Over the past year, I have grown accustomed to racing long distances on little training, a strategy I don’t necessarily recommend. April 2017, I gritted my way to a Boston finish in 3:01:34 off of about an average of 26.5 Miles the preceding 12 weeks, and with no run over 12 miles. Six weeks later I ran a 2:56:35 at the Vermont City Marathon off of an average of 29.5 Miles the preceding 12 weeks with one long run of 18 miles.
For the 2018 EA7 Milan Marathon I ran an average of 22.5 Miles the preceding 12 weeks with one long run of 17 miles… Certainly not ideal by any standard, and even lower than I had previously calculated.
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| Race Expo! |
For the past 3 months, I have been studying abroad in Milan, Italy and have been fortunate enough to travel around Italy, France, Germany, Hungary, Switzerland, and the Netherlands, just to name a few. While it hasn’t been the easiest to balance running, traveling, classes, and being in a foreign environment, I decided there was no way I was leaving Europe without running an International Marathon, and what better place to do it than my home city.
During this blog post, I am going to try and highlight some of the differences between racing in the United States vs. racing in Italy. For starters, you don’t necessarily have the “right to race” in Italy, i.e. you can’t just sign up for any race and run it like you can in the United States. Every runner who signed up for the marathon had to either have a sixty-euro medical exam done, clearing them as physically able to run, or be a member of their IAAF country affiliate. For Italy, that would be FIDAL, and for the United States, it is USATF! This meant that I had to renew my long dormant USATF membership from 2011 in order to race. Another difference was that my race bib was made of some strange printed fabric paper, instead of the traditional paper bibs I am used to. Finally, running in Europe, for whatever reason, is an incredibly male “dominated” sport. When I looked at the results for last year’s race, only 15% of the finishers were women, and this year it was only slightly higher at 16.5%!
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| Course Map |
On Sunday morning, I arrived at the starting area around 7:30 am with my girlfriend, Charlotte. This was usually earlier than I would have arrived for a 9:00 am start time, but we were told if we did not arrive before 7:45 am there was a possibility we would not get through the metal detectors and security in time. The line moved much quicker than I had planned on and I was through at around 7:50 am. The only problem was I had chosen not to use my race bag which I could store and pick up after the race as I did not want to risk any of my valuables. As a result, I was left without my phone or jacket for over an hour before the race. To pass the time I did some light stretching, ran about a mile warm-up and ran to the bathroom. . In Italy, or at least this race, the portable
toilets are only stocked with one roll of toilet paper each for all the
thousands of participants, and they aren’t replenished when they run out… Moving
on… Overall, the layout of the pre-race activities was extremely hectic to me. I did not figure out exactly where to go for the start line until 15 minutes beforehand.
For this race, I was in the first wave of runners who had previously run sub-three hour marathons, so I was right behind the elite runners. My goal for this race was to run even splits and stick with the 3:00 pace group, three runners with yellow balloons attached to them, for as long as possible.
Dieci…
Nove…
Otto…
Sette…
Sei…
Cinque…
Quattro…
Tre…
Due…
Uno!
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| 10KM Split! |
We were off! On a side note, numbers one through ten basically covers the extent of what I have learned studying the Italian language this semester… Sorry, Mom. I tried to settle into a rhythm from the gun but it was difficult due to the sheer volume of runners, much like at the Boston Marathon. I was ahead of the 3:00 pace group for just a few minutes before I relaxed and allowed them to pass by me. I had decided to use my Garmin for this race as in Europe the markers would be in kilometers instead of miles and I didn’t feel like doing mental math at “Kilometer 32” trying to convert my total time to my average mile pace. I instantly regretted this as my Garmin did not sync up with the GPS satellites properly and the first few miles were dreadfully off, I had already decided by 5K that I would only be looking at it for the total time in order to calculate my 5K splits, which I knew I could do pretty easily.
One thing about the Milan Marathon is that it has a huge amount of turns and I constantly felt like I was turning, making U-turn’s or looping back towards the same area we had previously been. Our 3:00 pace group was incredibly massive, probably over 100 runners, which made every water stop hectic, to say the least. At our first water stop, I nearly did not grab a bottle in time. You read that right. At every water stop, the table was lined with hundreds of 0.5L, 16.9-ounce plastic water bottles, something I found extremely wasteful and unnecessary as runners would drink maybe a fifth of the bottle and then throw it to the side. There were some friendly runners who did hold these bottles and yell “Aqua!” and pass them around to those who needed them before throwing them. I hit 5K in about 21:35, a few seconds off of sub-three-hour pace.
Milan, like most Italian cities, has its fair share of cobblestone streets and as a result, we were forced to run on cobblestone and rail tracks for about 2-3 miles throughout the race. While I’m not sure this necessarily slowed me down, I definitely did not like the feeling under my feet, especially later on in the race. At around 10K, we passed by Milan’s most famous landmark: the Duomo! For some reason, Italians love shouting out landmarks as they run by them, so all I heard for about a minute as we passed by was “Duomo! Duomo! Duomo!”. I’m not sure I would ever shout “Citgo Sign! Citgo Sign!” while running the Boston Marathon, but to each their own. I hit the 10K split in 42:52, pretty much perfectly on pace. It was here that I took my first Gu; a Strawberry-Banana PowerGel. I’m going to come straight out and say I do not recommend these at all. They taste much worse than other Gu brands and they did not sit well with me. However, as I did not have many options for nutrition, I was stuck with them.
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| Near Mile 20... |
We continued to wind through the outskirts of the city during the next few miles (I will include a course map in this post to highlight all of the turns) as the sun steadily began to rise and the race started to heat up. I had not been used to running in hotter temperatures as Milan, and Europe, in general, has been experiencing a particularly cold winter. The late start now meant that the temperature was beginning to reach the 60s, which is not awful for a marathon, however, it felt much hotter with minimal shade and the sun beating down on us. I hit about 1:04:08 or so for the 15K, still with the pace group, and feeling strong. It seemed that everyone in the 2:58-3:05 marathon vicinity had decided to stick with this pace group as there was literally no one in front of the pace group and no one behind it.
I started to feel the first bit of fatigue around the 20Km mark. Nothing detrimental, however, I was now aware of how my legs were feeling after the initial excitement had worn off, i.e. I was racing a marathon. We hit the halfway mark, 21.1Km, slightly ahead of pace in 1:29:41 for about a 6:50 Pace. Shortly after we passed the halfway I made the conscious decision to run behind the pace group by about 10-15 seconds. This wasn’t because I couldn’t keep up with them at this point, but because I had grown tired of running in this massive pack and competing for water positioning at every stop. Moving back caused me to feel the best I had all race from about 22Km to 30Km. My breathing was smoother and I also felt less hot outside of the large group. I stayed where I was positioned until we started making our way back towards the finish. I hit 30Km in 2:07:43, still about 20 seconds ahead of schedule!
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| Almost Done! |
At this point, I was really starting to feel the fatigue and could tell I was slowing down for the first time. Another note, the EA7 Milan Marathon is marked solely in kilometers except for one spot… Thank you for reminding me, Milan Marathon, that I was passing Mile 20. Hitting “The Wall” definitely still exists in Italy. I started to lose contact with the pace group and I decided to fall back and pace myself rather than blow up the final 2-3 miles sticking with them. Surprisingly, or rather, not surprisingly, my legs were the part of my body giving me issues, not my breathing or my heart rate. My breathing was akin to easy pace running, I just could not get my legs to turn over faster. I guess I kind of deserved to suffer a bit at the end because of my (lack of) training. After a rough stretch from 35km to 39km, I could feel my leg turnover improving a little bit. I wasn’t necessarily picking people off, but I wasn’t getting passed very much either. I hit 41Km and could really start to feel the pain in my legs. I refused to glance down at my watch time as I believed that it would already be in the 3:00:00+ range. One thing that I learned in this marathon is that regardless of whether it is in kilometers or miles, the last marker in a marathon feels equally as long. I rounded the final corner and had only about 200m to go. I was surprised to see the clock ticking in the 3:02:XX range! While I want to say that I then powered it home with an all-out 200m sprint to finish under 3:03:00, that was not the case. I crossed the line in a chip time of 3:03:03, a 6:59 Pace, and good for 271st place in a highly competitive field. I’m sure there was only a handful of us, but at least now I can check “1st Overall American at an International Marathon” off the top of my bucket list.
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| Finish! |
I had an interesting post-race experience, to say the least. After taking the metro to the Duomo and getting my favorite vegan chocolate gelato at Venchi, I retreated back to my room. Just a few short hours later I would find myself tripping into our glass living room table and cutting open the direct bottom of my foot on broken glass. As if running a marathon was not exciting enough, to top it off my body decided I needed a bruised bloody foot and a limp. I am currently on Day 169 of a run streak and boy was it fun running a 9:36 Mile last night.
While I technically qualified for the 2019 Boston Marathon at this race, I know for a fact that it is not going to be enough. I was 1:57 under my cutoff time, however, last year you had to be 3:24 under the cutoff to even get in. Before this race, I was already registered for the Run for the Red Marathon on Sunday, May 20th so I wasn’t super worried about qualifying here. I am going to give my body about a week to recover, which will give me five weeks to train for this marathon! As far as future races and plans go, I am excited to say that I have a full schedule coming up! This summer I will be staying in Boston, MA and interning at Bank of America. I will also be finishing up a semester early and graduating from Bentley University in December! For races, I am currently registered for the Run for the Red Marathon (Pennsylvania) in May, the Kodiak 50 Miler (California) in August, the TARC Fall Classic 50 (Massachusetts) in September, and the Ghost Train 100 Miler (New Hampshire) in October!
I hope to have a lot more to post about in the future, and as always, thank you to everyone for giving this a read!
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| Post-Race |
