CASE STUDY · RACE DIRECTING & EVENT DELIVERY
Growing an event without losing what makes it matter.
Keelan Birch has been involved as the volunteer Race Director of the Coffs Harbour Running Festival since 2022, helping shape its growth into one of the North Coast’s significant community running events.
The Festival is proudly organised by the Rotary Club of Coffs Harbour. Keelan’s role has encompassed all the practical work behind a large running event: course development, race operations, participant experience, volunteers, community organisations, sponsors, stakeholders and the many details required to bring thousands of runners together safely.
2,500+
finishers in 2026, with 2,946 registered participants.
$101k
raised for local charities and Rotary initiatives in 2026.
$90k+
raised for the local charities and Rotary initiatives in 2025.
Bush to beach.
The Festival showcases Coffs Harbour through courses connecting the Showground, Coffs Creek, Botanic Gardens, Jetty precinct and coastline. Its six distances now span a free 1km event through to the marathon, creating a place for children, walkers, first-time runners and experienced athletes within the same event.
Growth has been deliberate: increasing participation and the scale of delivery while retaining the community feel and the marathon at the heart of the Festival.
In 2026, 2,518 runners finished across the Festival’s events, up from 1,386 finishers in 2024 and 1,865 in 2025.
The impact reaches beyond the finish line.
For Keelan, the strongest measure of the Festival is not simply how many people enter. It is what the event creates for the community around it.
More than 15 local organisations helped deliver the 2026 Festival through water stations, marshalling, event support and other volunteer roles. The Festival generated $101,000 for local charities, community organisations and Rotary initiatives in 2026, following more than $90,000 in 2025. Since the Festival began in 2011, more than $600,000 has been returned to the local community.
That model, participants, volunteers, sponsors, community groups and organisers all contributing to something larger than race day, is central to the kind of events Keelan wants to continue building.
Experience that now informs Gondwana.
Five years of race direction at the Coffs Harbour Running Festival has provided experience across the full event lifecycle, from bringing the event back after COVID-19 and new course design through to approvals, logistics, communications, partnerships, volunteer coordination, race-day delivery and post-event review.
Keelan is now bringing that experience into professional event-management work through Gondwana Running, alongside his continuing role as Race Director of the Coffs Harbour Running Festival. Learn more about event-management enquiries.
The Coffs Harbour Running Festival is organised by the Rotary Club of Coffs Harbour. This page is presented as an example of Keelan’s race-direction and event-delivery experience.