Sydney Marathon 2026: Race Report

Two weeks on from the race, I’ve been putting this race report off. 

There’s less to cover, to be honest, though I had in mind while I was running it this idea about starting it with a reflection to long ago, another life, when I picked up this hobby with a weird intensity to cover what was then gaping wounds in my heart. Now those wounds are patched, I am anew, and I am not who I was when I started running long distances.

The Zac that signed up for the Gold Coast Marathon in 2023 is simply not the same one who ran the Sydney Marathon in 2026. Six marathons later, you’d hope so. Even to write back then about running two marathons a year — for two years in a row! — and then hitting what would become, spoilers, personal best times at each race this year, with nearly a full marathon PB again in Sydney, which we’ll get to, would have been a dream. A long distant, feasible but almost too hard one.

To reiterate: there wasn’t an absurd difference in the training distances between Gold Coast 2025 and Gold Coast 2026. Like 50 kilometres or something off the top of my head, out of like 750 kilometres total, so not even ten percent. The quality of the training was of course much better thanks mostly to Runna. But with respect to Sydney specifically, instead of running 70 kilometres in the eight weeks between races last year — plus a few days of skiing, which surely did something on a cardiovascular level — this year I ran 175 kilometres, including a good hill session two weeks beforehand. 

I knew the course too so I knew what I was in for versus last year so the Mrs. Macquarie’s Chair climb at 39 kilometres was not a surprise. And I knew, with the relative little that was left in the tank, that I could let the brakes off for that downhill stretch beforehand not to bank time but to get momentum and to keep myself going. 

I’ve been to Sydney a few times this year for work, staying in the Hilton and the Shangri-la, and each time I’ve spent the morning before I fly home running around Circular Quay and then up Mrs. Macquarie’s Chair largely so that on race day I could remind myself: this is not that bad. And in a vacuum it’s not that bad. It’s just a surprise, a hard one, a hideous one last year, and this year I managed to run up the whole thing.

Which is basically the piece to write home about re: the 2026 Sydney Marathon — strong splits, super even for the most part though I did start to slow at the 21 kilometre mark which I can only tell by my Strava results and not because of anything I noticed on the course. I suspect this is related to the heat, maybe, the sun beating down on the open road, but I held effort about as well as I’d hoped even in a best case scenario.

I wasn’t sure until like three weeks out whether I was going to push for a proper PB or just an improvement on last year. But in doing a marathon pace 14 kilometre run, I realised I wanted to push it, wanted the PB. And I got so close! I was two minutes and twenty-nine seconds slower than the Gold Coast Marathon which is mostly related to bathroom breaks.

Re: improvements for the organisers for next year — and for myself if (if!) I intend to race Sydney again — the toilets at the start line need attention. In the sense that the lines were an hour long and crossed two fields. I didn’t need to go at the start, pressure off meaning I didn’t have to nervous shit or anything, but it would have been nice to be able to go. I was about twenty minutes later than my call time but I still wouldn’t have made it to the portaloos if I had been on time. Then at kilometre six — the same set of portaloos I used last year, so I should have known better… — the portaloo I jumped into had no toilet paper. A brief break, a 2025 repeat, so I kept on going until kilometre 32. I maybe didn’t need to stop here but my shit-myself-tolerance does not exist. Not happening. So with a funny belly after a gel and some toilets just ahead and the actual race part of the marathon left to go, I emptied my bowels as fast as I could. I think this cost me like three minutes. The PB. I have no regrets.

Gel pacing went well, hydration strategy was good, and I just felt much better than at the Gold Coast. I was healthy, felt strong, happy, and having a good time and I’d taken some pressure off. Jess met me at kilometres 20, 25, 30, and 35 and she saw me again at 40 kilometres locked in where I didn’t expect to see where and so I didn’t, pushing onwards down the final downhill straight in which I really did send it. 

On that last run down to the Opera House forecourt, to the finish, I told myself to leave it behind. To finish strong. I did. Brakes off, legs on, the last kilometre in 4:34, and as soon as I hit the last few hundred metres where it levels out the finish line is dead ahead, I was out of steam and I’d left it out on the road. My best race, I think, overall, all things considered. Elevation, expectation, flexibility. 

As for whether I’ll do it again? I don’t know. I’ve registered for the fresh new one-lap Brisbane Marathon for 2027 and if I do another marathon in 2027 it’s likely to be Melbourne or to be something for which I travel overseas. Queenstown looks nice but it is a bit late in the year given Black Friday’s place on the calendar. But I’ve made my sub-four impressions on two races this year now and I hit a half-marathon PB at the Brisbane Half Marathon as part of the Gold Coast Marathon’s 33km maximum training run. And Bridge To Brisbane is next. 

Can I make it four PBs in four races? I want sub-50 and last year I came in at 51:10. It might be in the bag. But as Matt from my gym, Fitstop at Nundah, where I’ll likely focus more of my time and energy next year than this year as far as hitting strength PBs goes, said yesterday:

“I might surprise myself.”

That race is tomorrow.

We’ll see.

I am not who I was when I ran Sydney last year nor am I who I was the first time I ran a half marathon — the day I decided to be a ‘runner’. There is plenty left of me yet to decide a lot of things on and off the course. I suppose that’s what I learned out there covering 42.195 kilometres through Sydney. That this is not — a Gold Coast recursion — all there is.

If I had to summarise, the difference year on year is consistency and desire: another 100 kilometres, better kilometres, in between races. The cumulative effect of better kilometres between January 1st and the Sydney Marathon. But my math might be wrong because if I’d run another four kilometres before Sydney then the Sydney Marathon would have ended on my 1,000th kilometre for the year. Either way: no complaints. 

The race day is made not on race day but in the 1,000 kilometres beforehand. That’s the source too of the other big Sydney Marathon surprise — because the 3:54:10 time was a surprise, thirty-two minutes better than last year and in spitting distance of the pancake flat Gold Coast’s PB back in July — which was that my average heart rate at a 4:30:00 time in 2025 was the same as in 2026 at 3:54:10. 178bpm. At no point in the race did my heart rate climb above 190bpm until I really sent it right there at the last kilometre where, as you know, I flogged it and hit 203bpm. Planned. Expected. Fine. 

Right there at the end was that funny feeling of weird intensity I think I lack now, that I’ve delegated maybe to Marathon, to scrolling Twitter, to trying to watch every Reel that exists, and it was good to feel it again. It has its place. But it does not need to be all and end all. 

As above: this is not all there is. Except maybe I’ve been applying that too liberally across all my life. Because if this was all there was my time would have been even better. But… for what? Who knows. I don’t.