GOLD COAST MARATHON SERIES - IT'S ALL ABOUT THE TAPER

[00:00] In the beginning — we're back running the Gold Coast Marathon. Courtney, you're here. I'm here. Bronte, our superstar, is here. Benita, the superstar coach from Lace Up Running — and, as always, her assistant producer Max, fast asleep on her chest. How are we all doing? Good, good. I'm keen to hear how the runners are going — this has very much turned into a three-way interview with Bronte, the only person actually competing in the marathon this year. I'm fine with that, I really like it. But you had news. Well, yeah — so the last time we

[00:31] recorded, that was two weeks ago, and I wasn't well. In typical fashion for our generation, we just push through when we're not feeling well. Despite my body definitely telling me I needed more rest, I just kept going and going. Two days after we recorded the podcast, I finally went to the doctor. She said, 'I don't know how you've done it, but you have pneumonia — please stop running.'

[01:01] 'Please stop doing anything, full stop.' Yeah, really. So today genuinely feels like the first day I can breathe again. I had a good run on the weekend — no issues at all. But it was definitely a bit scary for a moment there, five weeks out, not knowing how it was going to affect my training. But I feel good now. How many days off did you end up having? I took about a week, I—

[01:31] think. I did a couple of runs on the weekend after the 30K — one was 16, one was 11, I think — and that's when my body started to not feel well. We recorded that podcast on the Monday, found out on the Wednesday — oh my God — and then didn't run again until the following Monday. How many people, when they're training for a marathon block, Benita, get through the whole block without at least one issue? Honestly, I don't reckon anyone does.

[02:02] I've coached a lot of people, and even with myself when I was running — you can't have a completely static plan, because you can't just hand someone a plan twelve weeks out and expect nothing to change. Things change. But it's interesting — we know calf injuries and physical injuries are pretty common. Is something like pneumonia, or that kind of respiratory illness,

[02:32] something you see much with athletes? Yeah, look, I feel like a lot of athletes just push through, like Bronte said — you've got family, you've got a job, you've got your training, you don't want to miss a session, but you start feeling sicker. I haven't had many people get pneumonia, but there are definitely a lot of people with respiratory issues. It's really important not to run hard through anything more than a sniffle — anything in your chest, that kind of thing.

[03:04] Sometimes you just need rest. Yeah, it was definitely my own fault — I was still going for walks late at night, sun down, chest cold, thinking, this doesn't feel right, but I can't stop. Straight to the doctor on the Wednesday, antibiotics, still not great until the following Monday — about five days later — when I ran for the first time and felt okay. Benita was amazing at adjusting the plan, because that weekend we'd

[03:34] had a 32K planned, and she said, 'we're not doing that.' We also weren't sure whether I'd need another round of antibiotics, which were messing with my system. It was good once I was off them and the pneumonia had cleared. I think that's another key lesson we've touched on at different points through this whole series — there'll still be people listening who think that illness or injury, the idea of five days off during a marathon block, would just

[04:06] ruin everything. If you've never done one of these before, that five-day gap this close to the race — four or five weeks out — feels like it'll cost you all your momentum. But that's not how it works. No, exactly. If anything, if you push through, you go backwards. If Bronte had done that long run and pushed hard, especially on antibiotics — if you're on antibiotics, you either don't run, or you don't run hard, and you follow the doctor's advice. Illness is very similar to injury in that sense —

[04:36] you've got to adjust the plan. When I first started out as an athlete, I got glandular fever, then tonsillitis as well, ended up in hospital, and I just kept training through it because I was at uni and thought I was invincible. It takes someone telling you, 'you have to back off,' before you adjust. With Bronte's plan, I'd actually written it before I knew she was on antibiotics, back when she was starting to feel better. But once you're on antibiotics, you've got to be so

[05:07] careful. You're better off taking the rest days — it won't take anything out of your preparation. But if you'd tried to run through it, we might be talking to you in hospital today instead. Exactly. And just to be clear — if Bronte had ended up in hospital, we'd have still gone ahead with the podcast. We'd have brought a portable microphone and sat around the hospital bed. We need Bronte. When I heard 'pneumonia'—

[05:37] I thought, oh no, is this some kind of curse — the curse of the podcast, where anyone who attaches themselves to it fails to make the start line. But no, it turned out great, because on the weekend I did the new plan — a 90-minute-to-two-hour run — and ran a half marathon PB in the process. You ran so well, I saw it on Strava. Yeah, it felt great. That was in the training run? Yeah — Saturday. Averaged 5:33 to 5:30 pace.

[06:10] No, not in the race shoes — I haven't put those on yet. I asked, and Coach said not yet — we're going to try them out this weekend. What's on this weekend, what's the plan? It's a long one — about 28 to 30, whatever feels right at that volume. It's one of the sessions Liam did earlier — a 1K surge a bit faster than marathon pace, then 1K easy, repeated through the run. Now, given how you've been coaching all the way

[06:41] through — you've been hesitant to get carried away, it's all about getting to the line, ideally a little undertrained — with the way Bronte's running, are you starting to think about time at all? I know you've been cautious the whole way, saying this is Bronte's first marathon so we're not thinking about time. But this doesn't feel like a typical first-timer anymore — she's shown she can really run. Cover your ears, Bronte — are you starting to think about a time? Look, I think she's running better than the time we've been looking at.

[07:11] But we haven't done any runs over 35K, and we're not going to — we did a slightly longer one a few weeks back, but three weeks out is too close to push much past 30K. So that's still an unknown. Is that a bad thing? That's what I was going to ask, because we've missed the chance now for me to do more than 30K — I did the GC30, but is it okay that I won't have run further than that before the marathon? Yeah, it's not a bad thing, because it's your first marathon. The longest run I'd have given you was probably 32 to 34K.

[07:44] So it's not a bad thing — it's good that you did that 30K race, and this weekend's long run is a bit further than I'd normally give you if we hadn't lost that week. It won't hurt your race. But it is still an unknown. The biggest mistake I could make as a coach is pushing your marathon pace too fast, and then you hit 30 or 32K with nothing left. We just want you to have a genuinely good experience — and even if you finish thinking you could have gone faster,

[08:14] then great, sign up for another marathon and we take more risk next time — more risk in training too. You're mostly running three days a week; you might move to four. But right now you're ahead of schedule and going fantastically, and that should give you real confidence heading into race day. I think a lot of people in this situation — who had a pace in mind, did the training, and are now ahead of it — will find this useful too.

[08:46] Is it better to stick to the original pace, knowing you can pick it up in the last 10K, or should I make a small adjustment if I'm well ahead of that pace? Look, it's hard to say. If we get the cool weather we've had lately — because weather's a factor too — you could maybe start 5 seconds a kilometre faster than planned, but I wouldn't be thinking 10

[09:16] to 15 seconds faster. My philosophy is: if you're going to speed up, do it after 30 or 32K, rather than going out faster early and risking blowing up. I've been on both sides of that finish-line feeling — the one where you think, that was horrible, I paced it terribly, went out too fast and died. And I've also been on

[09:47] the other side — finishing thinking, that was amazing, I could have gone faster. I know which one I'd rather have, and it's the second. When I broke 90 minutes in the half last year, I came on the next episode and said I felt great, wondered how much faster I could have gone — and you told me, no, you couldn't have gone faster, you just paced it well. Whereas the year before, at the Gold Coast Marathon, I went out with the 3:20 pace group and they left

[10:18] me behind around the 35K mark, and that last 7K was torture. To your point — it's about not chasing a faster pace no matter how good you feel. I know which finish-line feeling I'd rather have. I think I left a bit out there, rather than 'I never want to run again.' As much as I love seeing the PBs coming through in the halves, I know how race day can go —

[10:49] as we've discussed, some days I think I'm putting in the work to hopefully avoid a blowout on marathon day. But I'm more than happy to just run at 6:20 pace on marathon day if it means finishing, and finishing well — maybe closer to the GC30 pace, which was a bit quicker, but I'm not chasing speed, I'm trying to— The other thing you'll need to think about now is the finish-line interviews, Bronte — as a local celebrity, you'll be expected to do an

[11:21] interview at the finish with whoever's covering the day. Courtney and I'll be there to show up for you — In The Beginning, right? The goal— That's just reminded me, we've got to cover the photoshoot. Oh my God, Liam gave us his experience from last Saturday. Yeah, very different to yours by the sounds of things. I don't think it was — I think it was pretty similar. You were in a lovely studio. It was cold and dark — I was on the

[11:51] street in Varsity. At least you had witnesses. No, that's not a good thing. Oh yeah, actually, we did have the story — it's not a good thing — yeah, you're a poor young woman in a studio getting water thrown in your face. I was thinking, what have I signed up for here? No, it was really cool — I saw some of the stills. Are they going to display it at the convention? Yeah, it looks amazing. That's cool. And for anyone watching — if he uses some of mine, even though I'm not running the marathon, I told them I still wanted to be part of the photoshoot. These are going to be commemorated,

[12:23] displayed at the Expo, life-size — Harris Photography. Canvas-size, yeah. Go check it out, for sure. Actually, your mates at Salomon will be happy — I was wearing all their gear. Beautiful, shout-out. Hey, since we've been chatting as a group every two weeks, I think now's the time, Benita, to talk about the taper. We're at the stage where it's about how to wind this down and feel our best on race day. So — where are we now, time of recording?

[12:55] We're three and a half weeks out — three and a half weeks out from when you'll be listening to this. Give us a rundown, a rule of thumb, on what to expect from a taper and when it should start. Look, everyone's different with tapering. Some people respond better to a more aggressive taper — cutting intensity and volume down a lot more — while others do better running a bit more through their taper. But you can't assume

[13:28] you're one or the other unless your coach really knows you. As a general rule — and factoring in travel, so if you're coming to the Gold Coast Marathon from America or Europe, your taper needs to be more aggressive to absorb the international travel. If you're coming from Melbourne, you'll be fine. But think about time-zone changes too. And when you say aggressive, you mean dropping the volume down more? Yeah, doing less

[13:59] work — but for anyone coming to the race from within Australia, I'd start tapering from around three weeks out. That last long run doesn't need to drop off as much — it could still be at the three-week mark, just slightly less. Then once you're into the two-weeks-out window, I'm still running similar sessions and volume, but that long run is a bit shorter and a bit easier. Then in race week, just make sure you're still running on the

[14:31] same days you normally would. I think people like their schedule and their routine — a lot of runners don't want the taper to strip out all their runs and leave just one. So keep running on the days you'd normally run, and just reduce the volume and intensity of each session. If you'd normally do something like six times three-minute efforts on a Tuesday, maybe do four times three-minute efforts, with a few 20-second strides, or three times three-minute efforts — roughly half the volume. If a session normally takes 20 minutes

[15:02] of hard running, bring it down to 10 or 12 minutes. Putting on my first-time-marathoner hat here — why is tapering important? It helps you feel fresher by reducing the volume. Even with Bronte — she didn't run for quite a few days while she was sick, then did that long run off fresh legs, hadn't been training much, and smashed it, even though it was meant to be easy. It's about freshening the body up.

[15:33] The idea of training is stressing your body so it adapts to that accumulated stress — that's why we have recovery weeks too, to help your body absorb the training. Tapering does the same thing on a bigger scale, getting your body ready for the race by removing that cumulative fatigue — that heavy feeling in your legs from hard training. For the marathon, you should expect to feel a bit tired during training, but during

[16:04] the taper, some people feel a bit tired and lethargic just from not doing their normal runs. Yeah — and Courtney, I actually quite like tapers, but a lot of the people I coach don't. You're nodding your head at that lethargic feeling — did you used to get that? Yeah — when racing, if you weren't just doing one marathon but multiple races, you might pick a shorter, ten-day taper for some — less aggressive than a full three-week taper. Coming off big volume, racing a lot, then

[16:35] easing off, your body nearly goes into a kind of ultra-adaptation mode, so it feels flat for a while. Sometimes that lasts right up to race day — you're just waiting for it to lift. And when it does, that's when the magic happens, it feels amazing — but you're walking a fine line. For most people running recreationally, you probably don't have that same high-intensity three-week block to bring down, so you've got a lot less

[17:05] risk of that happening. But you will feel moments where things don't feel quite right — your body's going through the process of repairing and getting ready to race, so it's not always going to feel like roses. For the footy fans out there, to step away from running for a second — what people might not realise is why preseason matters so much for footy clubs. That's where they build their fitness, and then the season becomes

[17:35] maintenance — they're not really training hard week to week, it's mostly about recovering from the last game to be ready for the next one. So AFL teams don't train that hard during the season, but they do maintain — that's why high-performance managers, like Alex Rigby at the Suns, matter so much. Those training days where they build up kilometres and endurance happen in preseason, because in-season it's about being ready to perform each week.

[18:05] There'll be runners out there thinking, if I don't do enough in this last week I'm going to lose fitness. But Bronte just proved that a bit of rest — even from being sick — isn't necessarily a bad thing. So, go out and get pneumonia for a PB. I wouldn't go that far. I'll send you some saliva, make some money out of it. No — okay, that's not a great business idea. This started as breakfast radio, this isn't OnlyFans. No, we're not going there — Bronte's bathwater, now for sale.

[18:37] But that last week does matter — if you're thinking you're not doing enough, the worst thing you can do is do too much. You should always err on the side of doing too little rather than too much. Isn't it just another example of your brain fighting your body? Because in the race itself, your body's telling you one thing and your brain has to override it — your brain says 'I'm tired, I want to quit, I'm done,' while your body's actually capable of going further. And in this case, it's your brain saying you're not

[19:07] doing enough, and your body saying no, we're absorbing this. Yeah — and I think coming off a good taper also helps your body absorb the carbohydrate you're eating, so your glycogen stores build back up. When you're training hard, glycogen stores drop a lot, especially juggling work and kids. So tapering essentially gets your body ready for the big race — but the thing about tapering is that even at the start of the race, you might

[19:37] still feel a bit lethargic, and might not feel good until halfway through. That's important for people to know — you might not feel amazing early on, and you need to push through that. I've had that feeling myself: when I ran 2:22, I nearly wanted to pull out after 10K, just because my taper was so light — I was racing in Chicago but had flown in from the UK, and my taper that week was only a few 20-minute runs and a light session before the race. So I was

[20:10] ready to go, but I felt really heavy. That's fairly common. Give us an idea of your mileage — what would a normal training week look like three or four weeks out, and what did your final week look like? You said 20K only in that last week? Yeah, 20-minute runs. So I'd say around 180 to 220K in the week about four weeks out, and a week out it would drop to more like

[20:40] 60. But I never really counted kilometres — that's just an estimate. We never counted K's, hardly ever — maybe if I got injured, just to check things, but hardly ever otherwise. I just ran off time. I was very old-school. So did you just follow a structure and let the volume fall out of that, rather than the other way round? Yeah. There were periods where I did track volume, so I had a rough idea of what I was doing when marathon training, but

[21:11] that final week before the race was always pretty low. I reckon people would be curious how your body feels running 220K, or even 200K, in a week — that's a lot of running. Yeah, well, I used to recover really well — this was before super shoes, well before them, wearing paper-thin racing flats for sessions all the time, two or three times a week. And all the old-school recovery methods —

[21:41] ice baths, no compression boots back then, and just sleeping — I'd sleep at least an hour every afternoon, because I didn't have a job to go to, so that made it easier. Massage three times a week too. So I recovered pretty well, all things considered. And if you don't mind sharing — what was your key long marathon session? I really liked one session — about four times 5K, or five

[22:16] times 4K, at around marathon pace, with a 1K float after each. I liked it because you're practising marathon pace within a long run — maybe a 35 to 38K run overall, practising the pace across those 4K or 5K efforts, with the floats a bit slower and maybe pushing a little faster toward the end. I also did one on the track during a marathon block — six times 2K, each with 30 seconds' rest, then a hard 1K at the end.

[22:47] That's a lot of laps. I can't remember exactly how many, but the 2K reps were around marathon pace with barely any rest, and it was really about practising that pace. Then the final 1K flat out — I remember running close to three minutes for that last one. It's about practising running hard on tired legs, because that's a big part of what a marathon actually demands. I've got a question about food during the taper, but first I want to get to Brody. How are you feeling about

[23:17] the taper? The reason I ask is you've come from a bit of a running discovery over the last 18 months, and now you're running more and faster than ever — and now you're facing a couple of weeks of slowing down and running less. I don't mind the taper. I think, like Courtney said, whatever concerns I had about it, I had to confront when I went from Saturday to Monday, ten days without running, then slowly

[23:48] getting back into it, and then the half on the weekend, still feeling really good. So whatever issues I had with it, I don't have them anymore — now I can see the benefit. Definitely. So no, I'm excited for it — the idea that the taper is basically the preseason to the big day. It's the reward. Exactly. Benita, on the idea of your body adapting to the energy

[24:21] you're taking in — should your diet change during taper week? Because during the training block you're fuelling all that exercise, and if your mileage drops by around 70%, do people need to be conscious of adjusting their calorie intake as well? Look, I think you still eat what you'd normally eat, but I'd start carb-loading in the last two and a half days — meaning making sure you're getting carbohydrate at each meal,

[24:52] so breakfast, lunch and dinner, plus snacks in between. Don't feel like you have to diet just because you're running less — people worry about that because they're used to eating a certain way and don't want to put on weight, but you probably will put on a bit of weight from glycogen storage in taper week regardless. Some people carb-load for five days, but I suggest keeping it closer to race day, since you'll already be dramatically cutting your running volume.

[25:23] So you don't need five days of carb-loading before the marathon — that's just my view, other people have different ones. Can we go round the table — favourite carbs? Pasta. And with your pasta? Just pasta. I haven't done much carb-loading before. What about you? Rice. I'm more of a rice person. A cup of rice. Bread — Fred's a bread guy. What did you use — potatoes? Potato gems, is that one?

[25:56] Yeah — we actually had potato gems last night. There you go. Is that your pre-race dinner? No, I'll do pasta. My girlfriend, who's coming up from Townsville, we're running our first marathon together. She's running too. Yeah — we did the half or the 10K together last year, we've done a few, but this is our first marathon together. We always have pasta and one glass of wine the night before a big race. Is that allowed? Yeah, definitely — there's carbs in wine.

[26:26] There's carbs in wine. This is the first I've heard about your friend running it with you. Have you found yourself sort of teaching her about running, given everything you've picked up from Benita and Courtney? To be fair, she's asking me because she's seen the work we've been doing and the change in my pace — she knew me before I started running at all.

[26:56] So she's very supportive, even though this is a new thing for me too. She's had a few injuries, so she's more nervous about her own performance and how she'll get through it, but she's been putting in the work up in Townsville. You can be guilty of that — I say this having done it myself — hanging around people who know things and then repeating it as though you know it, when you've really just been

[27:26] listening. I'm basically a parrot repeating what you two have said, but it sounds good. The problem is once you parrot it to someone, they come back with follow-up questions and you don't have the answer. Never do — I've fallen into that trap too. All right — we've talked a lot about ourselves, but we've got a few listener questions ahead of the marathon, from people who are either running it or just want to hear more from Benita's expertise. Gordo, over in the British Isles — he's a coach himself, but he's always keen

[27:56] to learn more. He asks: what benchmarks should a coach look for before suggesting an athlete step up to a longer distance? For example, if someone's racing a few 10Ks, how long should they wait before attempting

[28:26] a marathon, or is there a rough guide for how much running you should have under your belt first? Look, there are a lot of different views on this. If they're under 20, I'd say stick to shorter distances — but if they're over 20 and want to do a marathon, and they're finishing a 10K feeling good in the second half, I think a 10K and a half marathon are pretty similar. If they can do a 10K, they can do a half,

[28:56] and the marathon is a lot more about the mental side — how well you can prepare and handle the training. So from your first 10K, it might be a year, might be two — it really depends on how they feel and recover through training. Do a few halves first, but if you can handle a 10K, you can handle a half, and the natural next step is a marathon. How did that process feel for you, Bronte, since you've evolved over what you said was about two years now? Was the marathon always the end goal, or

[29:28] did it become one along the way? This time last year I was talking to someone in the Gold Coast running community, saying I was going to do the 10K at the Gold Coast running festival, and maybe the half in Townsville with my girlfriend. He said, 'you'll be doing the marathon at Gold Coast next year — I know exactly how this goes.' Hook, line and sinker. He said, 'I'm telling you, you'll sign up for the marathon next year.'

[29:58] I said there's no way — and it wasn't until the GC50 last October, another half I did after a rough Townsville half, that I thought, okay, I'm doing the marathon. So from starting running in January, following Benita's rough timeline, it took about a year and a half. I can't wait to see how you are

[30:28] crossing the line, and then compare it to how you feel five minutes later. I remember finishing my first Gold Coast Marathon and thinking never again — I'd blown up at 28K and the last 14 were punishing. Crossing the line I thought, never again. Five minutes later I was thinking, okay, I need to find another one, I need to,

[30:59] I'm really curious how quickly you process that feeling — from the finish line, once you've caught your breath, into how you feel afterwards. When you were running your fastest times in your career, how quickly did you process the performance itself versus just the feeling of finishing? Yeah, that's an interesting one. Honestly, the reason I'm quite conservative with marathons is that my own first marathon was a bit of a disaster.

[31:30] I always think about that experience and don't want the people I coach to go through the same thing. In that race, the last — like what you're describing, Liam — the last 15K or so, I was thinking, why am I doing this? And crossing the line I just wanted to go home. It was the New York Marathon, a long way from home. But five minutes later I already wanted to do another one. My coach wouldn't let me for a while, though. I think I ran London

[32:00] the next year and improved a lot. Yeah, exactly — as soon as I finish, I'm like, never again, and then a few minutes later I want to do one next week. I've done the training, I'm fit, let's go. It's the irony of endurance sport — you often hate it while you're doing it, you're in pain, and the first thing you do when you finish is ask what's next. Keep that in mind. So what actually went wrong in that race — was the Gold Coast Marathon your first, or had you done London before? What went wrong there, so other first-timers

[32:30] don't make the mistake I made? I just ran too fast. I was feeling great at 24K and then dropped my pace by 20 seconds per kilometre over the next 5K. I had no idea what I was doing. At 24K I felt amazing, high-fiving my wife as I went past — five K later I was basically walking. I'd completely cooked myself. Terribly paced, terribly planned, terribly trained. Do you have any advice — we've talked a lot about pacing —

[33:01] for if things go wrong mid-race, not just going out too fast or finishing fast, but a rough patch in the middle? Any cues to get yourself back into it? Look, if it goes wrong at any point, it's important to reset — I always say, get to whatever drink station's next, think about someone in your life who motivates you, and try to reset every 5K. I think it's incredibly hard in a marathon, once you've lost momentum, to completely

[33:34] turn it around — so it's more about backing off the pace a little. I also wouldn't look at your watch. Sometimes people see they've slipped from 4:30 pace to 4:45 and it wrecks them mentally. If you stop checking your watch, after 5K you might find yourself back at 4:30 pace because you've relaxed. It's a lot about relaxing mentally and letting go of what the finish-line clock is going to say. Just focus on the 5K block

[34:05] you're in right now. Don't keep thinking about what the clock will look like at the end — a lot of people get caught up in that. That's hard not to do. Yeah, it is. My first marathon, I ran London — I've become a lot wiser as a runner since. This was 2010 or 2011, I think, and I ran without a watch, doing mental maths as I passed the

[34:35] clocks to work out my time. About 15K in, I was doing the maths and thinking, I'm amazing at marathon running, I'm going to run something like 2:50, I'm really good at this. Then I stopped and realised I wasn't that far ahead of everyone else — my maths was just bad, and I was actually running quite slowly. Do you know what you're going to do for pacing — set a time on your watch?

[35:05] Or run off a pace bracelet? Before training with Benita, I was using Runna, and it would feed my target pace into my ears — I hated that. Now, because we go off time rather than distance, when I train with Benita I just start the watch like I'm starting any run and don't look at it. So I never know how fast I'm going — which is why it was nice finishing that half on Saturday and only then

[35:37] checking. So you didn't know your pace during it? I knew I was feeling good, but I only glanced at it maybe three or four times through the run. It's interesting — the challenge of running with a watch and a pacer on your wrist is you forget how to run by feel. The most important thing at any distance is knowing how you're feeling and being able to adjust — slow down, speed up—

[36:07] or move up to the next group, whatever it is — rather than letting the watch dictate everything. The worst thing you can do is stare at your watch when you're not feeling as good as you should be, fixated on holding a pace, when in reality you might drop off a little, get through a rough patch, and come good again. We're not robots. Exactly. At the GC30, when we were targeting that 6:20 pace, I checked my watch a lot more

[36:38] to stay near that target, but I also had a pacer with me for most of it. For the marathon, just so I don't blow myself out, I'll probably be checking my watch a lot more early on— Especially the first 20 to 30K. I don't know if this is where we want to go, but roughly what time would that pace work out to? I think 6:25 pace is around 4:30.

[37:08] So you think you'll find yourself around the 4:30 pacer? I think so, we'll have a look. That might actually feel too slow, so you might be somewhere between 4:30 and 4:15 — that 4:15 pacer might suit you better. But if there's a 4:30 group and only a 4-hour group beyond that, I haven't checked the full pacing list, but sometimes it's good to just run with a group and relax. Yeah, I think so. It's going to be packed at the start, so that's the thing about zone C — the first 5K, don't

[37:41] worry too much about pace, because you'll have people all around you. That's an important thing at the start of any big race — the bigger the field, the busier and more hectic the start will be. Is it organised by finish time or minutes per kilometre? I'm literally pulling up the pace groups on the computer now — so you're in zone C? The paces for the 4-hour, 4:15 and 4:30 groups will be at the back of zone D, maybe

[38:14] I'm actually in D, or maybe E. If you're in C, that's more the 3:40 pace group — I'd never really thought about it that way. You want a pacer, but depending on where you start, it completely changes things. Running a 6:03 per K pace gets you 4:15, and 6:24 gets you 4:30 — but those paces will sit at the back of zone D and the front of zone E, and if you're up in zone C, you could find yourself running alongside the 3:40 group. Oh my God — I guess that's

[38:45] what you're describing about the danger of the start line — you've almost got to run it completely unaware of what's happening around you, because it's so easy to get caught up and blow up early. Would you, Bronte, after hearing that, consider starting near the back of zone C to link up with a pacer, given you said you enjoyed having one at GC30 and not having to think about pace?

[39:15] I'd probably lean that way — I think when you sign up for the marathon, you declare an expected finish time, so maybe I'm actually in zone D. I'd probably want to find a pacer, so I'd head to whatever zone that pacer's starting in. But this is a really good example — just by doing this, right now, Bronte, who's had Benita's guidance through this whole block and is a competent adult perfectly capable of running her own life,

[39:47] is suddenly having to reassess her own start position looking at this pacing map. I'm wrong — I signed up for zone D. Okay, but this is good to know — in zone D, the 4-hour pace will be at the front and the 4:15 pace further back. If you want to run with the 4:30 group, that's actually in zone E. Okay — so if anyone listening is thinking about running with a pacer, head to the Gold Coast Marathon website, because the pace-group information is up now, and you can see exactly where each group

[40:19] will start. Within reason, and they're all good people — I think running with a pace group can really help you relax, and for you, Bronte, I'd suggest starting near the back of the 4:15 group. Okay, that's what I was thinking too. That's Urban Chan and — who else — they're in yellow, you'll spot them. Very experienced runners — a lot of these pacers have personal bests well under their pace group, so they're very comfortable doing it. But sometimes

[40:50] they go out a touch fast, so it's worth being aware, especially in the 4:15 group, of not sitting right at the front. So that changes my race time a bit — at the back of the 4:15, you said? Yeah, and that's probably closer to the time we're actually aiming for anyway, since there'll likely be a lot of people around there. The other option is dropping to zone E and starting with the 4:30 group, running comfortably with them for the first 28 to 30K, and then pushing on from there.

[41:20] So we'll have a think about that. Okay, that's a discussion for another time — we've got three and a half weeks. This is good, because people jumping on and looking at these pace times might be wondering what to do — I honestly would never have thought about it and would have just turned up without a plan, since there's no pacer for every possible time. You'd be running with Justin and Jared Karlfeld, who are pacing the 2:50 group.

[41:50] Yeah, I heard a few mates weren't too happy — there's a 2:50 group, then a group for the leading women around 2:20, but nothing for people trying to break 2:40 or 2:30. No — and the response was, well, if you're running that pace, you can handle pacing yourself. Hey, on this pacing topic — someone wrote in wanting to know how to pace running the half one day and the full the next, back to back.

[42:20] hopefully full of hope. Yeah, I've got a few people doing that. The way I've been coaching them — probably a bit late to start now — is doing a fairly solid effort one day and a fairly hard long run on another day every three or four weeks, so you're practising back-to-back hard efforts. But honestly, I think the best approach is not running flat out in the half, since you've got a marathon the next day.

[42:50] You'd be better running very conservatively in the marathon and fairly hard in the half — though it's hard to say exactly what that split should look like. You're not chasing a PB in both, surely? No, that would be crazy. Is there actually a combined-time competition for that? Yeah, there is — it's fairly new, I think it's been around since around COVID. A friend of mine did it last year, ran the half then the full, and we were actually racing

[43:21] each other in the full the next day — she still beat me. When I started trying to break three hours, she messaged me saying, keep in mind you haven't run a half the day before like I did. So I asked what time I'd need to run for it to count as beating her, and she said something like 2:55. She was joking, because I didn't even make the start line for that one. Anyway — anyone doing the half and the full back to back, that's genuinely tough.

[43:52] You'd almost want to be training like you're preparing for an ultra to do that — lots of practice running on tired legs, day after day, really tired legs. Cool — is there anything else, any other thoughts? We've covered nutrition, we've covered mileage, giving your body the chance to adapt to all the training and get that freshness. Anything else people should keep in mind, or any other questions you've had come through, maybe around

[44:23] massages, or even recovery centres in the days leading up — would you recommend those? Look, I think a massage — if you normally get them — maybe three or four days out is fine, just nothing too deep-tissue. Most decent massage places on the Gold Coast should be pretty firm rather than really soft, but in race week

[44:54] just make sure it's not too deep. With recovery centres, if you normally use them, they should be fine. But I'd say the day before the race, you don't want to be running around doing all that — the day before is about resting, not walking around too much, watching some trashy TV, chilling out. Locked in. I think we're actually broadcasting our show

[45:24] the Saturday morning of the marathon. Yep. Which isn't great, because it means another early start — but it'll be cool being there among everyone. I may not get a chance to ask this again, so I wanted to ask now — after finishing the marathon, how long do I wait, or what's the next step, before I run again?

[45:54] Yeah, that's a good question. For a lot of the people I work with, I'd suggest at least the first week of just cross-training — walking, letting your body recover, off any structured plan. The marathon isn't just physically demanding, it's emotionally tiring too, so you need to give your mind a rest and not think too much about running — even if, like we said, you finish thinking never again and then five minutes later want to do another one regardless of how it went. The worst thing you can do is start training straight

[46:25] away. So the first week, I wouldn't suggest any running — just recovery, things like cycling, swimming, walking, making sure you're looked after, since some people are quite sore. Then the following week, a few easy jogs if you're not sore — maybe two or three. If you'd normally run five times a week, build up to four or five jogs the week after that. And then probably nothing hard until the week after that — some strides, then sessions. How exciting is this, by the way — we've gone from talking about a twelve-week block to talking about tapering, Bronte.

[46:55] No, this is it — I get a bit emotional thinking about it, because it's here, it's here, it's here. It's going to be so cool. Less than four weeks. My girlfriend's coming to the event — these are things we've talked about for a year, and now we're at the point where we've had a little blip with illness, and I'm just hoping the next three and a half weeks are seamless

[47:26] and it all goes well. It will be — this is really exciting. I'm getting those FOMO feelings again, that I'm not heading to the start line myself. Next time we catch up— We'll be three days out — race week. Race week, yep. Holy moly. Amazing. To everyone out there — again, if you've got any last-minute questions ahead of race day,

[47:58] even simple ones — I feel like Benita's already handed over the keys to the marathon city across this whole series — but if there's anything last-minute you want to throw out there, please send it in. If you've got messages of encouragement for our marathon queen Bronte, or song suggestions, I need fast-paced songs for my playlist — I've been listening to the same ones for six months and I like fast, upbeat stuff, so if you've got suggestions, please

[48:31] send them through. Song suggestions, words of encouragement, last-minute questions — send them all in and we'll try to get to them before the race-eve edition. Very exciting — alright, we'll see you then. Cool.