For years, FAST Running has taken training equipment to wherever our athletes need it.
Starting blocks have been loaded into cars. Sleds have been squeezed into boots. Jump boxes, hurdles, timing equipment, recovery equipment, cones and an ever-growing collection of training tools have travelled around Canberra with our coaches as FAST has grown.
That job has just become considerably easier.
Meet the FAST Buzz — our new fully electric Volkswagen ID. Buzz Cargo and the newest addition to the FAST Running training environment.
It is difficult to miss.
Finished in black and carrying the FAST Running colours and branding, the Buzz was designed to be recognisably FAST. But while we are very happy with how it looks, its real value is what it allows us to do.
The FAST Buzz gives us something increasingly important: mobility.
Taking FAST with us
FAST has never been defined by a single athletics track.
The AIS has been an important home for our regular training, but our athletes already train across a range of locations around Canberra. We use hills, tracks, grass, paths, gyms and other environments because different places give us different opportunities to develop athletes.
That flexibility is about to become particularly valuable.
From 7 October 2026 until 31 March 2027, the AIS athletics facilities will be unavailable to us — a closure that encompasses essentially the entire summer athletics competition period.
For a program built around athletics performance, that could have been viewed simply as a major disruption.
Instead, we have been preparing to move.
The FAST Buzz gives us the capacity to take much more of the FAST training environment with us as we relocate sessions to the many other wonderful training locations we call home.
Rather than asking, “What equipment can we fit in the car today?”, we can increasingly ask, “What does this session need?”
That is a significant difference.
More than somewhere to put the hurdles
Over time, FAST has developed an increasingly impressive collection of specialist training equipment.
Some of it is conventional. Some of it we have designed, adapted or built ourselves because we wanted equipment that better suited the way we coach.
There are our FAST training blocks, starting blocks, sleds, jump boxes, hurdles, wickets and markers. There is electronic timing equipment and video technology. There are resistance and strength tools, recovery equipment and all the smaller pieces that collectively turn an empty piece of track, grass or hill into a FAST training session.
Increasingly, we don’t just own equipment.
We have a mobile training system.
The Buzz allows that system to travel together.
Its large cargo area means equipment can remain organised and ready rather than being repeatedly distributed between coaches’ cars. Sliding doors on both sides and the large rear opening make equipment accessible at training, while the cargo configuration gives us room to continue developing how we transport and store our increasingly specialised tools.
There is even enough space for some post-training recovery when required.
Built for what FAST is becoming
There is another reason the Buzz feels appropriate for FAST.
We talk regularly about innovation in coaching. That doesn’t mean adopting something simply because it is new. It means being prepared to find better ways of doing things when they genuinely improve the environment we provide for athletes.
The Buzz is fully electric. For the jobs we need it to perform around Canberra, that makes considerable sense.
There is a nice symmetry in using new technology to transport equipment that itself represents years of experimentation and development within FAST.
And there is perhaps an even better symmetry in doing that as our athletes chase their own ambitions.
Green energy. Gold ambitions.
The phrase has quickly become attached to the FAST Buzz, but it captures something larger than the vehicle itself. We want to continue building a program that can grow, adapt and move while maintaining the quality of training our athletes expect.
A summer on the move
The coming athletics season will therefore look different.
Losing access to the AIS for almost six months — particularly those six months — presents a genuine logistical challenge. We will need to use different venues, adapt sessions intelligently and communicate clearly with athletes and families.
But different does not have to mean lesser.
Canberra has some outstanding places to train. Many of them are already part of the history and identity of FAST. The coming months give us an opportunity to use them even more creatively.
And wherever FAST goes, considerably more of our training environment can now come with us.
The blocks can come.
The jump boxes can come.
The sleds can come.
The hurdles can come.
The technology can come.
And, most importantly, our athletes and coaches can continue doing what they do.
The FAST Buzz isn’t Running Excellence.
It simply helps us take it somewhere else.
Running Excellence moves.
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