Fraser Darcy

Regular readers will be all over the Cadbury Marathon recap. First time readers, go brush up on your history knowledge and read last week’s blog. I’m not explaining it twice. You’ve already found this blog of your own accord, I’m sure you can find last week’s blog.

I finished off last week by saying that the priority was to recover well and watch plenty of the Australian Open. So far so good. I feel recovered physically and mostly mentally, having switched into track mode, from the marathon and I have watched a lot of tennis. I’ve even succeeded in bringing Alice’s tennis knowledge from not understanding the terminology of ‘game-set-match’ to suddenly knowing who Jack Draper is and why his lefty serve makes him difficult to face in the ‘ad’ court for our right handed Aussies. Being optimistic one week out from a marathon about my recovery is a trick for young players though so I will not be making any outlandish statements such as; ‘I’m back baby’ or ‘I have recovered and I didn’t get injured at all’ for another few weeks. Basically until I do enough hard training or hard racing that I can blame my next injury on that instead.

Before we get to my next injury, whenever that comes, you’re probably interested in what I did this week. On Monday, still living life as a Brighton boy, I ran down to the beach from Trevor and Linda’s and went south towards Brighton this time for 12km’s. 2 extra km’s compared to Sunday’s efforts. I didn’t feel too stiff and sore but by about 8-10km’s I felt a bit like I was cutting it fine for creating extra fatigue for myself. Quick shower, breakfast etc. and then I was off to the tennis in glorious blue skies. I gave myself plenty of time to get there early, soak up the atmosphere and snag a seat in the shade for what turned out to be a 5-set epic between Francis Tiafoe and Arthur Rinderknech. Awesome. I had got my money’s worth out of the free ticket I was provided by Trevor. Any tennis I saw after this was a bonus.

I wandered out to watch an Aussie, Aleksandr Vukic, play on one of the outside courts and found that entertaining for a set, then needed to leave because I had been to the Open for two days almost now and still hadn’t treated myself to a beer. So I did that and watched some tennis on the big screen for twenty minutes. Beer enjoyed, I wandered past some more outside courts that looked like they had a twenty minute wait to get a seat and eventually found myself on the back court with Japan’s Yoshihito Nishioka, a player I have followed before. Sat amongst 100 Japanese spectators I could’ve been in Japan. I watched his match for a bit and enjoyed reflecting on the fact that every tennis player I’ve seen this summer, all being in the top 200 in the world, are extremely professional and diligent in their approaches from what I can observe. They travel around the world as individual sportspeople hoping to improve themselves each tournament. Much like a runner. Hence, it’s good to reflect on their commitment and try and match it in my own athletic pursuits.

For me in the immediate short term though I didn’t have time to worry about my athletic pursuits, I had to catch the train back to Brighton, feed the dog, catch an Uber to the city with my bags, get on the Skybus, drop my bags in, get dinner, get on my delayed flight, get off my plane, get my bags and get home. All before 10:30pm. Yes, that is a little late but I remembered as I drove down the driveway that when I commuted from Quorn to Adelaide for 6:30am sessions the next day I’d often get in around 10:30pm so it was really no different.

Hence, getting up on Tuesday morning at 5:15am to be ready for training was pretty straightforward. I was on the bike doing my job, appreciating the many nice comments about Cadbury and was relieved to be getting back into a routine after a busy few days. I went for a quick run after the session and continued the theme of adding 2km’s a day to get 14km’s done. The rest of the day was pretty relaxed after that, caught up on some work, did some washing, went to the beach for a swim and just generally relaxed.

Wednesday. Another 2km’s added for my run this morning, I was up to 16km’s in one go. I was feeling ok but not amazing on this one and put that down to the windy weather. I jumped in the gym for my first proper gym session in a few weeks as opposed to the faffing around I’d been doing at home with my dumbbells. It really made a difference and my legs already felt sore later in the afternoon. Fortunately, I didn’t have much on besides some work at The RunHouse and more relaxing. I did make it out for a double this afternoon to try and flush out some soreness from the gym but that didn’t really work. I was still sore.

And I was still sore on Thursday as well. I ran my normal 13-14km loop at Belair for the first time in a week and a half and scoped out this Saturday’s RAO trail session. Being sore from the gym made this run pretty tough or maybe it was the culmination of ‘relaxing’ and not adding 2km’s to my run for the first time in four days post marathon. My run still went for 75 minutes making it longer but mentally, it felt easier in terms of the distance covered. Weird but that’s just the way my brain interpreted it. I had plenty of free time on Thursday having caught up on work and life admin in the past couple of days so I used most of Thursday to just relax. I didn’t even bother with a double in the afternoon realising how fatigued I felt. I did wonder if this was the marathon catching up with me five days later but just put it down to having a clear schedule and being lazy.

Of course, the clear schedule doesn’t stay clear for long. On Friday it was another bike job at the 6:30 session followed a couple of hours later by my own run. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to do a session or not because I was still prioritising recovery but also knew that I felt good enough to tick the legs over a bit faster and doing so might even speed up recovery. So, without any expectations on myself, I carried my shoes out to the grass track at the uni loop thinking I could do a jog, do a few strides around the track to at least mentally start preparing myself for track workouts again in the next couple of weeks, and then jog back for an easy hour.

Instead, what ended up happening was I felt good enough on my jog, besides a bit of DOMS still, put on my fast shoes, did a few laps of sprints/jogs and then decided to do some 800/200jog reps. I did a session of 800/200jog three weeks out from when I ran 14:35 in November and remember running 78-80s per lap during the reps so if I could run somewhere around there, whilst also respecting the feel of the session, then I’d be surprised. Instead, what happened was I ran the first one in 70s and held that pace. Oh boy. The same thing happened on the next rep but I could feel things were already going to get out of hand if I kept up that effort so I aborted and did 400’s with a 200 jog instead. This allowed me to keep the reps fast, which is good because I need to make sure I still have the speed to run fast for these 5km’s fast. It’s harder to build that in 3-6 weeks than it has to just buffer the physiological effects at that speed. I did 4 400’s with a 200 jog and then went back to the 800/200jog at a bit slower pace because I was starting to be cooked. I turned the last 800 into a 600 with a fast 200 at the end and then threw in one more 200 for good measure. For having no expectations on myself and ending up with 20 minutes of good track I was pretty pleased. I did feel pretty cooked for the rest of the day and worried I’d overdone it but, as I sit here the day after putting 90% of this together, I think I got the effort just right by aborting on those 800’s early on. And as I sit here on Sunday touching it up, I am more confident I got the effort right.

Of course, I didn’t just end my Friday there, I went home and relaxed as best I could around a sewerage issue developing at home. There was a bit of work done, a bit of resting and another run in the arvo. This was a much nicer arvo run than Wednesday as it did flush out a bit of the soreness from the session.

Which was good because on Saturday, I went out and helped run the RAO Trail session at Belair. Once again I had picked a new spot to go to and once again I made an error with the location of where the session started. Most people realised my error and got themselves there but some didn’t until too late which was a bad start. From now on at least I don’t think there will be any more carparks to direct people to for the first time in Belair so it can’t happen again (until we start going to somewhere else entirely!) Once the session got going it was a good turnout and I enjoyed powering up the short steep hill as this translates well to building speed which is what I want for the upcoming races I have my eye on. The second and third time repeating the longer hill was challenging but challenging is good as that’s what makes you fitter I thought as I ambled my way up.

With the session done and me feeling a bit more fatigued than I hoped I canned the idea of a gym session and instead went home to relax. Which, was a different sort of relax as the sewerage problem had worsened to the extent that 6 guys were now involved from SA Water to try and find a sewerage pipe of theirs that they have no idea where it is… But still it was relaxing sitting in the dappled sunlight while six guys looked for my s*** from two days ago blocked in a pipe somewhere.

In the end, they started to get closer and closer to resolving the issue so I was able to peel myself away from the commotion to go for arvo run at 2pm. I squeezed it in feeling not too bad in the heat, returned home to find the problem resolved, had a shower, put some washing on, made lunch and got out of there. My evening involved watching some mates run a 1500m at the track, grabbing some pasta before long run and watching the cycling. All a very good Saturday evening.

Come Sunday, it was time for ‘long run’. My idea when I started was to run with the group for 2hrs and keep it relatively comfortable, no faster than 4:00/km average pace. I got rolling with Chad and Nath (from Melbourne) before they turned back early and I linked up with the main group for the first time in a month. I wasn’t with them for long either as Riley and I then got rolling but we were soon joined by Jacob who had slept in. A revolving door of characters and conversations on this run really. We went past The RunHouse at 90 minutes in and I knew Riley was after 2hrs 15-2hrs 30 so had company for the last thirty I had planned to run. Instead, what ended up happening was I got sucked in, much like when I was caught watching the sewerage problem resolution, into running the whole 2hr 30min with Riley for a total of 35km’s. In my head it eliminated the need for a second run in the afternoon which was good because I would be done for the day, but it certainly increased the risk of fatigue and injury.

I did feel good though when running past 2hrs and even when I stopped. It wasn’t like any of those 37/38km long runs that averaged below 4:00/km a month ago where the last few km’s were a bit of a shuffle after running substantially faster. But the proof will be in the pudding in the next few days, or like I said at the start, whether I can fit in some hard training and racing in the next couple of weeks and instead blame my next injury on it. Orrrr I could just be positive and go, ‘great, I was able to run 35km’s confidently today, who gives a fuck about what I did last week, live in the moment’. There are plenty of different perspectives and none of them could be right.

Having referenced hard training and hard racing over the next few weeks it’s time to wrap this up with an eye to the future. The next major marathon I want to target is Ballarat Marathon 14 weeks away. Between now and then I want to improve my speed over 5k so that everything after that becomes easier. So, given there are 7 weeks until the State 5km Champs I will be trying to become a better 5k runner for the next little while. My sessions will move to the track a bit more and I’ll drop some of the easy running volume so I can recover between sessions a bit better and keep that speed. Get all that right, run some PB’s and then I can move back into the high volume marathon work outs. That’s the plan.

Taking it one week at a time though, this Saturday I have the State 3km and I am excited to see if I can give my PB a nudge. Last year’s race was a bit different approach (and fallout) to this years so it’ll be interesting to see how it all goes. Read about it all in next week’s edition of Fraser Darcy.com.

Thanks for reading.