Fraser Darcy

The fortnight of racing and cooking myself was over. Time to take a breath and change focus from track and trails to the forty two kilometres of a marathon. On Monday, I woke up feeling not too bad energy wise but my legs were very sore. I deliberated about running along the Sturt River to save my legs but my head couldn’t stand the thought of having to dodge people and cars when crossing the road so I went to Belair and just suffered through it. Until I bumped into Michael Nitschke that is. I know Nitta runs in Belair on Monday’s and this is probably the third or fourth time I’ve bumped into him. It always results in a good chat and a few more easier km’s which brought my total on this run to 20km. A good start to the week except for some sore legs. I caught up with some admin, work, a little bit of gym and then another sore arvo run to finish off the running part of the day. The day continued on after dinner with an appearance on the Peak Pursuits podcast which was cool.

On Tuesday I was still pretty sore with the DOMS just localised to my hamstrings. I made it out to the RAO session and instead of doing it at the intensity I have done over the last 7-8 weeks I eased it back and completed 10km’s of work rather than the 8km’s I had been doing previously. At slower paces it was more manageable and conservative for my hamstring whilst also being more marathon specific for me. The flavour of the rest of the day wasn’t anything different from Monday nor that of the rest of the week for that matter. I basically spend the hours of 9am – 12 or 1pm or even 2pm doing something productive, have lunch, a nap and then do something a bit more productive followed by something fun/research based (i.e. watching running YouTube videos). Having this daily schedule means that by the afternoon I’m ready to go for an afternoon run and ‘finish’ the day before dinner.

Wednesday. The return of the true mid week long run. I started at 6am to fit in some extra km’s and did so listening to my performance on the Peak Pursuits podcast. At 6:30am I caught up with Jess, Jacob and Chad and ran for another 70 or so minutes with them then finished off another 20 minutes by myself to make it 2hrs in total. Besides my hamstring it all felt pretty manageable. It’s very nice doing it in much cooler weather than when I was logging this amount of morning running back in December/January. Again, more admin and work during the day, some gym, an easy run and then I was treated to a proper meal cooked by Alice this week. Bit of a burrito/chilli con carne mix it was a real step-up in effort from Alice who has stolen the chef title from me recently. (Not really but I’ll let her think that at least. She can’t read things in brackets either because of her glasses you know.).

Thursday. In the old system of three sessions a week this was always my Bowker day. In the new system of two sessions a week I still went to Bowker to soak up some of the magic there but didn’t run there. I started from the carpark, ran to the train line, followed it to the beach, ran all the way to Kingston Park, admired how cool the ocean looked when it’s at 6:40am in the morning and dark, then turned around and ran back getting rained on in the process. I hadn’t planned to run 17km’s on this run but when my music got going and my body warmed up I started to become pretty efficient so just went with it. That’s the beauty of marathon training I think, when you’re feeling good on an easy run it’s almost a good thing to just get the body rolling and take advantage of some free and easy km’s. The rest of the day was pretty quiet, taking advantage of some downtime before I start getting stuck into writing programs for the next week. I ran again in the afternoon and then had a pretty quiet night. Training this week has been pretty routine like that I guess.

Until Friday. Another RAO session day but instead of just jogging like I had been in the three session a week system, this time I jumped in the session for some company and did my own thing. A major thing that has been missing from my training the last few weeks has been a steady long run at close to marathon pace. Hence, I needed to fit one of these runs in as a transitional session before I target a more marathon specific long run that targets the actual marathon pace I wish to run. So I set out with the intention of doing 24-25km’s at 3:30/km pace or quicker. After the first five or so minutes with the group I found my spot in the pack where I could watch some faster runners just in front of me and then work closer up to them on the jog recovery in the session they were doing. It meant that after 40 minutes I had been entertained enough to run 11km’s without really thinking too much. All on the same 1.9km loop too.

At the forty minute mark of my effort, when the RAO session stopped, I put on some music and really got to work. I hadn’t planned where I would go for the next forty or so minutes so I was happy enough to just keep running on the same 1.9km loop. It allowed me to focus on the absolute banger of a playlist that came through my airpods and for the first time in a few weeks I got lost in my own world. I hadn’t been in this zone for a while having been thrashing track sessions focused on specific lap times. Running to feel I was able to progress my pace from 3:30/km down to 3:15/km which is probably the pace I’ll aim for in my marathon. Not that I’ve really worked that part out yet. After 20km’s of running I felt like a change of scenery and went to a smaller 1.2km loop to finish off. I ran two laps there and then realised that with only 2 km’s to go if I just went back to the 1.9km loop I could do one more lap and I’d be done. So I did and besides my hamstring’s feeling tight at the end I felt good. Not like I was over working and not like I was running out of energy. Good signs!

I probably could have kept going for a few more km’s to really test out my marathon fitness but decided that as my first marathon specific long run in a few weeks it was probably a good call to end it early. I had done a similar effort to this in December for only 21km’s and that was good so doing 24km’s was still a progression on that effort while leaving me room to move next week if I want to do 30km’s at that effort. Pleasingly, and another sign I am fit and got the effort right, I finished off my day with an 8km double on the trails feeling good. Sometimes I think that when I run fast in the morning, I find it easier to run fast in the afternoon because that’s what my body was only doing a few hours ago. Once it has the momentum going, it’s hard to stop.

Unless you go to sleep and wake up on a seperate day. Like on Saturday. I ran 12km’s on Belair and took it fairly easy, not pushing myself to get rolling and just enjoying a nice Saturday morning before a busy-ish day of helping Alice move some furniture and then watching the Bombers lose. We did kick a lot of goals though which was good. Adelaide just kicked a lot more. I ran again in the afternoon and fit in a small mobility session to keep myself and my muscles happy.

I needed to be happy after the Bombers loss because I had a long run on Sunday. I wanted to cover anywhere from 35-38km’s with the last thirty minutes or so being at a pace specific to my marathon goal in Ballarat. That was my only real plan and the rest I’d fill in on the run. In my head I vaguely knew that if I could start accelerating at 90 minutes in I’d be right to get it all done with a nice average pace too.

As we started off from The RunHouse I felt pretty good and was happy to take the lead and keep the pace honest. A few others in the group were also looking for a faster than usual long run so to be running 4:00/km’s nice and early was good. The route we were taking was slightly uphill along the Torrens, which when I realised what this meant for the second half of the run, meant I continued on a bit further than the usual turn around point. I left my usual running friends and continued on to the 15km mark, even collecting a sighting of Tom Ruediger for the third week in a row! At this turn around point I knew I had 15km’s back to The RunHouse of slightly downhill running. So naturally, I let my legs go and started running faster. I could’ve applied the brakes here a bit but knew as well that one of my running mates was just in front of me, giving me something to chase.

I kept an eye out for him for a few km’s and was cautious about my pace getting any faster than 3:30/km. If I went any faster before I’d even hit 25km’s for the run I was worried I wouldn’t be able to progress to my goal of 3:15/km pace after 30km’s. I caught my mate Klingy somewhere just after 20-21km’s and went right past him. First victim picked off. Next, I thought I saw some other RAO runners but was delighted to see it was actually Jess and her brother Jack. Again, I hunted them down for a kilometre or so before passing them at an effort that was probably marathon effort. I was making hay while the sun shines and capitalising on feeling good on this run. Approaching the 30km mark I worked out that given I was running around 3:30/km for such a long time I didn’t need to run 3:15-3:20/km for too long to get the stimulus I was after but still wanted to do 5k’s at that effort. So, I took a detour towards Botanic and fired off three laps there to neatly bring the effort portion of my long run to 35km’s.

As I went through those three laps of Botanic I was trying to tune into how my body was feeling and what I was having to focus on to keep the pace. It wasn’t an energy thing (despite not having any gels or drinks, too much can’t be bothered about it), nor was it a muscle fatigue/tightness thing like Friday, instead it was just a leg turnover, mental effort thing. I felt like I could run faster if I needed to but had to work on just maintaining the exact pace I wanted so to ‘adapt’ to this pace. It went pretty well besides the last couple of km’s where I got a bit greedy and pushed the pace a bit. Pleasingly, last year when I was doing efforts like this on my December long runs I would finish the effort part and have to stop for a minute or two. This time around, I just went back to a ‘float’ sort of effort and kept running back to The RunHouse. It’s all a positive sign that the progression I designed for in these long runs, starting off in December, is now paying dividends.

The same goes for the overall volume I covered this week of 217km’s. After doing 6 weeks at 200km’s or more, including four in a row together, late last year, getting back to that mileage this week off the back of two 125km weeks (which made it easier rather than off the back of two 180km weeks of course) was a lot less daunting as opposed to it being the first time I’ve ever hit that mileage. Hence, the idea now is that I can continue to fit in a bit more quality in the 200km weeks to follow in the next four to five weeks. Specifically focusing on next week, that means a Tuesday session aiming for above marathon effort, a Friday session focusing at marathon pace and another Sunday long run with either quality or ‘extension’ (running over the normal 2hr 30 mark or 42 km distance). But for now, it’s Sunday afternoon and time to relax! Thanks for reading!