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 again as a second lap is not my idea of a good time. So: the half marathon is a good compromise.

It’s also exactly a month out from the Gold Coast Marathon for which I’ve been training for the first half of the year — with Runna, which is worth its own reflection, after race day. So I signed up expecting to run it with a friend as our annual race together. Unfortunately over the course of the year he realised he’d fallen out of love with the sport. His wife and I were going to run the Gold Coast Marathon together (well, both run it and then we’d celebrate Dan, Rychelle, Jess, and I together like we did for the Sydney Marathon last year) but she pulled out of it for the same reasons Dan pulled out of the Brisbane Half.

Rychelle said she’d run in Dan’s stead but yesterday, over lunch at Naim on Latrobe Terrace, with my race bib and Dantheman’s race bib collected and on the table, she realised she wasn’t quite up to it.

“I’m as prepared for this race as I’ve ever been,” she said, “except for the training…”

The most crucial part.

Now: I’ve run a lot of half marathons both recreationally and for training. I’ve just never done one as an actual race. In truth the only real races I’ve done are Bridge to Brisbane twice and three marathons. So: I felt like I knew roughly what to expect. I had a target. I had a goal. Here’s how it went.

The Plan

Target marathon pace is 5:20 per kilometre. 

This is what I fed into Runna when I signed up to it a few months ago and it’s faster than historical marathon pace which has been 5:41 per for that illustrious, unachieved, sub-four. Last year at the Gold Coast I collapsed mentally with bad nutrition at kilometre 32. Last year in Sydney, I took the time pressure off and just ran it and enjoyed it with a lot of nutrition and bad training between the two races and came in much slower but much happier.

To get to this pace over the 42.2 kilometre distance, the plan had to change from last year when the plan was, ‘Follow a Google Doc training plan’ and then ‘enjoy myself.’ I mean, I did, mostly. But training without gels meant that putting gels to work at kilometres 32 and 35 didn’t work as intended. What I expected was to have a little kick of energy from them, a burst of frenzy back into my legs. I got that a little from the caffeine gel at 35km, true, but it wasn’t quite what I was hoping for.

So I’ve been training all year with gels at the following cadence:

One at 7km, one at 14km, one at 21km if I’m going over 21km otherwise call it there, and one at 28km. I haven’t run past the 35km at which point I would have another one but, like last year, it will be a caffeine gel. For reference, these gels are the Maurten 160 gels but for the 35km gel I’ll need a caffeinated 100 instead. They don’t come in 160s with caffeine. I’m over 90 kilograms after all. I want the energy. 

Now, because Runna’s training plan is more aggressive than the Google Doc plan, the Brisbane Half Marathon day coincided with the peak week long run day — meaning 33 kilometres on the cards that somehow included the race. The long run structure Runna gave me was 7km conversational, 7km at 5:40 per kilometre, then 18km at 5:20 per (target pace), then 2km conversational cool down. Given that the race was a proper event, fully structured, official, and at 6am (I am not by default a morning person as much as I love the idea, and frankly the reality of on the rare occasions it happens, of being up at 5am) I didn’t want to frontload too much ahead of it.

The other fun twist is that my Runna training has been on three days each week: Wednesdays, Fridays, and Sundays. Sundays have been the lynchpin of my running for years now. When I began running as a habit it was easy to do on Sunday afternoons because they were usually free. And then I started to title these runs ‘sunday runday’ on Strava. So it stuck. Except that last Friday I didn’t run. I got lazy and I went to the gym, Fitstop, for a lunch time session to do some deadlifts at a good but not a PB weight (3x120kg max). So I ran on Saturday… at 4pm. This sort of solidified the plan for Sunday, which was going to accidentally be the capstone in another marathon-distance weekend but this time with more intensity than the one about a month ago — and with all the running within 15 hours — was going to be:

6.5km warm up.

21km race.

6.5km cool down.

After the warm up, I would have one gel. Seven kilometres into the race, I would have another, and at 14km into the race I would have a third. Then I would decide, based on how I felt the cool down was going to go, whether I would need a fourth in between the race and the cool down.

Race Day

Alarm for 4.15am. Poor sleep. Dreams about a sub-four. A good sign. 

I got dressed in the dark, lubricated with Nut Butter my feet, my thighs, my gooch, my nips, and missed that slightly lower bottom part of my cheeks which is a good note for next time. I drove to Milton over the ICB and parked opposite my old apartment building to start the warm up route knowing that a) parking was free, b) it would take me straight to the Botanic Gardens where the race was going to start, c) it was a flat and straightforward route along which I was d) a regular. Well, before I moved.

The other thing I am not is much of a cold person and even 11 degrees is cool enough in a synthetic Nike tee and some short thin running shorts to be quite cool. I ran from the car up Park Road and over Coronation Drive without waiting for the lights and got to the ferry terminal. To do the warm up distance I’d have to turn back around a bit towards Toowong and then loop back. By my calculations, this would be a kilometre in the direction of the Regatta, turn around, then finish at the Botanic Gardens. I had in my head to follow the river right around along the edge of the Gardens where a thin path sits against the retaining wall against the river but instead I ran, to my Gold Coast 2023 playlist athenian which has been added to over time with each successive marathon and now runs to like two hours forty minutes, to where the Goodwill Bridge meets Gardens Point. There I was at six kilometres and I came into a steady flow of runners walking uphill towards the bathrooms and then the Gardens.

I went to the public bathrooms at QUT instead of the portapotties thinking it would be the better of two evils. It wasn’t great but I think it was the nicer of the pair. I paused my Runna run on my watch here, a Free Run not the structured run because I didn’t want the plan in my ear trying to get me to adjust pace the whole time to fit a plan I wasn’t going to run, and walked down to the start line, to my zone, for like 5.45am after the guy at the bib collection said a 5.30am arrival. I was not, by any means, the latest.

What I think I underestimated in the process of psyching myself into a big race at a pace I’ve never really held for much significant distance except for like two during training long runs, is the Race Day Effect. The other runners, the crowds, the bib, the photographers, knowing someone can look you up and see and that there are really no excuses even if it’s not your primary race. 

It took eleven minutes twenty-six seconds after the starting gun for me to cross the start line as the 16,000-strong crowd inched forward. I had Four Tet’s remix of Opal — a big event staple in my life — on repeat until I crossed the line and then athenian played on shuffle for the rest of the run (until my [new!] AirPods died at like kilometre 19). Then it started.

Another thing I sort of forgot about, and just attributed to being a weird Sydney thing because of starting so far back relative to my target-ish time, was having to fight your way through the crowd to get a good pace at the start. Looking back, the only kilometre split in which I could have shaved a few seconds off my target pace to get overall below 1:50:00 was in kilometre one. It was a combination of trying to get comfortable first, getting into it, and then having to navigate people all around me because there’s no way with the Brisbane Marathon’s resources to shepherd people into the “right” starting zone as I tried to get up to speed.

Then before I was sort of even aware of what was going on we were in the tunnel up to the Story Bridge where I spotted the first photographer. I look terrible in race photos, mouth open, eyes ahead, never smiling, never looking like I’m enjoying myself. I tried to flash a smile and a little peace sign gesture that I picked up as a habit from Dan Allen, an old boss, but he didn’t catch it. 

The climb up the Bridge was a bit steeper than I expected but it was okay. Pace dropped which I knew it would but I got it back up to speed once we were flat and level and crossing high above the river. The thing about this course in general is that I’ve run it many times — even literally following it a few times back in 2024 for training before I hurt myself — so in general I knew what to expect except for running on the actual roads and not footpaths. 

Again on the underanticipating race day: on my way off the Story Bridge up to Kangaroo Point I ran past Aaron Himstedt. He saw me and he called out: “Go Zac!” That lit me up. Not in pace or anything but in mood and I think this is probably where I started to enjoy it instead of treating it like an obligation, a chore, a race I had to do because I’d signed up for it. I was holding pace, my friends past and reconnected were running it, and I realised later I had people at home following my splits. Because I had my watch set as one long run instead of three different activities, I didn’t have a good sense of my time beyond my pace. But we’ll get to that.

Also pretty straightforward: all of it from the Story Bridge down to Merthyr Road. Special shoutout to the really steep little lane the race did not take us down as we came down towards the back of Felons but the road proper we followed was also a fun decline. I can imagine that would catch you out if you don’t expect it. Personally it’s a highlight.

The few times I ran the proper course in 2024 (the course hasn’t changed since I’ve been paying attention to it) this dogleg uphill at Merthyr Road has been my least favourite bit. It’s elevated without the interesting river sights and you’re instead just running up through a suburb. Maybe part of it is running on the road rather than the footpath, dodging people and dogs and trees and bus shelters, but it was much smoother than I expected, again pace slowed but it was controlled, and it didn’t go as far Moray Street as I thought it did. Though this is the only split in the race, after the first at 5:37, that was over target — 5:31 per instead of 5:20.

Here, just after the turnaround, was where I had my first electrolytes from a hydration station. At the bib collection on Saturday there’d been an interview with the elite athletes on a little stage in the race precinct broadcast over speakers. One of them said, “If you’re thirsty, it’s too late.” I don’t need a lot of electrolytes for a half in general but to be safe I took one and moved on.

Then through New Farm, also fine. It’s maybe crass but this is the part of the race where two women slipped ahead of me for a while as I just focused on pace. I only noted them as, like, moving landmarks because one of them had peach shorts on that were so tight that I think a full combined cheek was out.

Tenerife looms. Not looms, it wasn’t dire, but this is where I started to get in my head a bit. I’ve been really focused on my heart rate with this training block. I had an indoor soccer game last year where my heart rate was 212bpm by the end of it so I took myself to a cardiologist. Long runs where I pushed myself maxing out at 200bpm and so on. They sent me to a specialist who said it was fine, some people just have high heart rates. In Tenerife, along Macquarie Street, is where I started to creep into the 180s. This was fine: my long runs tend to start around 165bpm and creep up to like 180. Add elevation and we get 190s. I was monitoring it. We turned around and at the time I thought I could have saved the time here I spent getting water and electrolytes by just timing my approach to the aid station better but the stats say it was okay. In fact, bang on: 5:18 per.

I had my third gel for the day here at a 5:12 pace along the edge of New Farm Park back onto the part of the course that I had run many many times: along Merthyr Road and over the Riverwalk behind Felon’s and on home. This was all pretty alright. My legs started to feel it around here but I held on, stayed straight, and just locked in. What did happen that I didn’t expect was my AirPods dying. They’d been charging overnight on this wireless charge pad that I thought for ages didn’t charge AirPods but apparently does but apparently not enough. They’re also new, only like a month old, so I thought they’d make it all the way through but that’s a good lesson for the Gold Coast. It didn’t make much of a difference. My first thought when they died was in fact that I do tend to run faster without them but I just enjoy it a bit less. Pace matching the bpm of whatever I’m listening to generally. That’s why I’ve got Fred again-adjacent tracks in most of my training playlists but the way I make Spotify playlists has changed a bit in the last few years. Less discipline about it. But that’s another piece.

Around four kilometres left I knew I was going to make a good time and the question just became holding on. I was running over the water, Howard Smith Wharves ahead, and was on the edge of pain. But then there’s not really that much more to cover until the last kilometre. A rise up Boundary Street (every time you think you’ve found them all, there’s another Boundary Street somewhere in Brisbane…) that slowed me down and as I came back down it past an office where I’ve spent a few months freelancing lately it started all to come home. Starting to hurt, starting to wonder how I was going to do this all again in July (the answer is with fresh legs, a flat course, and good nutrition). 

And then I do this thing on long runs whenever it starts to get hard where I just remind myself how much has been done and how little is left to go. I was 95% of the way. Just five percent — a mile left, almost there, and people on the sides of the road again calling out for us, having waited for hours apparently to see us off and then to see us back, telling us that, “It’s so close!”

“For the halfers!” a full marathon racer called out.

In the last kilometre, I like to leave it all out there. To throw whatever’s left in the tank at the finish line and come to the end strong. Maybe it means that there’s more in the tank than there should be at that part of the race, that maybe I should have emptied the kitty beforehand, but I’m not doing this to hurt myself. These races are not existential. And I still had 6km left to do afterwards. I looked at my watch and I had a calendar invite to turn some ads on for a client at 8am — flicking campaigns on the only easy thing to do on the mobile Meta Ads Manager app — and I had four minutes left. I wasn’t sure if I could make it for 8am. I tried.

Kilometre 21 (kilometre 27 for the day, kilometre 40 for the weekend) in 4:41 that got me to the Botanic Gardens entrance at the Albert Street intersection and then 100 more metres at what I can only imagine was the same pace over the line. Watch paused again, walk it off, straight ahead and then curving through to the right and up a grassy, muddy slope to refreshments tents and volunteers handing out medals over my sweaty running hat. The hat had stopped dripping — a sign to drink — but the two cups of electrolytes and three cups of water I had here got it going again. 

I didn’t know my time here. My watch paused. The QR code on my bib linking to 2025 results. Dan, who I was supposed to run the race with, at home recovering from an ACL surgery with Rychelle who was until yesterday my new race buddy, sent me my time.

1:50:49. 

5:15 per kilometre. Ahead of target. Good shit.

I messaged a few people with my hat dripping again, sweat on the screen throwing off all my button presses, typing emojis for me. Wiping it dry, hat off under my arm, just quick little updates. How’d Aaron go? Missing the Certified Runner Bois. An ETA update for Jess having a well-deserved sleep in in the middle of overwhelming weeks and weekends. A breather. 

I’d joked with Dan about wearing the medal to do my cool down. I still wore the bib because I figured that taking it off would mean the whole thing was over but it wasn’t. The medal this year is nice, just flat and simple, but it does have an inner ring that spins so I thought wearing it would just start axing my sternum as I ran so I opted just to hold it with the yellow lanyard sort of wrapped around my hand and the medal together in case it slipped or I let go for whatever reason. 

I walked back up to the bathrooms at which I ended my warm up, availed myself of the facilities, then resumed my watch. Six simple, humble kilometres left and I got them done. They were not great, not super fun, not my favourite. They were alright until the Milton ferry terminal at which point I had 2.5km left — one out towards the Regatta, one back, and then 500 metres back up (hill!) and down Park Road to the car. My first walking all day, all weekend, pain in my legs, was at 31.6km, just after the turnaround at the tail end of the home stretch. I walked it off for a minute, got my breath back, paid no attention at all to my heart rate after this, and then just pushed on at a 6:30 pace before I got back onto and then over Coronation Drive where for the first time in my life the pedestrian light turned green as I approached.

It was 8:57am.

I wondered if I was going to be able to beat 9am with like 500 metres left. At 6:08 for the last, thirty-third, kilometre this didn’t happen but I finished about 100 metres past the car at 33 kilometres flat and on but not before 9am, tired, and happy, and sore.

Getting into the car was uncomfortable. My left hip did not like having to hold my weight as I sat in downwards. But done. Home time. 

Next: beers. Then Marathon for hours, some of it wearing the medal, and then like a kilo of lasagna for dinner. 

A surprise: I pulled up just fine Monday morning. Good to know. 

A Note On Nutrition

During the race, great.

Before the race, not great. I was umming and ahhing about actually doing the Saturday kilometres and I’ve become addicted to playing Marathon when I’m not training for one and so I didn’t eat breakfast (standard, but trying to fix as an easy calorie addition for periods with lots of exercise) and I didn’t even have lunch until quite late which was quite light. Then, after I’d gone to my friend Lloyd’s art exhibition, I came home to Jess having ordered pizza. So my pre-race nutrition plan was basically to wolf down a whole Pizza Hut chicken thing. I mean: it worked. But apologies to anyone downwind of me about 1km into the race…

I will fix this with a more structured diet for the week of the Gold Coast to make sure I’m in fighting shape again.