Milan Marathon

I'm on day two of lounging on the couch after being hit by some sort of intestinal virus. This is the second time I've gotten sick this season and winter hasn't even started! I sort of want to blame it on being outside in Milan all day Sunday, but that seems sort of like a lame excuse. It's a good introduction to saying that I was outside all day in Milan! We were there for the marathon, of course. Piero had one athlete running and I had five. Mine were just there for fun while his was trying to qualify for the Beijing Olympic Games. The day was cold and overcast which was good, but there was a lot of moisture in the air and the streets were wet which is not good. If you're an amateur marathoner it probably doesn't influence you that much. When you're running around three minutes per kilometre the story is different. You really use your feet to push off and the surface you use for that counts a lot. Ottav1o had decided to stay with the second group that was supposed to pass the half marathon mark in 1h05'. Right from the start you could see that they were going a little too slow. He said that he tried to speed them up by saying something to them (2 pacers) and pushing them ahead, but they still were going too slow. At 14 miles he decided to go ahead alone. He ran by himself for 17 kms. That's a lot of time to runby yourself. He was actually able to catch a few from the first group, but inevitably he paid for all that effort on his own and lost a full minute in the last 2 kms. His final time was 2h11'41", not good enough for a qualifying effort, though many comments were made on his courage to go out on his own.

He'll have to run another marathon in the spring. This means a road trip for us, I'm pushing for Paris :-)