Fraser Darcy

There are many moments throughout the week that make me go ‘this’ll be the theme of the week in the blog’ and for once this week they were all about the one thing. Locking in. Coming to you on a Sunday after a long run it’s all very optimistic this week in fraserdarcy.com which seemed a long way away on Monday.

Monday started like any of the last three Monday’s. Sore and with plenty of admin/work to do. Having had my birthday over the weekend I lost a bit of time to write some programs for coaching and was chasing my tail. The only pleasing thing about not having the ability to run as much as I’d like is it meant I had more time to work on the computer. Late in the day I was fortunate to have another appointment with the best physio in the Darcy family. While nowhere near fully healed, and with it being very sore after playing tennis on Sunday night, my left hip/leg issue had at least progressed since I last visited Emma. A few strength indicators were improved and the difference between left and right legs was less as a result. These gains are only ‘neurological’ (AKA my body is remembering how to use some muscles I haven’t been using for a while) and it will still take a few more weeks at least to actually get strong. Emma was hoping that I could keep my running load to around 100km’s while that happened but in a recurring theme in the great Fraser v Emma wars I advanced an alternate theory where I try to run 140-160km’s instead. Emma wasn’t impressed. Having been treated by her though and with Monday ticked off I was pleased to get the week underway.

Tuesday. On the bike at RAO for a standard 1km/800/700m rep session. Different to last week where I ran my own session afterwards on the track, this week I opted to just jog an hour with the 9:30 crew afterwards. I didn’t have a race on my calendar this week and the new priority, much to Emma’s delight, was to just jog this week until I could run 2hrs. It wasn’t the greatest jogging for an hour on Tuesday but it was still better than nothing. There wasn’t much to report about the rest of the day either. And at this stage of the week I was still relatively grumpy and certainly not locking in to anything which shows just how a few moments can change the course of a week.

Wednesday. ‘Mid week long run’ day. And also driving to Quorn day. For the second week in a row. Plus I still had a decent number of programs to write. Gah, give me a break universe. I started my run off early to get a headstart on the day and thirty minutes in I was already doubting whether I would make it to one hour. The only comforting thought was that I had been in this position a couple of times in the last few weeks and had tended to make it further than I felt I could when sore. The ‘un’comforting thought was that my headphones were dropping in and out so instead of having The Doors blasting straight into my skull like a spike into my veins, I was having to deal with technology issues. AND if there’s one thing I don’t like in this world it’s things that are designed to make life easier malfunctioning or not working correctly and making my life harder (this also goes for rules and regulations!). Hence, I aborted my run at 45 minutes, went to The RunHouse, retrieved a spare pair of headphones and went back out a new man. The second version of my run was another 45 minutes so in total I had 21km’s ticked. Beauty. We might be finally getting somewhere.

Of course I had to then tick off some work at The RunHouse and then get on the road to Quorn for some orienteering work the next day. Cue another moment of getting locked in. I chose to listen to some Hoodoo Guru inspired music on the drive up and started to relax a fair bit with the change in playlist. Having a large music library and taste allows me to re-experience old songs and be reminded of good memories and moods when listening to something I haven’t touched in a while. The good weather on the drive back helped too and I almost thought about going for a second arvo run.

But I didn’t as I had some work to do plus needed to relax after the drive before a big Thursday. Just like last week, I got up early, ticked off some work, got a good run in, still listening to the Hoodoo Guru’s, and went off to work for the final orienteering session.

Walking back to my car six hours later was very nice. There’s only so many times you walk back to your car after finishing work for what could possibly be the final time with a certain employer (who knows what I’ll be available for next year). It’s very free’ing and is up there with one of the most underrated moments of life in my opinion. Bottle that emotion up of course and open it up on an afternoon run and what do you get? Well another moment towards locking in.

After several weeks of having to jog easy and ‘play by the rules’ of having an injury I was getting sick of the restriction on my running freedom that it had on me. Sure, I’d blown off steam each weekend with a race but the Monday – Saturday had been a drag. Jog easy, stretch lots, foam roll, take anti-inflamms, cross-train, run within yourself. Add to that the work and jogging I had been doing with RAO, plus all the program writing this week, had meant running had started to become a real rule-governed area of my life. Which is not how I first started to enjoy running. I find running enjoyable because it’s fun to run fast in the direction of somewhere, it’s fun to run fast listening to great music, it’s fun to work hard in the pursuit of a goal even though you will never know you’re doing the right work or it’s even the right goal, it’s the doing it that is important. Running and managing an injury in Adelaide though I had definitely lost sense of that side of my running. It’s what happens when you have an injury. There’s positives that come from it and also negatives. This week I had started to turn the tide back in my favour though and the best song I could think of on my Thursday afternoon that represented it is Paranoid Android by Radiohead.

I know a lot of people who read this probably won’t listen to the full song or have never heard it before so the short fraserdarcy.com version is it’s pretty mundane for a fair bit (hello Adelaide living), there’s some guitar and bits and pieces going, then it really drops down a notch and really mellows out (hello injury time) and then it kicks up into a new level at the end (hello getting locked in) and finishes with a crescendo.

What does this all mean exactly? Well it means I’m getting locked into training properly again. I drove back to Adelaide on Thursday night with a new sense of optimism that I might just be getting somewhere.

Well of course I was getting somewhere, I was getting back to Mum and Dad’s. Not for a long time though as I again had training on Friday morning. I was a bit more up and about this time and carried that into my own run. I took off down the street pretty fast to get things going and held on that pace for the first few km’s. I still could feel a fair bit of a niggle in my leg so it wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows but god it felt good to just run with a bit of freedom. The Hoodoo Guru inspired playlist was back on and I also played a game where I didn’t stop my watch or myself for traffic.

I enjoy running in Quorn with it’s open roads and minimal traffic but running in Adelaide is the antithesis of that. Or that’s what I’d let it be. Instead this run I chose to fuck it and dodge traffic, change direction if I needed in order to keep moving the whole 80 minutes I ended up running. I finished the run feeling pretty happy with myself just as you should after finishing a good run. That feeling carried into some more bike work for the 9:30 crew helping support Adam and Izzi in their training so I ended up covering 60km’s between my own running and two bike sessions for the day.

Unfortunately that meant the dreams I had of finishing all my programs for the week and getting them out by November 1st was dead. It wasn’t a big deal though as everyone’s program already has November 2nd and 3rd on it but it still made me feel as if I’d failed a bit.

Oh well, I had a chance to rectify that on Saturday of course. I first helped coordinate the RAO trail session in the morning and we had a really good turnout which was great. I did some jogging as well but had pulled up a bit lame from the 60k’s of training the day before. Oh well, more time in front of the computer finishing off programs would allow me to recover.

Ticking them off before 5pm was a relief and meant I was free for the rest of my Saturday. Fuck yeah, afternoon run time. I didn’t know how I’d go with this one given I was sore from the day before and my goal was to jog 2hrs at the long run the following day, but, I was also heavily influenced by the optimism of locking in to training and remembering some good old fashioned training principles.

Side note for a second, the big dogs back in the day, under the guidance of famous coaches like Arthur Lydiard, used to prioritise a conditioning phase that lasted anywhere from 10 weeks to 6 months. During this phase a runner builds their mileage as much as possible with only running in the aerobic zone. Not all running is easy and in fact, most of it is good old fashioned steady running (3:30/km-4:10/km). The type of stuff that is not really touched on much when in specific training (3:30/km-4:10/km is not race pace for me).

Having remembered these old training principles I went out for a good old fashioned arvo run and ended up having one of my best runs since the Sydney Marathon. Runs like this were also a staple of how I first started enjoying running by trying to run faster over certain courses with no warm-up or warm-down. Real running you might call it. Running from the door with no plan in mind but only music in my head. Of course, it must be addressed I have the freedom and energy to run like this at the moment because I haven’t been running the normal mileage I was back in the middle parts of the year. If I were I would be too tired for any of this. But that is of course the specific phase of my training and racing anyway so it’s not necessary to be able to run at 3:55/km for my afternoon run. This phase that I’ve been experimenting with locking into this week is certainly fine to run that hard. If of course I can maintain it and not get injured again which is always a risk.

But what’s life without a little bit of risk goddam it! Give me an opportunity to take some managed risk in a relatively safe way that’s not harming anyone else and I hope I grab it with both hands every time. if not, dial 0421 866 281 because I’ll need a good talking to.

I took more of a risk on Sunday morning in the 2hr long run. Feeling good I pressed the pace a bit and most of the group ended up averaging 4:00/km for however long they went. I personally went for 2hrs and collected 30km’s to make it 130km’s for the week. Yeah I’m tired now but not overly sore so things are still positive. Looking back on my last return from an injury towards full training volume in April/May, I did 30km’s like this two weeks before the Barossa Half where I ran 68:00 solo. Realising that it’s a nice confidence booster to know even though I’ve ran 31:30ish for two different 10k’s over the last couple of weeks, I’m probably not that far off something a bit quicker in a couple more weeks.

Sounds like you’re alluding to what’s coming up then Fraser? Well yes and no. I’d love to get a benchmark in a month’s time across 10k’s probably again but we’ll see. The plan for the next couple of months is to continue getting my leg strong (first priority, aren’t you proud of me Emma) get my running volume up with it mostly being good aerobic running and that’s about it. I can lock in to that plan for a bit because my work commitments are all loosening off and I’m not desperate to enter any races at the minute. Things can very quickly change though, just look at the difference between my Monday run and my Sunday run this week so that plan is subject to change. For now, thanks for reading and enjoy another song and excerpt from the Hoodoo Guru inspired playlist (see note below it as well).

If you’re reading this you’ll either think fuck yeah, this guy’s talking about what running should be sometimes, not all so regulated all the time, following a program and prescribed paces like the rest of our homogenised lives. The tempo/vibe of Dumb Things by Paul Kelly matches that feeling of what running should be like when running hard for fun in the aerobic zone. If you’re not thinking that well then, you probably think he’s done all the Dumb Things and this is just another one!