It was a
strange race, I wasn’t expecting much in terms of results since mid october my
training was just low mileage maintenance and my mind was not ready yet to push
hard another marathon.
I went
anyway to Florence
because I wanted to visit part of my family and the marathon was the perfect
excuse. I woke up at 6:45 am, breakfast, prepared my bag and headed out of the door
with my uncle who drove me as close as possible to the start, otherwise if I
had to drive I should have abandoned my car around 2-3 miles from the starting
area. The temperatures were good on the cold side, around freezing but when the
sun came up made the weather really perfect for running. We started on time but
in spite of the new starting area and wider roads the first miles were still
congested. I wanted to keep 4:40-4:45/km to try to finish “relaxed” in 3:20 but
during the first miles it was nearly impossible to go under 5:00/km. It is
still a mystery to me how in spite starting in a corral with most of the people
faster than me most of them were running much slower. After 3 miles I picked up
my pace and I kept a decent rhythm until mile 10 when I realized that keeping
the same pace for the rest of the race was not going to be easy. I passed the half in 1:41 and I decided that I
was not going to fight to keep an already unsustainable pace. I really wanted to finish without suffering much. I moved back to
the 5:00/km pace and I stayed there until mile 20 and then I progressively
slowed down even more. I didn’t have any intention to suffer and all I wanted
was to complete this long run uninjured. I finished in 3:38:42
really sightseeing Florence downtown during the last 10km:
Ponte Vecchio, Piazza della signoria, Santa Maria del Fiore, il campanile di
Giotto e il battistero and finally Santa Croce.
It took me
almost 1 hour to leave the finish area walk 1km back to my bag and reach my
cousin waiting for my with his scooter to go back to their home for an italian Sunday
lunch.
It was a
nice long run, my legs were sore at the end like after a long run, actually all
my long runs in the last four months were a little bit shorter but at a pace 45sec/km
faster, the weather was great and made this run really a nice one overall. If it was raining like last year it would have been a completely different experience. One day (next year maybe) I
hope I will go back with a fighting body to conquer a better time.
Now it is time to start a more solid training for the upcoming early spring
marathons. For sure this experience turned my fire on again to push my training
back on track. I also discovered that when my mind is not there it is nearly impossible to run a "relaxed" marathon. After a big lunch and a couple of hours on a couch digesting I was almost back to normal and ready to drive for 3 hours to Rome.
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