I recently repeated my ultimate personal challenge: participating in a major running competition and a high-stakes chess tournament on the exact same day. Taking advantage of the fact that the OMV Bucharest 10K and the Bucharest Chess Grand Prix lined up once again, I signed up for both, determined to beat my 2025 results.
Part 1: The OMV Bucharest 10K Race
The morning of May 9th brought perfect running weather to Bucharest. On my way to the starting grid, I ran into Emanuel, a former colleague from Trupa lui Fane. He used to be an elite runner winning these competitions in 33–34 minutes, but now runs casually. Since he was just running for fun, he generously accepted to pace me.
We started with a conservative strategy: a 5’15” pace for the first kilometre, dropping to 5’00” for the second. However, the official course markers from kilometres 2 through 9 were completely incorrect.At one point, the marks showed we crossed the 5K under 25 minutes, yet the 50-minute pacers were far ahead of us. We wondered if the marker was wrong or if the pacers were running too fast. Unfortunately for me, the pacers knew exactly what they were doing.
When we hit the 9K mark, the time was 45:15. I emptied the tank on the final kilometre, clocking a 4’56” split. I crossed the finish line at 51:18 ( that last km was about 1200 meters long in reality). This is 50 seconds faster than my 2025 time, though still 50 seconds shy of my all-time personal best.
A massive thank you to Emanuel! Even without active training, a 5’08”/km pace was a walk in the park for him, and his support made all the difference. Huge thanks also to my coach, Stefan Oprina, who cheered us on along the route.
The event’s popularity exploded this year. There were nearly 3,500 finishers compared to under 3,000 in 2025. I managed to finish in the top 10% (316th place). I was thrilled, but there was no time to celebrate, the chess tournament was already calling.
Part 2: The Bucharest Chess Grand Prix
The 2026 Bucharest Chess Grand Prix set an all-time record for chess tournaments in Romania with 586 players, a massive 30% increase from last year. This is also due to involvement of Romanian Chess Federation which has many projects ongoing.
The venue was once again the Palace of the Parliament. While it may not win any beauty contests, the sheer scale of the largest building in Europe is incredibly impressive. The tournament featured 10 rounds of rapid chess, using a 15-minute format with a 5-second increment per move.
The field was stacked with 32 Grandmasters. I was lucky to be paired against a Grandmaster in the very first round. My opponent went on to finish tied for 1st place (taking 3rd on tiebreaks), and I am proud of how I held my own in that game.
- Final Score: I finished with 5 out of 10 points, matching my score from last year.
- The Reward: I gained 4 ELO points, which will bring my official rating to 1749 on the next list. Last year I gained only 2 ELO points so I did better in 2026.
The podium was a clash of the new generation. Jose Martinez (Jospem) won the tournament, and Aydin Suleymanli finished second.
This year the VIP of the tournament was without any doubt Vasyl Ivanchuk. He is at the top of the chess world for almost 40 years. He was for a while number 2 in the world and was also world champion in both blitz and rapid chess.
While most top chess players are happy to sign autographs, Ivanchuk is in a league of his own. He stayed at the venue to play casual blitz games with young children. This rare humility reminded me of a beautiful excerpt from the 2003(!) book Linares! Linares!:
“Ivanchuk’s victories have earned him an unbelievable popularity with the Linarese. People greet him everywhere with a brief and warm ‘Ivanchuk!’ The warmth they feel at his unaffected behaviour out-weighs their admiration for the distant Kasparov. Ivanchuk doesn’t push his way haughtily through the crowd of noisy children thronging at the bottom of the hotel stairs every day begging the players for a signature in their programme booklets. He always stops to sign a few. In the year of his third tournament victory, he invited these young admirers to join him in eating the cake that the restaurant kitchen had prepared for him.”“
Vishy Anand once famously said that Ivanchuk lives on “Planet Ivanchuk”, he is a pure, eccentric chess genius. You can see this unique brilliance in clips from 2016 when he won the World Rapid Championship.
The organization was flawless, with one major exception: security screening at the Parliament building took over an hour. For future editions, organizers must either find a way to fast-track player entry or choose a more accessible venue.
Final Thoughts: The Perfect Pairing
Running and chess may seem like opposites, but they share a beautiful common ground. Both sports are universally accessible, highly inclusive, and inexpensive to pick up. Most importantly, they form the ultimate synergy for health, one keeping the body sharp, while the other trains the mind. The only thing to have in mind if you practice both is that running helps improving playing chess while chess is not great for your running skills.
If you like playing chess and running you can try doing both in the same day in Bucharest next year!
Adrian Matei's blog 
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