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
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
She’s pushing on like she’d planned, recording on her smartwatch, planning to rate it not hard but at the high end of medium. She’s sweating a little even in the early spring rainforest chill. It’s early. She’s pushing through the light filtered by the canopies that were closing in. The trees gnarling as she continued.… Continue reading Flight Time, pt. 3
They only bury their dead in winter. From spring to fall they keep them cold, refrigerated in their homes beneath the floorboards. They’re exhumed as the first of the snow starts to fall. The village takes the second day of snow off altogether and they head to the graveyards on the edge of the town… Continue reading Snow Angels
Read part one here. It’s always someone’s responsibility and today it’s his because he’s the oldest and he’s built this all up for everyone and he’s paying — well, indirectly — for them all to be here today but there’s no time to get hung up on anything that’s not what’s coming without warning. Every… Continue reading Flight Time, pt. 2
Zac van Manen 