A week later, we are all still remembering the display by Andreas Almgren in the 10,000 meters at the European Championships. The Swede was crowned continental champion in Birmingham with 27:23.44, a championships record, after turning the final into an elimination-style test from the outset and in which he pulled away from all his rivals except three.
After a first kilometer that was almost contemplative, in 3:17.4, Almgren moved to the front and began imposing a pace close to 2:40 per kilometer. He didn’t wait for the last kilometer nor try to hide in the group. He wanted to turn the race into a test of who was truly the best 10,000-meter runner.
I wanted it all to be about being the best 10,000-meter runner. It’s a tough way to race, but I know my strengths and I wanted to embrace it.
The result was decisive: Dominic Lobalu finished second, while Almgren crossed the line almost 20 seconds ahead and lowered a championships record that had stood since 1978. It was, moreover, his first major international title, after the world bronze achieved in Tokyo in 2025.
From 14:05 to 13:17: two races in one
The true scale of his performance becomes apparent when you look beyond the final result. Almgren passed 5,000 meters in 14:05.07, with an average heart rate of 165 beats per minute. In the second half he needed 13:17.74, almost 48 seconds faster, while his average heart rate rose to 180 beats per minute.
Two completely different races within the same final.
After the slow first kilometer, Almgren covered the next kilometers in a sequence of extraordinarily stable splits: 2:39.7, 2:40.8, 2:40.2 and 2:38.5. And he did so while his heart rate rose slightly and progressively, from 176 to 179 beats per minute.
Almgren completed the last 9,000 meters in 24:06.04, at an average of 2:40.7/km. Extrapolated to a 10,000-meter distance, that stretch would be roughly 26:46.7. It becomes even more spectacular to observe the last 8,000 meters, basically his entire time at the front:
The attack that went barely noticed
The race finally broke around the seventh kilometer. Almgren had spent several kilometers chipping away at the group when he launched a second surge that ended up leaving him alone.
The attack was much more violent than it looked from the stands.
The five decisive laps show a sequence of rapid twists before Almgren re-established his rhythm. The acceleration was enough for his last companions to begin losing contact and, soon after, the race was completely decided. Two kilometers at around 5:12, after he had spent more than six pulling the group.
At the halfway point there were still four athletes able to follow him: Mike Foppen, Yemaneberhan Crippa, Jimmy Gressier and the reigning European champion, Dominic Lobalu. None could respond to the next shift.
And here emerges one of the most interesting aspects of the race: Almgren was suffering, but he was not deteriorating.
Fatigued, but technically stable
Heart rate tells part of the story. The Swedish runner rose from 146 beats per minute in the first fast kilometer to 173 when he neared 2:40/km, slightly above his threshold of 168. Then, while maintaining rhythms around 2:40/km, the rate continued to climb gradually.
We have pace, heart rate, cadence and contact time. We do not have the full biomechanical picture, but enough information to try to look for cracks in a motion that, visually, seemed unaltered.
How Almgren built his tempo shift
Before the attack, between kilometers 3 and 6, Almgren had established a very steady pattern:
During kilometer 8, the fastest of the race, he reached:
He increased his speed by almost 3.5%, but his cadence rose by about 4.5%. The estimated stride length, by contrast, did not increase: it went from about 2.03 meters to 2.01. This gives us an early revelation: Almgren’s attack is built mainly by increasing the frequency.
It’s a significant distinction: fatigue was present, but there was no obvious loss of the ability to generate speed.
The cadence, the other key
The race data also help explain how he built the change. Almgren did not need to radically alter his stride to run faster. The strategy was mainly to increase step frequency while keeping a stable mechanics.
In the kilometers before the attack he was already moving around 2:40/km, with a cadence close to 185 steps per minute. When the moment to accelerate arrived, the frequency clearly rose, while the ground-contact time decreased.
It’s a pattern especially interesting in a 10,000-meter race: the extra speed did not come from a dramatic exaggeration of stride length, but from the ability to move the legs faster without losing efficiency.
That helps explain why Almgren’s image was so striking. While his rivals began showing visible signs of fatigue, the Swede maintained a posture and mechanics that appeared intact.
The confidence built by the data
The Birmingham display did not come out of nowhere either. Almgren had been using data for months to build the confidence needed to tackle a race he had chosen as the season’s big objective.
“I have a specific race in mind, and it’s the 10,000 meters of Birmingham. I’m going to try to do everything possible to win the gold… and I hope to run fast along the way,” he had explained before the championship.
His preparation was based on stable loads, threshold training and continuous monitoring of tempo, lactate and heart rate. Almgren himself has explained that he routinely checks these parameters and that COROS heart-rate data are an important part of his training analysis.
In Birmingham, that information ended up turning into a race strategy.
I was gaining confidence with every lap, but you never think you’ve won until you cross the line.
And when he finally crossed it, the scoreboard read 27:23.44. The championship record was his. Also the gold.
Almgren finished exhausted, as befits a race of that level. But the data tell something more interesting: during the 10,000 meters, even when pushing his body to the limit, he never stopped having control.
