Fraser Darcy

This week had it all. A fantastic and productive start. An alarming injury crisis. A pilgrimage to the forgotten kingdom of Quorn. And a triumphant return to form.

It all started on Monday of course. An easy 16km’s around Westminster and Oaklands Park listening to a great interview with Raf Baugh. Raf is a coach of marathon runners based in WA and has some great philosophies around running and coaching. After my 38km fast-ish long run the day before, this was a good way to motivate me to complete my easy 16km run. Monday’s are typically filled with some email admin, touching base with runners and preparing for the week ahead and this one was no different. I also had to write some programs as it’s that time of the month too. Throw in an another arvo run with some fantastic downwind strides at Bowker (my fastest ever strides perhaps) and it was a productive start to the week…

That continued into Tuesday as well. I ran in the RAO session and we had a session of 6 minute reps where I hung with Will and Jacob for the whole session. Averaging just under 3:00/km pace it was pretty hard work in the windy/rainy conditions.

I was glad to be done and glad to move onto the rest of my day involving gym, sauna, some pasta for lunch, some more programs, another arvo run in the wind/rain and then a coaches meeting. Pointing out I had pasta for lunch is a great segue into some fan mail I received this week. Anthony from Canberra wrote in to ask:

‘Loving the blog Fraser, just wondering if you could provide more detail about how you get your food in during the day. I have a demanding job and am always on the go but think I could learn something off you.’

Happy to help Anthony. Here is a sample plan of what I eat:

• Breakfast:
  • Pre-run. Two pieces of white toast with honey. Black coffee.
  • Post-run. Porridge (1 cup of oats) with honey or 1 cup of oats, milk, sultana cereal. Maybe toast with a can of sardines if particularly hungry. Maybe also an Up n Go if they are on special or if my sponsors have been particularly generous.
• Lunch:
  • A wrap with lettuce, cucumber, carrot, mushroom, red onion, maybe tomato if it wasn’t so bloody expensive and a can of tuna.
  • A bread and butter sandwich. Fresh bread is the best thing God ever made.
  • If hungry, two pieces of toast with a can of baked beans.
  • If really hungry, plain pasta. Up to 250-300g. 500g when carb-loading before a big session or long run or race. I am really hungry two-three days a week.
• Afternoon snack (rare, one day a week perhaps):
  • Two pieces of toast with honey. Another black coffee.
• Dinner:
  • Currently on a rotation of:
    • Beef Stroganoff (3 cups uncooked rice, 500g beef, 500g mushrooms between two… it’s alot)
    • Curry (500g mince meat, 3cups rice, 1 large sweet potato, frozen peas)
    • Chicken schnitzel (the schniztel obviously, 7-8 potatoes, a lot between two, brussel sprouts, 1/4 pumpkin, broccolini maybe)
    • Pasta (500g, tuna, pesto, zucchini, maybe tomato sauce every now and then)
    • Ramen (bloody time and pot consuming to prepare but is worth it, 500mL chicken stock, noodles, asian veggies, egg, kangaroo, yeah it’s aussie ramen)
    • Pizza (home made)
    • Plain Rice (yeah, maybe a can of tuna and some soy sauce, this is pre-long run dinner)
    • Fish and Chips (once a fortnight, seafood pack for two with extra chips, no washing up required)
  • If I am peckish, which is often, I wash down dinner with bread and butter and a beer. Usually non-alcoholic but sometimes alcoholic if I have had a hard day (hard day? what’s this bloke on about, he sits at home half the week…)
• Dessert:
  • Rare. It’s usually against my religion to eat dessert because it is a sin to have not eaten enough at dinner.
• The key principles with what I eat are that I try to eat a lot at lunch and dinner if I am hungry and fill up on the carbohydrate side of the equation. Everything I cook has lots of olive oil and salt added too.

So having fuelled with some rogan josh infused mince meat curry I went on my Wednesday run with Jess and Jacob on Wednesday. Funny that. I was starting to get a bit cooked on this day though and becoming lethargic with my work and other organisational tasks. I got out for an afternoon run, had some chicken schnitzel at night, messed up the timings of it a little bit and went to bed pretty tired.

I woke up on Thursday still pretty tired and kind of unsure if I should do my planned semi-long run. With Pichi Richi on the weekend I was going to miss a normal 2-2.5hr long run and with Gold Coast coming up too it was actually better to have a decent quality long run further out from Gold Coast than just the Sunday before. The trick of moving the long run earlier in the week is that it’s closer to the Tuesday session and Wednesday mid week long run. And of course the Sunday long run from last week. Stubborness and trying to find the limit in what training is appropriate is what drives me though so I stuck to my guns and went out for a semi-long run as planned.

My plan was to do 1hr easy into some sort of 10km marathon effort at the pace I’ll be pacing at Gold Coast (3:25/km for the elite women) and then follow it up with a harder session. If I got around 15-16km worth of intensity that would be an increase from my Thursday session the week before and a fantastic little outing. I was also planning on trying out my Bix drinks during this session as I’ll be using them in Gold Coast.

1hr in, and I was still pretty tired. I did briefly think about not pushing on and trying to fit my long run in on Friday but having not quite found the limit with my training, I pushed on… I got into the 10km at marathon effort and found it very difficult to get down onto pace. Is my GPS not working? What’s going on here, I’m sprinting! It took a couple of km’s before I was on pace and then I did start to progress faster than the pace I needed to with some comfort but those first few km’s were alarming. I called it at 10.66km’s, because that’s where my loop ended, jogged around to the other side of the train line and got into a hard 4 minute effort that again, felt terrible. I finished that, thought I’d call it there, jogged for two more minutes back to the other side of the train line and then thought f*** it I’ll finish it off and did one 1km rep. This time at a much more respectable pace. Jogging back home to switch into my warm down shoes I could feel one of the tendons in my ankle was very sore. It hadn’t been sore prior to this day (my knee on that same side had been though) so I wasn’t too worried, a jog cool down shouldn’t make it any worse…until it started to get a little bit more sharp and a little bit more painful. Uh-oh…

Yep. I had found the limit and had hurt myself. An hour or so later I could barely walk on my injured leg. It was quite painful, but not too sore to touch which was weird. I iced it and put on a compression bandage but later that afternoon it still hadn’t improved so I called in the big guns. Anti-inflammatories. I hobbled to the shops to collect them and two hours later I was no longer hobbling around in that much pain. I could still feel it on full extension and full flexion but it was at least manageable. I obviously didn’t run on Thursday afternoon.

I probably shouldn’t have run on Friday but I wondered if maybe it just needed to warm up. Nah, it was still sore, not to the point where I was limping but just to the point where I noticed it for the whole 30 minutes or so I ran. I called the run there early, did some gym, some sauna, finished off my programs and then called it a week.

Saturday was a lot better, I ran with Alice in the morning and didn’t really feel it, but didn’t have full confidence in it either. We went for a short jog, I tried to do some strides at Bowker but didn’t have enough confidence so aborted that mission, and then we drove off to Quorn. Yes! The forgotten kingdom! It was the weekend of the annual Pichi Richi race and it gave me a good reason to escape Adelaide, pick up some belongings from my house in Quorn and see a few familiar faces. Plus, the Pichi Richi event is one of the best events in SA so I was of course looking forward to racing that.

When we arrived in Quorn later that arvo there was no fairytale welcoming parade for my return. Instead we checked into the caravan park, checked out my house, and I went for a jog on one of my old loops. I didn’t feel my foot at all so that was nice but it was also nice to reflect on how much my running has improved since last time I was in Quorn in mid-December. For dinner that night we ate at the Pasta night that was put on by the swim club and then got into bed nice and early like you do when you’re camping.

Sunday morning rolled around soon enough and it was time to pack up the tent, have breakfast and get on the train to the start line! Yes, the train!! I’d never caught the Pichi Richi while I lived in Quorn and now here I was catching it for free to the start of the 10.5km for the first time ever. It was great! What was also great was that I couldn’t feel my foot in the warm up and I was pretty relaxed about my race plans. On one hand, I wanted to run a pretty consistent 3:00-3:10/km pace as a bit of a tempo session faster than marathon pace. On the other hand, I didn’t want to go too fast just in case my tendon was still ‘injurable’. Standing on the start line I still had no idea what I was going to do and then suddenly, with no countdown, the gun went so I started running.

And that’s about as simple as I kept it. I just ran up the hill for about 3km’s and then down the hill for the last 7.5km’s. Going up the hill I averaged 3:07/km which I knew was pretty fast considering the last time I ran this event two years I averaged 3:08/km for the whole race. I did think that on a good day, it was probably possible to run my fastest 10km ever here on this course even though the first 3km’s is all uphill. When I went through the fourth km in 2:45 I thought maybe that this day was that good day. When I went through 5km’s in just under 15 minutes I knew it definitely was. I didn’t try to push it any harder but just kept focusing on turning my legs over at the same consistent rate. The 2:50/km pace just kept coming and I eventually went through 10km’s in 29:13, almost one minute faster than my PB. With the extra 500m to finish it off I kept my foot down and ended up running in just under 31 minutes. I was in disbelief almost as to how fast I had just run. It was almost as if my GPS was broken again. I thought I was injured on Friday and now here I was running my fastest 10km ever, albeit on a downhill course.

The best things about the Pichi Richi race is that I not only enjoyed passing people in the half and full marathons as I raced past them, but as soon as I finished I was able to easily jog back and cheer on Alice who managed to do the same as me and run her fastest 10km and 5km times ever. And finish 3rd overall and 2nd female. It’s not only former Quorn locals who can do well at this event it seems! Not only was I happy about my time but it was also nice to win an event at the Pichi Richi race for the 4th time in a row. In 2022 it was the marathon, 2023 it was the 10.5km, 2024, the half marathon a day after racing in Brisbane and now 2025 the 10.5km again. The streak continued (and I was very grateful I continued it last year with my antics after Brisbane). After the race I chatted to a variety of people, had some sausages in bread to celebrate and some plain sourdough rolls and then collected my bits and pieces from my house. We didn’t get home to North Brighton until 6pm but that didn’t stop Alice and I from getting out for a short little jog. It did stop me from putting out a blog yesterday but one day later than as has been customary lately is not too bad.

From here, for the rest of the week I’ll keep training pretty sensible. I’m pacing the elite women group for 2:24 at Gold Coast Marathon on Sunday. If I make it to 35km I get a pretty decent pay check and a good training stimulus 8 weeks out from Sydney. Because of that pacing job though, expect another delayed blog update. Until then, thanks for reading and send in any other fan mail/questions you may have.