⁉️ Should I go? Shouldn’t I go? The 8:20 dilemma 🤭
It’s 8:20 and I’m standing there with my coffee in my hand, staring out the window at that heavy winter sky. I’m wondering whether I should go or not. I’d worked until two in the morning, slept five hours, and I was completely wiped.
I wanted to run—my instincts won’t let me quit—but my body was running on emergency mode. I step onto the terrace, take a deep breath, check the time: 8:30. And then I remember the promise. I’d promised my friends we’d run together: Paul, in a big comeback after losing weight and training; Petre, his son, for his first half marathon; Alex, the guy I met in Thassos, for his first marathon; Nae, with whom I’d agreed on a steady, human pace. And suddenly that pre-race feeling hits me… the adrenaline, the emotion, that pleasant restlessness— the whole package that shows up before the runs I love. ☺️
Two minutes later I’m already doing an improvised warm-up that looks more like an attempt to survive than any kind of sports routine. I pull a sock onto one foot, and with the other I stretch like I’m doing proper mobility work—only strictly in my head. 😂
When I pull my pants on, I’m dancing like I’m trying to calibrate my hips for a hula-hoop competition. My arms flail like those inflatable tube mascots you see at gas stations. At 8:44 I’m out the door, at 8:45 I pass the barrier and start jogging. Time? About fifteen minutes to the start, under two kilometers away. Okay, good. I’ve got time.
On the way I run into two runners hurrying toward the park. I look at their bibs and realize that I… don’t have one. In last week’s chaos I completely forgot to pick up my kit. Thank God for Nae, who’d called me on Friday to suggest he pick it up for me. Honestly, if he hadn’t, I would’ve shown up at the start with my hands in my pockets and the hope that we’d solve it through eye contact. Thank God for friends. 🤭
At the start, surprisingly few people. It’s 8:51 and runners are arriving from every direction. I’m spinning around like a top, looking for my crew. Of course, none of them were there. I run into people from every corner of my life: old friends, running buddies, Facebook people I’d never seen in real life, strangers showing up with a smile.
We take photos, exchange a couple words, I get emotional. I completely forget I don’t have a bib. It’s 8:57 when reality hits: wait, I really don’t have a bib and nobody’s anywhere to be found. Just to get my heart rate up without even running. 😂
Eventually Paul calls: “We’ll be there in a second!” And that’s it—I’m calm again. They’ve got my bib, I’m officially compliant. We crack a couple jokes, take photos, and line up at the back of the pack. Honestly? Not many people. But it’s fine—the energy was there. The start is given in memory of Nea Ilie—Ilie Roșu—the marathoner who ran over 200 races holding the Romanian flag in his arms.
He passed away about two years ago. I remember perfectly how, in my first two years of running, he was my nightmare. 🤭 When my batteries died near the end of a marathon, I’d hear him coming from behind, breathing like a locomotive, passing me with the flags and encouraging me: “Come on, you can do it!” And you had two options: either you ran harder, or you died of your own shame. Today I smile remembering it, but back then it motivated me more than ten caffeinated gels and two kicks in the butt. ☺️
The first kilometers go by easily. Jokes, banter, friendly volunteers, a Sunday-park vibe—just with running. We’re a big group, five of us. I met Alex this spring in Thassos. Great guy, good vibes, dabbling in several sports. At the Bucharest Marathon he ran with me… from a distance. Meaning he held the same pace, but not right next to me—more like “I’m following you from two lanes over so you don’t feel pressured” 🤭—and he posted an excellent time, around 1:52. Now he wanted the marathon. And from the start I could tell he had that flower-power energy: zen, in control, no stress, genuinely eager to race.
We settled on a 6 min/km pace, which worked for everyone—Petre for his first half marathon, Nae who wanted a steady effort, Alex… and honestly, it suited me too.
The route in IOR is beautiful, but it’s not easy at all. It has a false flat in places, a few climbs that kill your momentum, descents that give you wings, and a section with steps that I always walk. Always. Even when I ran 3:26 on this race, every lap, at the steps, I took a walking break—and I’m still proud of the result. Ten laps of 4.2 km… enough circles to make you sick of turning. But when you’re running with friends, the course somehow feels a bit shorter.
On the course I ran into lots of people, friends and strangers. And this is where my heart ran away with me. I saw Stan Turcu, a living monument— a man who, at over 70, did the 160 km UTMB with 10,000 meters of elevation gain. You can’t not greet him with respect when you see him.
Then there were the people who came up to me and said they follow me, that my advice helps them, that I inspired them to run. One thanked me for the training plan, another for the articles. And no matter how used to online messages I am, in person I still get awkward. I’m incredibly happy, but it catches me off guard. And that exact surprise does me good. It makes me feel like all that time invested—writing, rewriting, explaining, editing, sharing—really matters to someone.
Around kilometer 14, Petre tells me in the voice of someone who isn’t joking: he needs the bathroom. Urgently. He vanishes into the first toilet like a ninja, and we slow down a bit and debate what we should do. It wasn’t warm in the park at all, and I was in shorts… if I dropped to 6:30, my thoughts would freeze. So I agree with Paul that, if possible, we’ll try to keep the pace lower and let them catch up. If not, we’ll regroup later.
Now we’re three. We keep chatting, but what “keeping the pace lower”? 😂 Once the cold hit me, I realized I’d actually picked it up a little. I don’t like the cold—I hate it 🤪. And I don’t like running in long pants either, because it feels like my legs are being held hostage. That’s why even in winter I run as much as I can in shorts. Yes, you lose some heat down there, but at least I can run normally, not like a rusty robot.
I tell the guys I have no problem running alone if they want to wait for Paul and Petre, but… neither of them seems very eager 😂. We’ll see. Another lap goes by—km 16. Another—km 21. And at some point I feel Nae starting to fall behind. The rolling terrain, the pace a bit too high, plus Alex and I were deep in one of those good conversations that sweep you away, and we drifted down to 5:50–5:45 min/km without realizing it. We say goodbye to Nae and carry on.
I ask Alex how he feels, even though I could see he was zen. I ask if he wants to increase the pace and… he really did. So we go: 5:45, then 5:30. I tell him that if we keep this up, he needs to change his gel strategy and that I’d recommend one every 20 minutes. He fully agreed, and from that point on we pushed: 5:20–5:30, as the course allowed. We talked about going sub-4 hours too, but that would’ve required holding 5:00 steady, and I didn’t know if he could carry that to the end. It was his first marathon, after all. I’m sure that if we’d started from the gun with that plan, he would’ve made it. No worries—our run went perfectly, and we held it like that until around kilometer 30.
We chatted, laughed, exchanged a few words with other runners, with the volunteers… everything flowed. And right then, at the exact moment we were convinced it was just the two of us in the movie, Paul appears next to us 😂. Man… he was red as a lobster, and you could see on his face he’d really dug deep. Laughing, he tells us how after waiting for Petre, they celebrated together his first half marathon, took a photo, and then he took off. About 8 km at 5:00 min/km 😂. I was genuinely happy about his craziness—and especially that he caught up to us.
To understand better: Paul and I started this whole adventure together. We lost weight together—him 20 kg, me 30. We started running together, did our first marathon, went to Ultrabug, 100 km races, Ironmans. Then, during the pandemic… things slipped a bit. He had a few years where he eased off. He ran a marathon here and there, an Ironman, but rarely and without consistency. He put on some weight, but he never quit completely—he ran just enough to stay afloat.
This year, though, something changed. He took it seriously again, exactly like he did 11 years ago with me. He lost 20 kg again and bounced back amazingly. He even had a month of total madness—the step challenge, the step competition with his colleagues—where people went crazy in the healthiest way possible: he hit 1,400,000 steps in a single month. And it wasn’t just him—12 people passed a million, meaning over 33,000 a day 🤭, and 42 passed 500,000. It was insanely motivating for all of them. And yes, sometimes all you need is a spark to change your life.
Lately we’ve managed to run together more often again, right in the pace zone I like. On last Tuesday’s run, where we both felt great, we decided that in February we’re going to Malaga together to run 100 km. It was my plan for that month, but now that he’s back, we’ll do it together again— a distance we’ve already gone shoulder to shoulder three times: Seregno, Amiens, and Comana. My heart filled up with joy when I saw him alongside us in the race—especially since I hadn’t waited for him 😂. I know him: the fact that I didn’t wait lit a fire under him like two strong coffees. Out of respect for his effort, we went back to the original pace so he could catch his breath. Because if he fainted, we’d have to carry him along after us 🤣.
From here on, it was back to chatting. Alex had asked us what the deal is with “the wall.” I told him it’s better not to know what it is 🤪. The wall is like a kind of ghost: if you keep expecting it, it shows up; if you pretend it doesn’t exist, it stays hidden. So I told him not to summon it. And around kilometer 33, joking, I say: “You missed the moment when the wall was supposed to hit you. What do we do now? 😂” We keep talking and I tell him that if he absolutely wants to feel it firsthand, we can make it appear at km 41 too. We just have to sprint until we… break 🤣. He laughed out loud. It was obvious he was in good shape.
In the last 10 kilometers I ran into more people I care about. I saw Stan Turcu again, calm and present as always—the kind of person who makes you reset your excuses when you see him. I exchanged a couple words with Dorina too, who built an incredible community in Călărași. There are few places where you can feel people’s energy that clearly. Dorina is one of those people who can get the world moving simply by example. I was really happy to see her.
On the second-to-last lap we also ran into Florin Simion, who was celebrating turning 45 by running 45 kilometers. His style. 😊 We were happy to see each other. I’ve known him since my first 100 km race—the guy who, even though he’d finished long before, stayed at the finish to encourage everyone else who was still struggling. He motivated me enormously back then. And these are the kinds of encounters that make your heart beat a little differently, even after all these years.
At the hydration point at the end of the loop I took another sip of water, good and cold 😂. As if they could’ve given it to us warm—though… it wouldn’t have hurt. At start/finish I ran into Vera, who had just wrapped up her own battle. I’d encouraged her on the course, and when we high-fived, she gave me exactly the boost I needed for the last kilometers.
Then we went into the final lap. Here I felt my legs a bit tired, but I bounced back immediately when, around kilometer 39, I absolutely had to stop at the bathroom. It was a runner’s emergency—the kind you don’t negotiate with the universe—but quick. After the break, surprise: I sprinted under 5 min/km to catch the guys. And that sprint felt so good… it loosened my legs as if I were just starting the race.
I caught them exactly as they were calmly chatting and had eased off the pace. I teased them a bit, but the truth is I felt like running harder and drifted off again toward 5:20–5:30. The sprint had reset my legs and now I had this urge to run… as if they’d fed me energy 😂. Two words here, just as an idea: it’s not arrogance, it’s just the classic phenomenon. When you run at 6–6:30 min/km it’s a completely different dynamic from 5:20–5:30. It feels like two different sports. And when you return to your pace, you literally feel like you’re in your element.
At the steps by the bridge, right at kilometer 41, I waited for them, we regrouped like a little team, and decided to parade together for the last kilometer. It was unbelievably nice. Alex was telling us as we went how good he felt, and I was happy for him as if I were running my own first marathon. These moments are rare in life—when you see someone well prepared, with a strategy, with nutrition on point, with a calculated pace—and everything goes right.
I love watching everyone run, but I’ll admit it moves me more when I see people who are prepared, with a clear plan, nutrition on time, a settled rhythm. That’s where you see respect for the race and for themselves. That’s the difference between “we’ll see what happens” and real running.
The finish line was so-so… ☺️ Just a simple, honest joy between us. But the atmosphere… kind of sad. The 21K runners had finished long ago; the 10K runners, who’d started later, were done too. On the last lap I already noticed that quiet… like the stage had closed. The wind was blowing in the start–finish area, three or four people, a few volunteers, Gabi Solomon. I worked up the courage and joked: “Hey Gabi, did we finish first?!” 😂. He laughed. The truth is that marathon events in Romania still draw few runners. 10K and 21K are growing fast, but 42K… the wave is still coming. And it will come.
The truth is, when I think about it, this race wasn’t even about pace, kilometers, or finishing time. It was about people. About my crew, about those I’ve known for years, and about the strangers who came up to me with a sincere smile and told me what I write helps them. It was about those short meetings—seconds or a few minutes—that do more than a whole workout. About Martin, about Stan Turcu, about Dorina, about Florin Simion, about the people who called out to me on the course, about those who told me they actually used my advice. I don’t get used to it. I’m incredibly happy, but I also get awkward—I freeze a little, I get emotional, it all catches me off guard. But it hits exactly where it should: that place where you feel that all your effort truly has meaning.
It’s incredible how a real community has formed out of my stories online. People I don’t know come up to me and tell me I helped them, that I inspired them, that they found courage. And you can’t not get emotional. Online it’s simple. In real life… it’s something else.
And then there are my friends—the people I grew up with in running, with whom I lost weight, trained, suffered, laughed, struggled, got back up. Paul, Petre, Alex, Nae… people I’ve shared runs, jokes, effort, and this whole road with. When I run with them, I feel like I’m running at home. Like I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be. And that’s a feeling no medal, no time, no pace can give you. It’s something you feel in people, not on a watch.
At the end, when I stopped, I had a moment where I understood something very clearly: I’m tired. This year has been incredibly full, beautiful, and intense. I pushed hard. I had two 100 km races, three Ironman competitions, plus everything else. I wrote, I ran, I traveled, I worked—I did everything I felt I could do.
And like every year, toward the end I feel the need for a break. A real break. The two-week one where I don’t run at all and let my body and my mind breathe. After the break… I’ll be back. With new stories, new plans, and running at the center of them.
But during this break I’ll still write a few good things. Because this year, as crazy as it was, deserves to be told down to the last detail. ☺️
#running #marathon #SportGuru #parks #runners #runnerslife #community #triathlon #endurance #motivation #urbansport #romaniaruns #imarathoner #runningstories
Gallery
