Liam Adams

Liam Adams is known as the working man’s runner, as he has a full-time job but still manages to find the time to run around 200km/week as he trains for one of the most time-consuming events, the marathon.

He will be competing in his second Olympic marathon at Tokyo 2020, after making his debut at Rio 2016. He has overcome many challenges on both journeys to Olympic selection.

A very sporty and competitive kid, Liam was recommended by his primary school teacher to try cross country. In his second year, he won a medal in the nationals. He ran for a few more years on limited training, then thought he wanted to improve and should start training and taking it more seriously. He started training with local coach Gregor Gojrzewski who would have two significant impacts on his career, a decade apart.  

“Gregor was very knowledgeable and knew just what I needed he held me back and didn’t burn me out”, recalled Adams.

“He also had me ready to race at championships. He planned so well - he was absolutely amazing”. 

At 17, in 2004, he won the national junior 5000m championship, then later that year he claimed the national junior cross country title. He closed his junior career with his 5000m PB of 14:30.  

As a senior, he competed at many major championships - World Cross Country, World University Cross Country, World Half Marathon and World University Games. As a kid, he dreamed of competing in the Olympics but except for 36th at the 2010 World Cross Country, he considered he was just not getting to the level he wanted. 

With no intention of chasing an Olympic 10,000m qualifier, as he felt out of form and was just in America after he won a flight as a prize, in April 2012 he just missed the 10,000m standard by a few seconds clocking 28:11 at Stanford.

This disappointment spurred him to move up to the marathon, where he ran a tremendous 2:14.09 on debut in October 2013 in Melbourne. This performance earned him Commonwealth Games selection, where he placed an impressive seventh in a personal best 2:13.49 in Glasgow. Before the race, he had heel pain, but ‘didn’t want to know until after the race’. A post-race scan revealed serious plantar fasciitis. He would not compete again for three months.  

The chase was now on for a Rio Olympic qualifier. A year after resuming competition in October 2015 he made his first attempt at the Chicago Marathon while in the best shape of his life, but he woke on the morning of the race to windy conditions. At 22km his hamstring twinged and kept pulling. He stopped four times and being limited he finished in 2:16.09. “It was a qualifier but I knew it wouldn’t be fast enough.” 

In March 2016 he made another attempt, at Lake Biwa in Japan and was flying early. “Lake Biwa, I was too quick too early, 30:20 for 10k, 64:40 at half, then I leant over to grab a drink and twinged the opposite hamstring. I was bleeding time and realised I would not run faster than Chicago, so at the 37km mark I withdrew to focus on another race.” 

He had just six weeks remaining before the qualification window closed. He was rejected by London, and was now desperate to find a marathon that would accept his entry. His first coach Gregor Gojrzewski would be key for Adams. Gojrzewski was a personal friend of the race director for the Warsaw Marathon in Poland, and could discreetly get him into the race to be held on the last day of the qualifying period.

Finally, Liam, despite battling blisters, nailed it, clocking 2:14.59.

His build-up to Rio was again rocky, suffering gastro in the pre-Games camp and on race day, in wet conditions, he slipped at the start and strained his ankle. He ran conservatively for the first half as he could feel the ankle, then he decided to give it a crack in the second half and ran well until 30k but after taking a drink he found it a battle.

The last 6 or 7 km were a real grind, but he was still the first Aussie across the line, finishing in a commendable 31st place. 

In 2017 he ran a PB 2:12.52 in the Berlin Marathon, but lost his sponsorship. It led him to wearing an iconic tradie singlet in the 2018 Melbourne Marathon. He even blacked out the logos on his shoes.

“I’m a bit different to all the other runners I’m running against,” he told Runners’ Tribe in an interview.

“They’re professionals, and I’m not. I soon started getting all these messages, some saying they were inspired. They saw me as a weekend warrior taking it up to the professionals and beating them. I don’t really care that I’m not sponsored now. If I can inspire people a little bit, I’ll just continue what I’m doing.” 

In 2018 he placed fifth in the warm Gold Coast Commonwealth Games marathon., then in 2019 he was again in pursuit of qualification for the Tokyo Olympics.

In July on the Gold Coast he ran a 76 seconds PB of 2:11.36, but was agonisingly six seconds outside the Olympic standard.

“You stuffed that up,” yelled a frustrated Adams.

Three weeks later he defended his Sydney Marathon title, but he needed a fast course and in late September he headed to Berlin. In the lead up he got a chest infection which was still affecting him. He was coughing heavily during the race and eventually withdraw at 34km. 

Over the summer of 2019/20 in Australia, he was busy, working 60 hours/week as an electrician and his mileage was down, but just as it was increasing, smoke from the terrible summer of fires affected his training.

He was aiming to race at Lake Biwa on 10 March 2020, but COVID-19 was cancelling events – Tokyo and Paris Marathons and the mass participation section of the Nagoya Marathon.

Lake Biwa was under pressure to cancel. Adams had battles just getting to Japan, his flight out of Melbourne was delayed and he missed his connection in Sydney, requiring him to spend 10 hours in the airport. He arrived 38 hours before the race. The predicted good weather turned bad on the day with heavy rain, winds and a temperature of just 10 degrees.

He overcame a 15-minute delay, standing on the start line in the atrocious conditions, to post a PB of 2:10.48, the fastest time of the three Aussie qualifiers. As we know the world shut down within days, but Adams had bagged his Olympic qualifier and was a safe bet for the Tokyo Olympics. 

Adams had to wait until 2021, but his selection for a second Olympics was confirmed. The Tokyo marathon, was held on a course in the northern Japanese city of Sapporo, saw Liam start conservatively in the heat. He moved through halfway in 1:07:05, before digging in to maintain his pace and move from 65th to 24th in the back half of the course, clocking a time of 2:15.51. He improved on his debut in Rio where he had placed 31st.

Since Moneghetti’s 10th in Sydney, over the last two decades only one Aussies had placed higher than Adams.
"I'm really happy with it. I was hoping for top-30."

Liam just missed the podium at the 2022 Commonwealth Games, placing fourth, just seven second behind the bronze medallist. In July 2023 he was the first Australian in the Gold Coast marathon clocking a personal best time of 2:08.39 to become the sixth fastest in Australian history. He represented Australia on his 18th National team in 2024 at the world cross country championships.

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