2009 Piceno Marathon: a live experience

This post describes a live experience for the May 19th 2009 Piceno Marathon and gives you insight of what it is really look like. Below you can find a translation from the original Piceno Marathon live experience. The Piceno Marathon is in the top 30 of the Italian ranking (number 23) from the number of participants, it is one of the oldest marathon in Italy, being already at the 28th edition (2010). Along with the Collemar marathon, it is run in beautiful places in the Marche region. However, contrary to Collemar, it is in a flat race with Porto San Giorgio and Porto Sant'Elpidio. The post below refers to the old course starting from Grottazzolina, which was the starting point in the last 7 years, before the move to Porto San Giorgio.
This is the main philosophy of the Piceno marathon: "We have the ambition to communicate broadly the spirit of everything which represents our territory: entrepreneurship, small-scale industry, profession, culture, education, traditions relating to land, BEAUTY. This spirit never stops running!"

Thanks for posting my result. I would like to say that the timing of the race is not really excellent, but taking into consideration that the temperature at 11 am reached 30 degrees Celsius and the path is not suitable for runners who want to close a marathon well, I do really feel satisfied. Well, I can tell you my experience in short, maybe some friends or runners will think next year to participate in this race, they will benefit from my experience.


08:40 am and the marathon started. We were around 400 runners. There was also about 1000 participants for the 10 km race. We all started together. So real-time, but we literally walked for at least 50 m. We then run within Grottazzolina, the path is pretty undulating, and we crossed after 4 km the starting line again, then the path leads to Fermo at about 18km. At the 6th km mark, the runners are confronted with the choice to go right to continue for the marathon, left for the 10 km. Everything goes well: the feelings are positive, flat and straight path amidst very beautiful hills, green galore, majestic trees, two-storey houses, with beautifully tended gardens, festive grandparents who happily playing with their grandchildren. Temperature is rising at 21 km, I have passed the half marathon with good timing for me of 1h40 and 30 seconds. Everything proceeds normally. At 23 km, I began recording times exceeding the 5 minutes / km.
and I realize that before me a long stretch of asphalt slightly uphill. At the end of the day, I flatter myself that this slope will have to end sooner or later, then go ahead with a sacrifice. Miles after miles I arrived exhausted at 38 km, there in complete darkness. Many fellow runners stop, some were walking, I still need to complete about 3 km of a  steepest ascent. I notice some hints of cramps in the calves. At refreshment I need to stop, and actually my pace is about 7 minutes per km. My thinking is that I still need to close this race and that time has only a relative value. Finally, among the various hardships and pain I arrive to finish straight. Satisfaction: this is my third Marathon that I was able to complete. I thought I would have retired at around 37 km, for the first time since I'm a runner. The brain only rebelled against that crazy idea, however I had nothing left to give physically! Let me give advice to some joker: in marathons maths don't work, comparisons of certain races do not work the same, who wants to check and compare the times of races in different locations makes himself or herself only confused. Every race and event that takes into account of different location, different weather conditions, different period of the year, etc.