It was a great race in spite everything, as added bonus I did better than my goals. I stayed at a friend place, woke up at 7am to find a cloudy sky and cold weather (about 50F) and some light wind. As soon as we arrived in Pescara the wind was stronger especially on the main marathon road along the sea. My mood was totally flat no excitement whatsoever, I was just determined to repeat 4:37/km for 20 miles as I did three times during my long runs and then evaluate my situation and trying to get the best out of it. This race included also a half-marathon with 800 people, a non competive walk with some 200 people and a marathon with 200 people. It is a 3 loop course, first one of 13.1 miles along with half-marathoners and then 2 shorter loops of 6.5 miles. The course is completely flat, at sea level right in front of the sea going north for half of the distance and south for the remaining one. The only "hill" was a bridge 200 meters long 30m high the rest was pancake flat. No crowd support except for the last 100 meters before the finish line, the rest of the race was a time trial with a few runners here and there, the wind and the roaring sea. The race started at 9:25 and immediately I settled in a relaxing pace that I discovered soon was a little bit faster than I wanted, in spite my efforts to slow down I thought we were going south we had a tail wind, so I decided to maintain the 4:30ish per km. As soon as we turned around (mile 4) going north the wind was definitively making an impact on my efforts, but I did my best to stay behind my wonderful fellow half marathoners and I passed the bridge with the hill with about 1:30 of advantage respect to my time table. Still heading north the road was wider it was really difficult to stay behind anybody so the whole line of runners moved right next to buildings or parked cars, whatever was offering a better protection. At km 17.5 first 180 turn and we were heading south again, my advantage was the same meaning that I kept a more honest pace. First passage in front of the finish line and goodbye to the half marathoners, I was at mile 13.1 in 1:36:02, now the fun begins (so I thought). We were going south (tail wind) and there were 3 people in the next km in front of me and about 2 behind, and no one else around, just a few cars trying to run over the volunteers at the intersections. Going north was a fight against the wind, my times went from 4:37/km to 4:50/km, but I was OK with that, another 180 degree turn and going south my times and my speed were good again hovering around 4:28-4:30. I passed in front of the finish line (again for the second time) to start the last loop and at mile 20 I was still 1:30 ahead of my schedule (2:26 and change). I got a big mental push out of that, I calculated that with 5:00/km (8.00/mile) I would still do a great time, so I decided while I was still going south to keep pushing as fast as I could (around 4:30), going north the story was the same of the previous loop, my times went immediately up, but I was picking up people (most of them were marathoners still in their first short loop) and my times never went above 4:55/km. Third 180 degrees turn I was heading south with 4.5 km to go and wind under my wings, I wanted to go down to 4:30/km again but it was not going to happen, I could do just 4:35-4:37. Final 2 km were on some kind of cobblestone, but I couldn't care less I was flying again until the finish line. This is the end of a journey started in Ogden in 2006 when I did 3:20 and change. Since then I couldn't put together a strong training plan or race day was just bad. I thought at certaing point (last year) that going under 3:20 would be near impossible, but I kept pressing on and finally all those long runs at MP and all those miles finally paid off. I can squeeze a few more minutes out of this training, because today's conditions were hard (the wind), no crowd and no runners around, the course was flat but monotonous. It was really like one of my long runs, where I am by myself going out and back on a 6.2 mile stretch. In Florence in 40 days I will try to go after 3:10, this time I have nothing to loose. My splits from the official timing service: Distance Position Age group Time Average pace
Lap 1 17km 52 11 01:17:01 4.32
Lap 2 27.5km 51 12 02:05:43 00:48:41 4.34
Lap 3 38km 47 11 02:54:31 00:48:48 4.35
Arrivo 42.195km 44 11 03:14:40 00:20:08 4.36
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