Gold Coast Airport Marathon - RunMarathon

It was a brilliant run on the flat course on a perfect day! When you set a personal best by 25 minutes and achieve your primary goal then it's hard to be anything other than happy! I was very pleased with my ability to maintain a very even pace throughout the course and also with my ability to keep up the mental pressure late in the race when I was feeling tired and sore. It's interesting that all through the race I was visualising crossing the finish line with the time clock saying in big yellow letters "3:09:00". And guess what? That turned out to be true even it was so only by five seconds. I wonder if that visualisation eneterd into my desire to keep pressing on as the race got longer and not allow myself to fade? I also think the other major change in my previous race strategies was to very much take this race 1 km at a time. I actually was mostly quite oblivious to the total elapsed time that I had been running and was more interested in what the pace was for the last kilometre and looking for the next kilometre mark to come by. But I mean that not in a desperate sense but rather a positive one of being able to say that I had ticked off another kilometre in the race. Overall I only had 2 "down" in moments during a race and they were very brief perhaps less than half a kilometre each. The first one that was at about 15 km when I had some gel and some reason it started my stomach aching. (I quickly remedied this by a big drink of water at the next aid Station!)

It's hard to think of what to do differently given that the run was a great success. My hydration and nutrition were spot on and my pace and energy management was similarly very good. I guess that only leaves doing more training to get better!

Had a beer!! Having a Corona after a marathon I think is going to be a tradition having started after my first marathon last year. Also drank 600 mL of bottled water that was given at the finish plus an extra litre of Gatorade over the following 45 minutes. Also ate some jelly snakes. Felt remarkably good at the end and while tired and a little sore was not in as much distress as I had been after the Melbourne Marathon where my hamstrings were constantly on the verge of cramping.


I performed at my top level given the training that I had done. I achieved the target of being under 3 hours 10 minutes so it's hard to say what else could have been improved. Perhaps I could have had pushed myself harder over the last 3 km but I think that is easy to say in hindsight and overall my energy management was exceptionally good over the day.


A fantastic race that is well organised and has lots of volunteers. Even got a free (and very cool!) competitor T-shirt which isn't always the case were some other races. Great course to set a PB!