The Big Dance
The Murrumbateman Eagles are off to their first grand final, I break down my week of training, the end of a habit and reveal my first Motivation Monday Hero!
Everyone is handed adversity in life. No one's journey is easy. It's how they handle it that makes people unique.
Kevin Conroy
Success Doesn’t Happen Overnight
I started playing Aussie Rules at the age of 6 for Canberra’s most successful club, Ainslie. My father instilled in me that Eastlake was our sworn enemy (my mood on this has changed a little, as I now help coach the women’s program at Eastlake) and we also didn’t like Belconnen either. The club had just come off winning 6 premierships in a row. Little did Ainslie know at the time, but after the 6th premiership there would be a mini droughts of sorts, and that the cup with beer flowing into mouths of legends like Ian Muir, Reece Langan and Andrew Bishop wouldn’t be drunk out of by another Tricolours player until 2010. It was the longest drought on the men’s side of the club, and in a few weeks the undefeated women of Ainslie will likely break their premiership drought from a solo premiership in 2001.
Even for the most successful people or clubs winning doesn’t come easy. 5 years ago I agreed to move to play for Murrumbateman, a club that was being established in a small town of 4,000 or so people. Club President Andy Ingold at the time was a jack of all trades, he was to be President, Coach and Captain. It was a rough first year putting it lightly, we trained on an oval that was an ex-horse paddock (and doesn’t have any irrigation to this day), there was no dedicated light towers so we trained under Rural Fire Service lights on a wing on the oval, when that wasn’t available we travelled across the Yass Valley and even used ovals in Hall and Belconnen. Our home ground in Murrumbateman doesn’t have change sheds so the Men’s Shed creates a makeshift one for us to use on game day.
Incredibly in that first year we avoided the wooden spoon, that went to our rivals Yass. The next year the coaching reigns were handed over to Terry Lemon, an experienced campaigner who couldn’t count the number of premierships he had won. He was no-nonsense and we improved playing in our first finals, I didn’t get to play that day due to work commitments, but it would’ve been my first finals game in seniors, I loved playing under Terry and still have a strong bond with him and the person he made me believe I could be. Last year Brent Fraser came on as coach and the vibe changed again, Frase is a passionate man and he has been instrumental in driving a culture that should see sustained success for years to come. The duties of the club also started to be spread amongst different people. I could name a dozen of them and their work behind the scenes that has made the club what it is today, but one of them Tony Graham who has been basically ‘Mr Fix It’ for the club and makes sure all the boys have their gear on game day has been a driving force of motivation for the team.
Tony, for those who don’t know was the first Chief Officer of the ACT State Emergency Service, he served for 11 years as the CO, and two decades in the service itself. You wouldn’t know it by the way he carries himself, but Tony has been battling cancer and this year it was revealed the cancer had spread to his bones and brain. Last year I sat down with Tony in his home and interviewed him about his battle with cancer, and not once did he play the woe is me card. He’s had surgery this year, and has still been able to fulfil game day roles for his beloved Eagles, as well as keeping everyone up to date on when the club’s puffer jackets would arrive. The love the team has for this man is obvious, none more so than when the players bought a signed footy of all the players at the club’s charity gala dinner for more than $2,000 so that it could be given to Tony. Which brings me back to Saturday and a win over Woden in the Preliminary Final to setup a date with Yass in this Saturday’s grand final. The club’s first ever finals victory and one that I had dreamt about five years ago when we were just a bunch of players having our first kick on a small horse paddock in a rural town. I found Tony as we were coming off the ground and savoured a big hug, if the lessons my football career has taught me it’s that success doesn’t come easy and you have to appreciate these moments, I’m certainly going to soak up this week, no matter what the result is at the end of it.
One Eye On Kosci
I will admit that training for a 100km race in football season hasn’t been easy at all. Given the physicality of football, you simply don’t know how you’re body is going to hold up, especially when playing on a Saturday and needing to long run on a Sunday, so I’ve been adapting my long runs to see how I feel. During this current stage I’ve been looking to just keep my fitness and try and slowly build without having my body breakdown completely. This has seen me throw in some two hour runs during the middle of the week, preparing for a 100km race is anything but glamorous, I’m not good at getting to bed early so alarms going off before 5am and even one I set before 4am were an absolute struggle. But, I know that once football season finishes, I’ll be consistently pulling off 100km weeks. In fact I’ve been so ambitious I’ve set the goal of running 1,000km over a 10 week period to just mentally test where I’m at before the big race day.
Breakdown of the week
Monday - Rest Day
Tuesday - 1 hour night run on trails
Wednesday - 80 minute on trails
Thursday - 2 hour run on trails
Friday - Running 4 Resilience - 6km Progression
Saturday - Game Day
Sunday - Rest
Totals: 51.4km in 5 hours 38 with 751 metres of Elevation.
Night time is quickly becoming one of my favourite times to run, it’s challenging and a completely different beast to running at dawn. Different animals seem to be active at night, based on spotting 4 Bettong over the past 3 weeks, and being guided by a head lamp is therapeutic in a way. My confidence is coming along and on Tuesday I scored a 5 minute personal best at night over the course.
My Wednesday over the 80 minutes absolutely felt like a struggle. I climbed a 180m climb over the first 3km of the 12km I got through, just trying to replicate in some way that start of the 100km at Kosci, where I’m going to have to climb to Eagle’s Nest from the bottom of Thredbo.
On Thursday I normally have Elevate, but my coach Shiree is off slaying Larapinta, so we got the morning off. Our plan said stairs, but my mind and body was craving something middle to long, I didn’t want to go too far based on football season still being in play, so I had the goal for a two hour gate-to-gate from Goorooyarroo to Mulligans and back. I beat it by 20 seconds, the first time I had ever run sub 2-hours for this course.
Friday saw me back at Running 4 Resilience which I found so important following the death the day before of Paul Green. The Friday has been awesome, it’s the day where I try and rip in and unconventionally I’ve been trialling different sausage rolls before a tempo run to see if I could potentially hold them in during a 100km run. For those that don’t know, that’s one of the joys of ultra running, you get to practice what foods can keep you running, it’s an experiment I’m still dipping into, I’ll share more results as they come to hand.
Breaking The Habit
I’ve never been a big coffee drinker at all, I find the warm stuff disgusting, but chilled it’s quite enjoyable. Mind you, the ‘chilled coffee’ I’m talking about is a Dare Iced Coffee, recently I found myself with the early morning starts filling in for breakfast at work, buying a Dare every morning, the Mocha and 750ml. Quick maths will tell you having five of those a week is 13,800kj more than a days worth of kilojoules across the week in flavoured milk, let alone what it’s made from. A friend suggested trying an alternative, a Japanese cold brew called Boss Coffee. It’s nothing flash but it fills the craving, and a double espresso over a five day period (if I’m really craving) adds up to 1,835kj over a week. That’s 7 and a half times less kilojoules I’m consuming just in a week through the switch. Something I feel many people should consider for their overall wellbeing and health, is finding a substitute that fills their craving, or eating a food in a certain way that it fits into their goals.
My Motivation Monday Hero
Jasmina Svoboda is the Queen of Stromlo, you’ll often find her and Border Collie Humphrey running the trails for hours at one of Canberra’s most iconic locations. Jasmina on Saturday completed her second marathon in three weeks, running the Kowen Marathon track, before topping off her week with a near 16km run with the beloved ‘Lazy Glutes’ to run a 121.7km week with 4,021 metres of elevation. Jasmina was one of the first people I met at Elevate and she is one of the driving forces behind my belief that I can run 100km at Kosci in December, she may not be the fastest by her own admission, but she just goes and goes and goes, and after seeing her take down Bright 4 Peaks I’m packing the car and heading down to Victoria for the October weekend later this year. She’s currently training for the miler at Kosci, and when I first asked her about it her response was essentially ‘if not now, then when’. She’s always got a positive mind-set which I feel you need when you’re clocking 100s of kilometres a month, here’s to our first Motivation Monday Hero, Jasmina!
Good luck on the weekend,Go the mighty Sweagles,win or lose,remember to always enjoy the moment 😀
Great read mate. Enjoy GF Day.