On the last weekend of October, Valencia, Spain, hosted a half marathon that the entire running world was looking forward to. The race confirmed its high standard with Yomif Kejelcha (ETH) setting a new world record of 57:30, beating the previous record by one second. The Czech runners also did unusually well. Moira Stewart improved her own Czech national record and became the first Czech in history to run under 1:10. She finished 11th overall with a time of 1:08:44.
Two of our RunCzech Racing Team competitors took part in this half marathon. Both had high expectations and were aiming for this race throughout the autumn part of the preparation.
A better result was achieved by Martin Zajíc, who achieved a fantastic time of 1:02:31 and thus ranked third in the Czech history tables. He thus recorded a great performance increase and improved his personal record by almost two minutes.
Martin Zajíc
“The season was a turning point for me this year, although it was not without challenges. My main goal was to improve on all the tracks, which I did – I broke personal bests this year at all the key distances from 1500m to the half marathon. I am especially proud of the performance in Valencia, where I ran the third best time in the history of the Czech half-marathon. The race did not go completely smoothly and after the seventh kilometer I had to adjust the pace when I started to miss the necessary reserve. Nevertheless, I managed to catch up with other competitors, which gave me confidence and led to the time that I very pleased.
I evaluate the whole season positively, but I know that there is still room for improvement, especially in maintaining consistency and preventing the health problems that accompanied me for the last three years after returning from the training camp in Kenya. These experiences teach me patience and I hope that next year, with better planning and preparation, will be more successful.
In the upcoming season, I want to focus on shorter tracks, because good form on them is the basis for longer races as well. I would like to continue collecting titles and gradually get closer to making my performances stand up to European competition. The goals are long-term – I want to show that even Czech runners can be respected endurance athletes at the international level, and I believe that if I stick to the established pace and approach, this path will lead me to them.
Now I have three weeks off without running and time to plan the next season. My goals are high – I would like to show that I can be competitive at the European level already at the EC in road running and at the summer Universiade.”
Martin also highly values the cooperation and support of RunCzech and is proud to be a member of the RunCzech racing team.
Patrik Vebr also significantly improved his personal best, finishing 1:03:24 and marking 7th best Czech time in history.
Patrik Vebr
“I went into the race with the ambition to significantly improve my personal best and I succeeded. However, I saw a few things that went wrong and if I had avoided that, I could run an even better time. Firstly, I ran too fast at the start of the race. The second thing is that the pre-race morning didn’t go quite as expected with my usual eating and toilet routine and could not have any energy gel as I am used to. Despite that, I am satisfied with my performance, which puts me on the 7th place in the Czech historical tables, and it is a great motivation for me to continue my work. I would like to thank RunCzech for its support. It’s a great motivation for me and thanks to it I am able to push my performance and I hope that together we will make it to at least the Olympic Games in Los Angeles 2028.”
