Fraser Darcy

It’s 3:43am in the morning and I can’t sleep. Obviously, why else would I be up at 3:43am? I’ve been lying awake in bed for almost 2hrs pondering whether to get up, have something to eat and use the time productively. Or instead, continue staring at the ceiling and replaying the events of the last 36hrs in my head. A compromise between the two is replaying the events of the last 36hrs in an emergency blog so I can be using the time productively.

Following on from where we left off in the universe of fraserdarcy.com, I had just published my normal weekly blog detailing the week leading up to the State 5km and was now shifting my focus to tomorrow (Monday’s) State 1500m. I spent the next couple of hours on Sunday afternoon keeping up with Izzi’s marathon in Nagoya (she finished 6th in a solid time of 2:23:29). I wasn’t feeling that flash overall, maybe it was the heat or maybe it was the fact I didn’t get much sleep after the 5km, only falling asleep at 1am after 3hrs of staring at the ceiling. I seem to be doing alot of that lately.

Anyway, it didn’t matter how I felt, I had to muster up some energy to help celebrate Alice’s birthday with friends and her family that afternoon. I’m not a big birthday celebrator of my own birthday, nor of my own family’s too much. So on any normal day I’m not one for birthday activities, especially probably so before a big race the next day, but, you can’t pick and choose when you want to be a runner so bad luck Fraser. Plus, having the distraction of birthday activities is arguably a good thing for an over thinker like me. Kind of obvious I’m an over thinker, I’ve been over thinking my way through three and a bit years worth of blogs… With all that context in mind I set out with Alice to alt on King William Rd at 3pm to meet Jacob and Ola who were there early. Having been to alt before with Alice on a date I knew the surroundings and felt pretty settled spending the next few hours with Jacob and Alice’s friends.

Come 6:20pm, we had waved goodbye to the last of Alice’s friends and left the warm confines of alt to head down to Agape for some greek cuisine with Alice’s family. I’d neither been to Agape before nor met most of Alice’s family so I was very much in a heightened sense of adventure which kind of makes it more thrilling. Settling into the dinner after small talk we were treated to a banquet style meal with several entrees coming out first. Now again, something you may or may not have worked out is that when it comes to food, I like to know what I’m getting and when I’m getting it so I can set my stomach and expectations accordingly. If I can be in control I choose to be in control, but if I can’t, well, I have to embrace the unknowns and thrill of it all. This evening was shaping up to be the latter. With no knowledge of exactly what we were eating or when it was coming out I sampled several greek delicacies and enjoyed them all. The best and final part which took a very long time to come out was the lamb shoulder. Unfortunately it took so long to come out that Alice’s older brother and partner had to leave for a Fringe show so there was more lamb for me and everyone else at the table. So if you’re wondering if Agape is any good, yes it’s good at food but on this night they were under the pump with their service.

Come 9:15pm, we had waved goodbye to the last of Alice’s family and headed back to the car. Alice had seemed a bit quieter in the last thirty minutes of the meal and I wasn’t sure if she was mad at her family or just tired. Turns out it was neither, having fallen ill during the meal with an upset stomach. And no, she was not drunk. You and Alice might want me to skip the gory details from here but as a journalist I have a code of ethics to uphold and the truth must come out. We drove off down King William Rd before Alice gave me the suggestion of pulling down a side street. Oh no, not a vomit already? Yep. Less than five minutes after leaving Agape, less than twenty minutes after polishing off a lamb shoulder, Alice was sadly bringing it all back up on the footpath whilst hanging out the passenger door of the Triton. Oh boy, I’ll have to get out here and do some good boyfriend work. I walked around the back of the car and JESUS CHRIST ALICE, that’s a lot of vomit, she wasn’t kidding! She got herself out of the car and redecorated a bit more of the footpath whilst I did my best at consoling her, keeping her hair out of her face, you know, we’ve all been there before. Having been questioned by the Gestapo over my somewhat lack of compassion towards my older sister when she was ill only a few days ago I knew this was my opportunity to prove I can be compassionate. There, there Alice.

We got back in the car and headed home with Alice feeling a bit better. But, as someone who has vommitted from motion sickness and hungover related illnesses knows, there is a time period where you feel better that only last ten-fifteen minutes. That meant we got as far as Belair Primary School before we had to make another pit stop. Luckily for Belair residents, no vomit this time. We made it home and downstairs, collecting a bucket on the way down without any more vomit. This was not ideal preparation for my race the next day but seeing as I had already lost control of my afternoon/evening I was already up for the thrill of what was to come. It’s a mindset that I think I honed from the days of outdoor ed life where you face unpredictable scenario’s constantly. Plus, I had to help Alice whether she was my girlfriend or not. Luckily for her (and me), she is my girlfriend so my level of compassion was a bit higher.

The next couple of hours passed by with Alice doing some sleeping, then some waking up, then some vomitting, then me emptying the vomit bucket and returning it to her then doing it all again. It was maybe 12:30am the last time I looked at my watch. If I could sleep in till 7:30am then that was still pretty good…

Which is what we managed. I felt pretty good the next morning and Alice felt better. I continued my services as nurse whilst also fitting in a small 20 minute jog to shake out my legs. Being only two days after the State 5km I felt a bit better generally everywhere except for my calves and left achilles. They were a bit tighter but still manageable. With my jog done I had some breakfast, did my normal Monday job of recapping the activities from all the people I coach on Strava for the week and then relaxed whilst watching some Youtube with Alice. She eventually mustered up the energy and courage to leave the house and get back to hers, leaving me to get sorted for the State 1500m that was due to be raced in 2.5hrs time. I had some toast, an Up’n’Go and a coffee around 12:15pm and then hit the road.

Arriving at the track nice and early it felt pretty warm but not too bad. The summer heat of Quorn and Hawker is worse. Plus, returning to the scene of my State 5km crime was a pretty good feeling too. I checked in, waited for my RunAsOne mates and then we all got organised and warmed up together. Much like the previous 1500m I did two weeks earlier, I wasn’t putting too much pressure on myself so was happy to be fairly relaxed and jovial with my preparations. I care more deeply about other events and liked the opportunity to use this 1500m as a way to enjoy getting organised for a race and being excited about it. Which I definitely was.

This race had 19 fast people in there with nowhere to hide. I’m someone that likes to beat people as much as I like to run a fast time so I had plenty of people to look at in my warm up and in the call room going oooooh, yeah I’d like to beat him, oh yeah, him too… boy I hope I can beat that guy. Keeping my relaxed demeanour we strolled out to the track and got ourselves organised to start on time at 2:35pm. My only game plan for this race was to obviously run as fast as I could and put myself in a world of hurt I’d never experienced before (a given for any serious race) and to do that by running the third lap (second last lap) the hardest of anyone. This is what Jacob suggested I do at alt the day before and sounded like a good idea. If I left it too late I would run the risk of being caught up somewhere in the middle of 18 other people and letting 800m specialists run over the top of me late.

Off the start line I didn’t get a great start, sinking back towards the back third of the pack. There were several people in front of me I thought what the fuck is that guy doing there. By 200m in I was still sitting on the outside of the pack, about halfway up when even more people came around me and got in front. By 300m in, with three full laps to go I was still sitting in lane 2 so decided to get on with it by moving up towards the front. I found a spot just behind second place and slotted in quite nicely. Up the front was Arron who I had raced in the 5km two days ago so it was nice to be getting the assistance of his pacing this time around. I felt relatively comfortable as we rounded the home straight to finish that lap and started moving up onto Arron’s shoulder. This was it, go now and make my move or die wondering. As I went past Arron with two laps to go he yelled out to me to ‘get after it, make them look silly’. Them being the other runner’s who focus on the 1500m whilst I’m someone who supposedly is more of a marathoner. At the end of the first bend I heard Arron yell out again ‘you’ve got a gap, go for it’ so I did. I took off down the back straight and by the home straight I had a lead of over 20m. At this point I was still charging, feeling like I was a man on a mission.

At the bell, with one lap to go I still had a big gap. I charged around the first bend and still had the lead. Shit, I might actually pull this off. The headwind on the back straight hit me pretty hard the second time around though and I started to tighten up. It was probably here that I should’ve relaxed and focused on my leg turnover a bit more. Instead, I tightened up, gritted my teeth and tried to fight my way into the headwind a bit more. Just hang on a bit more, you can do it. With 200m to go I still had the lead but I could feel the others were gaining. I had no idea how many but having watched a few 1500’s I’ve seen scenario’s where someone in my position gets swamped late and ends up spat out the back.

With 150m to go Jono Harris went past me moving very quickly. Tom, my training partner, passed me with 120m to go and I thought I had butchered it. I started to find something with 100m to go and had Dylan Stenson, Jess’s husband, on my shoulder. Dylan is a former podium getter in the 800m at Nationals so has some serious speed. I was in a battle with him for the last podium spot and unfortunately he was moving away. I dug a little deeper, trying to find every bit of pace within me for the last bit and stick onto him but he was too strong. I finished 4th in a time of 3:49.71 for a three second PB and a result that to be honest, defied my expectations for the race. I beat a lot of other more fancied runners and did so by taking the race on which I was most proud about. Perhaps if I had relaxed a bit more and not been as surprised at myself for having a big lead I might’ve been able to run a bit better. Perhaps not too, Jono, Tom and Dylan are all very good runners and all ran very close to their PB’s. I was the one who ran out of my skin and if they were put in a similar position to what I did, I’m sure they could’ve lifted as well.

Post race I was in somewhat disbelief that I almost bloody won the race whilst I was also very cooked. I didn’t feel lactic or anything but my breathing and heart rate felt like it was uncontrollable. It started to concern me a little when after making it back to my bag I was still very cooked but I guess that’s a positive indication I put myself in a world of hurt I’d never been before. It’s somewhere I’d like to go in a 5k race in the future as well. I eventually did settle down and managed a cool down jog with Luke and Connor. I headed home shortly after, had a swim, a ginger beer and recapped the race with Mum, Dad, Georgia and her partner Tom. It was at about 5:30pm that I realised I felt good, it was a nice night and I needed someway to wind down from the race still because the swim and ginger beer had not done anything. So I went for a little jog and it felt wonderful.

Post jog there was of course dinner and then bed and there here we are now. Recapping the 1500m at 4:38am. The game from here is to get on with the rest of my week leading into the National Mountain Champs on Sunday. That’s from a this week perspective of course. The other game is to work out what the hell I’m going to do with National Championships. It’s two weeks out from Ballarat Marathon and I have to work out if I can maximise my ambitions in both those events or if by doing Nationals I will compromise Ballarat too much? Where does my best capability lie? What am I most passionate about? What will I enjoy the most? Asking myself these questions at 4:40am in the morning isn’t going to give me any productive answers so for now I’ll leave you on a cliffhanger. Perhaps I’ll have answered those questions by the next blog, perhaps not.

For now, I’d like to just pause for a second and congratulate myself on a successful 7-8 week block of focused track training that yielded a 2nd and a 4th at the State Champs and two new PB’s. Now having congratulated myself there I can take that energy and attitude that I brought to my races and continue to bring it along to my next race, just like the way I’ve always done it and the way I’ll always do it…

Thanks for reading!