Great Ocean Road Marathon Expo

Great Ocean Road Marathon (or now Great Ocean Road Running Festival) Expo is not your typical indoor fair. It is more like an outdoor mini festival with stalls under gazebos, music, jumping castles for the kids, food trucks and even a kite making workshop.

There is a wide range of running/walking events to participate for the entire family, from 1.5km Kids’ Gallop, 5km or 10km walk, and of course 6km, 14km, 23km (half marathon), 44km (marathon) and 60km (ultra marathon) runs. You can sign up online at greatoceanroadrunfest.com.au or before the events on Friday and Saturday at the race week offices in Lorne and Apollo Bay. The festival itself runs for two days, Saturday and Sunday, usually somewhere mid May.

We got to Apollo Bay from Melbourne on Friday after work and because it is extremely hard to find any accommodation in the area this time we’ve booked a lovely cabin at Bimbi Caravan Park bimbipark.com.au/ that is only about 20km away from Apollo Bay. Yes, you can book hotel/motel rooms or AirBnb in both Apollo Bay and Lorne but you need to do it much earlier and be prepared for ‘slightly’ inflated prices.

The Expo

Next morning we drove to town to pick up Race Packs for me and my son, who was at 10.30 am running his 1.5km. Sorry, didn’t even take any photos. There was just a bib, special wristband to access some of the festival activities, drawstring bag for marathon and ultra runners (or a towel for half-marathon runners).

You can also purchase a lot of nice merchandise online or during the festival. There are short and long sleeve running tops, hoodies, caps and more.

We had some great coffee at the expo, attended a kite making workshop, had a run through a bubbly foam tunnel, checked some new energy gels and running gear. The atmosphere was fantastic and we were lucky to have just a perfect weather.