2015–2019: the early record

Updated 10 Oct 2026

Running notebook · Running record · Personal bests · Race history

2015–2019 · 2020 · 2021 · 2022 · 2023–2025 · 2026

2000 m has a special place in my running history. In sixth grade, I ran a road time trial in 8:33, about 4:17/km over the remembered roughly 2 km distance. There was a roughly 2 km loop in my neighbourhood that I kept returning to over the years; I estimate I ran around a thousand kilometres on it. I no longer live there, but it helps explain why I chose 2000 m for the first time trial of my present return.

That childhood 8:33 is a recollection, without an exact date. It is separate from two organized 2 km races whose results I have now recovered. The older race record also reaches back several years before my first recorded Strava run.

2015–2016: the park races

At twelve, I ran the short XL events in Vrana Park and North Park, a regular 5kmrun in Plovdiv, and two in South Park. Another South Park result follows in September 2016, when I was thirteen.

The paces above use the published distance labels and are rounded to the nearest second.

North Park needs one qualification. Its current result page labels the short race 6.0 km, while the organizer’s report published the next day explicitly describes 5, 10 and 15 km races and links to this event’s results. I remembered running the 5 km option. I keep the contemporary description here; it does not establish a certified course length. The results page preserves both labels.

These results give dates and places to childhood running I had only partly remembered.

Two organized 2 km races

The Kids Run results are both from South Park:

The first is close to the 8:33 I remember from the neighbourhood loop, but they are different runs. The road-loop memory belongs to the 2015–16 school year; these are dated organizer results.

15 October 2017: Sofia Marathon, short distance

I was fourteen, in eighth grade, when I ran the Sofia Marathon’s short-distance race. The official result lists 10.5 km, 49:04 chip time, 49:12 gun time, and 61st among the men, under Angel RAYCHEV, bib 2164. The chip time corresponds to about 4:40/km using that published distance label.

I remember this as a very hard race, with the start near Orlov most. The organizer’s contemporary instructions place the start in front of Vasil Levski National Stadium and describe one short lap of an older four-lap marathon course.

That is the older layout behind my memory. The later races I ran in 2020 and 2021 used a different marathon layout, with the start at Battenberg Square. The shared race-results record keeps their course information together.

2018–2019: the recorded history begins

The first run in my exported Strava history is from June 2018. The export contains ten run uploads from 2018 and eight from 2019. The ledger below preserves each of them. Their descriptions are blank, so there is much less context than in the later interval records.

A few titles still tell me what the run was for. The 20 June 2019 and 22 June entries say “Running uphill, walking downhill.” Their exported elevation-gain estimates are about 184 m and 240 m over 8.00 and 8.21 recorded kilometres. The whole-recording paces include the walking descents; they do not isolate the uphill running. “Helping my friend with his running session” is another title, alongside ordinary morning and evening runs.

These are the beginnings of the recorded history, rather than the beginnings of running itself. The neighbourhood loop and the earlier organized races already existed. The fuller 2020 record and 2021 season follow from here.