Fraser Darcy

The highlights first. Ran my third fastest 10k according to Strava this week. Did some fast strides. Ran uphill on the treadmill and enjoyed it. Am on track with work. Ran a double threshold day. Did a trail session. Made it to the end of the Torrens in my long run.

The lowlights. Only did one proper gym session. Had a bad sleep on Thursday night. Almost tried to cook beef stroganoff without the Masterfoods beef stroganoff packet.

Neither a highlight or a lowlight. Alice bought a new sofa bed for the spare room.

Those are the storylines for this week and now you can play bingo as I try and work them all into my weekly recap. On Monday I slept in a bit and then got out for an easy 16km’s around the Oaklands area. Starting my week off around the Oaklands area is good because I get locked into loops of either 8km, 10km, 12, 14 or 16km. So it’s easy to start the week off right. In the evening it was windy so I didn’t want to bother with the beach and I’d run around the Oaklands area in the morning so my other option was to do an out and back along the train line. It was actually a lot less boring than I thought it might have been. I finished it off with a session of strides and exercises at Bowker. These strides were pretty good despite the oval being wet and the lights not being on. So there we go, first highlight ticked off.

The second highlight to tick off is in my Tuesday session I ran my third fastest 10k according to Strava. There’s a bit of mayo on that stat due to the GPS error on the small loop we were using. The session was 3minutes on, 1minute float, 1minute hard, 1minute float and I aimed to just complete as much as possible with Jacob. This is my usual benchmark for sessions when I’m feeling fit and having done the whole session with him on Friday I probably should’ve had more confidence that I could hang with him for the whole session. But I wasn’t that confident and instead surprised at myself that I was still there with him through 5k and then through 8k. Pleasingly, the paces that we were running felt controllable too. I could’ve gone faster in the 3minute or the floats if I needed to but that’s not the idea of the session. My weakest part of the session was the 1 minute reps and Jacob almost dropped me each time. When we finished the 30minutes of the session I knew I was close to a good time for 10k so decided to finish it off. Good decision in the end to collect a bit of confidence dust and put it in the back pocket. Perhaps I also now need to start mentally preparing for the time where I don’t hold myself to Jacob’s level and just think about my own training.

The rest of the day after that was pretty good as you’d expect after a good session. I did some gym, some sauna, bought some new light globes from Bunnings, started writing some programs and then went for an easy run in the afternoon along the beach (which wasn’t windy). I pushed it all the way down to Marino on this run and I hadn’t done this for years I reckon. Usually I turn around at the bottom of the hill at the end of Kingston Park because I can’t be bothered running up that hill. It’s worth bothering with though, just 30-40m of elevation gives you a great view back towards Brighton and Glenelg. And at 5:20pm at night in winter, I’m sure you can imagine it’s pretty nice. I got rolling a bit towards the end of this run too.

Wednesday’s run was nothing special for the first 90 minutes. Good conversations with Jess and Jacob and that’s about it. I finished off with 15minutes on the treadmill though to continue my uphill running experiment. It was pretty good (i.e. somewhat hard) but I didn’t need to run fast to get that extra good-ness felling. The treadmill incline ranging from 10-15% does it for you. The only downside is that it places extra strain on my achilles and hamstrings which I felt for the rest of the day. But that’s all part of the experiment I guess. It didn’t impact me on my next run, later that day I ran an easy 10km’s around the Oaklands area to finish off a productive program writing day.

Good thing I was productive with work on Wednesday because it meant I could focus on a big day of training on Thursday. I started off with a session of 6km ‘steady’, 6km ‘future goal marathon pace’, 2km ‘hard’. The idea was to follow the pattern of the special block I did earlier in the year but on a reduced level. Instead of 10km steady, 10km at marathon pace, this reduced workout was my attempt at easing into these bigger volume workouts at some point in the lead in to Sydney. I thought if I could run the ‘steady’ part at 3:30’s and the ‘future goal marathon pace’ at 3:15’s then I’d be content. It turned out that 3:26’s felt more comfortable as the ‘steady’ pace so I stayed at that effort because it’s also very similar to the pace I may run in the Gold Coast pacing job. I progressed down to 3:11’s for the future goal marathon pace which was probably a bit quick but I was still able to add in 2km’s hard at the end (which wasn’t that much faster). The really cool thing was that I felt like I was finishing a half marathon race in this session by the end of it which was a good feeling to get to. Makes me feel like I’m actually replicating what half and full marathons can feel like in training which is a good training stimulus to have.

I jumped in the sauna after this session, pretty pleased with myself and ready to get a few things done for the rest of the day with that good energy. That didn’t really happen. I wrote some programs and thought for a bit that I was barely going to get out for my arvo run. Maybe I had overcooked it in the morning. Oh well, one good session for the day is usually pretty good.

I still got out for my arvo run though and just eased into pretty slowly. Wearing my normal long run shoes I was giving myself the best chance of breaking out into the session I had planned which was: 6km steady again and then 6*1km. Again, similar to what I did in my special block a couple of months ago. 2km’s into my afternoon run a good song came on my playlist and I thought, alright, let’s give it a go, and started running a bit faster. Unsurprisingly, it felt good. I felt light and warmed up and like I wasn’t having to apply much mental effort to get going which was not how I was thinking only a couple of hours earlier. A few km’s into this steady effort and I was suddenly running 3:20’s without pushing it. The last couple of km’s were even 3:15-3:16/km pace. I hit lap on my watch at the end of this 6km ‘steady’ and got into the first 1km hard straight away. It came out at 3:06/km pace even with a few dodges of dogs. A bit of a jog to get my breath and focus back and then I went again. This time running 3:00/km pace. By the end of this rep I felt pretty satisfied and was also getting pretty close to home. I had enough road and time in the day for one more fast effort before I was then going to have to warm down. A good song came on again and I really went for a fast effort where I tried to just run as fast as I could before I started to get a bit lactic. Turns out this was almost 300m at 2:42/km pace and it felt amazing. In the end I had run 6km at 3:20’s, 2*1km and then a 300m all out effort after my 24km in the morning. A great training day and one in which I was pretty cooked afterwards (but happily cooked).

The only downside to being cooked after a big training day is that it can maybe interrupt your sleep that night which is what happened to me. I was awake from 2am until 5am and was subsequently a bit flat on Friday morning. I jumped on the bike for the RAO session, got cold, warmed up at The RunHouse afterwards, got out for my run and then went straight home. No gym, no sauna, no breakfast or chatting time, straight to home. I put my phone in another room and needed a good day of just staying ‘internal’ to recoup from my bad night of sleep. By the end of the day, with some programs written, the washing done and groceries bought for pizza night I had enough time for an afternoon run. I was lacking a bit of motivation though, until I put on an old Led Zeppelin album. It’s like injecting myself with motivation. Even though my stomach was feeling a bit iffy I still had a good arvo run of 12km’s thanks to the sounds of Led Zeppelin. Some pizza, a late night adventure to get a fresh loaf of bread and poof, I was back re-energised at night time after a tiring day.

I was fortunate to have a bit of pep back in my step as I went out to the trails on Saturday, or maybe the fact I was going back out to the trails put the pep in my step. Either way I had a bit of pep in my step and enjoyed getting out for a fartlek session on an undulating fire track. A session that never fails to be enjoyable if you just focus on running up the hills fast and down the hills faster. By the end of the morning I was sufficiently tired again and enjoyed reacquanting myself with the trails. Living at North Brighton now, it feels like I am beginning to appreciate the trails a lot more and how fortunate I was to have access to them either on my door step or only within ten-twenty minutes of driving. And that’s whether I was living at Quorn or Eden Hills. The benefit of having a bit of stoke back for the trails is it means I’m like one of those kids who never gets to eat Macca’s and then when they do get to eat Macca’s they go absolutely wild.

After going somewhat absolutely wild in the morning I did a quick gym session at my former/current/future sponsors (Mum and Dad) and said hello to them. Then it was onto the rest of my day which was highlighted by me devouring more of my fresh bread and also collecting a sofa bed with Alice. This would usually be a bit of a non-event for most people but there is a clear strength discrepancy between Alice and I. You can imagine then that there was a challenging moment once we had to lift the couch off my ute and into the house. The details do not need to covered in full but basically we solved that challenging moment by utilising the help of a neighbour who happened to be walking past. So yes Alice, I will be putting the couch story in the blog but I’ve tried to do it in a way that doesn’t embarrass you too much.

After a busy arvo of couch lifting there were some doubts as to whether I’d fit in my arvo run but thankfully, a good podcast with a retired runner helped motivate me. The runner was a former Australian Olympian who actually happened to be an Algerian refugee. Yes, Algerian! Regular readers may remember I referenced my Algerian heritage a couple of weeks ago so you can imagine my delight in listening to one of my brothers talk about the homeland. It was a good listen and a good run. One that set me up well for…

My final highlight of the week. Making it to the end of the Torrens path. We usually run up to the hills along the Torrens for our long run with RunAsOne and getting to the end of the path, seeing where it finished, had been on my mind once or twice before. I figured this training week was the best opportunity to try it. 2 weeks out form Gold Coast, several weeks out from Sydney, I could throw in a 2hr steady long run and see how that feels and whether it’s something worth repeating as I get closer to Sydney.

After 20 minutes of jogging with the group as my ‘warm up’ I put on the rest of the podcast to listen to and got rolling along. I didn’t need to run any faster than 3:35/km up the hill but wanted to run somewhere in the 3:40’s (or 80% of marathon pace). Once the podcast finished I put on another album of Led Zeppelin and started to check my watch frequently. I knew the end of the path was vaguely around 19km’s but would I get there before 1hrs 15min, my ideal turnaround time for a 2hr 30 run? I wasn’t sure and just kept grinding. I pushed past my previous furthest distance along the path of 15km’s. I had 4ish km’s of new terrain to explore and it was great! It’s almost like a fairytale script. I went to a new section of the path and there was nice trees, a billabong, patches of nice looking grass, good views of the hill and a good path to run on. Fantastic! I was getting closer and closer to my 1hr 15 turnaround and the path wasn’t finishing though. Or so I thought. I noticed that Gorge Rd had appeared on my right which meant I was close to nirvana/the end. Shortly after there was a sign that said 500m until the end of the path. This was it. I was going to do it. 500m later I was there. At the end of the path. I hit lap and turned around. Then I ran all the way back to The RunHouse at a nice comfortable effort (low 3:30’s) listening mostly to an AC/DC album.

And that was it. A steady long run like that for 32ish km’s actually felt pretty good. Because I didn’t ever really get rolling and run anything faster than 3:20’s my body felt pretty good. Like I could’ve kept going if I wanted to or needed to. Having run my equal biggest week of mileage though I didn’t need to so therefore I didn’t want to. And that was it. A good week of a few highlights and not that many lowlights. The one lowlight I didn’t address was trying to cook beef stroganoff without the beef stroganoff which demonstrates that I have forgotten about the beef stroganoff sauce not once, but now twice this week. Thankfully Foodland was around the corner on the night in question and it wasn’t actually a big deal.

Speaking of big deals next week isn’t much of a big deal. Another similar week in training and then I’m returning to the promised land. No not Algeria. Quorn! Yes, it’s the Pichi Richi Marathon weekend and I’m heading up to collect a few things, show Alice around and have a weekend away. The blog will be delayed as a result so check back in on Monday or Tuesday to see how it all went. For now, ta ta and thanks for reading!