I love Rome. Even though I’d been there many times, that day everything was different — the entire city center was closed off for us. It had something strange about it.
5:50 AM. Dawn was breaking as an enormous crowd began to converge under the Colosseum, still lit by the night lights. Despite the presence of more than 7,000 runners, the atmosphere felt calm and relaxed.
I felt a range of emotions, with anxiety inevitably gaining the upper hand. There was only one goal: reach the end, no matter what. I think that if I hadn’t managed to finish, I would never have attempted such a feat again.
The Start Link to heading
The start happened in waves. The members of each wave had a different colored bib. Naturally, being a newbie, I ended up in the last wave with the surrender-white bib. Just as we were crammed into the starting corridor, we began theorizing the worst possible way to tackle the marathon: chasing the pacemaker. For those who don’t know, the pacemaker is a person who runs at a pace suitable for completing the race in a specific time: for example, there was the 6-hour one, 5:50h, 5:40h, etc. The mistake was primarily mine, because following my companion, I decided to go after the 4-hour pacemaker, who would have an average pace of 5:40 min/km — completely unsustainable for my level of preparation. Another important fact is that these pacemakers were relative to each wave, so you’d happen to cross the 5h one and have to ask which wave they were for, because they had no distinguishing marks.
The Critical Phase Link to heading
The first 25 km flew by. I maintained an average pace of 5:40 min/km, which was already an achievement for me. Despite this, after a full two hours from the start, we still hadn’t caught the 4h pacemaker (and we never would). That was the moment of collapse.
In the span of a few minutes, I felt a sharp drop in energy, a tiredness like never before, unbearable foot pain. I slowed down dramatically and tried to stay on my feet. The kilometers began to stretch, and I kept seeing myself overtaken by countless people. At one point, the situation was so critical that I decided to take advantage of a refreshment station to eat an apple, hoping to recover some vital fluid.
Around the 30th kilometer, I started seeing the first people sitting by the roadside, a few ambulances stopped with a runner on a stretcher, others stopping to vomit in the middle of the road. From that point on, there were various spots where you could abandon the race while recording your time. I saw various people veering toward the exits, and the temptation was strong for me too. But each time, I thought: come on, in 5 kilometers there’s another withdrawal point — worst case, I’ll make it there. The sight of people with fancier bibs dropping out (in theory, every color other than white was supposed to be more experienced than me) and withdrawing from the race made me feel justified in doing the same. After all, what am I thinking, with only a few months of training behind me?
That was more or less my spirit in the last two hours of the race: keep kicking the can a little further down the road, break everything into small milestones to go as far as possible.
After the 35th kilometer, I regained a bit of pace — a slow pace, around 6:20 min/km, but steady nonetheless, and that was no small thing.
The Finish Link to heading
At km 39, it seemed already in the bag. We re-entered the historic center, and I started hearing music again and seeing lots of people cheering. I felt new energy flowing into my body; the unbearable foot pain became less and less present, and I even managed to regain some momentum toward the finish line.
Needless to say how much satisfaction crossing the finish line gave me — and above all, being able to stop. The feeling of having finished and not having to push anymore gave me a sense of absolute peace. A few meters after the finish, the staff was distributing a mask and medal in a single package, and a little further on, the thermal blankets too.
The finish line looked like the disembarkation point of a boatload of migrants — people wrapped in thermal blankets, lying on the ground here and there, agonizing from the effort. Sitting down was far from trivial: bending my knees caused absurd pain, and to sit you were forced to use a “Leaning Tower of Pisa” technique.
Conclusions Link to heading
I definitely underestimated the marathon. With 6 months of training behind me, I thought I could at least finish the race comfortably, but that wasn’t the case. The biggest mistake was overestimating myself — not that I didn’t know it, I’d been told everywhere, but race-day adrenaline voided every piece of good advice. I paid for the first 25 km of apparent invincibility with the last 17 of atrocious suffering. Surely, if I had followed the strategy of starting slow and picking up speed toward the end, I would have enjoyed the race more and probably my time would have benefited too.
Ultimately, I believe the marathon is more of a mental exercise than a physical one — imposing your mind over your body and making it keep going, despite everything, step by step, for 42 kilometers and 195 meters.
