[1] She set both an Australian record and her personal best time of 9:18.35, by finishing third in the women's 3000 metres steeplechase at the 2008 IAAF Golden League Meeting in Oslo, Norway.

[5] Under new coach, Max Cherry, MacFarlane competed for the Sandy Bay Harriers Club [1] - improving her best times over every distance from 400m to 10 km.

Immediately following the Commonwealth Games, she helped Australia to a team bronze medal in the IAAF World Cross Country Championships in Fukuoka, Japan.

MacFarlane returned to world-class form in 2008, but a few months before the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, her coach, Max Cherry died at the age of 81.

She ran ninth in the third heat against fifteen other athletes, including Kenya's Eunice Jepkorir and Russia's Yekaterina Volkova, who both later won the silver and bronze medals in the final, respectively.