dinner and went to bed nice and early. Yes, I was living the high life on Saturday.

Which allowed me to live the fast life on Sunday. It was cool getting up knowing I was going to race a 5k road race on Sunday as opposed to going for a 2hr long run. I left the house at 7:30, picked up the RAO tent from the RunHouse, drove to the Uni loop and was all sorted by just after 8am. I chose to warm-up by myself with my headphones in as I was aiming to get a bit in the zone for this. Yes, I had no expectations on myself with this race considering I have been training for a marathon, but I also wanted to give myself my normal 5k experience. I used to race 5k’s pretty often, once every few months, at a parkrun. This was my first official 5k road race so I wanted to make it a mix between using my parkrun experience (and my track 5k experience earlier in the year of 14:29) and my recent fitness improvements. I knew sub 15 was very achievable but if I could get close to 14:29 that would be pretty good too. Realistically, 14:40 something was probably where most people would’ve had me pencilled in. Going off the results of prior years, that would be a solid enough time for Top 5. This year however, there was an interesting field of runners with some tipping that five-six guys wold be going around 14:10-20 pace. I’d love to run 14:20 so if a pack did go at that speed I thought it’d be interesting to see how I’d go. My get-out-of-jail-nothing-to-lose card was that I had raced a half marathon on Sunday, hadn’t really been doing any 5k specific work and had a marathon coming up too that I was focused on.

I didn’t think about that stuff that much though on the start line. I was more wondering what the little 14 year old kid thought he was doing standing right next to me. The gun went and I out sprinted him to get myself sitting nicely in the lead pack. Up front was Isaac Heyne who was capable of running sub 14 minutes and was reportedly going to. Behind him was five other guys and me. We were running very fast to start with and clocked the first km in under 2:50. Too fast probably but again, I was there to see how I’d go and had nothing to lose.

I was still in the pack at the end of the second km but was definitely starting to tire. I didn’t feel too bad aerobically but more mechanically couldn’t keep moving my legs that fast. It was also different to be running a 5km on a loop course instead of the Port Augusta parkrun where I had plenty of visual cues to know how far off I was from finishing. I had slipped off a bit coming through halfway and the third km turned out to be my worst. With a slight uphill I almost ended up running over 3:00/km for that km but was able to sneak under. Up ahead, another runner in the pack had dropped off and I was making ground on him. Behind me, Adam, my training partner who should be better than me over 5km, was coming up. I had forgotten about him in the race for the first few km’s and now the fact he was coming up was a great confidence booster. Oh great, I’ll tack on to him and he can take me through to the finish just like training. We ended up passing the other runner around 3.5km’s in. I felt strong again and took the lead off Adam at the 4km mark and was even winding it up for the finish. I knew my average pace off my watch indicated 14:30 was around the mark so I might be able to run something pretty fast. With about 400m to go the other runner came up to us again and I thought oh here we go, they’re going to out kick me aren’t they… Sure enough, just before the final corner they both took off and I had nothing. That’s probably the effect of my training and their talent being too good for me. They ran 14:29 and I ran 14:35 to finish 7th. It’s probably the fastest 7th place finish Fitzy’s has seen in a while. To also be within 6 seconds of my track time is quite good as most pundits would give anywhere from 10-20 seconds difference between track 5000m and road 5km times. So, a road 5km PB was a nice reward for the race but really, I was happy I gave 14:20 a go, showed to myself I still have work to do to get there (or maybe I just need to be fresher going into it) and glad I proved that my 14:29 from earlier in the year wasn’t a fluke.

After the race there was the obligatory warm down and chat with some of my mates in the group. I spent the rest of the afternoon, visiting the sauna, popping in to see Emma and Dylan, cleaned my car and doing a whole lot of not much.

Coming up this week is now another race, the Adelaide Marathon. I am excited to see where I am at over the marathon having significantly improved my speed, by 30 seconds over 5km, since this time last year. As it gets closer to the event I keep focusing on my goal to try and run the best race I can on the day and not worry about what result that gets me. If I can execute a race as good as I did last year then I will be happy. If that gets me a PB, great. If the conditions on the day don’t make that possible then that’s a bummer but it’s more important to focus on how I race as that’s what people will remember. You very quickly make a name for yourself if you go out too hard in a marathon and blow up. I like the idea of measuring myself up against the Adelaide Marathon for the third year in a row. I’m not sure if I’ll do it again next year (although it is slated for April 2025, not August) so I will also be making sure I make this effort count. Another factor I’m looking forward to is the increased crowd support from RunAsOne runners and maybe even some blog readers!

The race starts at 6:30am from just in front of Adelaide Oval this year (the course is the same but the start point and direction have been changed) so if you’re around come out and say ‘good work’ or something like that. I might give a thumbs up if I hear it or I might just be pretty focused. Who knows. What you will know in a week’s time is how it all went as that’s of course the focus of next week’s blog! Thanks for reading this one!