Australian Running

Project recording runners stopped. A legacy database has been left here with marathons in Australia 1906-2015.

Marathon running's changed in the last few years. It's changed from being about racing in a marathon event to completing the marathon distance. Nearly all of the 55 new marathons in 2016 - more marathons then existed 4 years previous - were created specifically for people to inflate the number of times they completed the distance. In the era of GPS you can complete the distance pretty much anywhere in anytime so there seems little point recording runners - their finish place and time - if they're not racing. MP

"Too many … get an easy ego gratification by plodding in poor form and style over the marathon distance in what amounts to really poor times and performances that tend to make a burlesque of one of the toughest events in any sport any person can compete in." Cerutty