One week till EDP LISBON HALF MARATHON

Lisbon is my first half-marathon race this year, and I wanted to do a PB because the route is designed for a fast race. The start will be on March 17th at 10:05. It is still being determined what wave I am, but I recently got an email with my BIB number.

You can read the race review here

I’ve been training since my last race in October, and I was progressing very well till I got a calf strain, which put me out of running for almost three weeks.

My Garmin says I will finish in 1:46:54. The expected time increased while I was injured, but this unplanned rest also did good to me.

I am a big fan of https://runalyze.com/, which I recommend for tracking your training. My training looks like this right now:

It will be interesting to see how much the drop in training in February will affect my race time. I am looking forward to proving the Garmin estimations wrong.

My training consisted of three sessions during a week:

· Speed repeats like 100, 200, 300, 400m on Mondays

· Intervals of 800, 1000, 1200, 1600m on Thursdays

· 18–21km slow long-distance runs on Saturdays

Last week, after I recovered completely, I had two runs of 15km, one at the pace of 5:30/ km and one at the pace of 5:11 / km. Things are looking promising and well under 1:46:54 predicted by Garmin.

I also had 2–3 tempo runs of 3–4k around 4:50/km, mainly because I was running late, and it was dark outside. I aim to have them around 4:30/km pace and increase the distance to 5km.

The costs will be manageable if you are interested in participating next year. I am based in Bucharest and will be flying with Lufthansa, which is not a direct flight. The cost was around 200 euros for the round trip, and the hotel I will stay at is Marques De Pombal, where three nights will cost approx. 390 euros. Since the race is on March 17th, I chose to stay 15–18 March to avoid another sprint to the airport.

To conclude, I am very excited to go to Lisbon. It will be fun, and I’ll enjoy the vibe and the show around the race. Stay tuned for the after the run post.