Fraser Darcy

Another EXCLUSIVE post about what goes on in the life of Fraser Darcy. This week it involved a lot of running (shock), a lot of program writing (ok, not a big shock) and a random bunch of other stuff as per usual.

Monday: Coming off a 32km long run with Jess on Sunday and the afternoon off I thought I might be feeling a bit fresher on Monday morning in Port Vic. I did kind of, but I also didn’t really have much time to consider if I felt fresh. I ran with Jess for another hour of easy running in the morning, started tackling some of my programs for the month, went for a swim, watched a lot of cricket and ran again in the afternoon. A busy start to the week which set the scene for the rest of the week. The aim of this week was to write all of my programs and put together the first official week of my taper into Cadbury, however, this wasn’t going to be much of a taper this week. I was only planning on dropping the mileage to 170km’s with a few shorter easy doubles, less of a Friday session (and no double) and a shorter long run. The bigger taper week was to come in the final week.

Tuesday: I deliberated over whether it was worth staying in Port Vic for my final session of the year and well, I deliberated so long about it I was actually in Port Vic for it. It was good in the end to do a session around the familiar 2km loop. I once again teamed up with Jess for a run, this time just for my warm up and cool down but for the session we did our own thing. If you remember correctly, last Tuesday I did 8*1km and so to keep things a little different but also a little the same I tried to hit roughly the same pace but over only 5*1.6km. This is also a great session on this loop because it means I can just jog the recovery to the start of the next rep and only have to concentrate on running 5 laps.

Starting off I felt pretty good and ran the first rep in 4:53. The next one was 4:52, then 4:54. That 4:54 didn’t feel like it was two seconds slower with the effort certainly increasing a lot more. The fourth rep drifted out to 4:57 and I was in danger of blowing up past 5:00 if I didn’t stoke the fire a bit on the last one. I managed to get 4:54 on the last one with a good kick and thought I’m aerobically fit, but probably just a little mentally and physically tired today. It’s what happens when the taper is so close and you’re a bit like why should I bother thrashing my body just to record a nice even split per rep. Overall it was good and I shouldn’t look too much into it. It did mean that my last hard interval session was done before Cadbury so that was nice.

I deliberated about when I would go back to Adelaide after the session though, should I drive back straight away? Do some programs first and then go back? Or drive back at night? Or early next morning? So many options and nothing decisive about any of them. The other additional factor weighing on my mind was that it was NYE and spending it at Port Vic would be cool, but then spending NYD driving back to Adelaide and feeling like I was on the back foot would be a bit meh. But on the other hand, driving back on NYE and spending it at Eden Hills (or making another drive down south to visit some mates) was also going to be a bit meh. In the end, I reasoned that if it weren’t NYE I’d probably drive back on Tuesday arvo and wake up fresh on Wednesday morning for my final mid week long run.

So that’s what I did. And it turned out to be the best decision of the year. Joe sent me a message offering to jump on the bike for my last mid week long run and I jumped at the opportunity to have some company. Much like not knowing when to drive back I also didn’t know what intensity I wanted to run this MLR at. I wanted 90 minutes but I also wanted it be around 25km’s. That means an average of 3:36/km which sounds rudely fast. The week before, on Christmas I did enjoy the 32km’s at 3:46/km I ran and a taper of that would be something shorter, so 25 km’s, but still keeping the intensity in.

So that’s what I did. I ran the first four-ish km’s relatively cruisey at around 4min/km but then started to get going. Joe jumped off the bike for a bit and jogged for thirty minutes and he averaged 3:32/km for his little session so by 1hr in I was doing pretty well at going to hit 25km’s in 90 minutes. We finished off with some laps around Botanic and I really enjoyed the final twenty minutes. I wasn’t straining to hit marathon pace, rather just enjoying running 3:30/km. I also wasn’t doing it in super shoes so to be comfortably hitting that pace while chatting to Joe was also a nice little ego boost. In the end I hit 25km’s in 90 minutes so the two goals were achieved.

I couldn’t sit around all day like I did last Wednesday on Christmas, basking in my glory of a good training run. No, I had to keep ticking with my programs, do some washing and get out for another easy run. It was a busy start to the year.

Thursday: The busy start continued, an easy run at Belair, some gym work at home to save time driving down to The RunHouse for a gym sesh. Some more programs to get me tantalisingly close to the finish of them and another easy run. I also prepared TBL for tomorrow but had a basically pretty quiet and productive day. It was the second day in a row of being away from Port Vic and yes, it was disappointing to not have <5min access to the beach for a swim on these past two days but I was making a point of getting outside and switching off on the lawn every now and then to reset which is one of the things I value most about heading to the beach. The tricky thing is when you’re at the beach just looking out, it’s all flat and empty so that helps to wipe everything clear in your mind. When you’re at home there’s all these things in your eye line so it’s a little trickier to be clear in your mind. Unless you live on top of a mountain or cliff, then everything is so far away it’s basically like being at the ocean (this is what it’s like at Moonarie or Arapiles). But my parents don’t live on top of a mountain or cliff so instead I just have to imagine a good reset is happening.

Friday: I felt pretty reset come Friday morning because it was the first RAO session of the year and I felt ready to go. I was on the bike and enjoyed taking some footage of Riley and Jacob while blasting some music and being on the whistle. Afterwards, instead of hanging around for anyone else, I went and did a 30 minute threshold by myself and felt pretty good. It was the usual recipe though; feel kind of tired as I leave The RunHouse, coax myself into just getting through the warm-up, do some strides, start the session, feel surprisingly good, get rolling and run better than expected. I didn’t allow myself to get carried away with anything this week and finished feeling pretty comfortable as well so the warm down was a pleasant jog back and not some death march in the sun like it can be sometimes. It was a good thing I had some energy left because I still had plenty of programs to write having been handed almost ten new runners to be responsible for which is great ($$). I knocked most of these out, started sending a few out and then before I knew it, it was time to go out for the final social occasion of the festive period, Mum’s birthday. It’s always hard for people who have birthday’s close to Christmas as the fun is often sucked out of everyone by then. In the past I’ve even missed Mum’s birthday because I’ve been away galavanting somewhere else. This time though I was here and we went out to Parisi’s for a nice dinner with my sisters and their partners but I was glad to be home later that night and in my bed resting after a busy week.

Saturday: I had planned to be finished my programs by Friday but the inclusion of the new athletes meant I had to spend some time on Saturday wrapping them all up which I did after an easy hour in Belair. I got through most of them before lunchtime, did some gym work and then hit lunchtime with a big sigh of relief. I could relax a bit knowing I was pretty much done. I wasn’t completely done, I still had two new programs to do that lumped on my ‘desk’ on Saturday but that was easy to stay on top of by Sunday afternoon. It meant I relaxed a lot on Saturday afternoon. I even contemplated going to the beach but time got away from me as it often does when you’re doing some good relaxing and I ended up just going for a cruisey jog at home and enjoying some pasta for dinner before the final long run of the Cadbury build.

Sunday: Which, was again a run that I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with it. I knew how I wanted to feel by the end of it but I didn’t know what effort that was going to require. I wanted to feel pleasantly tired and like I was stopping just before things got serious. Was that going to be at 90 minutes like most week before a marathon long runs? Or was that at 1hr 45? And at what pace? I started off out the front with Jake and was comfortably running 4:10/km waiting for some of my mates to catch up. About 4km’s in, Riley came through at sub 4min km’s and I hesitated before joining in with him. If I got sucked into running 2hrs at this pace that’d be basically what I did last Sunday for 2hrs. I needed to keep the intensity the same but lessen the volume so I reasoned with myself that if I ran with Riley for 90 minutes that’d be about right. It was nice to run with Riley at a good pace. We picked off a lot of the groups of RAO as we came back towards The RunHouse and I could feel I was doing it a bit easier than he was which was nice for my ego. I stopped once we made it back at The RunHouse and felt like I’d barely done a long run which was nice and just the feeling I was after.

I chose not to hang around too long this week as I had those final programs to do and some TBL work to put together along with the blog. The blog ended up getting pushed back to Monday as I had to watch the last day of the cricket instead and opted to also visit the Wittunga Botanic Gardens for an arvo walk (in place of an arvo run) and the beach for a swim. It was nice to be relaxing after all this on Sunday night knowing I’d put together a great training/taper week, finished all my programs and was also on top of other life admin jobs. I had a couple of extra biscuits to celebrate and felt like this is the trouble with the taper where you start to relax too early before the hard work of the race is done. I enjoy being in heavy training mode because due to the sheer amount of time spent running I don’t have time to put a few extra biscuits in my mouth and get all lazy on a Sunday night. But hey, maybe having one night like that, a week out from the marathon is the refresher I need to stay focused not only until the marathon but also afterwards as well.

I guess we’ll see how focused I can stay. The theme of some of these runs this week has been a bit unsure it seems about what metrics I’m aiming for. I know the feeling I want but not what the data will be to get me that feeling. A week out from Cadbury it’s also the same with the race. It could be a little warm (17 degree minimum) than ideal conditions so does that mean I need to reign it in a bit? Or is it even still worth going out at as a role model and going for a PB? Or should I instead just try and win it and continue my training? Well at this stage my approach is still the same as it was last week, of treating it like an experiment like I have been doing with my training. To get the best out of the experiment I have to get the best out of myself on the day. I’d like to think I am capable of running on PB pace even with a few degrees warmer than ideal and on a rolling course but I won’t know if that’s correct until about 30km’s. Perhaps by doing this experiment over a few marathons a year one day I will know exactly what I’m capable of any given day in a marathon. That’s a fun idea to look forward to and something that will probably motivate me to continue to try my best.

In this final taper week I really don’t have much on at all. A few easy jogs, a visit to the Adelaide International tennis tournament and of course the travel to Hobart. I plan on putting together a bit of a training analysis of my whole block as opposed to just a weekly recap of it all so that could take up some of my time mid week. If the weekend goes as it normally does with a marathon, plus the fact I’m heading to the Australian Open on Sunday/Monday straight afterwards, then the actual race recap may be a few days late next week so don’t panic! Subscribe if you want to be in the loop with when the recap is out or just continue to check back on my website every hour after Cadbury marathon finishes until it drops. It’s your life, I’m not going to tell you how to live it. Thanks for reading.