After his victory in 1500m at last year’s Swedish national championship and national record at 10k in the season opener, we’re excited to report that svexa analyst Andreas Almgren has made an amazing debut as he stepped up to the half marathon distance, securing second place at the Barcelona Half Marathon in a blistering time of 59mins 23seconds. This sets a new Swedish national record by almost 2 minutes, and makes Andreas the second fastest European ever! Andreas finished just one second behind Kibiwott Kandie, the former world record holder and second fastest ever half marathon runner.
Andreas has been using the philosphy described by the ‘threshold Seidur‘ in svexa’s Ellida tool to provide individualized guidance for his training. Ellida can guide endurance athletes training towards particular events or goals, and can also provide predicted times for targeted races. In this case, Ellida’s prediction of 59:31 for Andreas was just 8 seconds or only 0.2% away from his actual result!
The men’s contest kicked off at a moderate 2:53/km cadence with all the main favourites in close attendance including Andreas, four weeks after his national 10km record of 27:20 in Valencia. After an opening 5km of 14:22, the second section was covered in a quicker 13:49 but the large lead group still remained intact. Once the pacemaker had finished his job, it was the relatively unheralded Konga who broke away from the pack while three-time Valencia Half Marathon winner Kandie decided to remain in the chasing group. Konga had built an 11-second advantage over his pursuers by the 15km checkpoint (42:02), but Kandie, Kipkoech, Ayele, Maru, Kimeli and Almgren all had Konga in their sights. Kandie, who lowered his marathon PB to 2:04:48 in Valencia two months ago, made a move with two kilometres to go and soon managed to catch Konga. The duo ran together for just over half a kilometre before Kandie found another gear to pull away and secure victory in 59:22. Andreas overtook Konga and Ayele in the closing stages to finish just one second behind Kandie!
Congratulations Andreas!
