Fraser Darcy

Yep, I’m moving back to Quorn!

Just kidding. As much as that is sometimes an appealing proposition it’s not happening. Instead, Quorn Life 2.0 is in reference to the fact I’ve fortunately had the Darcy family residence all to myself since Tuesday morning. Mum and Dad have gone to Europe and I am the Man of the House in their absence. Have I capitalised on my new sense of freedom in bringing back some Quorn Life routines into Eden Hills life? Yes. Yes I have.

The week started on Monday though and to quickly get that day out of the way, I ran in the morning, did my little piece for The Blue Line, did some gym, replied to some people I coach, went for another run and had an online meeting for a committee back in Quorn (where I did spend a bit of it dreaming about what it would be like to live in Quorn again…alas, it is not to be). I pulled up pretty well from my Clare half marathon PB to be pretty OK in both of my Monday runs. I’ve definitely pulled up better from Sunday long runs but I’ve also pulled up worse.

I think the fact the course was primarily on gravel means I pulled up better than worse. That set me up well to get stuck into…

Tuesday’s run! Down at the RunAsOne session I was fortunate again to be able to train at 6:30 with the group and was in two minds when I started about running the session as normal or doing some sort of longer jog, progression session. Having pulled up well, and able to compare to previous times I’ve come off a half marathon and then trained on Tuesday I felt ok to just ease my way into the session. All I wanted to get out of it was; run some reps at faster than half marathon pace and burn off some energy. By the end of it I ticked both of those goals for a satisfying morning. I actually felt pretty good by the last couple of reps and could’ve gone a bit faster again but was glad I held back for a B grade session. Having had an A grade workout on Sunday at the race and with plans to do another A grade workout on Thursday, this Tuesday session I was happy to just go through at B grade effort. For the rest of the day I continued to prioritise recovery from the half marathon whilst also ticking off a few little admin jobs. The biggest ‘highlight’ in some respects on Tuesday was that I had the house to myself from now on! Mum and Dad departed in the morning so when I returned home after the session I came home to a quiet house.

Having the house to myself reminds me of course of living in Quorn where I could have uninterrupted thoughts for days on end. That’s a really cool way to live I think where I can focus on what I want to do with my time and not be distracted by others. It means my recovery is a higher quality and by the time I get to my afternoon run I’m looking for something to do and get me out of the house. Which on this occasion, was an easy run in Belair.

On Wednesday I ran a pretty easy 75 minutes with Jacob instead of my normal 90 minutes – 2hrs. I was doing this because I wanted to be fresh for my Thursday workout which I’ll get to in a few short sentences. The rest of Wednesday was gym, some more replies, some more relaxing and recovering at home, another easy run and the second day in a row of having the house to myself and having dinner prepared before Alice arrives. The first three days of the week have so far been pretty stock standard I guess. Nothing too exciting.

That’s because the excitement was being bottled up for Thursday‘s training day. On this day I was planning on completing a ‘special block’ which is a training tool used by a famous European coach (Renato Canova). In a special block, an athlete performs two large workouts in the one day that are focused on the pace that the athlete hopes to run for whatever race they are doing. They are more commonly used for marathon runners but can be applied for 5k – half marathon runners too. It was pretty exciting to be planning my first real special block as it felt like I was discovering a new form of training for the first time. What would happen in the afternoon? Would I be able to complete it? Would I feel sore? How will I pull up? I was equal parts nervous as I was excited.

I won’t bore you with the science behind the special block and the different variations possible. Instead, keeping it short, I was adapting a block I’d read in some one else’s training that I think would suit for a first special block. Over time I hope to do more of these and will increase the difficulty of them, but for my first one I planned to keep it easy and do:

• Morning run: 4km warm up, 10km at 3:30/km- 90% marathon pace (or ‘moderate’ effort), 5 minutes standing rest, 10km at 100% Marathon Pace, 2km warm down.
• Afternoon Run: 3km warm up, 10km at 3:30/km(‘moderate’), 5 minutes rest, 6km HARD, 2km warm down.

I chose to do the morning run around Vic Park in the city as I knew that it was possible to get a couple of 10km’s done there without too much trouble seeing as that’s where I’ve done most of my bigger marathon sessions in the past few weeks. It was nice parking my car along South Terrace and leaving my drink bottle on the back of my ute with a spare gel. Means I didn’t have to set up a whole table like other people might bother with when organising these sessions. I ticked off my warm up while listening to the Peak Pursuits one year anniversary podcast where I even got a few shoutouts which put some pep in my step (thanks Brodie!). Then it was straight into 10km’s at a moderate pace. This part of the run was meant to be easy to complete and just to put some manageable fatigue into the legs. It went down pretty smoothly and I enjoyed not having any real plan to the loops I was running, just deciding to mix things up and run wherever I pleased in Vic Park.

At the end of that first 10km block I timed it so I finished at my car. I had some of my drink for the second time (having run past my car and taken a swig halfway through) and had my second gel of the morning. This was all while I was taking my five minute standing rest. Then, it was time to get into the next 10km.

Having run 10km’s around this South Terrace loop only a couple of weeks earlier and felt I had to push pretty hard to get to 3:16/km for that effort I was unsure how it would feel this time around. The first few km’s I got rolling at the required pace so was happy enough but slowly, I had a problem with speeding up. I kept coming off the slight downhill sections of Vic Park at around 3:10/km pace and was finding it hard to slow down to the effort I had planned to hit. So I did a pretty typical Fraser thing and threw out the plan and just ran to feel instead. That ended up being much more enjoyable and I averaged 3:08/km for 10km’s, a pace that I would’ve been happy with for a stand alone 10km let alone one after 10km’s at 3:30/km. After that, well, that was the first block done. A little cool down and then it was time to get some rest and recover for the afternoon run. The true way of doing a special block is to not fuel in between the morning and afternoon runs and instead rely on the stored carbohydrates and fat reserves. Being my first special block I thought it was probably wise to just fuel as per normal for my afternoon run and have a normal lunch. Restricting food can come later in my career.

I was so excited about my second run of the day and how it would go that I didn’t even have a nap during the day. Crazy!! I also couldn’t be bothered waiting until 4-5pm to start my second run of the day like I normally would so instead started it at around 3:15pm on a very nice, sunny arvo in Vic Park again. I could’ve gone somewhere else for a new stimulus mentally for my afternoon run but I thought keeping the location the same would help me better compare my efforts between the morning and the afternoon. Without any more preamble and worry, I was straight into a short 3km warm up. I didn’t need the full 4km warm up having already been ‘activated’ by the morning session and also, the first 10km at ‘moderate’ effort is a bit like a warm up anyway. Similar to the morning, once I finished my warm up I was pretty excited to get into the session and didn’t really feel any sense of dread that I might have usually for a hard session. I was just excited to see what would happen!

Straight away, the first few km’s were too fast. I was aiming for around 3:30/km but couldn’t even slow down past 3:20/km on some stretches. Far out, this is coming out easy, do I slow down or just keep running to feel? The whole idea of training at this point in my training block is running as many km’s as possible at close to marathon pace as I can handle. Seeing as I was handling marathon pace fairly comfortable at the start of this second run I decided instead to just run to feel and if that meant I ran at 3:15-3:20/km then so be it. The risk of course is that I wouldn’t have anything left for the second part of the second run but I would fight that hurdle when I came to it.

Running 10km’s at a pace faster than you had anticipated is a great feeling. For around 30 minutes I revelled in the fact that I was pretty fit and getting to enjoy running fast in Vic Park for the second time in one day. That first 10km block ended up coming out at 3:15/km and when I finished at my car for another drink and a gel I was buzzing. That was so much fun. That’s 30km’s of work done for the day, only one more block to go! My five minute rest ended and I was straight into the 6km HARD. I had planned the paces for the first three parts of this special block but for this 6km HARD all I wanted to do was get really tired and find the limit.

Running the first kilometre at 2:55/km-3:00/km pace was certainly HARD and going to get me to that limit quicker than I had hoped. By the 1.5km mark I was beginning to slow down to 3:10/km pace and knew I had to change things again. Was it because I ran the 10km too fast? Or was it because 2:55-3:00/km was too ambitious? I won’t really know until I try another special block I guess. Whatever the answer though, it didn’t matter. What did matter was I needed to adapt my run to what I could do because I had found the limit and couldn’t go past it.

I decided to lap my watch around 2km’s in and take a 80-90s break. Another variation of a special block is to run 1km repeats instead of a continuous run so I shifted my focus to that instead. 80-90s of rest later and I was off again, running too fast for my 1km repeat and dying towards the end. Far out, I can’t make 6km’s worth of these. I did one more 1km repeat and almost pulled the pin there I was that cooked… well at least I found the limit. But, in probably the smartest decision I made all day, I decided to do one more 1km repeat at marathon pace/effort and see how that felt.

It felt good thankfully and it gave me the motivation to do just one more hard 1km repeat to follow it up and then call it a day. A short little cool down followed and then I was done. 48km’s in total for the day at an average of around 3:35/km. A good solid training day that gave me the same sense of satisfaction as completing a big outdoor mission. I think it felt like that because there was a real sense of discovery about whether it was possible to do what I had planned and how it would all feel. Plus, doing it by myself was really cool too. PLUS, running that much, that fast, on once very nice sunny day, is also really fun if you like running as much as I do.

For the rest of the evening I celebrated my little training session with some burrito’s and plenty of rest. The only training that is worth doing is the training that you will recover from after all, so I didn’t want to waste my efforts on Thursday by not recovering from them properly.

With that in mind, on Friday I rode the bike at the RAO session for a change, all the while blasting AFL theme songs in celebration of Gather Round. After that it was two 45 minute runs for the day and plenty of time spent on the couch relaxing. That was similar to my Saturday plan too. A longer 1hr run in Belair, some gym, cleaning the house in Mum and Dad’s absence and another run. After all that, I was pretty recovered and ready for Sunday’s long run.

The long run was the final run of the week and as per usual long run days, it started at The RunHouse. But, unlike usual long run days, there was a smaller crew of us which I kind of enjoyed. Meant I could have a few conversations with the same people instead of lots of mostly meaningless conversations with lots of people. Anyway, I gladly pushed the pace on this run for the first 75 minutes sitting just above 4:00/km. At this point I collected a drink bottle I had stashed in the parklands, took a sip and started to pick up the pace. Similar to Thursday’s 6km hard I didn’t really have a plan with this last 45 minutes of my run, I knew I wanted to run faster than 4:00/km but I didn’t want to run more than 32km’s or 2hrs. I also didn’t want to overreach, that could come on Tuesday in next week’s training seeing as I overreached only two days ago on Thursday. So, when I started rolling through at 3:35/km pretty easily I was happy. When that pace became 3:24/km I was even happier. I ended up doing that from the period between 18-28km’s, going through a 10km split in 3:30/km again feeling pretty comfortable. A couple of km’s jogging back to The RunHouse and I conveniently had ran 31km’s in a tad over 2hrs on a warmer than normal Sunday.

The only little downside to my run this morning was that it was possibly the last time I run 2hrs until Ballarat Marathon in two weeks. It’s beginning to be the time that I taper my training off and focus on absorbing all the work I put in so that I can put my best two feet forward on April 27th. If you’d like to read about the training that will occur between now and then, please subscribe. If you wouldn’t like to read about the training, fine, you obviously have more important things to do!

Small postscript too! Today is also the National 5000m Final and I ended up qualifying for the ‘A’ Race which is kind of a life long dream really. I could’ve stood on the start line of arguably one of the best 5000m races in the country. Instead though, I prioritised training for Ballarat and saving some dollars. I guess I’ll just have to qualify again next year…