Fraser Darcy

There is an over-used line that there are three certainties in life; death, taxes and insert whatever item is relevant to whatever you’re talking about. For this week’s blog that ‘item’ is my annual pilgrimage to Port Victoria.

Long time blog readers, all six of you, will know that the week after Christmas I make my way to Port Victoria for a period of annual ‘hibernation’. All it involves usually, for those unacquainted first time blog readers, is instead of driving for my runs, I run from my family’s beach house, and instead of ‘working’ on my computer I spend my time watching sport, napping, going for a swim, walking and then staring out the window. Staring out the window is a favourite past time for those at Port Victoria. It’s often wondered why people don’t look out the window in the morning at Port Vic… it’s only so they have something to look forward to do in the afternoon. Yes, Port Victoria life is slow and sleepy, just perfect for my annual pilgramage.

But wait, aren’t I in peak training mode for the Cadbury Marathon which is now only two weeks away? How does that fit in with normal hibernation antics? Pretty good actually. Admittedly I was quite tired on Boxing Day when I first arrived at Port Vic but a few days into my stay, with the wind starting to quieten down and the lengths and quality of my sleeps improving I am starting to feel recovered. Which, is exactly what you want to feel as I approach racing a marathon.

To quickly summarise the first part of my week before I actually made it to Port Vic…

• Monday: An easy run with my friend and former colleague Elise. The normal 10 miles in Belair was mostly covered. Gym + easy afternoon run + strides followed throughout the day. The middle of the day was taken up by engagement drinks for my brother and his fiance/my future sister-in-law Susie.
• Tuesday: 6:30 session on the bike with RAO. 8:30 session on foot with me, myself and I. Went to Vic Park for a change of scenery and did 8*1km with 200ish jog recovery. Felt great despite feeling tired in my warm up. Averaged 3:00/km without ever pushing it on my reps. Pushed it in some quicker efforts to drag the total work out to 10km for the session. Arvo run followed.
• Wednesday: Christmas Day. Normal mid week long run but went solo and a bit faster than normal. So not really normal at all. Was great. Running on Christmas Day is good because you can trust everyone you run past to be in a good mood which means my mood stays positive throughout the whole run. No afternoon run but I did play tennis with Dylan.
• Thursday: Boxing day run in Belair. A bit tired but still ran ok. Ran in the afternoon at Port Vic in some atrocious wind. Said hello to cousins and long time blog reader Aunty Vicki as per my usual Boxing Day evening antics.

Of course that was supposed to be a summary of before I made it to Port Vic but we actually slipped into Port Vic mode at the end. To continue, on Friday I was feeling tired and unmotivated. Possibly from the come down of high energy around Christmas, possibly from the fact that for the first time in a long time I didn’t start my Friday with RAO at 6:30 on the bike and possibly from the fact it was just bloody windy still and uninviting outside. Considering that on any given race day it may be just as windy (which at the Glenelg Classic in November it was!) I treated my run as an experiment to see how marathon pace/effort felt in windy conditions. So yes, I dragged myself out for a run, did my warm up, did my strides and ran with a slight cross-wind/tail-wind towards the northern part of Port Victoria.

Once at the end of the bitumen road I turned around into a slight cross-wind/head-wind and was immediately in the ‘get through it you bastard’ mindset. I made it back around the 5km mark and stepped off onto a 2km loop I used the last time I was training in Port Vic. This little loop goes past Aunty Vicki’s house and my family’s house and has a nice mix of bends and rolling undulations to keep my mind occupied. It’s also nicely protected at points and I was able to go from averaging 3:30/km into the head wind back to normal 3:20/km pace even with a head wind.

The last two Friday’s have been 1hr+ marathon style sessions and part of me wanted to achieve that again today but the wind and motivation levels, high and low respectively, meant that just getting 10km done was going to be a success. A part of me wanted to know what doing a second 10km tempo in the afternoon would feel like but I wasn’t sold on that idea either. By stopping at 10km of tempo in the morning I at least hedged my bets and kept my options open for the afternoon.

Which, when the afternoon did come around was a lot more sunnier, a bit less windier and I felt a lot more recovered and spritelier. I rolled out the door at 4:00/km pace and didn’t really look back from there. When I realised I was running only 5-10s/km slower than I did in the morning for my concentrated tempo effort, and being in slower shoes in the afternoon, I decided to push it a little bit and just enjoy running for running’s sake. I was embracing the sensation of feeling good on this run and took the opportunity to just blast off with no expectations. It wasn’t going to be quite a second 10km tempo but a 12km progression, getting down to tempo pace in the last 3-4km’s and averaging 3:42/km was a pretty good alternative. This type of training I believe is quite specific to marathon running as it’s all about pushing hard in a run when you’re tired and depleted of glycogen, much like what you have to do at the end of a marathon. To know that I enjoy runs like this, and have now done a few arvo run’s like this in the past couple of months, gives me a lot more confidence than my 10km session in the morning.

Training isn’t the only thing I’ve been doing at Port Vic though. This is the last Christmas the house is in our family’s possession so on Friday night we (minus Georgia and Tom) enjoyed a final dinner altogether. As a result, on Saturday I got up late, at 7am (!), the next morning and enjoyed running part of my morning hour run with new Port Vic beach house owner (and three-time Olympian and Comm Games Gold Medallist) Jess Stenson. I’ve ran with a few people at Port Vic over the years I’ve been coming here but Jess easily takes top spot in terms of quality runners (sorry Georgia and my cousin Adam).

It was nice to jog with Jess as one of the trickier elements of being away training for a marathon is the sense that you lose your routine and sense of security in socialising with other runners. What I mean by this is I go to The RunHouse six days a week at least and so I get reminded almost daily that having a running routine isn’t abnormal and almost by osmosis, that it’s important to take myself seriously so I can be happy with the outcomes from my running. When I’m on ‘holiday’ surrounded by family who aren’t die hard runners it can be easy to lose focus and let myself sit on the couch a bit longer, read a book a bit longer, go to the beach and maybe miss my afternoon running. Why should I bother to go for an afternoon run and train, no-one else seems to be bothering. Running with Jess and knowing she’s training like me is therefore a good bonus to have to push myself in what could be my final hibernation in Port Vic (I did realise though that I could just rent a house next year or take Aunty Vicki up on her offer to stay at their place… or maybe I could stay at Jess’s?!).

So now being in Port Vic and having jogged with Jess on Saturday morning I spent the rest of the day relaxing, putting together this blog and The Blue Line and getting ready to drop into the final two weeks of training/taper before Cadbury. One part of my relaxing time has been spent analysing the differences in training before I ran other marathons in my career and the training block I’ve put together recently. As an example, if I look at the time I ran Adelaide Marathon in 2023 (in 2:24:00) and the training that preceded, it pales significantly in comparison to this block. The ’23 Adelaide Mara block only had 4-5 good long runs whereas this block has at least 15, maybe 17 good long runs in total by the time I hit the marathon. But training on paper and outcomes on race day do not always match so I can’t count my chickens before they hatch.

What I can count is the amount of km’s for the week and with the addition of a pretty terrible Saturday afternoon run I was on track to break 200km’s for the fourth time in a row. My Saturday arvo run was terrible due to the wind and my stomach giving me the shits. A night and day difference to the arvo run the day before. I thought my stomach had somewhat fixed itself before my Sunday long run but 1hr in, and running at a good pace with Jess, I had to pull over and make an emergency pit stop.

Relieved of my discomfort, Jess and I got rolling once again at 4:00/km pace. I had toyed with the idea earlier in the week of running down at Innes National Park for this long run as a bit of an adventure but decided I didn’t want to spend 2.5hrs of driving in total for the day when instead I could spend all that time relaxing on the couch or swimming a little bit at Port Vic. Hence, I was really enjoying the opportunity to do my long run with Jess who was aiming to get her first 2hr long run done in a while.

About 90 minutes in Jess waved me on though, knowing that I was keen to do some faster running towards the end. I dropped a few 3:30ish/km’s in there and enjoyed feeling relatively strong as I pushed the pace in non-fast shoes. Aerobically I felt good but physically my legs felt sore. This is ok I think because the idea of training for the marathon is to push the aerobic ability of your body as far as it can go all while having the mechanical ability to carry it. At the end of 8ish weeks of solid training I feel like I’ve pushed my aerobic engine far enough and can now focus, in the next two weeks, on freshening up my legs so that can withstand two a bit hours of top-end aerobic running. Or at least that’s the theory and if I get it wrong I’ll analyse what I should have done better for next time.

One of the first ways I’m going to freshen up my body over the next two weeks is by taking this afternoon off running and going to the beach. Maybe I’ll do some ice bath work or bring the sauna back in as well over the next couple of weeks. Or maybe I’ll just sit on the couch and start putting some programs for the people I coach. The only way to find out is to read along next week for another EXCLUSIVE insight into my training and life. Thanks for reading this week.