IZZI BATT-DOYLE’S RACE AGAINST HERSELF

When Izzi Batt-Doyle crossed the line at the Gold Coast Half Marathon in 1:07:29, she didn’t smile. She’d just run the fastest half marathon by an Australian woman on Australian soil, winning the Oceania and Australian championship titles on her home continent in the process. But the clock told a more complicated story. Her own national record, the 1:07:17 she ran in Marugame, Japan, in February last year, had slipped past by 12 seconds.

“When I rewatched the videos I realised I didn’t really smile,” the Adelaidean says. When we catch up on a video call, she’s enjoying a couple of days’ rest in Queensland before returning home. “I was happy to run a fast time, but I’d been measuring a little wrong at the 20km mark and thought I could still get my record.” It was only down the finishing straight, squinting at the clock, that she saw the record time tick past and understood she would fall just short.

That she was disappointed at all is a measure of the shape she’s in. Five weeks earlier the ASICS-sponsored athlete had won the Launceston Half Marathon in 1:08:46, itself the fastest time ever run by an Australian woman on home soil; her Gold Coast run took more than a minute off that. The outright fastest half marathon on Australian soil, by anyone, remains American Keira d’Amato’s 1:06:39, set at the Gold Coast in near-perfect conditions in 2023. Izzi is now the closest an Australian has come.

The strange thing about the day is that, for all the depth of the field, she was effectively racing on her own. “I felt like it was my race to lose. I was the fastest on paper by a fair margin,” she says. She thought Japanese runner Rino Goshima might hang with her and force a decision late, but it never came to that; Goshima came in 81 seconds behind Izzi for silver. Among the Australians, no-one could touch her. Caitlin Scott, running a personal best, placed third in 1:09:08.

Rather than let that drain the race of tension, Izzi turned her concentration inward. “It was sort of me versus me – to push myself towards the time I knew I had in me and the level I wanted to get out of that race,” she says. “I could sit in and run it more tactically, but that doesn’t excite me as much as seeing what’s possible and trying to reach my potential.” 

What she is, on the evidence of the splits, is relentlessly even. “I targeted 1:07:30 pace and ran 1:07:29 – that shows the kind of runner I am. I’m quite metronomic,” she says. The numbers bear it out: Coros broke down her race and every 5km came back between 3:11 and 3:12 pace, her slowest kilometre a 3:13 – an average of around 3:12 a kilometre, held with barely a wobble for the full 21.1km. 

On a day that was effectively a time trial, that consistency is a weapon. She holds a target to the second and never blows the race apart with a rush of blood, which is exactly what a solo tilt at a fast time rewards. The flip side shows up the moment a race turns tactical. “As a female I don’t have that same change of speed in the last two or three kilometres, whereas the guys can rely on kicking down a bit faster,” she says. “I’m just holding my even pace.” 

In hindsight, she thinks the record was there for the taking, and that she was too conservative early, sitting controlled in a big pack through the first 10km. “If I ran it again I’d press a bit more in that first 10km to stay on 3:10s and not stretch out to 3:13s, because I don’t think I could have run any harder in the second half. I was going my hardest.” The margin, she points out, is tiny. “It’s only a little over half a second a kilometre, 12 seconds, to beat my record. But the good thing is I still have the record. I’d just love to keep bettering it.”

If she seems hard on herself, it’s worth remembering how the record came about. “When I ran that national record in Japan I was utterly shocked,” she says. “I was trying to run a 1:08-something, and I came into the stadium and saw 1:06-high on the clock. I couldn’t comprehend it.” The mark took 31 seconds off Kerryn McCann’s, which had stood for a quarter of a century.

The more revealing story is what’s happened in training. After a demanding Boston Marathon in April, she took two weeks almost completely off, then had only three and a half weeks before Launceston. “I knew it was a quick course in good, cold conditions, so I used it as a mark in the sand,” she says. “I surprised myself to run 1:08:46 off only a few weeks of training.” What changed between Launceston and the Gold Coast wasn’t a gruelling block of work. If anything, it was the opposite.

Back home in Adelaide for the winter rather than chasing a European track season, Izzi has folded herself into the crowd. “I’ve changed things this year,” she says. “I’m currently doing every session with RunAsOne, the coaching group we lead. On Tuesdays and Fridays, that means a 5:45am alarm, a 6:30am session start, and getting the work done with a big group of 200 runners of all abilities. My mum’s out there – I run past her on the course.” 

There are, she reckons, about 10 men quicker than her in the group, which is exactly the point. “I’m in a second pack behind Riley and a couple of the others. It pushes me to run a strong effort in a really fun, supportive environment. I never feel like it’s a slog,” she says. Riley is, of course, RunAsOne’s other coach, Izzi’s partner Riley Cocks. “I went into the Gold Coast having done some really good sessions without ever feeling like I’d put myself in the hurt locker.”

It’s a shift from the solo grind of previous training at home, and the months away on training camps with Melbourne Track Club. It’s come with lower mileage, more cross-training and a deliberate hand on the brake before her next marathon build. “I’m almost holding myself back,” she says.

That build is the whole point. Izzi already holds the Australian road records over 10km and the half marathon, and she’s honest about where her ambitions now sit. “The Australian records are the ones I want to break,” she says. “These fastest-on-Australian-soil marks are nice, but you naturally want to go for the top ones.” 

The one at the top of the list is the marathon. Jess Stenson lowered the national record to 2:21:25 in Valencia last December, nine seconds inside Sinead Diver’s old mark, and Izzi was there to see it – finishing seventh herself in 2:23:35. Her own personal record is 2:22:59, earned at Valencia a year earlier, and she’s quick to call Stenson’s run a very well deserved result.

Getting close to that record, she’s decided, means narrowing her focus. As things stand, in the past two years she’s set personal records in everything from the 3000m up to the marathon, on both track and road. “I’ve been good at a number of events, and range is great, but it’s probably meant I’ve been good rather than great at one thing,” she says. “This year I’ve committed to going all in on the roads and setting the track aside for now. I need to pay respect to the marathon and the training it demands.” She hasn’t shut the door entirely – she’d happily run a track 10,000m at the Zatopek in December – but she doesn’t expect to race internationally for Australia on the track again.

Part of that discipline is a lesson learnt the hard way. “One of the things I’ve done in the last few years is say yes to too many things and then not perform at my main goal,” she says. “Last year I won Beach to Beacon, set a course record at the Melbourne half and was dominant there – but by the end of the year I was tired and cooked.” It was in that state that she lined up at Valencia, a reminder of the cost of a season with no gaps in it.

For all the talk of records, Izzi holds them lightly. Over the same Gold Coast weekend, Haftu Strintzos won the men’s marathon in 2:06:20, taking two seconds off Andy Buchanan’s Australian record, set in Valencia in 2024. “You don’t own a record,” she says. “Records are meant to be broken – that’s why we keep a list of them, so someone else can break them in the future.” Andy losing his was surely hard, she allows, “but it’s great, because the sport keeps pushing on.” She’s not putting a ceiling on her own, either: breaking 2:20, she says, isn’t out of the equation in the coming years.

Which brings us to the immediate future, and the part she can’t talk about. Izzi will run another major marathon later this year, but the field hasn’t been announced and it isn’t her place to name it. What can be said is what it isn’t. It isn’t Sydney – the field for that race is out and she’s not on it, though she’ll be there in an ambassador role. It isn’t New York. It is one of the faster courses, most likely not long after Sydney, and it’s the kind of race where an Australian record could realistically fall. Read into that what you will. 

Underpinning all of it is ASICS, who backed her when almost nobody else would. “In 2021 I had a breakout year and qualified for the Olympics, but I was unsponsored – just out of college, with two broken feet behind me,” she says. “ASICS came on board because they saw me as a potential marathoner, even though I hadn’t run one. The marathon is the core of their history. I felt so grateful to get any support at that stage.” Five years on, the relationship has deepened. “That support has grown and it’s just a really good fit. I have a background in psychology, and the ‘sound mind, sound body’ philosophy really matches my values,” she says. “I’ve signed through the next Olympic cycle, and I feel like I’ll be with them for life.” 

The psychology degree shapes how she coaches, too. “I take a holistic, person-first approach, whether I’m coaching or reflecting on my own running,” she says. “To perform well you have to be settled. I work out who someone is as a person, and that shapes who they are as a runner.” 

The one thing she can’t seem to schedule is her own wedding. Riley proposed in October last year after a run at Carrickalinga Beach, an hour from Adelaide. “We can’t find a time,” Izzi laughs. “When we looked at dates I said the race schedule comes first. My manager told me the races will just replace me with someone else – but hopefully Riley won’t!” 

For now, the racing comes first, and the record she wants most is still out there. On the evidence of the Gold Coast, she’s closing in.