The plan. This was my fifth marathon (fourth official race, third Gold Coast Marathon) so I was no stranger to either the distance or the event. I had a decent sense of the plan going in so below summarises basically the differences between last year and this. I’d also run the Brisbane Half Marathon in… Continue reading Gold Coast Marathon 2026: Race Report
After an aborted attempt at the 2024 Brisbane Marathon, I’ve had the half on the agenda for a little while. There’s something about the course that I quite like, hitting off some of the best parts of one of the best cities in the world (sue me), but the idea of having to run it… Continue reading Brisbane Half Marathon 2026: Race Report
Ah, mia figlia. The mountain rumbled on the night of the feast. Moored in the harbour was a growing civil fleet and a limping pirate crew who brought tension and small chaos and tomatoes and wooden wounds taken by British flak. Their schooners floundered with peppered hulls and as the ash climbed high and we… Continue reading Rigger Tony
Apartments are cheaper because they’re smaller and easier to pin down and because the deed has less space in which to hide as they bound about the prairies avoiding the hunt. It’s into these fields that the homes go when they’re released like healed animals back into the wilderness by the builders to become prey… Continue reading House Hunting
The basic story of the Sydney Marathon race report is that I just never got to my target pace with consistency, having in the lack of training sort of forgotten what that rhythm felt like off the top of my head, and then struggling through the start of the race to hit a consistent line… Continue reading Sydney Marathon 2025: Race Report
They made him from the beer they drained under the taps. Sloshing around, he was more ale than lager, the bar in a gentrified place, nestled in the shadow of a stadium and apartment blocks all around. They sat him in the back corner, unseeable from the road but there to find if you poked… Continue reading Barfly
The mice started it. It was their insistence on a few hours of mandatory charging at a time at a minimum rather than what they referred to as the piecemeal standard of a bit here, a bit there, some more over coffee or lunch and then the rest after hours and then all at once.… Continue reading Stationery
15,000 people this year’s Gold Coast Marathon. In 2023, I ran it with a friend I left behind early. In 2024, I ran 42km with a friend just on a summer Sunday morning through Brisbane. In 2025, I ran the Gold Coast alone (with thousands of my new friends). That’s 1.5 times up on when… Continue reading Gold Coast Marathon 2025: Race Report
Last time I tried to run 32 kilometres I didn’t get it done. That was on December 1st, 2024. I ran 23.3 kilometres and had made a range of errors. Today, I reached the peak of my Gold Coast Marathon training program with a 32 kilometre run. This time I did it. I ran from… Continue reading 32 Kilometres Of Marathon Prep
I wrote this while counting continued, before concession. It's better that way than with an updated edit. Enjoy. He’s the son of a Dutch tiler who’s no longer with us. He was made on the way over and he was, during the last Coalition government, the Chief Whip of the Australian Federal Parliament. “I don’t… Continue reading Preferential
Zac van Manen 