Fraser Darcy

Following on from my back to back marathon quest, the question on most people’s lips in my world this week has been, how have you recovered? Pretty good to be honest. Sitting at my computer one week after Adelaide I can confidently look back on a good week of training, a good week of recovering and I am glad I freshened up mentally with a few different things this week. The mental fatigue of rolling back into running so soon after ticking my marathon goals has probably been the hardest part. Fortunately, or not really as I’m about to explain, I’ve been able to draw on a few other experiences from my outdoor life that meant I recovered quicker than most people would expect. It’s not really fortunately though because I earned those experiences the hard way through the same decision making process that led to me running two marathons in close succession. So it would be a shame if I wasn’t implementing the learnings from those experiences into my running, hence there’s nothing fortunate about that!

But into the specifics of my week first to see how I actually recovered. On Monday I woke up feeling not too bad. Definitely not as sore as post-Ballarat and being already in Adelaide it meant my Monday-post-Marathon was pretty straightforward as opposed to the Monday-post-Ballarat-Marathon. I replied to a few emails/sent out a few messages to people I coach, went for a short jog at Belair, even did some mobility and then even went to the sauna for the first time in a while. The jog was pretty cruisey, I felt like doing 10km’s and was a bit unsure after 6/7km’s that I might’ve pushed it too far but as I sit here and reflect on that run from six days ago now it obviously wasn’t too far.

Tuesday, normal session day with RAO, I brought out my session shoes as I was feeling that good I almost felt like joining in for the session. The only reason I didn’t in the end is because being a progression run, I was likely to run a fair bit of it at marathon pace which is what I’ve done almost 5hrs of over the last two Sundays. So, I’ve got a fair bit of marathon pace in my legs at the moment and I didn’t need anymore. Hence, I just did 6*30s hill strides and was pleasantly surprised with how they felt and how fun it was to run fast. There was a weird sore spot in my foot when I did my session shoes on for the 30s efforts which made me worry that I had a new niggle to care about but now as I sit here since that run five days ago, it obviously wasn’t anything to worry about.

After the morning run on Tuesday I spent a good deal of my day relaxing at home, booking a trip to Launceston for my next race on June 1st and planning a potential Europe trip. It was nice to get onto this Euro trip planning without the stress of a marathon hanging over me. Same with the relaxing. I felt like I could actually relax well knowing I didn’t have to decide if I was racing a marathon or not. Later in the arvo, but not too late actually, I went for a little afternoon jog and followed it up with a second sauna of the week. Throwing in the sauna two days in a row was a mix of doing it for recovery purposes and also because it’s just fun to have free time to go and do something I enjoy, an important part of mental recovery I think.

Wednesday. There were a few additions to our Wednesday morning jog crew which kept the conversation moving the whole time. I ran 75 minutes feeling pretty good and on top of things.

To get to Wednesday’s run, and then gym session, feeling this good was a nice box to tick because it meant I was going to be ready for a session either on Thursday or Friday. To some people, doing a session so soon after a marathon seems ludicrous. But to me, having thrived off the successful completion of a goal and understanding how my body felt, it didn’t seem so ludicrous. I thought a lot this week how in climbing, when you tick your project (or hardest climb) you get super motivated to try something harder straight away, or you get motivated to try and climb lots of fun things to change up your routine. In running though, when someone ticks a marathon, and yes I know the fatigue is different, the first reaction is for everyone to take a holiday and rest for two-three weeks. HellooOOOooOO, you’re in the shape of your fucking life, who wants to sit still and waste that on the couch!

Add to that motivation I was able to draw on, the other consideration I had from my outdoor ed days is in the outdoor world when you are eyeing off a challenge you have to have the skills and fitness to meet the challenge. You can’t necessarily design a challenge that suits whatever skills and fitness you have. Easiest way to think about that is with an example. Say you want to paddle from Victoria to Tasmania across Bass Strait. You have to be able to kayak a very long way several days in a row (with stops every night on islands). You can’t change the variables. You either can do the kayaking or you can’t and therefore won’t make it to the island. Same in climbing too, you either get yourself strong enough to do all the moves and the climb, or you can’t.

Having goals and challenges like this where you are forced into having the fitness required to just complete the goal is very different to something like running a marathon. If you fall off your time goal of running 2hrs 20 for running a marathon then you’ll still run a marathon, just in 2hrs 22 probably. So where am I going with this? Well, for a lot of people the idea of running one marathon is a little like paddling to an island. They care about the time yes, but they probably care more about finishing in itself. For me, running two marathons was more about challenging myself to a goal similar to paddling to an off-shore island. By treating it this way in my head, and similarly by treating the recovery from the two marathons as like paddling to the next offshore island I was giving myself no option of failure. I simply had to make it to the island. That’s part of the deal of doing this challenge. Falling in a heap several days after two marathons in a row would be a failure of the whole process. Another way to look at it is like when in designing a new product, engineers must consider the whole life cycle of a product and how it can be recycled after it’s final use. Failing to do so is poor design.

So having treated my recovery for the first three days since Adelaide as a goal in itself I was happy to get to Thursday fresh enough to do a session. I wasn’t really sure of what session I wanted to do; some specific half marathon work, something light and fast to keep my toes fresh, or something I know I could do easily for my confidence. In the end, I chose to do the same session I did on Friday in between Ballarat and Adelaide. I ticked off 15 minutes of the session 5 days after Ballarat, perhaps I could tick off 24 minutes of that session 4 days after Adelaide. And by doing the same session I could easily compare it to last week and compare my fatigue. Even better this time around I was doing it with my own music in for the first time in a while but not after I spent the drive to the session and my warm up listening to the latest episode of the Peak Pursuits podcast where I was a guest host this week!

It turned out to be a pretty good session which was pleasing. I eased into it slightly and then ended up working down to sub 3:00/km pace on the ‘ons’ which meant I ticked my goal of ticking the legs over faster. Having not done a double on Wednesday or gone to the sauna I was a bit fresher on Thursday morning which helped too. The other positive factor about this session was it was nice to do something different on a Thursday for the first time in a while (as opposed to running along the Sturt River like I had most previous Thursdays) and I continued this theme with a different arvo loop in Belair for an easy afternoon run.

Friday. RAO session day. Having ticked my session the day before I was happy to jump on the bike and coordinate this one. It meant I got out for my run a little bit later and just jogged around some of the course from the Adelaide Marathon to reflect on some memories. I was at a point in my week of running where I was getting sick of listening to music and didn’t have any podcasts to listen to so this run dragged on a bit. I spent most of the day working on something for RAO and relaxing before getting out for a late afternoon run along Shepherds Hill Road. It was the first time in a while I’d run on Shepherds Hill road and it was nice to do so.

Saturdays can be a drag sometimes when there’s a session I have to do. Sometimes I wish for the old Saturday routine of doing a run and then spending the morning gardening at Quorn. Alas, it wasn’t to be and I had to do the next best thing… a session with the RAO Trail crew with Asics rep Sam Hopper and RunDNA along for the ride. It’s easier to do a Saturday session when it’s on the trails because it half feels as if I’m getting it for free. The session was pretty simple, run uphill for 3 minutes, jog back down and then go again. I did 6 reps and all were pretty even. I stopped at 2:45ish to get my breath back before having to blow the whistle at the 3 minute mark.

Running downhill to recover was probably what I was most concerned about in this run having not spent too much time going downhill in the preceding few weeks while I intensified my preparations for Ballarat and Adelaide. Surprisingly, I felt pretty strong. But then I realised, of course I should I feel strong, I’ve run a lot of trails, I’ve done some lighter weeks off them, got myself into the shape of my life and have since recovered and absorbed that increased load and now I should be fitter and stronger for it. So yeah, I should feel pretty strong. Having ticked the hardest part of the day I loitered around The RunHouse for a fair bit afterwards and almost lost my window for a second run of the day. I say almost, because of course I know it did happen in the end but I just wanted to build the suspense for ten seconds.

I made it out for a second run around 2:45pm in the afternoon which was unusual for an arvo run (I had to get it done before the Bombers game at 3:45pm). I kept the unusual theme, or ‘mental freshness’ of it being early rolling by deciding to run a bit faster than normal. I loved these types of runs in November/December/January etc where I wasn’t afraid to run too fast on an afternoon run knowing it didn’t matter if I was tired for the next day of training. With no race on the immediate horizon I was able to experience a bit of freedom with my running and just run. It felt great too which is of course the reason I did it for 10km’s. And I pulled up fine I realise as I sit here one day later.

One thing that was on the back of my mind was ooooh I wonder if anyone will ask me about this run given it’s unusual-ness. That’s the good and bad parts of Strava flowing through into my psyche. I know people will care about my runs/sessions without really asking about them (the same way people care enough to read this blog…) but without understanding the context of some of my runs on Strava they aren’t getting the whole picture (which is what is shared mostly on the blog instead!). I often find myself wondering what my running would be like if it was similar to sea kayaking or skiing or my earlier rock climbing days where there is no real Strava and subsequently, no general vibe of commenting on people’s activities and either giving them ‘kudos’ for something someone deems is a good idea or commenting on something in private about how someone thinks something is a bad idea. Often in running though, and I’m guilty of this myself, we have conversations debating whether someone’s training is right or wrong like there’s a law you have to follow. There’s no fucking law. It’s not illegal to run whatever you want. It might not be smart, but neither is drinking 10 cans of beer on a Saturday night. But drinking that much beer is pretty fun and sometimes life is about having some fun. This ‘having fun’ approach to sport is rife throughout climbing and skiing but less so in running because we’re so often obsessed with the metrics of it all. Reminding myself of an approach to running where it doesn’t matter what other people think of your runs and trying to have a little fun along the way was refreshing this week and of course another factor in helping me to recover well.

That’s of course not to say I don’t like Strava, no no no. I think given these shortcomings it’s of utmost importance that I stay on Strava to ensure that it isn’t filled with a bunch of people stuck in the system of just doing what they think is right according to the imaginary law of running. That’s not what running is about after all (in my opinion). By putting my runs on Strava and then explaining the context behind them here on my blog I like to think, without sounding like I’m sort of wanker with a prohpecy, I am challenging the status quo of what people think is possible with running. It’s only a small challenge to the status quo but it’s enough hopefully to get people to think that there is more to life than just doing every run the way a coach* or some imaginary law of running tells us to. Anyway, even though that Saturday arvo run was good and inspired me to a great rant…

That wasn’t even the best part of my Saturday, no no no! The Bombers beat Sydney to make it into the Top 8! A stressful last quarter meant I had three sessions on Saturday where my heart rate was elevated but it was pleasing to get the win in the end!

Sunday. The final day of the week and the first RunHouse long run in a while for me. It was good to run with the group for 2hrs and tick off 30km’s. It didn’t feel as easy as I would’ve liked however forgetting my gels didn’t help but I also think ‘long run’ fitness is sometimes different to marathon fitness. What I mean is that I am fit to race a marathon where the roads are all closed off and there are people cheering you on and the adrenaline from it all powers you through. But then running in a small group, chatting along the way, dodging traffic and running on shitty footpaths is a skill in itself. It’s easy to string long runs together when you’ve done a few weeks of them in a row, but the first one post marathon (similar to the long runs I did after the track races in February and March) is tough. The good thing is, having ticked it off I’ll now be better for it… in the long run at least…

And that’s a wrap for this week. 148km’s, two and a half sessions plus some gym, sauna and some relaxing. The plan for next week is a pretty normal training week along with sprinkling some more sauna in there and having a race for Flinders in the Ekiden Relay event. The only place you’ll read about all that though is right here. Thanks for reading.

*That’s even for the people I coach who read this blog, feel free to go rogue off the program once in a while. As long as you’re getting an equivalent amount of volume and quality in (or more if you can handle it) and enjoying your running then I am a happy chappy!!!