Fast Friends: These Eight Mates Are Flying to Boston

Cameron Merrick is running late for our video call. Literally. When he finally appears on screen, the Sydney Harbour Bridge looms over one shoulder and the Opera House peeks across the water behind him. He’s mid-stride somewhere on Circular Quay, fitting a session in before sitting down to talk about what might be the biggest race of his life. Which also means he’s firmly on Unofficial turf, covering some of the same route the huge Sydney run crew follows each Friday morning. 

It’s a fitting entrance. Very soon, Cam will be one of eight Unofficial members lining up at the Boston Marathon. All eight have earned their places the hard way, clocking the famously tough Boston qualifying times. Five women – Sissi Bergman, Ashleigh Wiseman, Ella Boudakin, Matilda Donkin and Isabelle Hawtin – and three men – Cam, Rien MacDonald and Kristafor Farrenkothen – are making the trip together. Their story says as much about friendship as it does about fitness.
 

We spoke to five of them across two calls – the boys first, then Sissi and Ash – and we’ve previously sat down with Cam to trace his remarkable progression from social runner to elite-level marathoner. What came through in each conversation wasn’t splits or training loads. It was how deeply these eight people have come to rely on each other.

It’s hard to believe, given its scale now, that Unofficial has grown from a Friday morning run of just eight or 10 people. As the community has scaled up, the crew has added Wednesday track sessions and Sunday long runs to the mix. But the size of the group is less important than what happens when you keep turning up to it. “Unofficial is our church,” Sissi says. “It’s that weekly thing that you do. We’ve built really healthy habits with each other where we want to spend most mornings of our week together, and we make that time because it’s part of our routine.” 

Cam sees the group’s long runs as a litmus test for something deeper. “It’s kind of like the pub test,” he says. “If you can get through a long run with someone, you’re probably going to get through most things with them in a conversation.” Ash comes back to the most important ingredient of all: friendship “The same people kept showing up week after week. They would tell you something on the Friday, like if they had a job interview coming up, and then you’d see them next Friday and say, ‘Oh, how was your interview?’ It’s just building genuine connections over seeing each other week after week,” she says. “I think that’s what builds the community: showing up, more than anything.” 

She met Sissi on her second visit. They’ve been inseparable since. Within eight weeks, a small group had formed around them, planning day trips to the Blue Mountains and Sunday afternoon ice-bath sessions in Sissi’s backyard. “It was this honeymoon period,” Sissi says with a laugh. “You’re really drawn to each other, asking great questions, having really deep conversations. And then you just become addicted to it.” 

A parallel thread was forming among the men. Cam, Kris and Rien found each other through a natural gravitational pull; they were running at similar paces in the speed sessions on Wednesdays, and a group chat formed (with Ella, too) to coordinate long runs on the weekends. They started the Never Run Alone podcast, with Rien as host and Cam, Kris and Sissi as regular guests, which has deepened the bonds further and documented the journey in real time.

Then, through the second half of 2025, all eight qualified for Boston. The achievement can’t be understated. For 2026, the qualifying standard for men under 35 was 2:55 and for women 3:25, but demand was so fierce that the actual cutoff fell a further 4 minutes, 33 seconds below those marks. This is an exclusive club, and all eight punched their tickets on merit. Sissi paced Ash to her qualifier at last year’s Gold Coast Marathon, which made it doubly special.

“We all qualified for Boston late last year and decided, why don’t we all make a big trip of it,” Cam says. What had been a loose collection of running friendships locked into focus around a shared goal.

The training block that followed has been 14 to 16 weeks of unglamorous consistency, and it has tested every one of them. We asked each runner to summarise their block in a single word. The answers paint a picture of what it takes.

Cam: “Consistent. I don’t think I’ve missed a session this entire block.” He’s looking to improve on his impressive 2:21:53 PB with a sub-2:20 earned on Boston’s infamously hilly course. 

Kris: “Controlled. I’ve had many opportunities where I’ve felt good and could have done more than I should, so I’m glad I’ve kept the lid on it.” He’s been working his way back from a stress fracture, in an impressively disciplined return that Cam gives a brotherly shoutout to during our call.

Rien: “Turbulent.” He’s been managing an injury of his own since relocating from Sydney to Melbourne, his hometown, in December, a move that hasn’t diminished his commitment to the group one bit. He’s stayed plugged in through the group chat, the podcast and regular phone calls.

Sissi: “Emotional.” Recently her knee flared with pes anserine bursitis, an inflammation that forced her to pull back at the worst possible time, right at the peak of her training. “I’ve cried more in this block than I have in any other block. Happy tears, but a lot of big tears as well,” she says.

Ash: “Tough. I’ve never set myself a goal this big. There’s been a lot of runs where I’ve doubted my ability to hit some of the target paces. So, mentally tough, physically tough.” 

Kris puts it neatly: “There’s something to be said about shared accountability. We’ve all put out some pretty lofty goals, and having one another to say, ‘Pull your head in, you’re training too hard,’ or, ‘You’re not training hard enough.’ It keeps you in line.”

The flip side of that accountability is permission. Cam talks about the head noise that can build in the back end of a marathon block, especially one geared towards a race on the other side of the world. “If you don’t have anyone to vent with and rationalise that experience, you can spiral,” he says. “Sometimes you just need someone to say, ‘It’s okay, a week off isn’t going to kill your training.’ And when someone giving you that permission is also working towards the same thing, it takes a lot of the pressure off.” 

Sissi understands the support around having to pull back better than most. “Most runners have been injured at some point, but when you are injured, you feel like you’re alone and that no one else knows this feeling. I honestly probably would be sitting in the shower crying right now if I didn’t have them,” she says of the group. 

Ash – who is also a chiropractor, and has become Sissi’s de facto practitioner – was among those regularly checking in on her. “Having people who will happily listen to me rant about my knee and let me air my feelings and make me feel safe and supported is everything,” Sissi says. “They don’t care about my time; they just want me to have a good race. And just knowing that has eased my mind a lot.” 

Ash had her own moment of vulnerability during the block. Her final key session – three 10-kilometre repetitions at marathon pace, essentially a simulation of the race itself – pushed her to the edge. Five kilometres into the last rep, she ran up to Sissi, who was waiting for her on the sideline after finishing her own session. “I was like, ‘I don’t think I can do it. I’m absolutely cooked,’” Ash recalls. 

Sissi told her to forget the exact pace. Just finish the run. “The marathon is the celebration of all the work you’ve put in for the last 16 weeks,” Ash says, recounting the advice. “On marathon day it’s going to be hard, but you train to endure the suffering of what the marathon can bring, especially in those last 10ks. 

“And it’s in those moments when you really knuckle into that marathon mindset, and it’s good to know you’ve got so many people in your corner. At the end of the day, if you don’t hit that goal time it’s not the end of the world. You’ve given it your all and that’s all that really matters.”

The range of goals across the eight reflects just how broad Unofficial’s tent is. If Cam does succeed in going sub-2:20 it could place him among the top two or three Australians on the day. Sissi, with a PB of 2:46, was targeting 2:45 before her knee trouble and will now see how race week unfolds. Ash is making an audacious leap from a 3:10 PB to a coach-prescribed target of 2:52, an 18-minute improvement. Kris, rebuilding after his stress fracture, is aiming for what he calls a conservative PB under 2:45. Rien, nursing his own injury setbacks, would love to sneak under three hours but admits he could land anywhere within a 30-minute window. 

One training highlight stands apart. In early February, Sissi asked dual Olympian Eloise Wellings, who she knows through a work connection, to pace her through a 5km time trial on a track in Sydney’s south. “I had a 17:30 kind of goal and I didn’t want it to be someone like Cam to pace me. No offense to Cam, but I wanted it to be a woman who was going to be there pacing me,” Sissi explains.

The pair went shopping at adidas (Wellings’ sponsor) beforehand, picked up matching kit, and got to work. It was brutal, with 90 per cent humidity, and Sissi didn’t yet know her iron levels were dangerously low. “I suffered for those five kilometres,” she says. “The head noise was high. I felt awful. It was probably harder than any race I’ve ever run.” She came away with a personal best regardless. “The fact that I could hold on when I was feeling so depleted gives me hope that there’s more in the tank.” Ash points out that Sissi’s 5K pace is Wellings’ marathon pace, which explains why the Olympian barely looked needed to look at her watch (impressively, she innately knew they were on pace) and wasn’t remotely gassed. 

A fortnight before the Boston Marathon, six of the eight assembled for their longest run of the block: more than 30 kilometres through Sydney’s hills in pouring rain. Rien, now based in Melbourne, wasn’t there, and Sissi was nursing her knee injury. But the spirit of the thing transcended logistics. “It was beautiful,” Kris says. “Just sitting at an easy pace for three hours, talking, reflecting on the block.” Cam describes it as “a bit poetic, running hills in the pouring rain as we’re reflecting on what we’re going to face as a group in two weeks”. 

It will have been Thursday or Friday just passed – three or four days before the race – when all eight of them finally run together in Boston. A little shakeout, nothing serious. And then Monday.

Rien has been thinking about the weight of that. “The eight of us will never run Boston again,” he says. “This will never happen again. It’s a unique moment in time, and I’m already grateful for it. We’ll see how I feel at Heartbreak Hill.” 

Cam sees it similarly. “A lot of people run Boston by themselves, or go over and maybe achieve their personal goal,” he says. “But the biggest part is celebrating everyone else’s goals. You get to have the experience eight times.” 

And for Sissi, it’s more personal still. Her father is flying in from Sweden, her brother and niece from Toronto, and they’ll be in the crowd watching her race for the first time in her life. “They’ve never seen me race before,” she says. “Just knowing they’ll be there on race day is going to be pure magic.” 

After Boston, the group’s paths diverge and reconverge, as they do. Sissi and Ash are running the Gold Coast Half Marathon together, this time with support from ASICS. Both have entries for the Sydney Marathon. Sissi is also heading to New York at the end of the year, while Ash is eyeing a return to the track, where running began for her. Rien is settling into Melbourne’s running scene, and all three men have October plans for the 21.1km in his hometown. Cam will also be hitting some of the same big moments as Sissi, going after the Goldie Half and the NYC major. 

But first, there’s a race to run. Eight friends, one starting line and the shared understanding that no matter what happens, they’ll cross it together.

Follow the Unofficial Boston crew’s journey on the Never Run Alone podcast. Read more about Cam Merrick’s progression here.