our choices show what we truly are

6.2 inglourious miles, actually I was proud of them I started really tired and then at  mile 4 suddenly I felt much better and finished the last 2 miles at faster pace. Today it was really warm, when I got home at 6:30pm the temperature inside the house was 16°C while outside was 18°C.

I thought a rest day would help my long run today, but I am not sure right now. My goal was to finish 25k at 5:00/k, but since the beginning I struggled to stay on pace, I finished at 5:11/k average pace and somehow I am happy because I didn't give up. The other positive thing it is the second week of the year above 50miles, my real goal for the next three months is to go consistently above 60/week. I want just to go back where I was  last october and the only way is to pile up as many  miles as possible. Tomorrow it will be a snowboarding day, one of the last one of the  season. By the way today the weather  was really great sunny and 20°C.

Snowboarding the whole day in Abruzzo. It was a great sunny day.

Tonight the temperatures were lower again, still above freezing, but spring for now is gone.

8.6 miles in 1:10 in the industrial area.

Another 8 miler at a slow pace, it was not raining but it was humid and coldish.

Tonight I didn't have enough time to run, 4 miles at faster pace in 29:16, 4:33/km. 

Another lazy night, after 4 miles my legs thought it was better going home. I have some lingering aches in the right foot, a knot in the right quadriceps since last december, but overall it is the feeling of being tired that is killing most of my runs. I am not sure if it is just a feeling or I am really tired and I need to rest. For the next month my running schedule will be based on how I feel without crashing and burning myself. I hope I will eventually get better.

Another 4 miler.

This morning I witnessed one of those rare events I haven't experienced in a while: running with two other human beings.

I wanted to do at least a 13 miler, one of the other guy was happy with 9 and the third one was flexible and ended up doing 12.

It was a beatiful morning with clear skies and a strong wind from the north. It was a bit chilly at the start but when we finished we were warm, but no sweat.

We started at 5:30/ km and by the time we finished we were well under 5:00/km as average pace, final time was 4:55/km. Having company most of the time definitively helped me and somehow I think I am on my way back to a decent shape. I am not there yet, this run would have been a great training run if it was the beginning of january, now I am somehow behind my schedule and for next sunday I am not going to change my marathon plan(that is going out at 5:00/km). The best part was at the end when I discovered that my legs were not completely shot and I could have kept the 4:30/km we were pushing during the last 5 km for at least another 5k or longer. I have to be patient and enjoying what I can do right now.

A nice 6.2 miles along the Adriatic sea in Pescara, sunny and windy.

Here we don't have the DST yet but at 7 pm there was still some light, in  a couple of weeks it will be really great going out at night and being able to run with light in the sky.

Tonight 7.1 miles in 1 hour, a couple of more runs in the next couple of days and then rest  until the marathon.

This week should be my taper week, but because I haven't done any real big mileage week in the last five months, I will keep my usual running schedule until wednesday. Then I will take two days off, saturday a few miles and sunday the big race.

My goal for sunday race will be to finish in 3:30, last year after the marahon I thought under 3:20 would be my only goal for this year, but then things changed and my winter running was not as good as I wanted. Finish in 3:30 it will be a great result.

Tonight 5 miles in 44 minutes.

Last run before the marathon 4 miles in 29:55 (4:39/km) just to remember the good old times. Just to show that is no longer my MP I left so much sweat on the road I couldn't believe it. Three days of rest and then sunday the big day. 

Two miles to discharge some energy.

This morning I woke up at 5:30am and I was ready to drive to Rome at 6:00. We (12 people from 6 different towns) were supposed to meet in front of my house at that time, the last person of 12 eventually arrived at 6:15 when the rest of the group was already anxious to leave. A few jokes to relax and we were on our way to Rome, we left our cars at one of the subway stations outside Rome, we used the facilities at the station and then we boarded the train that was crowded at 7:00 am on Sunday like on rush hours on Monday morning. We reached the Colosseo starting area, we quickly dropped our bags and headed to our corrals. Inside the corral I was sitting on the cobblestone just 40 meters from the starting line watching all the elite athletes warming up. The sun was up and just sitting there I was already hot. At 9:00 the wheelchair athletes started, at 9:05 we started. It was amazing watching the top elites immediately creating a gap in just 100 meters and disappearing right after the first turn. At that point I started concentrating on my own task. My goal was to keep 5:00/km until it was no longer possible. My first 5k were actually a little bit faster (4:52/km) because I didn’t want to be passed by the whole crowd and then I settled down on a more regular pace. After 10k I was fine, running was smooth and breathing was regular, but I was already drenched in sweat, I used any aid and “sponge” station to water myself inside and outside.

At km 17 we reached St Peter and it was the usual incredible view, I was shivering in front of the emptiness of the St Peter plaza (it means I am getting old and cheesy). I reached the half way in 1:46 and still somehow in control, but my legs were stuck on one speed and that one only and I knew immediately that I would end up slowing down progressively. Next 5k were the new part of the course, that was much better than the last editions when we were running for 2k on a freeway along with cars on the next lane, I was slowing down to 5:20-5:30/km, but I didn’t have any desire to push the pace and to die to finish in 3:30 and I kept whatever pace I had because it was the fastest way to reach the finish line. Once I reached mile 20 we entered Rome downtown and there I felt much better (not a “second wind” but something similar), lots of people on the streets and I thought I could still finish under 3:40. Until km 38 I was still in good shape, then the last 4 k were a struggle to survive. This is the hardest part of the course because there are a few hills especially in the last 2 k, the cobblestone is so uneven that feels like running on a rocky trail and my pace went down to 5:40-5:50 and then I did it the last 2.2k in 13 minutes and change.

I was happy to have finished another marathon and my legs were not dead at the end, I took a 5 minutes nap while waiting for the others and immediately felt great.

My current marathon fitness is around 3:38 (my last 2 marathon times) and today if the course was not so slow it would have probably been the same time. I would like to think that is not possible that I have lost almost 30 minutes (in my marathon time) since October, even though I ran fewer miles and without much speed. I did the last three marathons with the idea of training through them and finishing them without crashing, but the net result was that I trained through them and I crashed at the end of each of them, just because I didn’t care much about the final result and I “accepted” the slow down. I was somehow “defeated” without fighting and when the mind is not there the body fell apart (in the last two weekends I did two medium runs much faster than today's marathon pace).

Rome marathon still remains an incredible experience giving the runners the possibility to run through some beautiful place, but it requires lots of respect because it is much slower and harder than altitude profile shows. Except for a friend of mine who did his PB, the rest of our group crashed big time, as I did, but at least they were chasing their PB.

In a couple of days I will be able to run again and from there I will start rebuilding my confidence for the upcoming races.

Rest day.

Another rest day, 30 minutes on the bike trainer this morning.

This morning I woke up with a sore throat, it didn't get worse during the day, but it didn't improve either. Probably I am incubating/fighting a bug at the same time. Tonight I was debating with myself wheter to run or not, I decided to wait until tomorrow if my general conditions don't deteriorate. My legs feel almost back to normal, this  morning I tested them with a 200m dash, all out, to catch the train, I was quite happy about how they responded, once on the train.

First run post marathon, 5 miles with some residual daylight from 6 to 6:50pm.

I felt good, legs are almost back to normal, my lungs are still coughing up some of the stuff piled up in the last two days.

I wanted to test some of the hills of the upcoming trail marathon, especially my legs on them, and at the same time spend at least two hours on my feet. I accomplished both missions, I did two big hills, 11.1 miles with half of them uphill and half of them dowhill, in 2:23:48, nothing really fast because even the downhill was technical and it was difficult to push the pace without risking a face landing (plus I am a wimp going downhill).

During the last three miles I was really thirsty and hungry, next time I will bring some food and liquids. In three weeks I will be happy to post this time half way through the race.

I wanted to celebrate the first day with the Daylight Saving Time with a big run at night. I got home at 6:30 with plenty of light but I soon discovered that my neighbour had his house flooded. He opened the sprinklers but one of the pipes going under the roof was damaged during the winter by the freezing weather and started leaking, when he got back home two hours later his main floor was under 10cm of water everywhere. By the time I got home most of the water has been removed, but the ceiling was still dripping, I helped him to put most the furniture on some logs to avoid further water damage.

I went running at 7:30pm enjoying the last 30 minutes of light and it was really pleasant, at 8pm was already dark but I was by the lake, no cars and no artificial lights, with enough light to be able to continue until 8:30 when it was really dark. I did 6.2 miles in 55 minutes.

Nice run 5 miles trying to finish at 10k pace. This was my progression: 5:58/k, 5:17, 4:55, 4:55, 4:17, 4:17, 4:11, 3:58. Overall 37:57, 4:43/k. It feels good to reintroduce some kind of speed in my legs.

Another progression run finishing 8 miles with the last four at 4:30/km, overall I am feeling great 8.1 miles in 1:06:06. In the next two days I will be in Padova probably I will be able to run friday morning, saturday I want to do another medium run on the marathon trails.

I am in Padova no time to run.

Second day in Padova  too tired this morning to go running before going to work. Tonight I will be back home and tomorrow a long run will bring back my normal schedule.

Today my plan was to stay out on my feet on trails for three hours with at least two big hills. This would be a good way to become acquainted with the upcoming trail marathon.

This morning I was not alone, Daniele, came with me. We started at 8:15am going straight uphill for about 4k, the first 1.5k were still not that bad then the really steep part began. We managed to keep a "running pace" without walking, once on top we turned around we went downhill, not very fast because the terrain was rock and roots infested but we reached the bottom safe and sound, after 400m of flat terrain we climbed our second peak. This one was longer and a little bit higher but overall was more runnable, once on top we were just 10k from the start, but it took us  about 1:20minutes. At that point we went downhill on a asphalt road for 2k and  then we jumped on another trail to dive for another 2k straight downhill to teach our muscles to survive the downhill damage. At this point we had 4k on a flat sandy section where we struggled to keep 6:00/km the sun was high in the sky and it was hot because there was no shade. At the end of this section our car were just 2k away, but we were not totally  trashed yet and we had 140 minutes only in our legs, we decided to climb again the first hill, but this time halfway from the top we were forced to power walking first and then pushing our hands on our knees to keep moving. The last few downhill km to the end were really hard, our legs were heavy but overall we were really satisfied. We did almost 15 miles in 3:05, next week will try to replicate this effort to achieve a decent conditioning for the race.