Elbaman IV

While we were waiting for Dino to pull in Giorgio kept going back and forth on his marathon times. Four hours. No, four hours ten minutes. No, four hours fifteen minutes. Definately not under four. We were just there to have fun and I kept telling him to just forget about the time but he kept pulling it out of the hat so I told him to shoot for under four hours. He hadn't run a lot this summer and his only long run had been a mere eighteen miles but he had done a lot of mountain climbing during the summer so I knew that he had muscles. Now listen up all of you marathon runners out there: YOU DON'T NEED TO DO THE LONG SLOW RUNS. Stop it! Work on strength, get a solid foundation, then start doing tempo runs. That's what you need to do a successful marathon. The marathon was fun to watch. It was an approximate 8km circuit so if you stood in one spot you could watch your athlete go past ten times. I was standing next to some crazy people that were just yelling and screaming at people as they went by. The runners names were printed on their bib and since I'm quite far sighted I could read the name off the bib and yell "Hey everybody, here comes..." and this group of ten would pick up on it and start screaming his or her name. It sounds so silly but I had so much fun doing that! Just trying to give the triathletes a boost and see their faces light up (or not) as we yelled at them. Giorgio said that there weren't any mileage markers for the entire course, but we could tell that he was going to make good time. I saw Dino on the course as Giorgio was going on his last loop and we waited by the final shoot so that we could run in with him. His time: 3:58:17. Our final time: 12h37' (don't remember the seconds. Fourth place out of six mixed teams.

I have to say that this is the most fun I've had in a really long time and probably one of the races that I'm most proud of. We decided to go back next year, changing roles. I have a year to become a cyclist. Giorgio has a year to become a swimmer. We've signed up another hopefully reliable friend to be the runner. I'm really looking forward to training this year!