Gold Coast Marathon 2025: Race Report

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 I ran it in 2023. It’s 7,500 times up on the number of people that ran my last mara.

The plan was pretty simple. Enjoy it to thirty kilometres, hold steady at 5:30 per kilometre-ish for as long as possible, hydrate every ten kilometres with electrolytes, and have two gels — one at about 30 kilometres, the other at about 35.

That’s basically what happened. There’s not really a lot to report in terms of learnings for the first half. It was clean solid running, pain-free, calm, relaxed. What I wish there had been was a sunrise over the ocean along Main Beach Parade. Instead, on Sunday, it was overcast. This kept it cool and not sunny which was a joy for the start of the race — and which gave way to a brief shower at 29 and then open sun on the bitumen from 30 onwards — but it was not quite as magical there at the beginning.

Then at 28 kilometres I reminded myself of a run long ago, in a different life, where I ran 14 kilometres straight for the first time and posted that it was a third-athon. I realised I had a third of it left. A Powerade my support crew (the inimitable Jessica) gave me at 21 kilometres made it through until 25. My mental began to give halfway through 27. At 28 kilometres I had a gel in my hand, a Maurten, without caffeine, and I was ready for it. 

If you haven’t run the Gold Coast the course does this funny thing at 30 kilometres where you double back past the finish line and run six up then six back down. Last time, it didn’t get me completely but it got me enough. Last time it was a combination of physical and mental pain. This time I made it through 30 with some more electrolytes, some help from that gel, and another beautiful appearance by Jess for support. At 32km, my friend Dan surprised me with a sign. WHAT A van MAN en. That helped too. But not enough.

Just afterwards, I stopped running. I didn’t stop altogether because I knew that once I stopped it was over altogether. It’s just that I did also know, ahead of time, thanks to training, that once I walked the first time it was about over for the sub-four dream. And I walked for the first time at 32 kilometres and had the Maurten gel with caffeine, the second of my two gels, before I started again. Ripped open and finished the whole thing walking. Afraid to upset my belly with something new on race day — oops — but also the beginning of the end.

When I started the race, I started my Strava too early. What I’d intended the app to do was keep my pace for me. There was a red balloon attached to the 3:50 pacer and a black balloon attached to the 4:00 pacer. I didn’t see either of them for the whole race so I thought I was in the middle of them all the time. The idea was that Strava would tell me how I was going in lieu of a clean sense of time. I didn’t see the timer when my wave crossed the start line either. 

The first balloon I saw was just ahead of me after the finish line, in the crush at the exit from the race track out into the precinct, the parklands, the table bench my parents had parked themselves at. It was black. 4:03:33.

I thought I would have beaten myself up over it, sitting back home here now with a sore left foot still and legs with living memory of the long run but otherwise alright. But the goalposts, as they do, sort of moved.

The Wednesday before the run, before the big day, after my last training run, a bit fast and with a few too many beers after, my friend Dan — Mr. 32 Kilometres — offered me his Sydney marathon ticket. Maybe, at 32 kilometres on the Gold Coast, something told me that with another opportunity so clear it didn’t matter as much. That I’d already done this one and could take another crack with lessons learned and no risk of injury. And at a World Major!

Maybe that’s what happened. Maybe it was mental after all. Maybe I couldn’t keep my focus on the steps in front of me, the breathing I had to do right now not the breathing I would have to do later on, next time I was at this same mileage. That’s a lesson for outside of the race. The prominence of next time over this time. 

So the goal for Sydney, in just seven short weeks, is sub-four. Again. It’s fresh, it’s new, it’s a World Major that’s banned transfers so I’ll have to race as someone else. But it’ll be on my Strava. Raced on my legs. Battled through my head.

That’s what counts.

I couldn’t sleep on Sunday morning. Nervous. I am not a morning person, I keep telling myself like it’s unfixable, but I was up at 3am ahead of even my 4am alarm. Instead of fighting sleep I just got up and sat down in the living room of our 1 bedroom hotel room at The Star Residences high up on the 35th floor and I wrote in my little notebook from a while ago. I wrote the strategy down with a Parker pen from two jobs ago. The pages at the front of the notebook are from another life altogether. Pre-Gold Coast 2023. Documented in the pages left blank afterwards until now: the impetus for doing that race in the first place.

What I wrote down on the right page of the two-page spread of plans I put together before the sun came up was this:

“When it gets hard, think of:

• Jessica’s love and support.
• The Certified Runner Bois.*
• Strava kudos.
• How barely you are who you were when you ran this last time.”

In seven weeks I won’t be so wildly different again. But where it counts… I hope I am.

I’ll run it about the same way. Same kit, same shoes, same game plan. More frequent gels maybe. 10 kilometres and then 21 kilometres then 30 then 35. Then at 37 kilometres onward just look down and forward, put one foot in the front of the other, and breathe.

*ed. note: The name of the group chat of Sunday runners with whom I’ve been training.