Fraser Darcy

Another week of training and another week that started on Monday in Belair. I have noticed a habit of mine that when I am going well with my running I tend to stick to the same routes on the same days. There’s value in this because I can measure my fatigue or improvement from week to week but there’s also negatives in this approach because I don’t get to experience the sense of freedom and spontaneity that can come with running somewhere new. Anyway, I continued with this habit for another week on Monday in Belair and ran an easy 10 miles, bumping into Nitta on the way through. I was a bit flat to start with coming off Victor the day before but by the end felt good. Some gym work before midday, program writing in the afternoon, an easy afternoon run of 10km’s and then that was the first day of the week ticked.

The second day of the week started with some cycling at the 6:30 RAO session and then straight into my own session at 8:45am. I didn’t have to wait for anyone to get going again and started when I wanted too. It didn’t stop me from feeling a bit lethargic in my warm up though which I always put down to the come down from a high energy environment in the morning at 6:30, to just me being on my own at 9am in Botanic. Coming off the race and recognising that Friday’s session was going to be 4 minute reps with a jog in between, I wanted to do something that had some easy aerobic work in there but also finished fast. I chose to do a broken progression run going in intervals of 4k, 3k, 2k, 1k with roughly a 90 second jog in between. If I could manage marathon pace, half marathon pace, 10k pace, 5k pace respectively that would be great but I placed a larger emphasis on just running to feel.

In the first interval, 4k, I had to slow myself down initially and then settled into a nice rhythm. 4k’s around Botanic is a little over 2 laps so it’s pretty easy mentally to focus on. I came out at 3:22/km for the first one, bang on marathon pace. After a short jog back to the start I got into the 3k effort which is essentially 1.5 laps. The last 0.5 of a lap was a bit too fast but since I was just running to feel I let it happen. I ended up averaging 3:10/km. A little too fast for half marathon pace but again, it was to feel. For the 2k it was basically 1 lap. The feeling was good by now, my lethargy had disappeared and my tail was up. I averaged 3:02/km for this effort and was a little concerned I had overcooked it. To keep myself from really throwing the kitchen sink at this session I chose to do the final 1km effort with two turns in it on the slowest part of the course. It sort of helped as I had to measure my effort in the first 600m of the rep but still finished fast to average 2:58/km. Overall, it was a pretty good session and I was satisfied.

When you tick off a satisfying session like that by yourself it really sets up the rest of your day. I finished off almost all of my remaining programs for the month in the afternoon and thought I was due for another good afternoon run but this one actually sucked a bit. Oh well, there’s always tomorrow for another good afternoon run.

Wednesday’s are the day of the week where I get to run with someone and again it was Jacob for the first 75 minutes of my run and last 75 minutes of his. Once I dropped him off at his house I started to pick up the effort without really noticing it or deciding to. The last two weeks I had gone in with a plan to pick up the effort but this week I was much trying to lock into a state of mind of just feeling good during this mid week long run. By 90 minutes in I was hitting sub 4min/km’s and continued to increase my pace until I ran a 3:15/km. How did it feel though? Well it felt good, hence why I did it and hence why I enjoyed it very much. I followed this run up with another, smaller gym session for the week and finally finished off my programs for the month. It’s a satisfying feeling ticking that job off and this time, the satisfying feeling did contribute to a positive afternoon run.

As I wandered out the driveway for my afternoon run I thought ‘I wonder what a double threshold or special block day feels like’. That’s in reference to basically doing two sessions in one day. I just wondered this fact as I wandered out. Feeling good though, the wondering soon turned to finding out what it felt like. I didn’t look at my watch until 5km’s in and by then had been averaging 3:50/km and was moving well. The average didn’t improve that much over the next couple of uphill km’s but in the final km’s of that 10km jog where I was running faster than marathon pace it certainly did (to eventually finish with an average of 3:42/km). How did it feel though? Amazing. I felt light, I felt smooth and I felt fast. I wasn’t overreaching and I wasn’t labouring. This is how running should feel. Dinner down the Broadway later that night was a perfect finish to a good day of running.

When you have a good day of running, or a good day of anything really, the worry is that the good thing will end. You can’t have a good thing all the time right? There has to be balance? Half expecting this Thursday morning run to be crap I was pleasantly surprised when it wasn’t. It felt better than Monday’s 10 miles in Belair. The rest of the day was more admin work for a bit and then a bit of relaxing in the afternoon which was nice! The relaxing vibe continued into the theme of my afternoon run on Thursday as I chose to do it down by the beach and have a swim afterwards. An easy 10km on the flats meant I averaged 4:02/km. Some drills and strides followed, and of course, a refreshing swim.

Two good days in a row of running, surely that means the third day will be a bit cooked? Not necessarily. Why don’t I just back my self and believe I can have good days and average days but not necessarily need to have a bad day just to balance out the good days? I’m sure I’m not the only one who thinks like that so why do we do that? There’s a few theories I have on that but I also don’t have time for that.

On Friday, the hopefully third good day in a row (although Tuesday was a pretty good day though so doesn’t that mean you’ve already had three good days. Shut up and just stay on topic Fraser!), I was on the bike again for the 6:30am session meaning I was on my own again afterwards given the usual 9:30am crew had either already trained or were still recovering from overseas trips/races. I opted to do something similar to the 6:30am group but altered it to fit it in with the shape of Botanic.

Essentially, I ran a hard 4:20ish rep of the nice road part of Botanic and then jogged the straight bike path section (2minute jog). I again was a bit lethargic to start and knew that if I aimed to do 6 reps, I could at least use the first two to get going and run them a bit slower to build some momentum. I sort of did this and sort of just ran to feel. I’m really enjoying training by myself and learning to run to feel again and it showed. I averaged 3:06/km for the first one and 2:58/km for the last one and wasn’t overreaching at all. Perhaps I could’ve taken the jogs a bit faster to illicit some more training stress but running to feel is all about listening to the body and so instead, I just jogged how I felt. I warmed down, did another small gym session to keep the body fresh and then spent the rest of the day relaxing watching the cricket as I really had nothing better to do. A nice cruisey afternoon run was a welcome change from two semi-fast days of afternoon running in a row.

Saturday is possibly my favourite ‘lighter’ training day of the week compared to Monday and Thursday. I think it’s because I get to run with people on Saturday’s and I also know I have had a pretty successful week by then already. This Saturday was the last RAO trail session for the year and we had almost 30 people turn out for a mixture of tempo and short hill repeats. Having done a session the day before but wanting to lead from the front, I did 2 sets of the tempo + short hills and found it was a great way to break up an easy 13ish km’s. You can probably guess already that having had a relaxing Friday afternoon around my running, Saturday was a pretty relaxing day as well. You are correct if you guessed that. It’s all about keeping fresh for Sunday and potentially a busy week ahead.

I finished off my relaxing Saturday afternoon with a spontaneous hit of tennis with Dad into a nice Saturday arvo run of just 8km’s. Pretty good to know I can play tennis again after my experiment on my birthday wasn’t that successful. Talking of experiments, so far, 5 weeks into my experiment as a 200+km a week runner is going well. I am enjoying being creative with how I reach the volume I need and am enjoying not absolutely flogging myself in the mid week sessions. Going forward for the next three weeks I would like to try and extend the quality on Friday’s sessions and run them more at marathon pace and see how I respond to that. So far, I’ve been handling the 3:00/km-3:10/km reps well, and also some speed stuff, but how do I go with 15km’s at 3:20/km for example (knowing I did 15+km’s at 3:30/km or slightly slower in the early stages of the experiment without any issues). In a way, I’ve been funnelling my training from running steady, progressive runs between 3:30-3:50/km and fast 2:50/km-3:10/km sessions into now hoping to run more volume at 3:10-3:25/km (aka marathon pace). We’ll see how it goes and you can read all about it.

But first, to wrap up this week I finished off on Sunday with a nice easy long run. I was receiving the SARRC Club Champion award for 2024 at 9:30am so knew I had to start at 7am and finish at the Uniloop (presentation venue) to fit 2.5hrs in. This meant I had to start at the Uniloop, run to the RunHouse (7km’s ticked off there), run with the group (24km’s ticked off with group, bringing me to 31km’s), a few km’s back to the Uniloop (35km’s ticked off) and then one final loop of the Uniloop because presentations hadn’t started and I was feeling good. I linked up with some other runners for this last loop and had to slow down from the 3:40’s I was running at the time. I had sort of wanted to run faster than the 4:14/km I averaged but instead it was nice to run for 2hrs 40 minutes and not feel like I had run at all. The first thirty minutes of my run was probably the worst I felt throughout actually. I was all tight and my stomach felt full from dinner and breakfast still whereas by the end I felt light, warm and fresh. Having ticked 38k’s pretty comfortably the game plan over the next few weeks should be to increase the speed of those 35-38km’s and see how that goes. The toughest part of that will probably be having the discipline to leave the group behind and get some faster work in. Perhaps by writing it here I will be held accountable to myself.

The only way to find out is subscribe and read about it next week I guess. Thanks for reading.