Inside Andreas Almgren's European 10,000m Win

Andreas Almgren has spent the better part of a year thinking about one race: the 10,000m at the European Championships. On August 15th, at Alexander Stadium in Birmingham, he ran it exactly as he had envisaged, breaking a championship record that had stood since 1978 to win his first major title.

Watch: COROS PACE 4 - Neon Yellow

Sensor: COROS Heart Rate Monitor - Lime

Analysis Tool: COROS Training Hub

Since a record-setting start to the year in Valencia, Almgren's season was built around important training periods and key races. Throughout the early season, his Base Fitness climbed from 115 to 149, built on weekly training loads that held consistently around 1000 TL with little week-to-week deviation.

Heading into the season, there was no ambiguity about the target.“I have one specific race in mind, and that's the 10,000m in Birmingham. I'm going to try and do everything I can to get the gold medal… and I hope to run fast on the way there.

It's a different kind of confidence than the one that carried him to bronze in Tokyo, the same desire but with more expectation. Even following the years of interrupted momentum, stress fractures, illness, and broken training blocks behind him, the goal for this year was non-negotiable. "I had a great winter; it wasn't perfect, but I was the fittest I had been. I was able to push more, incorporate speed earlier, thanks to the insight from the data. I could see things building, and it gave me a lot of confidence."

Almgren wasn't interested in a tactical race decided by a last-lap kick. After an opening kilometre of 3:17.4, he moved to the front after the third lap and started pulling the field apart himself. "I wanted to make it all about being the best 10,000m runner. This is a hard way of racing, but I know my strengths, and I wanted to take it on."

Changing the entire dynamic of the race, Almgren picked up the pace, dropping it to 2:40/km. At the same time, Almgren's heart rate climbed from 146bpm to 173bpm, just above his Threshold of 168bpm.

With the race now being run entirely on his terms, Almgren settled into a remarkably consistent rhythm: 2:39.7, 2:40.8, 2:40.2, 2:38.5 across the next four kilometre splits, with his heart rate climbing only gradually from 176 to 179.

By halfway, only four men remained within reach of the pace: Mike Foppen of the Netherlands, Yemaneberhan Crippa of Italy, France's Jimmy Gressier, and reigning European champion Dominic Lobalu of Switzerland.

"Naturally, you start to have doubts if your plan is working; all of the years of injuries, setbacks, and near misses try to creep into your mind. I really had to focus and trust my training"

The race's decisive move came at the seventh kilometre, with those behind him beginning to labour; Almgren dropped a second surge that finally broke the last of his company. Even though this was almost imperceptible to the audience, you can see immediately in his lap data: five consecutive laps, surging to devastating effect, before settling back into his rhythm.

The final two kilometres may have looked like a procession, but Almgren knew it wasn't over until he crossed that line. "I was gaining confidence with each lap, but you never believe you have won until you cross that line".

Even with Almgren's 'slowest' splits since he took the lead, his heart rate began to recover, stabilising back to an average of 179bpm by the final few laps.

Crossing the line in a championship record time of 27:23.44, Almgren ran a rare negative split, completing the first 5000m in 14:05.07 at an average heart rate of 165bpm, and his second half in 13:17.74 at an average heart rate of 180bpm.

Almgren wore his COROS PACE 4 and COROS Heart Rate Monitor throughout the buildup and the race itself, using the COROS Training Hub to track exactly how his fitness was building toward this one day. It's the same process that gave him the confidence to commit to a plan set almost a year in advance, and to trust it when the doubts crept in with laps still to run.

"It's a result I can be proud of for a really long time."

For Andreas Almgren, gold in Birmingham is part of a much larger story. It's proof that the years of hard work were never wasted.