Zac & Sean’s 2024 Homemade Marathon

The Gold Coast Marathon, the only full marathon I’ve run before, is a warm marathon. On July 7th, 2024, on the day of the full marathon, the Gold Coast had a low of 15 degrees Celsius and a high of 24 degrees Celsius. Today in Brisbane on my homemade marathon, we finished in 28 degree heat at 42.2 kilometres.

We started at 4.40am from my apartment block in Milton. Sean parked just up the road from my place and while I waited at the stairs up to the lobby of my building, two Ubers dropped off returning partygoers. It was that sort of hour.

We raced up Park Road and crossed an empty Coronation Drive without waiting for the light. I ran with my friend Sean, a high school friend who has better mental than me and more trail running experience plus he did the Blackall 50 this year too. We’d planned initially on heading down to the Regatta to begin the run and then turning around and heading basically towards Newstead House with a Story Bridge detour in the first half but instead we ran straight up the Bicentennial Bikeway to the bend in the river where a hill climbs up towards Tank Street and over Kurilpa Bridge.

Then we followed the river along West End around to the West End ferry terminal at the end of Orleigh Park. We turned around there and found ourselves about a quarter of the way through by the time we were at Kurilpa Bridge again beside QAGOMA. Here we had the first of many water breaks.

As far as the weather went for this section, it was cool — about 20 degrees Celsius — and largely shaded. I had a 4 Pines Brewing Co. hat on which is unusual for me because I tend to run long through the late afternoon into the sunset and return in the evening proper so sun safety’s never been a huge priority. That hat was already soaked through by South Bank. We were aiming for a finish time of 4:30:00 to allow for the heat and the elevation we’d hit on the way through. By now we were on pace.

We raced along the South Bank promenade as the sun rose and here we started to pass other runners in volume. There had been a few walkers in West End catching the early morning around 6am but by 6.30am there were run clubs in matching singlets. We carried on in a straight line down the riverside before we turned towards the bottom of the Kangaroo Point Cliffs.

Here we made a quick toilet stop — the only one of the trip, and one I didn’t strictly need but that I took the opportunity to take when Sean did too — and then continued. To dodge a small congestion along the footpath of walkers, dog walkers, and more walkers, he darted onto the cycle path which a cyclist immediately yelled at us about. Fair enough I suppose.

The Kangaroo Point cliffs are shaded all the way through as well and by now the sun was up but the heat was at bay though we were starting to feel the humidity. I was sweating through the cap — its brim was dripping as I ran. What I did not do, in the way of a lesson, was properly replace this lost hydration. Sean ran with a CamelPak-sort of backpack with a litre-and-a-half of just water in the back hump that sloshed about when he refilled it later. In the front, he had two one litre bottles into which he mixed energy gels and water.

By now, as we turned around at Captain Burke Park and ran up Main Street towards the Story Bridge proper, Sean was in the lead and I wasn’t strictly lagging behind but I was starting to feel it. This was about 15 kilometres. So far, based on the map that we’d used for planning the route, we were about a kilometre ahead.

We crossed the western side of the Story Bridge without drama and when we reached the hill that heads down to Felons we did our first bit of walking downhill. On other long runs I’ve just raced down this hill to catch some speed and give me the momentum to send it past the brewery proper out onto the Riverwalk but instead today’s motto was: Get it done. Not to get it done fast. Past Felons we hit the Riverwalk and this began the long rest of the run that was basically in direct sun.

My girlfriend Jess met us at the Sandakan Memorial at the entrance to New Farm Park with a no sugar blue Powerade and a Carman’s protein bar which I had all of one bite of. I have not trained with nutrition and even as I had that tiny amount my body was telling me: Don’t. We walked for about 500 metres about halfway around the inner road on New Farm Park, ran the rest, and then continued on from just about where we started that loop and came past the ferry terminal there, the Powerhouse, and then to the point at which we wound eventually turn around and begin the home stretch: Newstead House.

By now we were about 20 minutes behind schedule. Jess went to get breakfast before she was due to meet us again at what our planning map said was kilometre 30 — Sydney Street ferry terminal.

By Gasworks we were, well, gassed. We got more water here from the bubblers and walked a stretch through Waterfront Park where Sosos starts — though I’ve never been — and here as we passed the café on the way to the rest of the Riverwalk came the first use of a phrase we would use again a few times as we started to hit a wall from about 30 kilometres onward, hot and starting to get dehydrated and roasting on our left sides: “Run at the sun.” We walked through the shade and then ran again to Newstead House and around.

I was not yet feeling pain. It was, “Uncomfortable but not painful,” as we came back through Waterfront Park past Gasworks. We were about 35 minutes away at the end of the Newstead House loop from Sydney Street ferry terminal about best. Instead we ended up meeting Jess at the Sandakan Memorial again, walking from the Powerhouse. We hydrated again at the bubblers at Waterfront and again at the bubbler just before the Powerhouse going south — this is my usual half marathon turnaround point. Sean was still ahead by now and he stayed that way for a little while yet.

Jess refuelled us after a short walk past the Powerhouse and to our original rendezvous. We beat her there by what must have been like thirty seconds because we and did a little jog through one of the paths inside New Farm Park itself and ended up coming out not that far from where we started — you can barely see the detour on the Strava map of the whole loop.

We walked along Oxlade Drive to Merthyr Bowls Club, turned left, and ran at the corner. Hydration at one of the bubblers next to Sydney Street ferry terminal which was by now about 31 kilometres, so we were looking about a kilometre ahead, at least according to my Strava. I’ll get to that.

Then it was just the reverse of the way we came until Felons, slow, and I walked past the brew hall basically to the bottom of the hill up to the Story Bridge. But instead of heading back up it we went left down the promenade along Eagle Street, past Riverbar which I did not know was open for breakfast and so on, and back up through town before the Dexus construction site. We went left down Felix Street and in between the buildings on the corner between the carpark and the Japanese place and here we hit the first two small stairs down to a lower terrace and past an Italian place. As soon as I stepped down those instead of taking the small ramp just to the side I realised what I was feeling by now was pain. But here we had less than 10 kilometres left to go. About 8 left. Here Sean and I were about even.

We ducked down to the river level past the Italian place, under the new Kangaroo Point bridge, and got our last bit of elevation up the ramp back towards the top path along the Botanic Gardens at which we turned around, drank again from the bubbler there at the tree on the corner before Edward Street, and wrapped around to the right to go downhill and along the edge of the riverbank again under the bridge we’d just crossed over.

It was about here I started to talk the lead ahead of Sean who was hitting a wall but I had something like a goal by now: finish comfortable and meet Jess again at about 38 kilometres — at the bottom of the hill climb that lead up to Tank Street and Kurilpa — and then finish with the stretch towards the Regatta and back home. In that respect I had something the pain was for: a third no sugar Powerade and I thought there’d be a third small bite of a protein bar. On this stretch we did some of our fastest running in the whole route. We dipped below 6:00 per kilometre. And by now my moisture wicking LSKD shirt had gotten drenched, dried, drenched, dried, and would have been getting drenched again except that I didn’t have the fluids.

Past The Star, past Queen’s Wharf, we did this fast pace with a clear goal, and we passed that final awful hurdle — again, at least according to my Strava — whereby we only had 5 kilometres left. It was about here that our kilometre markers moved in communication from, say, 38 kilometres flat to 38.2 kilometres to make sure we actually made the marathon distance.

As we came around the corner at the next meeting spot, emerging from the Kurilpa shade, I couldn’t see Jess. I knew she’d be coming from something like the other way but we’d picked the pace up some from our other two rendezvouses so we were faster than she expected. So she had to run to meet us! Armed with a no sugar Powerade as expected and a Trolli gecko lolly for emotional support.

My normal long run reward is one no sugar Powerade, blue, with a Trolli gecko lolly per ten kilometres I run. I was pretty close to this by now and in hindsight instead of protein bars I should have just had lollies, at least one, maybe two, though I’m sure my stomach would have hated it just as much. I wolfed them both down and we started to run again from kilometre 39 to the Milton ferry terminal which was kilometre 40. We’d planned to make it to the Regatta and back but it was looking to my map like we didn’t quite need to make it that far.

Until Sean dropped the bombshell: his Strava was three kilometres behind mine, even with an odd glitched detour across the river twice.

“I’m ending mine at 42.2 kilometres on mine,” I said, exhausted more than anything else, which maybe was not the right attitude. But by now it was all pain. “It hurts,” I said to Jess as we started to run again once Sean had run ahead to make up some of the difference. We walked just about to the Regatta ferry terminal — about 600 metres — before we ran again, passed Sean going back the other way, and then turned around. By now I only had 600 metres left on my Strava.

In this last push I passed Sean with about 150 metres left to go, tapped him on the shoulder, and kept going. Jess was recording this whole last minute to get the moment. I got to 42 kilometres, then 42.05, then 42.07, 42.10, 42.15, 42.18… then 42.2 kilometres. Here I stopped and started to walk. Jess joined me. I was a sweaty mess, hot, exhausted, and all I said when she asked, “How far?” was:

“42.2 kilometres… Fuck!”

I stepped off the footpath of the BCN into the thin shade at the edge of the cycleway part — without this time disrupting traffic — and Sean caught up to us walking.

“How far is to your place from here?”

“About 1.5 kilometres total. How much more do you need?”

“Two.”

“Start together, finish together.”

So, sure, we walked just about the rest of it. We walked past the Milton ferry terminal still along the river and I pointed out a tunnel ahead that would bring us along the flank of the last Milton Market for the year. This would take us to Cribb Street and then down Railway Terrace and we could circle a block to make up the 200 or so extra metres we’d need. We were not fast crossing Cribb Street. We were not fast going left Crombie Street towards the gym at which I go to a PT twice a week which is basically the difference I reckon between the constant but not excruciating pain I felt today as opposed to the excruciating but faster pain I felt at the Gold Coast Marathon by now in 2023.

But what we were fast at was the very very last stretch: past the Night Owl, along Railway Terrace, and up Manning Street, uphill, to the top and then down to the bottom, me filming the end of Sean’s run so he had the end of his like I had the end of mine, and it wasn’t until we got to the bottom of the hill again next to the café Society+ that Sean paused and asked: “How far is it again.”

“42.2.”

“I’ve done like 42.5.”

So we did it twice. His time, somehow, is faster than mine on Strava but he was ahead of me for a lot of the middle and I could not, I reckon, have done it without him. I also could not have done it without Jess. But I got it done. I’ll likely not run a midsummer marathon again unless I started at, like, 3am instead of 4.40am.

Sean could not join us for any kind of recovery afterwards because he’s insane, going straight to a Friendsmas to which he had to drive on tired, sore legs before heading to a retail shift for a few hours out near the airport. After the Gold Coast Marathon last year, I took a day off work to sit in an Epsom salt bath. He packed up his life into boxes and into a truck and drove down to Coffs Harbour on the way to Canberra to live for a time.

For recovery: I had a shower. Thanks to Nut Butter, I had no chafe but for a small but not prominent sting on my right nipple. I Nut Buttered up my feet too so I had no blisters. Speaking of my feet: that’s the retirement run for my second pair of Saucony Triumph 20s. They’ve made it to 1,100 kilometres with a hole on the inside of the right foot and a small hole I noticed for the first time last week on the same spot of the left foot. The shower itself was fine, was good, but trying to dry my legs was a mission. Getting changed into other shorts was a mission.

Jess and I headed to the Milton Markets afterwards and I had two BBQ pork rice paper rolls, two iced long blacks, and a BBQ pork banh mi. Then we swam in the building’s pool, ducked into the building’s sauna for ten minutes, tried the building’s steam room for a few minutes, sat in the shade in the building’s spa, then got back into the building’s pool just to cool off and kick my legs around for a bit.

Then I napped for two hours.

And I gave myself in the process something like heat stroke. It’s not that severe — I am not nauseous nor am I slurring my words or dizzy or anything like the Wikipedia page’s symptoms — so it is perhaps simply heat exhaustion instead. Maybe it was the sauna, sweating out what water I’d managed to replenish from two cold litres wolfed back down upstairs in my apartment.

But I got it done.

As for other lessons:

I ate well last night, carb loading, and I didn’t feel out of fuel beyond water at any capacity during the race. I didn’t sleep super well with a generalised anxiety about the whole thing, and a few other things I won’t touch on here, and my head didn’t hit the pillow to sleep until about 11pm with a 4am alarm set, but I suppose it all comes out in the wash.

I won’t run, like I said, a midsummer marathon like that again. But I registered for the Gold Coast Marathon again, pancake flat and cooler than today and surrounded by thousands of others doing it instead of just two people — who I cannot express my love and gratitude for enough — and I will train better my running going in because my training for this process was not that good but, again, I suppose it doesn’t matter.

As for why I ran it: I want to run a marathon every year. And I was due to run the Brisbane Marathon in 2024 until I hurt myself…

This has escaped me some as far as length but if you made it this far: thanks for reading! Find the Strava activity through here and my Strava profile here. Follow me on Instagram too for more writing, running, and writing about running.