Testing my marathon pace

One thing I realised lately was the bulk of my training has been on flat tracks. Budapest has some hilly areas, but somehow I never ventured into them too much. The same can't be said for our honeymoon/vacation back home in Portugal - the difficult thing is to find flat sections! From Lisbon to the Azores islands, through the mountains in the Algarve, you have great training possibilities.

Run in Ponta Delgada, São Miguel Island, Azores.

Run near Fonte do Bispo, Algarve - the rugest terrain ever?

The views are amazing and it really makes a difference from running in my usual urban environment. It's like the kilometers go past faster. Unfortunately, I don't take many pictures while out running, but that's something I'll try to change to make these posts a bit more interesting.

That leaves me with today's training. Needed to do some 15-16km at marathon pace but none of my usual routes hits that distance - they fall short or too long. So, I decided to be creative and add a Castle hill climb into my usual 10km route.


Funny thing that after almost 6 years living in Budapest, you still get surprised with roads that lead nowhere or at least not where you wanted to. This was the case, as climbing the staircase to the caste (and hitting the highest HR today - 160 bpm), I ended up in a courtyard in the middle of the castle with no exit, except the way I came in...and down the staircase...and forcing me to run uphill again somewhere else. So I sorta did 2 Castle hills today.

The rest of the run went pretty much uneventful. I did take the opportunity to run on the river bank road, which was closed to the traffic because of some construction works.

Ended up doing a bit faster than I set out to and finished strong as I usually do. The staircase in the beginning clearly slowing my pace down but overall kept around the 5:20 min/km.

Now, on to the market to buy veggies.