I get asked this question a lot.
"How did you come up with the idea for Coastal Five?"
The funny thing is...
It wasn't really my idea.
At least, not in the beginning.
Like most good stories, it started somewhere completely different.
A Little Event in Queensland
Before Coastal Five, there was the Warwick Pentathron.
It was held in a small country town in Queensland, Australia, and my former husband, Mark, had competed in it several times growing up.
Mark was a runner through and through.
Cross country, road races, athletics... running was simply part of who he was.
He loved the idea of tackling five races over one weekend. It wasn't about huge prize money or massive crowds. It was just a great event that challenged people in different ways.
When we moved back to New Zealand during COVID, he kept saying the same thing.
"New Plymouth would be perfect for something like this."
And he was right.
Where else could you run along the coast one day, through beautiful gardens the next, tackle a mountain trail, climb the road at Pukeiti and then finish the weekend with a fast mile around the Bowl of Brooklands?
The courses almost designed themselves.
So we decided to give it a go.
Probably the Worst Time to Start an Event
If you were choosing a year to launch a brand-new running event...
2021 probably wouldn't have been at the top of the list.
COVID restrictions were changing constantly.
Events around the country were being cancelled.
Auckland was still in lockdown, which meant a lot of people who had entered simply couldn't come.
We had around 380 registrations and a decision to make.
Do we cancel?
Or do we back ourselves and find a way to make it work?
Mark wanted to cancel.
I wasn't having a bar of it.
So we adapted everything we could, worked within the restrictions and held the event.
Looking back, I don't remember much about the stress.
I remember the people.
People were just so grateful to be there.
After months of uncertainty, they finally had something to look forward to. There was an atmosphere that was hard to describe. It felt less like we were organising an event and more like everyone had simply decided to make the best of a difficult year together.
I don't think either of us realised it then, but that first weekend shaped what Coastal Five would become.
It was never just about running.
It was about people.
A Different Second Year
The second Coastal Five looked much the same from the outside.
Behind the scenes, life was very different.
Mark had been living with severe depression and, by then, much of the organisation had fallen to me.
We still put on another fantastic event.
A month later, Mark took his own life.
I could leave that part out.
But then I wouldn't really be telling you the story of Coastal Five.
Without Mark, there probably isn't a Coastal Five.
He imagined it long before it existed.
He designed the original courses.
He saw what New Plymouth could become before anyone else did.
He deserves to be part of Coastal Five's story, because he always will be.
Why I Kept Going
People have asked me over the years whether I ever thought about stopping.
Honestly...
Not really.
Of course there were hard days.
Running an event isn't easy, even at the best of times.
But somewhere along the way, Coastal Five had stopped being just an idea.
I'd watched people complete their first 5km.
I'd watched walkers discover they were capable of far more than they thought.
I'd seen runners come back year after year, bringing friends and family with them.
I loved race weekend.
I loved seeing nervous faces on the start line become huge smiles at the finish.
I loved the community that was growing around the event.
It never really felt like something I wanted to walk away from.
If anything, I wanted to make it better.
Today
People often assume there's a big organisation behind Coastal Five.
The truth is... there isn't.
If you've emailed Coastal Five, there's a good chance it was me replying.
If you've sent a Facebook message, that was probably me too.
If you've spotted a typo disappear from the website late at night... yep, that was probably me as well.
Race weekend is only possible because of an incredible group of volunteers, sponsors, supporters and friends who give their time to make it happen. Coastal Five simply wouldn't exist without them.
But for most of the year, it's just me, quietly working away behind the scenes.
Over the years, my own kids have grown up around race weekends, course markings, registrations and finish lines. Coastal Five has become part of our family too.
As we head towards our biggest event yet, I still think about that conversation we had all those years ago.
"New Plymouth would be perfect for something like this."
He was right.
What started as one person's idea has become something much bigger than either of us imagined.
A community.
A challenge.
A weekend that thousands of people now look forward to every year.
And every time I stand at a finish line and watch someone achieve something they didn't think was possible, I'm reminded why we started in the first place.