Running to Think

I was a child when my father was training for his first marathon. I have the vivid image of him running for a distance I could not begin to comprehend at the time, when everything looked much bigger than it really was. Probably my father too. The joy of finishing a marathon was the only thing that I couldn’t understand and I kept underestimating for so many years. That was until I finally ran my own marathon, and suddenly, everything began to make sense again. After crossing 26 mile mark, my father changed.
He became more poetic whenever he talked about running. I remember that he said once “a marathon is just like life”. I never got the meaning of that quote and again I underestimated it. As of late, I think I found out the meaning of that phrase.
A marathon is like everyday life in the sense that we can appreciate our efforts only at a certain point: Only when we stop running. That memory kept me curious about running and endurance sports to the point that I wanted those words to be meaningful, for me. That was the main reason for which I became a long distance race walker. In Italy that was a big thing at the time. There were so many good schools to learn the not-so-natural technique and strategies to do it faster without breaking the rules and being disqualified. Heal on the ground and blocked knee are the two rules that make race walking one of the most deleterious sporting activities that a kid can get into. I was really good at that. I won a number of regional and interregional championships, I got the first position at the national criterium of race walking in Caorle (Venice), back in 1996.

My future was already planned as a professional race walker when I had to deal with the first injuries. The older I became the longer I trained and the more I was exposed to more or less bad injuries that played against me and shattered my dream of participating in the olympic games of Athens 2004. Distance running was the patch in my career as an athlete. I tried to fill my life with that. That was the only thing I could do.
 My bad physical conditions forced me to stay at home, putting me in a state of depression since no other sport was on my wish list. I hated football, and still do, I had no feelings for tennis and the like and I never wanted to play in teams in general. Running has always been the mirror of my personality, the place where I've always been comfortable, the peaceful path that always made me feel at home. Especially when I was far from my real home and family.
 So many times I've been struggling with the usual difficulties of everyday life. As a guy who's always been abroad, living on his own, no family, no relationships whatsoever, very few friends and too many goals to focus on, I was barely paying attention to the details, forgetting that life can start from the finish line, if only I could stand still on my feet. That's what I found in running.
The ability to survive until it's over, till the finish line. Maybe that's what my father meant with "a marathon is just like life". Maybe, as I will tell him one day, life is a marathon of which we have no clue where the finish line is.

Be Great, Powerful Beyond Measure

The dinner following an intense workout like a 50 km run (ok, even for much less than that) is probably not very well appreciated if it is too heavy to digest or eaten later  than usual, maybe right before going to sleep. Even though I consider eating late quite negative for my body, I cannot hide that it occurred to me a number of times.
Here is a nice receipt that helps muscle recovery and tissue rebuilding with a good amount of proteins and vitamins.

Ingredients
100 gr of crab meat (this provides 18 grams of proteins)
1 spoon of olive oil
half lemon
1 teaspoon of sumac
1 tea spoon of black pepper
1 spoon of mostarde of Dijon
1 fresh tomato
6 brussel sprouts
1/2 red onion


Instructions
Prepare the crab meat in a dish and mix it together with oil, lemon, pepper, mostarde, add some salt and let it marinate for about 20 minutes.
In the mean time cook some brussel sprouts with a small red onion. Cook the sprouts slowly, using a lid and keep the steam inside.
Cut a fresh tomato in cubes and compose as in the picture. Sprinkle some sumac on it.

I didn't plan to run 32 miles the day of my 32nd birthday because of Dean Karnazes who apparently did the same for his 30th birthday. We just happened to have the same idea and I must admit that it's a very challenging one.
So I changed the training schedule of the last months to be able to finish 32 miles by the 30th of November. The very first idea was just to get my feet to the finish line, wish myself a happy birthday and drink a beer with some friends. But things went differently. Very differently.
First, I found a holy soul of a friend who accepted to be my pacer and support me by bike, providing me all the stuff that I might have needed while covering the distance of 51.5 km. Priya was very excited to help me. Although she's very passionate about sports and she loves running, I had the feeling that she was not aware of the type of work she would have been involved in and the responsibilities she had accepted to take.
Being a good pacer is not a job that everybody can do. Runners are usually pissed when something goes wrong with the pacer who has to stay as much as he or, as in my case, she, can. Attached to the runner, she has to search and deliver stuff in a matter of seconds and catch up as soon as possible when she falls behind while reorganising stuff in the luggage. Add to that the fact that the aforementioned backpack is usually heavy and that a live twitter stream had to be updated and the job might become a nightmare. I know how it can be. I used to be a pacer when my dad started running marathons and I was a kid on a bike usually much bigger than me, with a backpack definitely taller than me, a timer I constantly had to look at and all the duties that had to be carried out upon request.

We started at 10:30 CET from Leuven in the flemish region of Belgium, crossed the city and headed to Oud Heverlee in the countryside to have a peaceful run with no cars around. Peaceful places can hide trouble though, in the form of uphills and irregular terrain that usually make the run more exciting but not as smooth as an ideal course would be.
Since the beginning I was worried about the left foot which, coming from a stress fracture some months ago, could have given me a reasonable cause to quit the challenge. I had been worrying for nothing, or well, for the wrong foot. The right one was giving me some signs of weakness and stress from the extensors and another zone near the tarsus already at km 12. It was a very weak signal, weak enough to be completely ignored for the rest of the day.
The sight of a little blonde girl who smiled at me as she knew what I was running for convinced me of the fact that all those little aches were just a side effect of my body’s adjustment to the pace, the distance, etc.  I knew I was wrong. But that helped. So I winked at her, she smiled me back and I kept running.

I was not following the pace I planned to run at and started a bit faster probably due to excitement and the low temperature. I was so sure I would have lowered the speed sooner or later. Therefore I ignored that too.
At km 15 we started going up, approaching a nice zone called Zoet Water, next to the forest of Oud Heverlee, with a natural water spring. No need to stop for a refill this time.
The run was going smooth and I was approaching the 21st km when I informed Priya that finally there would be no more climbs. I hadn’t even finished that sentence when we entered the city of Leuven again to go to de Vaartkom, the canal that goes to Mechelen. But, to get there we had to run on the ring,  a quite steep and 3 km long ring. I was relatively fresh and that climbing gave me no reason to worry.

The second part of the course was all along the canal. Basically no elevation. But the milage was starting to kick in and the 34th km was the one that I felt for the first time on my legs. Numb, completely. I had a banana and two pieces of boiled and salted potatoes and kept sipping water slowly and constantly for about 10 minutes. At km 37 I felt fresh (such a beautiful oxymoron) again and kept going shrinking the distance to the full marathon. I don't remember much of that part. I passed at km 42.2 in 3h21' and felt great.
I didn't know that I was raising the wall I would hit very soon. That crash occurred just ten minutes later around the 45th km, when I suddenly felt my legs like two heavy stones, my stomach incapable of processing any food nor fluid. Any action was kind of futile. But the clock was ticking and the only thing I could do was to read the pace of 5 min sharp per km. I found it hard to go below it.
Less than 7 km and I would have been allowed to wake up from that nightmare. But 7 km is long, especially when the body is not helping to move on and when the foot I had been ignoring started yelling out its disappointment in the form of an acute pain like the one of a large needle stuck in the middle of the extensor tendons, ripping apart tissues at any collision with the ground.
Still, 5 minutes per km. Not slower. Not faster.
At km 48 things got better again. So much better that I got excited again and when I met a group of old retired people on their saturday afternoon promenade along the canal, I shouted at them "gentlemen, I'm running since 48 km". They were scared.

I was not running the last three on my legs. Rather on my mind. My fuel was a mix of adrenaline, dopamine and endorphins I was producing for free that made me forget everything around me and focus on the finish line I could see now.
I raised my arm to the sky, then stopped the timer and hugged Priya.

The 30th of November I thought myself a lesson. Achievement is an attitude. Sometimes it is good to keep such statements in mind.
I am 32 miles old.