Fraser Darcy

It’s week three of North Brighton life but it feels like week five. That’s probably a good thing. I’m settled, Alice is settled and my running is going well. Essendon could be going better but they don’t live in North Brighton so that checks out. Something I realised this week about my new habitat is that it is back to my roots. Yes, before Quorn, before Blackwood and before Melbourne where I went to primary school, I grew up less than five kilometres from where I live now in Oaklands Park. It means all my afternoon runs and some of my morning runs I complete around the Oaklands Park estate and the Sturt River are possibly the routes I would’ve done if my family never moved away from Oaklands Park. It was pretty cool when I realised this. Having done most of the ‘growing up’ I remember in Melbourne, I have sometimes felt conflicted if I am a South Australian or Victorian. Returning back to my OG stomping grounds has confirmed that I am a South Australian. Technically a South Australian with Algerian heritage (I can never forget my Algerian brothers and sisters) but that’s a story for another day…

Instead, a story for this day is how my life and training went this week. For reference, I was coming off cloud nine at the start of this week following my PB at Launceston Half Marathon. I had set this week as a ‘refresh’ week and was hoping to come out the other side with new goals and motivation to level up again. To kick off my reset week I got out for a run that had no distance or time goal in mind. I just wanted to jog around and feel good. I jogged around and felt stiff for the first twenty minutes but eventually felt good by the end of 49 minutes of jogging. From a training perspective that was pretty much it for Monday, no double run, no strides, no sauna and no gym. I killed the rest of my day by doing some grocery shopping, putting together my blog, having a phone call with friend of the blog Chad (who was in the US a the time and is now in Europe) and doing not much else. T’was a good day.

Tuesday was also a good day. I jogged the RAO session, again with no prescribed distance or time in mind, and then followed it up with some gym work. I also set down to write some goals for myself and reflect on the achievements of the first 5 months of this year. That took a while as they are goals that will direct my focus for the next few months so I wanted to make sure I felt strongly about them. An afternoon run and a sauna with Fin was all that was needed to finish off a good day so you can imagine how good the day really was in the end when I cooked up a mean Beef Stroganoff for a dinner. If you haven’t had beef stroganoff in the last three months this is your reminder to do so. Onion, mushrooms, beef, Masterfoods sachet, sour cream, rice or pasta. Done.

Fuelled by beef stroganoff I ran a bit longer on Wednesday morning than I had on Monday and Tuesday. This was the first day I was starting to feel good from the start of my run having recovered physically and mentally from Launceston. I did a bit of work from The RunHouse afterwards, put together some plans for my two trips to Europe, touched base with a few runners I coach and then had another easy run in the afternoon.

Having strung together three good days of jogging it was time on Thursday to sprinkle some intensity in there. Even though this week was a ‘refresh’ week I still wanted to do some intensity to keep things ticking along but in a way that was ‘fresh’ and mentally stimulating. So, killing two birds with two session ideas I did an uphill session on the treadmill AND a tempo session on the treadmill. The uphill session was an experiment that I was keen to try ahead of my uphill race at the end of September. If I can train for this uphill race using uphill sessions on the treadmill effectively than I will be happy. This session in particular was 3*5mins uphill (90s rest between) at 15% with varying speeds. The first effort was at 8.5km/hr and I felt good at the end of the five minutes, like I could’ve kept going for another thirty. The next effort was at 9.5km/hr and again, felt pretty good, but a little more tired. The next effort was at 10 km/hr, finishing the last minute at 10.5km/hr. Now this felt a bit more honest and I probably could’ve kept going if I really needed to but I didn’t as 15 minutes of uphill running for my first try was a good start. So instead, I ran 15 minutes at 3:20-3:30/km pace on the flat’s again just to top up my steady/tempo running for the week and see how my body felt after the uphill. Plus, it dragged out my intensity to 30 minutes for the session in a pretty harmless way. I hopped off the treadmill after a short warm down, felt pretty sweaty, did some gym and then cracked into the sauna. A big morning in the end and one that meant I was pretty cooked for the rest of the day.

BUT! Although I was physically cooked, mentally I was pinging! I received notice after my treadmill /gym/sauna session that I was being offered a pacing job at Gold Coast Marathon for either the 2:19 or 2:24 group. And I was being paid for it! This is the closest thing a runner like me will ever get to an actual job promotion so it was very cool. It also means a slight tweak of my training I had roughly planned for the next three months but it still fits in very well (hence why I agreed to it). I capped off the day with an arvo run where even though I felt cooked, the mental good news meant I got rolling anyway and ended up running the second half of the double at a good steady pace.

Doing so meant I pulled up a little tired on Friday but not too bad really. It also didn’t matter how tired I was on Friday because the key principle of a refresh week is doing training and not caring how tired you are the next day because the training doesn’t really matter in a refresh week (because to refresh yourself you need to give yourself a break from the expectations!) Still, I did the RAO session on the bike in the rain, went back to The RunHouse, got warm and dry and then went back outside in the cold with Riley for an easy jog where I kind of got rolling towards the end which was nice. I also felt this good on my arvo jog too which was nice too. The rest of the day on Friday wasn’t much to report, cleaned the house, did some relaxing, was actually unproductive on a few things and regretted it but again, that’s whats sometimes needed in a refresh week I think.

Another key ingredient in a refresh week is getting out on the trails! Which is what I did on Saturday morning with the RAO trail crew. I had planned another experimental session for this outing in Belair and it was based off a staple session that many East African runners do; 200m repeats up a slight hill. I wanted to see how they made me feel as I’ve never done more than 5-6 200’s in a session and only ever on the flats. This session is supposedly meant to be done for 15-20mins so not too long but just enough and at a high intensity to target and fatigue the fast twitch muscle fibres. Logistically that meant anywhere from 12-15 reps. I had Riley for company again on this run and we both pushed ourselves pretty hard. Me so hard that I only made it to 12 reps before becoming too fatigued to make the session of any quality. And it was fantastic to pull out at 12. I hadn’t experienced this type of hurt in a while, possibly since the Bowker sessions in February, so it was great for that reason and great because it also showed I still have room to improve. If I could do 12 of these reps faster than I did them this time around that’s improvement but it’s also easy to improve by just handling more of these reps for longer. By ticking this session off it had made for a second successful experimental session for the week. That’s a refresh week done well.

A refresh week done even better is sprinkling in some new plyometric drills on Saturday afternoon in my gym session. Single leg and double leg hops on to a box, plus some specific bounding exercises with ankle weights on were further exciting additions to my routine. If that sounds strange that a few new exercises on a Saturday gym session ‘excites’ me then you obviously don’t appreciate the quest for improvement and learning that I am constantly on. These plyometric drills were great! But also very tiring! My arvo run on Saturday was a bit slower than my previous jogs and I put it down to the tough morning session plus gym and the fact it was very windy and cold.

Finishing an arvo run in the wind and cold on Saturday isn’t a great pre-cursor to a successful long run on Sunday. With some trepidation I set out to try and run 2.5hrs for the first time since the Adelaide and Ballarat Marathons which were only a few weeks ago. In between then I’ve run 2hrs twice, 1hr 45 and Launceston half. One part of me felt like; jeez it would’ve been great to have all those being 2.5hr long runs to fall back on too for confidence. Another part of me was like; well by having not run one for a few weeks, it’s a great way of polarising my training. Go up to 2.5hrs for a few weeks, come back down for a week or two, then go up again and smack for more long runs, then repeat the cycle. Could be something to experiment rather than just aiming to always lock into the same cycle of 2.5hr long run just because of the belief that they are the gold standard. And if they are the gold standard, how come I don’t do them more than once a week? Maybe I should go through a month of doing two a week, then only doing one a week, then none a week and focusing on something else? These questions are all very stimulating and could lead me off on many tangents about training theories. I’ve already lost your attention span so back to the main tangent.

This morning’s run went well in the end despite the trepidation. I started off in a jacket and gloves, dropped them off and the majority of the group at 21km’s in, continued on to Botanic with a smaller crew of runners aiming for the half and full marathon at Gold Coast and then picked it up towards the end with just Cohen for company. I was hoping I’d pick it up towards the end of this run but didn’t expect myself too so was gladly relieved when Cohen started winding it up of his own accord. To average 4:01/km for the whole 2.5hrs is pretty solid and a great return to the 2.5hr run. A part of me before Sunday thought ‘oh I wonder what life is like as a 2hr long run guy for a while, maybe I’ll forget about the marathon for a bit’. Post this 2.5hr run where I returned to The RunHouse wet, tired and full of DOMS from my 200m hill session the day before I was very glad I pushed it to 2.5hrs. A run like that makes you feel alive and that you’re actually pushing yourself. Perhaps I get that feeling because I know Cohen, myself and another fella Mitch were the only ones who hung on for 2.5hrs today and so perhaps that’s the special feeling I like. Probably, but I also really do like the fact I ask a lot more of my body over a 2.5hr run than I do in a 2hr run. And that’s without even wondering about the benefits for my race performances, that’s just coming from the perspective of trying to enjoy running as much as possible.

Which as an overall this week, I did really enjoy my running. It was good to refresh myself, it was good to set some new goals and it was good to experiment with some training. Next week things will be a bit more ‘locked in’ as I aim to tick off a pretty standard week with a couple of big sessions and another big long run ahead of the Gold Coast pacing job. Until then, thanks for reading and go the Bombers for tonights match against Carlton.