As those in or around the marathoning world may already know, Abbott, title sponsor of the Abbott World Marathon Majors series, is looking to add to its list of six major marathons. One of the candidate races looking to join the existing lineup of Tokyo, Boston, London, Berlin, Chicago, and New York is the Sydney Marathon, which runs in Sydney, Australia every September. The race has experienced rapid growth, with less than 3500 finishers in 2022, over 13,000 last year, and over 20,000 this year. A few weeks ago, I was lucky enough to be one of those 20,000+ finishers and now I’m back with a report in case anyone in the TCTC might want to join the likely larger crowd next year at what could be the newest World Major Marathon.
First, let’s get travel out of the way since that’s pretty much what everyone initially thinks about at the mention of a trip to Australia. You have to fly (unless you like really long boat rides) and it is a looooong flight, or set of flights rather since we don’t live in LA. So, first you get to LA and then you fly fourteen hours to Sydney for a total house-to-hotel trip of about thirty hours. In the meantime, you lose a day so leaving on Tuesday morning means arriving on Thursday morning as my wife and I did. The only thing I really have to say about the big flight was that it was bearable. It was hard, but if you want to run World Majors, you have to do hard things. The flights over and the similar flights back will be among them, but you’ll make it. (Jet lag tip—arriving in the morning and staying up until regular bedtime on the first day worked very well in helping us adjust. I don’t know what would help coming back, as it was fairly awful.)
OK, so now you’re in Sydney, what’s next? First, hopefully you’ve arrived early enough to let your mind and body recover from the travel and time difference (Sydney is 14 hours ahead of NC). If it is Thursday or later, you can go to the expo to get your bib and possibly also learn to navigate Sydney’s modern and accessible light rail and train systems. Then you can try a local restaurant, walk in the Royal Botanical Garden, or tour the famous and fabulous Sydney Opera House. Over the next couple of days you can do all of this, tour the town, take excursions in Sydney Harbour (yes, it has a “u” in it), climb the Sydney Harbour Bridge, maybe catch a performance in the Opera House, or travel out of town to the Blue Mountains for the day. Or you can lounge about in a very reasonably priced luxury hotel. You can even just hang out at the expo every day which, honestly, was pretty small, but I expect it to grow if Sydney becomes a Major. You taper how you like. But make sure to get to bed early on Saturday night because….
The Sydney Marathon starts at 6:00 am. And across the Harbour from where you are likely staying, which means a train ride (at least it’s free with a race bib). Depending on the length of your race prep, walk to the train, etc., you’ll probably need to be awake by 3:30 or 4:00 at the latest. Fortunately, the time change during travel helped a great deal with this and it was not an issue at all. It also wasn’t a difficult process, so the trip to the corrals and then to the starting area seemed pretty typical and orderly. I’ve run four of the existing Majors (Boston, Chicago, New York, and Berlin) and I would put Sydney second best behind Chicago in ease of getting to the start line. And the weather? Gorgeous, 50ish degrees, low humidity, and breezy. It was a perfect day at the start line!
After the start comes the main event– the race! Beauty, they say, is in the eye of the beholder and I suppose the same is true for what constitutes a “good” race course. One criteria would be solid logistical support along the course in the form of aid stations, toilets, and medical care. I fortunately only needed the aid stations and not the latter two services, but all of these seemed adequate for a major race as far as I could tell. I certainly did not have any trouble getting water, sports drink, or nutrition at the aid stations and did not need more stations than the race provided. Crowd support is also important in a large race and this was probably where I noticed the biggest difference between Sydney and the other Majors I’ve run. The crowds were certainly there and enthusiastic, but they weren’t as consistent through the course as at other Majors. Hopefully that will change if the race becomes an official Major and its reputation increases. Of course, everyone cares about elevation changes when looking for a race and Sydney definitely has more than the existing Majors. Checking findmymarathon.com, four are quite flat, while Boston has 815 feet of gain/1275 feet of drop and New York just over 800 feet of both. Sydney has nearly 900 feet of gain (some sources, including my watch, say more like 1100-1200) and a little less than 1200 feet of drop which means that it is a net negative race, but also a bit hillier than the other Majors. In running it, I found the first ten miles fairly rolling and curvy, so I had to run by feel instead of just hitting a pace and holding it. The middle section still rolled some but was a lot more runnable. However, the hills returned with a vengeance at the end with the last three miles consisting of a significant downhill, a significant uphill, and then a significant downhill to finish. The course is definitely more challenging than other Majors, but I don’t mind a challenge and actually enjoyed running something a bit different! Finally, for those that find scenery a draw, it would be hard to match the course in Sydney. The race begins with a run to and across Sydney’s famed Harbour Bridge, then winds through its gleaming downtown and around the Harbour a bit before heading out of downtown into an area with lower buildings and parks, some of which are part of the course. The race also has the unique feature for a Major of doubling back on itself in that middle section so that I was able to see the leading male and female runners which is something I have never had a chance to do in a big race. And then there is the end! The finishing mile plunges down a hill toward the Harbour right beside the Botanical Garden. Just as you hit the bottom hoping not to trip over your own tired legs, you round a bend to the right and see only a couple of hundred meters left to the finish line with the magnificent silhouette of the Opera House rising directly behind it! That, my friends, is hard to beat for a finishing backdrop.
Post race, there is about a 400m walk to the friends and family meeting area and other post-race activities. Unfortunately, those areas are also part of the way back up the hill you just ran down in the last mile of the race. That is not a welcome climb at that point, although I do not believe there is anything the organizers can do about it due to space constraints in the Garden near the Opera House and the finish. The only solution would be to move the finish and there is no way I would suggest changing that location. If you’re not ready for that walk, stand and look at the beauty of the Opera House and Harbour for a bit longer to build your strength.
Before moving on from race day, I would like to mention one more unique feature in Sydney. In addition to the full marathon distance, the organizers also have 10K and 4.2K race distances. Unlike other races that have the shorter races on a different day, these are held on the same day from the same start as the marathon, but with a later start time. Participants still get to cross the Harbour Bridge, run through downtown a bit, and finish in the Botanical Garden above the Opera House and relatively near to the marathon’s friends and family meeting area. This allowed my wife to get up after I left, go have her own race day experience in the 4.2K, and almost immediately meet me at the marathon finish area. We really liked the fact that she got a taste of what it feels like to navigate all that happens on race day for a competitor in a Major without having to actually run a marathon. Hopefully this is a feature the race is able to keep going forward.
Now that you’ve run all over the city of Sydney and enjoyed the amazing Opera House finish, what should you do next while you recover? Well, there are museums, beaches, a casino, and an active nightlife right there in Sydney. Or, having already made the long and expensive trip to get to Australia, you could see other areas of that fabulous country—which is what we did. We traveled to the center of the country to see Uluru/Ayers Rock and other rock formations in the surrounding national park. We also traveled north to the Cairns/Port Douglas area to visit the Great Barrier Reef and Daintree Rainforest, which is a remnant of the oldest living rainforest on the planet. We thoroughly enjoyed all these locations and highly recommend them. The views and the local people were amazing and lovely everywhere we went. There are also a number of other areas we did not visit which I am sure are also worth seeing. The only downside to the further travel is that Australia is quite large geographically so changing cites involves even more air travel. But it WAS worth it!
In the end, the city of Sydney, its marathon, and the country of Australia all provided us with wonderful experiences. Based on those experiences, I believe that the Sydney Marathon should, and in my opinion likely will, soon become the seventh World Major Marathon. If it does (or even if it doesn’t), runners would do well to ignore the long journey to and from the race and welcome the chance to get that additional star by enjoying a visit to Sydney and to Australia in general.
