Courtney's Marathon Debrief: 2:42:10 And Why Training Doesn't Lie

[00:00] Welcome back to In The Beginning Podcast, the Gold Coast Marathon Series. It's time to put a full stop on the series for 2026. Courtney, congratulations — you are a marathon finisher. Thank you, Liam, thank you mate. Your voice is rusty. Yeah, this is your weekend — this is the result of people waking up Monday or Tuesday with DOMS. I've got

[00:30] DOMS throat. This is what happens after two full days on the start/finish line for the ASICS Gold Coast Marathon, with my mate Pete Murray throwing in a game of footy on the Saturday evening too, which was pretty exciting. But I'll never complain — best job in the world, being on the start/finish line. That's the aftermath of what my job entails over the weekend. But enough about me — I think you and Pete Murray

[01:02] tackling me at the finish line hurt me more than the actual race did. Talk about calling the footy — I felt like whichever Collingwood player got slammed by Brayden Maynard. As you took my legs out, Pete got me up under the ribs. Let's go — official time, 2:42 and change. I actually don't know the exact number.

[01:32] Which could not be more on-brand for you. The thing is, there are no excuses about records here — with other marathons there's always something, a headwind, whatever else. No excuses for this one, because Australian records were tumbling. I think this puts the Gold Coast Marathon in the conversation as the fastest marathon in the country, right. This puts it on the radar for people

[02:02] travelling overseas looking for a quick marathon. Same weekend, two Australian records — was it an all-comers record and an Australian record? Izzy Batt-Doyle, in the half marathon on Saturday — hers was an all-comers record. Was it Australian, or just all-comers? I believe it was the fastest time run on Australian soil, which makes it an all-time mark either way. It was a fast weekend. Let's talk about Haftu — did he

[02:35] also have a good showing at last year's Sydney Marathon? Potentially — I think he was first Aussie across. But there's so much to unpack about Haftu. Firstly, from a broader marathon perspective, staying with the event itself — this makes the Gold Coast Marathon a must-run event for certain athletes. If you want to run a fast time in Australia, that's the race to do it at. And on top of that, the

[03:05] fact he did it in the sponsor's shoes — a pair of ASICS, big tick there. I bumped into Andy Buchanan on Monday, coming out of the lift at the hotel — we're recording this on a Tuesday. I said, mate, how are you? We've had Andy on this podcast a couple of times, great energy guy. His energy was low. I asked what happened on Saturday and he talked me

[03:35] through his race, what went wrong. He said it was tactics — made some mistakes tactically. And then I mentioned the record, and he said, yeah, pretty shit getting all the questions about it. But it made me think about how, in my head — and probably most average runners think this too — elite athletes just progress linearly, every race getting better and faster.

[04:06] That's not how it works once you're at this end of racing. There are injuries, training builds, target races, all sorts of things. I reckon that's actually the great part — every time this happens it pushes the record forward and drives the sport on. That's elite racing, there are ups and downs. But Andy will come back bigger and better, he's got faster times ahead of him, no doubt. I actually met Haftu on Sunday, after the marathon.

[04:38] There was a little function on. I met Haftu and his manager, and I'm probably not the biggest fan of EMQ's big boss right now, because I was asking Haftu what comes next for his year and he was having a bit of a laugh about it. I said, well, obviously you'll be back in 2027 to defend your title — which got a laugh, his manager giving a knowing nod about how they still need to figure out the next twelve months. Then I turned to the boss of the marathon and said there should be a

[05:09] defending-title bonus built into the prize money. Thinking about it, I reckon every sport should have that — impromptu hot take here. Don't you think winning it once is hard, but winning it again the next year, with a target on your back, is harder? I disagree — there's a record, go break the record, that's your bonus right there.

[05:39] I think there should be a defending-champion bonus in every sport, honestly — the Brisbane Lions should get a big bonus from the AFL if they win it again this year, though they probably get more sponsorship out of it anyway, so that's their bonus. Anyway, it was a fast weekend, no excuses out there. A properly fast weekend. So let's go back to your run — what do you reckon, how do we do this? I've got some information here.

[06:10] After it all happened I went back and looked at the whole build, so I've got the data. Do you want that first, or do we start with the run itself? I'd like to hear the story of the run before the data — talk me through it. And Courtney goes to his diary, this is great. Take me through the story of the run, because I saw you very briefly Saturday during the half — came down, said g'day, did a bit of filming on the line. What did you do Saturday night,

[06:41] the night before? Nothing different to what I'd usually do. I was out and about that morning, went down and checked the Expo out — thanks to everyone there, the crew at the Expo saying it's nice doing a local race, since we'd been talking about it a bit with the marathon and people knew I was doing it. Same out on the course, everyone who cheered. Despite your best efforts to stay hidden. I think I did a pretty good job.

[07:12] You did do a pretty good job — some people said they missed you completely. I did get heckled a little on the start line because I wore headphones, and missed a couple of people. Was that the headphones? Not really — more that you're standing in a crowd of two hundred, people yelling the whole way, unless you really stood out on the course. Though there were a fair few good mates out there on bikes and around the course,

[07:42] so plenty of people out on course that we knew, which was great. While we're on that — I wanted to hear about your race specifically, but just quickly, one thing I don't get to see from the start/finish line is the atmosphere out on the course. As we talk about the boom in running right now, the Gold Coast Marathon no longer has a participation problem — it will never again struggle to fill the field. Fifteen hundred people on

[08:12] the waitlist this year. The challenge, or the opportunity, now is activation and improving the experience. And it was better out there — people everywhere. Broadbeach was cranking, and then down at the turn at Miami, around the 17K mark give or take, when I got there — I was probably running between the 2:35 and 2:40 packs at that stage — it was jam-packed.

[08:43] I saw people I knew down there, which was great. By the time some of the later packs came through it must have been seven-deep with family and friends following their crew — Miami was really booming. But Broadbeach was where I noticed it most. What was it like up the north end, after the finish line? A little sparser — pockets, like around the Grand, a good little crowd there, and I never felt completely

[09:14] alone out there — except running around the back of the Grand along the Broadwater, probably the hardest 3K, because your legs are gone by then. You've got that stretch into a headwind — you always find one — and then the crowd picks back up around that side, and then the last K there's more crowd again. Though I'd say, from the broadcast, those shots of Haftu leading solo with the Broadwater in the background were iconic — the kind of images that make me think of 2032, the ones that get

[09:45] sent around the world, that beautiful setting with a runner going past. It was a good week — we got lucky with the weather too, didn't we, over the weekend. So let's go through it properly, Courtney Atkinson — let's start at the beginning. One of the great things about the marathon on the Gold Coast, and I've said this to a few people, is what they said at the welcome function — over half the field comes from interstate or overseas, locals are maybe 30% or less.

[10:15] So seventy per cent of the field from interstate or international. On Saturday, when I came over to see you and do a few things for the day — getting the show crossed off, I know the boss was trying to get me to stop yelling names for five seconds — I was over there doing a few things, but I was gobsmacked by how many people there were at the end of the half. I was running late, couldn't move through the crowd — once you're stuck, you're stuck. And I was warned on

[10:45] Saturday morning — this is the thing, as a local it's the best race you can go to. I drove straight into Australia Fair, walked a hundred metres across to the start line. What I did run into, though, was that I got there early enough to get a nice easy toilet up at Australia Fair. Came back half an hour later after warming up, and that line-up at Australia Fair — you weren't making the start line in time if you were relying on a public toilet around the race. I don't know

[11:15] what the fix is for that, honestly. There's a point where you just can't provide enough toilets, and that was the case — I was thinking, man, I could really go again. There's a point of diminishing returns on portaloos. That's what I mean about it being a brilliant event for locals though — where else, unless you're staying in a hotel, can you drive in, park easily, and walk a hundred metres to the start of your local marathon?

[11:47] That was brilliant for me. Had a proper warm-up, a few strides, and jumped on the start line. To put the start into context — I was trying to work this out, I think you asked me — I haven't actually raced properly in four years. Yeah, this came up — Ryan Kelso asked on the show before, how it felt compared to the last time you raced, the feelings leading into a

[12:18] race. I didn't realise how long it had actually been — nearly four years out of that environment. And how was it? Nothing changes, putting the shoes back on — nothing changes. I got out and ran, and like we'd talked about, took a conservative approach and was happy to do that. My training had predicted a specific time, and I want to go through that background after this — I pretty much hit within

[12:48] seconds of what the training predicted, which is interesting, because you'd expect some improvement over the block. Looking back at the volume, though, I can see I probably didn't need the taper — didn't need all of that, the volume just wasn't there to justify it. I ran out with everyone — of course there are the ones who go out too hard and start popping. For the first 18K or so I was more or less getting passed

[13:19] by people, because I started in the priority group, right up the front, and ran pretty consistently at a steady pace. In hindsight I was probably — between the 2:35 and 2:40 groups — running about 2:38 pace for the first, let's say, 25K. What was noticeable for me in the race was that I was running purely by heart rate — I

[13:49] wasn't making decisions about which pack to run with, I was holding a pace that kept my heart rate steady rather than watching pace itself. In hindsight I probably should have just slotted into one of the big packs, started chatting to people, and been happy to sit at that pace, whether that meant going a touch quicker with the 2:35s or a touch slower with the 2:40 pack that ended up going past me.

[14:20] Hypothetically, what do you think that might have done for you? Probably would have just given me more people to chat to. What was actually happening was I ended up in a bit of a no man's land — a few people would come past, I'd run with them for a bit, then sometimes go past others who'd pop in. It was, honestly, a little bit uninteresting.

[14:51] Super chill, super easy — got to 21K still smiling, still happy, no stress at all. Then the first hiccup came at about 26K, of all things — I got a stitch in the diaphragm. The

[15:22] old-fashioned kind — I probably hadn't run beyond that distance at a decent effort in the buildup. Old-school stitch, around 28K, had to stop for a bit. If you look at my Strava there's actually a dip around the 41K mark — purely because I stopped, arms up over the head, the old trick. Anyway, got it under control and ran back into the 2:40 group, and the race went on — 32K went okay, like everyone says, you get your legs back, it's

[15:52] time to get going. Legs still felt reasonably good at that stage. Picked it up a bit, started passing people, got to 35K — and that's where it got interesting, because my heart rate actually decreased, came back down close to where it started, and

[16:22] the pace for that last stretch — which is literally what most people talk about in a marathon — dropped off, lost a couple of minutes. At no stage was I thinking I'm in trouble, or breathing heavy — it was just harder, neuromuscularly. My legs just

[16:53] didn't have it — wasn't glycogen, wasn't bonking, nothing like that, I just hadn't done the prep you need for a marathon. All in all, when you asked what it was — it was status quo. I finished within about

[17:24] forty seconds of what was predicted from the training. So you've actually gone out and run the most unsurprising, predictable marathon the data could have offered. A hundred per cent — take that little hiccup out at 28K and you'd say, well, I literally didn't train enough. And when I say didn't train enough, I mean I probably wasn't a hundred per cent prepared for the

[17:54] distance. Got to 35K and the legs just didn't have the distance in them — nothing really hurt, nothing dramatic. This isn't a sports-movie moment. No, because it was pretty boring, honestly — no inspiring Tin Cup moment where you refuse to give it up. Didn't go bad, didn't go good, it just went how it was meant to go.

[18:26] I do have some questions for you though — how did the nutrition and hydration plan go? Perfect — took on plenty, probably around 80 grams an hour, well within range for that intensity, which was definitely aerobic. There should be no bonking situation with that amount on board.

[18:57] Finish-line vibes — what were the emotions at the finish line? Now, I know you're not an emotions-on-your-sleeve kind of guy, but how were they? Honestly, nothing much. So on par with the rest of your run, then. Honest to god, yeah — no,

[19:29] that's nothing I'd want to make up. I thought about this a lot afterwards, got some notes here on the learnings, because we're about to get into the data — I think for people who've been listening along, it's worth coming back and analysing what I actually did beforehand versus the outcome. When I finished, honestly, I just thought, okay, gee, I wish my legs were a bit better, and whatever else.

[20:03] And then we got into talking it through properly. I'd already decided before the race, regardless of the result, that I'd enjoyed it enough to want to do it again — but better. You know what I think, and I reckon most people would agree — the reason the marathon is great is everything leading up to it. No different to how I talk about the Olympics, or a wedding — it's the excitement,

[20:36] everything, unless you're actually racing for the medals, to win the race — different story if you're racing to win. But if you're in it for your own time, to be out there for yourself, it's exactly like a wedding — the sessions with the mates, the whole jigsaw puzzle you're trying to put together, picking your outfit, choosing the shoes you want to run in, telling your friends where to meet you on course. A hundred per cent, and for me it's actually about the goal at the end, that goal

[21:08] providing structure, giving you something to work towards. That's what the whole process is for me — the marathon makes a lot of sense as the finish to that. Is the race itself the most enjoyable part for me? Honestly I'd probably prefer to just do a flat-out 10K. But the process is genuinely interesting. Standing on the start line, that's your victory lap, the hard work's already done. And everything Benita and Michael Shelley told me,

[21:40] everything they said about a first marathon turned out to be exactly what happened. Benita was on the money — just run 3:50 pace, you'll get through it and have a good day, then we'll talk about a time. She was right early. We can't recommend that coaching crew enough — Benita Willis, Lace Up Running. Funnily enough, Liesl Jones, who ran the 5K, has caught

[22:10] the bug too — she was talking about it this morning on the radio show, about running a half marathon. After we went off air she asked who she should go to for coaching if she signs up for a half next year — I said, well, you've got my number. But before you get into the data, one more question about the race — you started

[22:41] in the priority start, the elite and seeded zone. Did you notice anything, any observations about the people running around you at the sharper end of the field? Alana, my wife, ran the marathon too, finished around 4:30. That's amazing. Had a great day, and she's caught the bug as well — said afterwards that if she'd started in the right group she reckons she could have

[23:13] run 4:20. I told her, by the time this comes round next year you'll be talking about breaking four hours. But they still take their own time crossing the line regardless of the group. What actually happened was she got caught up slightly in front of the 4:30 balloon in the start zone, ended up one of the last runners off in wave two, and then the wave-three balloon caught her early, so she didn't really have anyone pacing her through the first half. Makes sense. She said one of her favourite moments was around the

[23:44] turnaround point, while she was still heading out — she saw me and all the elites go past, and that was one of her favourite moments, watching the fast runners come through. Like a road train coming at you continuously. That's the thing about the big races — the course, the crowd, the number of runners — that's what you don't get at the smaller ones.

[24:15] What I did notice up the front was that maybe eighty per cent of the field between, say, 2:30 and 2:50 are what we'd call the proper nerdy runners — got the gear, not caught up in the boom, been doing this a while, you can tell, they turn up not just to the run clubs but

[24:46] properly train. But still, that other five to ten per cent where you're thinking, how are you running next to me — some genuinely big blokes running strong right into the finish. A couple who passed me, I looked and thought, wow. Coming from a professional athlete background, I find that really impressive — takes all shapes to run at that pace, where

[25:19] some are running four-minute kilometres. If you're chasing a sub-three-hour marathon you can get there without having been an elite athlete, without having been a runner your whole life — all sorts of people in that space, which I thought was genuinely nice to see. Alright, let's get nerdy. One of the other notes I had is that training doesn't lie. If you're training properly — and this is something Tim Rigby, another mate who's run

[25:49] three marathons, always says — he's been within two minutes every time, and he says training doesn't lie. You can't just show up on race day and expect to run ten minutes quicker than your training suggests. It's not going to happen. This is the clip, put it in big letters over the top: training doesn't lie. There's no way around it. If you haven't done the proper training, something

[26:19] different tends to happen — but you're not suddenly going to run quicker off no training. For me, looking back at what happened at the end, it wasn't a crazy drop-off, but it was ten to fifteen seconds a K, and I believe it was neuromuscular fatigue, not bonking. There's a real

[26:50] difference — bonking is your muscles running out of glycogen, so you physically slow down because you've got no sugars left for energy. That's what people call a bonk. Mine was more neuromuscular — could have had a bit to do with glycogen too, but I'd taken on plenty, so I think I just didn't have the power left to keep running at pace. If I'd needed to speed up for a short burst I probably could have, but wasn't going to hold it. My heart rate was also

[27:20] proving that — it stayed low, which is a good thing, because that's trainable. Good and bad patches, just like the Miler — that's endurance sport, you go through phases in a race like that. The good thing is a marathon's long enough to recover from a bad patch. Like I said, I had a little walk in there, like everyone does. Hold on, you had a little walk? Yeah — this is a bit embarrassing — I got passed by the main

[27:52] 2:40 group while I was walking with my hands in the air, then managed to pull myself together and finished about a hundred metres behind where I'd otherwise have been. Where did you walk, where did you stop? Just on the inside of the road, not right in front of the big crowd, though there were still people around. I'm putting myself in your head there — you wouldn't have enjoyed

[28:25] that part. No, you'd have been hating it — people giving you the come-on-mate-you-can-do-it, and you're thinking, I know what I'm doing, just leave me alone. And then there was the business of getting into the big packs, and the headwind, that sort of thing. So that's the learnings on the training side — train smart, train properly, you generally get the result you deserve. Which brings me to the numbers, because I

[28:56] went back through it — the good thing is I logged everything on Strava. Someone asked me at the end of the race whether I'd really put everything up there, and yes, this time everything I've done has gone on Strava — every session, every heart rate reading, it's all there. So here's the breakdown behind that 2:42. And remember, as I go through this, I've got forty years of background in endurance sport —

[29:26] it's not like I just picked up running last year. So, pretty much, I started training in mid-March — though calling it training is generous, because the first three weeks were walk-running, never got over fifteen minutes of it. Covered only around fifteen kilometres in that

[29:59] time — was still coming out of injury until around April the 4th. So from there I had May, June, July — three months, a twelve-week block. By the numbers, I only ran two hundred and ninety-six kilometres in that time, which averaged out to fifty-seven kilometres a week — low, considering the race distance was 42.2K. The biggest week I ran was

[30:30] skewed by two big marathon sessions inside it — eighty-four kilometres. The smallest week was around twenty-one kilometres, and forty-one kilometres in the taper going into the race. On most other days, when I wasn't travelling, I was jumping on the Swift trainer for an easy hour. That's the full context of where I was heading into the race —

[31:00] which probably explains why I felt a bit off at the end. But that was the experiment, right? So if I asked you, Liam — like we said at the start, I'm doing an experiment, three months, only running every second day, we'll see what we get — did the experiment work? Well, that's not really how experiments work — it's not about whether they worked or didn't, it's about the learnings from

[31:32] the experiment. So what was the hypothesis going in? That I could get to the start line uninjured — which I did. So it worked. The rules you set yourself — swallow the ego, no back-to-back hard running, consistency on the bike — those rules

[32:02] worked well for the goal of getting to the start line injury-free, and finishing the race. Now, if we ran a different experiment with a different hypothesis — say, can Courtney Atkinson run a 2:30 marathon — you'd need to drastically change the rules, or need more time. Because here's the thing that really mattered: I only got through three proper marathon-specific sessions in the whole build. What do you mean by marathon sessions?

[32:36] As in, designated marathon-pace training — only three times in the whole build where I actually went out and ran extended distances at marathon effort. How did we not talk about this more? I felt like you were training well. I was, but — remember, this was underprepared in the biggest possible way, because it was only six weeks out when you mentioned it, and I went, oh, that's right — oh, shit. So three marathon sessions, and on the progression of

[33:11] the long runs — I did eight long runs total, max distance 32K. Started at 20K, then two runs hit 30K, and that was it. The marathon-pace sessions were all within the last five weeks. On the physiological progression, if

[33:43] you looked at my two speeds — I've talked a lot about this, LT2, the lactate-threshold pace I'd be able to push and hold — looking back at the data, I probably started, after that walk-run base, around 4:20 to 4:30 pace,

[34:13] and once I actually got into running properly, was predicted to be in around 3:10 marathon shape. So effectively, over those twelve weeks, I pulled about forty-five to fifty-five seconds a kilometre of improvement, which is pretty significant — really significant over that time. That was the shift I

[34:46] managed in the build. A few other stats — I also travelled a lot: Gold Coast, Salzburg, Munich, Gold Coast, Sydney, Gold Coast, Cairns, Canberra, Sydney, Gold Coast — a lot of travel in those twelve weeks. But all in all, the prediction was almost perfect, based on all of the analysis and

[35:16] Benita's subjective read on it too — everything pointed towards exactly what happened. If you're someone who doesn't quite know how to analyse your own data to that level, or doesn't have the tech, or you're looking at a marathon in the next six or twelve months — the lesson, broken down simply, is training doesn't lie.

[35:47] Training doesn't lie. And you can't get lucky on marathon day. Locally, we spoke to Ali, who — congratulations — came second in the Queensland Marathon Championships in 2:36. She nailed her time pretty much on the money too, within a minute of what they were targeting, and got it right. During the build I was watching her training group, Kyle coaching her, a whole group doing similar work, and they

[36:17] were training on almost the other end of the spectrum from what I was doing — big mileage. Weren't training to avoid injury, were training to perform, long Sunday runs up to 40 kilometres with a lot of race pace built in. On the money, and their training actually delivered — all hit their goals through that structured approach, sticking to their paces. That's the key, I think — they had goal paces and stuck to them, got the same outcome.

[36:49] It was so cool watching Rinnie and Ali come across the line first and second in the Queensland Marathon Championships — I think Rinnie hit a PB too, and it was Ali's first marathon. Carl Weiss — I messaged him after the race, he had a fantastic run too, right on what he predicted. And Ando, who I saw just up the road, is now officially a legend of the Gold Coast Marathon — right on the money. So all the local guys and girls we know around here had a really good day. Any other

[37:19] questions on the running? Pretty much wraps it up — you've done it. There is one more question — what's next? Another marathon — are you doing one? Yep. Ideas on where? Yeah. Is it the one you mentioned to me, possibly, at the Expo? Possibly. I look forward

[37:49] to that — there'll be another marathon for sure. I can't just leave it there satisfied — need to give it another shot. Courtney Atkinson has never accepted status quo, and he's not about to accept a status quo marathon. Stand by, In The Beginning family — something else is going to happen in the next twelve months. Definitely caught the bug a little bit, for sure. He's been bitten. I love it. To everybody else out there — fantastic, well done, congratulations again. I know you don't love being

[38:19] congratulated — for someone who's achieved what you have as an elite athlete, it might feel like less than it should. It's not, though — as we tell everybody, a marathon, whether you win it or crawl through it, is an incredible effort. Half marathon runners too, well done — genuinely, every one of you out there did something great. So everyone who's messaged in — we've had a heap come through, and we'll get to as many as we can in Saturday's episode. Today was very much about your race, Courtney, and your build.

[38:49] Let's tie off a couple more things before we finish up. Big shout-out to Josh Willoughby at Run DNA — good Adelaide lad, played with the Sydney Swans for a brief period, terrible at golf though, sorry Josh, taking a shot while I can. Run DNA have put together a bit of a shoe breakdown, not quite a shoe poll like everyone does, but a breakdown of what the winners actually wore.

[39:22] Starting with the men's — Haftu breaking the Australian marathon record in a pair of ASICS Metaspeed Sky Tokyos. Good mix through the field — ASICS, HOKA and Puma, three different shoe brands on the men's podium. For the women's race, all ASICS Metaspeed — the first two in the Sky Tokyo, third place in the Edge Tokyo. Is that telling, given it's an ASICS-sponsored race, about who gets invited? To me, the women's result

[39:54] suggests they were able to bring in more ASICS-sponsored athletes for that race. It does look that way, though it could also just be coincidence. In the half marathon, Shumpei was in the ASICS Metaspeed Edge Tokyo — I believe he may have broken the record too. Were you at the finish for that?

[40:25] I usually have an iPad in front of me with results coming through live, but it wasn't working, so I had to eyeball it — Pete Murray and I squinting at the big screen on the finish straight, trying to work out who was out front. And this is why, and I do need to apologise, not that it makes any difference to her — I don't think I gave Izzy Batt-Doyle the finish call she deserved. I'm sure Dave Culbert and Steve Moneghetti and the rest of the broadcast team gave it

[40:56] great coverage, but I didn't give Izzy the call she deserved for the fastest Aussie ever on Aussie soil. I just didn't have the information in front of me — and I know a good tradesman shouldn't blame his tools — but with everything else going on, half marathon runners coming through in the men's race at the same time, I was scrambling to get names right and didn't give Izzy the send-off she deserved as she came through. I did apologise —

[41:29] saw her in the lift at the accommodation afterwards and told her, congratulations on an outstanding run, but please come back next year and I'll make it all about you. On the men's half there were two pairs of ASICS and a Nike on the podium — Izzy was wearing, and this is interesting, what I think was an ASICS Metaspeed prototype. Hard to pin down exactly from photos and video —

[42:02] looked like a Metaspeed of some kind, in the Tokyo colourway, but with some extra tech I couldn't quite identify. In the men's half you had a Nike in second and another ASICS in third, two ASICS Metaspeed Edge Tokyos and a Puma Deviate Nitro in the 10K, an On Cloudboom Strike worn by Natalie Rule taking out that race, more ASICS on the podium behind her. In the men's 5K, Harrison Martinenko had a standout run in

[42:33] the ASICS Metaspeed, with a Nike Vaporfly and another ASICS Metaspeed rounding out the podium. In the women's 5K it was a Puma Fast Nitro, a Nike Alphafly and a Puma Deviate. So a weekend dominated by ASICS, which tells the story really — as you come down through the marathon and half marathon, where the international elites get invited, and further down the distances, you start to

[43:03] see more variety in the shoes. Makes sense — you'd want to sponsor a marathon to showcase your shoe. Did you see anything out on course from the Nike Radical Airflow gear? Only one — the singlet, actually no, a full long-sleeve. Interesting, because we'd talked about this — those are the

[43:35] pieces people might be aware of. The Radical Airflow range popped up for purchase in Nike stores the week before the race. When I saw one at the start line, a bloke near where I started had one on, along with a nose strip — a proper full-kit enthusiast. Not in a bad way, every sport has them, golf, triathlon, marathon running, people who love the sport as much for the kit as for

[44:06] the doing of it. It was just the one — only saw one person out in the full Radical Airflow gear, thought it might've stood out more than that. Maybe someone with a relationship with Nike, but he was wearing ASICS shoes, so probably not. They'll be everywhere eventually. Looked at it out there and thought, that's really out there — expected to see the singlets, not a full long-sleeve top. He was actually running well —

[44:37] up in the 2:35 group at one stage, then he was walking. Well, let's not blame the singlet for that, that's probably just the training. But good to see one in real life — like spotting it out in the crowd and going, ah, that's what it looks like on someone. They'll be everywhere at

[45:08] Melbourne for the Nike marathon there, I reckon. I still think the ACG side of things is more positioned for trail, that's where we get mixed up — I know what you mean, but still think they'll be everywhere at Melbourne. We'll wait and see. Let's finish up with this — Ryan Kelso, good mate, congrats Ryan, saw you cross the finish line, which is great. He's got a few questions for me.

[45:38] First one from Kelso — did Courtney not find a singlet, or did he just not like the look of his muscles sticking out, so went for the shirt? Went with the full shirt, and the honest truth is there was no Radical Airflow gear left to wear. Did try a singlet on and thought, nah, not me — a bit heavy, mate, if I'm honest. Trust me, you're not — there are a few things that could help my marathon performance, and one of them is probably losing a bit more

[46:08] weight — twelve weeks of fifty-K a week didn't quite get me a six-pack, or a few bicep curls in either, didn't quite get me into tip-top shape. He also wants to know — and yes, you've admitted you wore headphones — can you share your playlist? Had every intention of curating one, and in the end just went with a Spotify radio playlist, don't even know what it was. Done so much training with a beat in the ears, figured, why change it now.

[46:39] One last one from Kelso, and we'll finish today's episode on this — more marathon content coming Saturday. If you could do one thing differently, knowing what you know now, what would it be? Good question. Wouldn't have done the taper — would have kept the mileage up. Looking back at everything, how I

[47:10] felt on the day and how it all went, just don't think I did enough training volume to justify a taper. Looking at all that data, probably wouldn't have gone as hard in a session, but needed every bit of fitness that could be got. It's a good question, but you never really know. Did everything the way you're supposed to — was still approaching it like a professional athlete in the sense of doing the carb load, getting the shoes sorted, doing the training, doing the taper, doing everything within the rules we set out, and got what I got.

[47:41] Got what you got — training doesn't lie, there it is. That's the wrap-up on Courtney Atkinson's first ever marathon. Congratulations again, mate — 2:42:10 is nothing to be disappointed with, even though I know you are, a little bit. Not disappointed, mate, but I know how your brain works, and we're already plotting the next one — amazing. It's cool too, Liam. There's a lot of excited people out there. Everybody who participated and crossed that blue line on the weekend, thank you for making it the best ever ASICS Gold Coast Marathon. I know for a fact they've got plans to go even bigger and better in 2027, so we'll be back. See you Saturday.