A construction engineer who began pursuing running seriously only as an adult has become the fastest Polish woman ever over the half-marathon.
Elżbieta Glinka won the women’s race at the PSG Garmin Gdańsk Half Marathon on 27 September in 1:08:48, becoming the first Polish woman to complete the 21.0975-kilometre distance in under 69 minutes. Her performance cut 30 seconds from the previous national record of 1:09:18 set by Karolina Nadolska in 2021.
The Polish Athletics Association recognised Glinka’s performance as a new national record, although it noted that the result remains subject to the formal ratification process.
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Glinka did not simply dominate the women’s field. She finished fourth overall, behind only three men, on a course beginning and ending beside Gdańsk’s football stadium. The overall men’s race was won by Adam Głogowski in 1:05:13.
For breaking the national record, organisers awarded her a PLN 100,000 bonus.
“I’m proud and very happy,” Glinka said after the finish, adding that the performance was a reward for the work she had put into the season.
From construction sites to national records
What makes Glinka’s rise particularly unusual is how late elite-level running entered her life.
Born in 1993, she studied civil engineering at Warsaw University of Technology’s branch in Płock and went on to work in the construction industry, eventually becoming a production-preparation manager responsible for the financial side of investment projects.
Running began as something fitted around work and ordinary adult responsibilities rather than as a professional sporting career. Glinka says she started training regularly in 2018, while more structured coaching and serious competitive ambitions came later.
For much of her rise through Polish distance running, she continued combining training with a full-time construction job.
That changed this year. Glinka has taken unpaid leave from her employer to concentrate fully on athletics, with an eye on qualification for the 2028 Olympic Games in Los Angeles.
Her progress has been remarkably fast.
Earlier in 2026, she broke the Polish women’s 10 km record in Valencia with 31:47. She also won the European 10,000m Cup in La Spezia and represented Poland at the European Championships in Birmingham.
The Gdańsk performance now gives her another national benchmark.
A barrier no Polish woman had broken
The significance of 1:08:48 goes beyond simply replacing one name in the record books.
Before Glinka’s run, no Polish woman had broken 69 minutes for the half-marathon. Nadolska’s 1:09:18 record had stood for five years, and Glinka lowered it by half a minute in a single race.
According to the Polish Athletics Association, she maintained remarkably even pacing throughout the race, covering successive five-kilometre sections at roughly 3:15–3:17 per kilometre.
The result also came only a week after she competed over 5 km at the World Athletics Road Running Championships in Copenhagen, adding another dimension to what has already been a breakthrough season.
For someone who once saw running primarily as a way to stay healthy and deal with the pressures of work, Glinka’s progression has been anything but conventional.
European Athletics described her earlier this year as a recreational runner who had progressed from a 1:33 half-marathon to international competition, while Glinka herself has spoken about initially feeling that she was not experienced or fast enough to join an organised running group.
She joined anyway.
A few years later, the engineer who once fitted training around construction projects has run 21.1 kilometres faster than any Polish woman before her.
