Review: Bucharest Half Marathon

Do you even know where Bucharest is?

Brownie points if you do - it's the capital of Romania!

Of course, this was my first time in Romania. I flew late Friday night so I could participate in the Bucharest Half Marathon on Sunday morning.

My mom also flew from Tokyo so she can see the country and the race.

We stayed at the JW Marriott Hotel right next to the Palace of the Parliament. If you are a history buff like me, you would know the crazy history of this place and the tragedies the country experienced just a few decades ago under a brutal dictator. This second-biggest building symbolizes such past, and we got to visit on Saturday afternoon.

The hotel was great with amazing breakfast like the Melia in Yangon. So on Saturday, we walked around the Palace of the Parliament (because it's so big), visited the Expo on the East side of the Palace, and just walked around the city. The city is quite small and the beautiful weather definitely made it an enjoyable pre-race visit.

So we went to the expo, which was located 20 min walk from the hotel at Piața Constituției or Palace Square. The expo was quite small and there was a kids' race going on that day. I picked up my race packet and shirt quite smoothly and walked around the vendors to check out what they had on offer. I didn't need anything, but it was still nice to look around. I was especially excited about the T-shirt I got!

My pre-race dinner was pretty great. We went to a Romanian restaurant called Lacrimi si Sfinti, which served lovely and delicious traditional food. Here are some photos:

Carb-loading was a success!

So Sunday Race Day:

The weather was lovely. A crisp, sunny, cool day. The excitement of the start line near the expo was fantastic. As far as I could see, I was the only Asian woman running. I was placed on Pen D even though my pacer was in Pen C. I didn't like how the guy refused my moving up, even though there were people from Pen F in Pen D. Pen C had the 2 hr pacer and considering that I finished in 1:53, I should have been put much higher. I even explained to him I run faster than 2 hr. He still wouldn't let me in, which was annoying because as you can see, my slowest km splits were the first two km since everyone was so slow in front of me!

But the good news is that was the only bad experience I had.

I fueled up with the amazing Marriott buffet just the right amount. The city was so beautiful to run in. I enjoyed every moment of it actually. And I finished faster than my last half marathon!

I would definitely recommend signing up for this. It's a flat course and it only cost me 25 euros! I mean, that's what I would pay for an adidas synthetic shirt anyways.

I would definitely like to run Bucharest again.

#travel #traveltips #running #race #halfmarathon #training