The Longest Day

The story of Mel Brandon's Faultline Miler — told from the crew car

The messages started coming in on Sunday morning and haven't really stopped since. How did she do that? How is that even possible? How on earth did YOU stay awake?

Fair questions, all of them. The honest answer to the last one is that I'm still not entirely sure I did...by Monday evening I sat down to watch live sport, found nothing on, and eventually understood that my brain had simply stopped tracking the days.

The first two questions deserve a proper answer because what Mel Brandon did last weekend wasn't a fluke or a miracle or something that happened to her. It was the product of years of work. Hard, hard training while juggling life as a busy single Mum with an important day job. I’ve coached Mel for many years now, and over that time I’ve watched something shift, not just in how fast she runs, but in how she understands what she’s capable of.

I coached Mel to her 2:48 Christchurch Marathon, I was there when she won the Faultline 100k and I followed every update from Spain when she raced the World Championships. However running along Oriental Bay at 3am, moving at four-minute km pace, headlights tactically switched off, chasing figures in the dark, that felt different again. Not bigger, necessarily, but certainly closer.

This is 100% Mel’s race, but if you’re in it the way a coach is in it (properly in it) then it becomes shared, whether you intend that or not.

So this is for everyone who's been asking. It's a long one but it felt appropriate.

Six Months Before

When Mel first mentioned the Faultline Miler, we filed it somewhere between "interesting" and "we'll see." The World Championships were the priority. A 160 kilometre race could certainly wait.

As it turns out, the mountains have a way of clarifying things. Somewhere on those dark Spanish slopes, grinding through altitude, fatigue and a failed headtorch, Mel had a thought..."if I can get through this, I can probably get through anything".

So she came home from Spain and we turned our attention to the Faultline Miler in April 2026.

The training block wasn't dramatically different from what had prepared her for the 100k the year prior...the same solid principles and the same key philosophy that serve me well. However we added something...double the amount of serious, sustained strength work. Lower body, core, the kind of unglamorous home gym sessions that don't make good runfluencer Insta content, but make an enormous difference at kilometre 140 of a miler. That's because Mel doesn't just want to finish races, she wants to finish them well. That distinction shapes everything about how we train.

That's the thing about coaching someone like Mel. She doesn't need pushing, she needs channelling.

2:30am, Race Day

I'm awake before my alarm and I know there's absolutely no point going back to sleep. I know this feeling, the mind already running calculations and checking off the mental checklists.

I shower, check my gear (which is, in volume, roughly equivalent to Mel's) and work through my cheat sheet of checkpoints and arrival windows. Organisation as a crew person is everything. An anxious, disorganised coach helps no one. I was always meticulous in my own race planning, leaving nothing to chance. I try and bring that strategic nature to every coaching relationship.

Mel picks me up at 3:45 along with Lara Zoeller. I drive them out to the start and we yarn about all things not running related.

The morning is clear and still and cold, two degrees on the car thermometer and stars overhead. You can tell the weather is going to hold which is one less unknown. At 5am, the headtorches move into the dark and disappear. I drive home, have a second breakfast, my third coffee and see the kids. The long day then begins.

9am, Totara Park, 34km

The fog is lifting as I pull into the hub, sunlight cutting through the mist in a way that's almost offensively beautiful given I've already been up for hours. It's one of those WOAGD mornings.

I spy Will Bell (inaugural winner of the Faultline Miler) and we have a good catchup. Will and his wife Nicola are awesome people and both provided great assistance over the course of the day. As it turned out, I spent a lot of time in their company.

Max Poland comes in first (another of my athletes), running the opening leg of the Miler relay. He's averaged around 5:20 per km over hilly terrain and looks completely composed. With the Wellington Marathon eight weeks away, that's reassuring.

Then Mel comes in looking comfortable and relaxed. 3 hours 42 minutes for the opening 34 kilometres, well ahead of schedule and right in line with the pacing model I'd built. This is one not based on general field averages, but on what I genuinely believed...that Mel was going to track closer to the top men's historical splits than the women's. She had around a six-minute lead over Anna O'Byrne, with Lara Zoeller a further eight minutes back. Plenty of race left, and with both O'Byrne and Zoeller carrying serious 100-mile experience, I wasn't reading too much into the gap at this early stage.

Quick turnaround. Fuel, bottles, and off she goes.

47km, Dry Creek

The first thing she says is that she's not feeling great.

I do not panic as not feeling great at 47 kms (5km further than a full Marathon) is hardly a crisis, it's expected. The body is confused and the brain is filing its first formal complaints.

We acknowledge it and we don't catastrophise it. We talk through the objective, top up the fuel, and send her up into the Belmont Hills. That's the job...not to fix everything, but to help the athlete access what they already have.

I drive back to Tawa and spend 45 minutes watching my son do freerunning at Big Air gym. It's a surreal contrast to the rest of the day and what's playing out across those ridge lines. I grab more food and head up Takapu Road.

Takapu Road Aid Station: A small logistical miracle unfolds across three generations and two islands

Mel comes through looking comfortable, and I do some more maths.

She's running well ahead of schedule. Which is great, except her mum, who has never seen Mel compete, is planning to come and see her at the Porirua hub. If she doesn't leave her house in the next ten minutes, she's going to miss her by about two hours.

I get Mel moving, simultaneously message Mel's daughter Eva down in Dunedin, who can relay the urgency upward to her grandmother. I drive hard to Bishop Viard College and I make it just in time to meet Mel's mum at the hub entrance. Mel's mum hadn't seen her compete before, not once. To witness the hug between them at that hub, after Mel had already run further than a lot of people will run in a lifetime, was pretty special.

By this point, her lead has stretched to 33 minutes.

Spicer Forest: The Supermarket Bag Incident

I owe you an honest account of what happened next.

I know the trail from behind my house to the Spicer Forest checkpoint intimately. I jog it often and I know exactly how long it takes me to walk or run. So I go home, get changed, pack up Mel's supplies into a supermarket bag, and hike up the trail in my tracksuit pants and hoodie, perfectly confident in my timing.

However she's already been through!

She ran that section faster than the previous year. Objectively impressive but subjectively, a massive problem for me as she only has 6km of running to the next Hub. I now need to get to that Johnsonville hub quick smart but I'm standing on a trail in tracksuit pants, holding a supermarket bag, wearing a hoodie, approximately nowhere near a car.

What followed was not my finest moment. I turned around and ran back down that trail as fast as I could. Supermarket bag swinging, tracksuit pants flapping, the hoodie doing nothing useful. I didn't quite set any Strava records but man I was surprisingly close on a couple of segments. I arrived at Mel's car with a full sweat on, drove to Johnsonville, breaking many speed limits on the way, and walked into the hub with only three minutes to spare.

Mel came in looking strong, moving through the field, 100 kilometres into a 160 kilometre race. I tried to look like I hadn't just sprinted down a hill carrying her vital supplies.

Skyline: Into the Dark

After Johnsonville, with warmer clothes on , fresh headlamp in place and fuel sorted, Mel heads up onto the Skyline and across to the Makara Saddle. I grab food at Crofton Downs Woolworths and drive up to wait.

I'll be honest, I'm having a flat patch here. I've been on the go all day and there's a 30 odd kilometre run still ahead of me. Getting unexpected support from Emily Solsberg and her daughter Naomi, who appear at the saddle with lights, Halloween masks and genuine warmth, lifts me more than they probably realise.

Mel comes in and she knows the next section in the Makara MTB Park will take around 2 hours. It takes a little more than that. It's rocky, slippery in places, relentless in the dark. It's where I fell in the 2024 WUU, tore a hip flexor and ruined my race. Tough place to run fast at the best of times.

When Mel comes into the 130k hub, I see something I haven't seen at any point during this 20 plus hour day. She looks exhausted. Not beaten and not finished, but the specific, bone-deep exhaustion that accumulates over 130 hard kilometres. It's written on her face in a way it hasn't been before.

I say nothing dramatic, just get to work. Get her eating, get her talking, let her come back to herself. When the eyes are ready, we head up Salvation together.

The Last 30km: Presence

There's a version of pacing that's about effort. Pushing someone, pulling them along, filling the silence with noise.

Then there's the version where you've coached someone for a long time and really know, when to speak and when to just shut up. When to increase the pace and when to hold it steady. When to name what's happening and when to just be there and let it happen naturally.

Up Salvation we run. The steeper stuff toward Wrights and along the fence line earns its power hiking...no ego, just the right call. On the steep descents we're deliberate and careful. Descending isn't Mel's biggest weapon (nor mine) and at kilometre 135, the wrong rock in the wrong moment ends races. So we're controlled and very patient. However on every runnable section, every uphill, she is still moving well. That's six months of gym work expressing itself.

On Car Parts, Will Bell and his athlete come past us. They're looking strong and smooth. 20 kilometres to go, which is still a hell of a long way. I say to Mel..."There's a long way left. We'll probably get those guys back. Let's just keep doing what we're doing".

I believe it when I say it. In racing, consistent beats spectacular almost every time.

I tuck Mel in behind me on Transient and set a pace. Steady, not heroic, just quite relentless. Running five-ten metres ahead, turning back to spotlight roots and rocks and anything that wants to end the night early. Trying to get her into that tunnel vision state I know from the end of my own marathons. The world narrowed to a single point. In Mel's case, my back. It sounds simple but it works.

The Final 10km

We hit the Rugby League Park hub and go straight through. We have a rhythm and not going to lose it. It's not great stopping at some lights on a Sunday when you're 20km into a long run. Imagine 150km into a miler.

From here it's under two hours to the finish line, and I've messaged Andrew D to let him know we're coming in around 3 to 3:30. This is the same stretch Mel and I ran together last year in the 100k and here's what I didn't expect, she's moving better than she was last year.

Twelve months ago, through this section, there was more hiking. More conversations about how far it was to go. This year, she's running it. The body is broken in the way that 150 kilometres will break a body, but the engine underneath, the strength, the conditioning, the mental architecture she's built over years, is still firing. As Mel said afterwards, the final stretch of the miler actually felt less brutal than the same section had during the 100k. I've been coaching long enough to know that's not an accident.

We pick up a male miler on the old Vosseler course and go past quickly. I tell Mel to run hard for a moment, just to put them out of sight. We do but then a technical descent slows us and their headlights start appearing behind us again.

With around two kilometres to go we come off Mount Victoria and the world opens up. Street lights, beautiful tarmac and the harbour. Mel switches into a gear she shouldn't still have access to at this point of a race, and I have to work to stay with her.

We switch our lights off, a small tactical call. It gives us a bit of cover from the guys behind and lets us move into the shadows ahead. Later, a mate told me that kind of decision making was exactly what he’d expect from me, which felt fair. We round Fisherman’s Table and, up ahead, two figures come into view, maybe two or three hundred metres in front. You can see it straight away in the way they’re moving...shuffling and working hard. At this point in the race, that’s exactly what it should look like.

We close the gap and the shapes become familiar. Will and his athlete.

We give them genuine words of encouragement. Then we go past them and we don't look back. The city hums. A late-night voice calls out something encouraging as we round Te Papa. There's a few laughs and a whistle or two.

Mel crosses the line at 3:14am, smiling. A course record by 22 minutes. Eighth overall, first woman.

The Drive Home

We scoff down chips and nuts and Andrew D drives us back to Mel's car where I left it at the bottom of Salvation. It is very very cold. I have been awake 26 hours. I have run 30-odd kilometres. The drive home is a decision I would not necessarily endorse in retrospect.

I sleep for a few hours but my seven year old is not interested in my tired legs and fuzzy head. The London Marathon comes on TV later that evening. I have an athlete in the race and I am desperate to see how she goes (60min PB). Then one of the greatest athletic performances any of us has ever witnessed unfolds on the screen. Somehow I make it to the end of Sunday.

Monday evening I sit down to watch live sport and find nothing on. I realise I've lost track of the days entirely. I go to bed.

What I Know Now

People keep asking me how Mel did it. How anyone runs 160 kilometres. What the secret is.

There isn't really a secret. There's a person who is extraordinarily strong, physically and mentally, who has committed years to understanding what her body can do. There's a training block built on the right foundations. There are 20 or so jet planes consumed in the dark ("don't tell the kids," she said), constant fueling and incredible support from volunteers and familiar faces. Plus a mum who turned up just in time.

Then there's a coaching relationship built on something simple, honesty. She knows I'll tell her the truth. I know she'll tell me the truth. The hard conversations happen early, not when it's too late to act on them. That trust, earned over years in hard sessions, difficult long runs and races that didn't go to plan...that's what allows everything else to work. The training decisions and the quiet confidence to say at kilometre 140, "let's just keep doing what we're doing", and have her believe it.

I don't know how much credit a coach can reasonably take for something like this. Honestly, probably not much. I'm just super grateful to have been a part of it, it was fun if a bit tiring.

A final thank you to Bradley Houghton at Trail Running NZ — a genuinely kind and generous human. He is a great supporter of Mel's running who gives her the recognition her racing deserves. We're grateful for the write-ups and for the light he shines on what she, and others, do.

A few coaching spots are currently available. If you'd like to train like Mel, or simply want a coach who will sprint down a trail in tracksuit pants carrying your supplies with surprising speed, get in touch.

AW Run Coach | Wellington, New Zealand

awruncoach@gmail.com