Marina's Bloggariffic

It’s a holiday on the 1st of November in Italy. And on this day, Claire, Cart and I woke up bright and early to head to the monumental Saint Peter’s Square for the 3km charity Corsa dei Santi Run.

Normally, trying to park around the area would be a nightmare. But luckily for us, participants could park their cars at a multi-storey carpark called Terminal Gianicolo at a reduced price. From there, it was just a few minutes walk to San Pietro.

And here we are, all nice and shiny! I’m so proud of Cartcart for joining us, even though I know that he’d rather stay home and relax

Oh! By the way, do you see our three digit number bibs? Unlike the run in mid-October, here it was very crowded with participants. In fact, when Cart and I were there at the registration counter last Sunday, just one hour after it opened, we were already number 526 onwards. Woah! There were already 500 people before us?!

The race started at about 10am and by then, there were so many people! Even while walking on our way to San Pietro, there was a crazy huge line forming outside of the porta-potty (which I have absolutely no intention of ever going inside again) Which is why you should always empty your tank before going out of the house kids!

In any case, it’s a bit of a confusion trying to get to the correct section as I didn’t see any signs for the 10km and the 3km runners to head to.

It was only later when the race started, we were herded to the correct lane by the marshals when they spotted the colour of our bibs. The three of us happened to be standing next to a huge organizational group. I was amused that they kept screaming out their region as soon as the cameras went towards them.

Not too long after, off we went! It was such a beautiful sunshiny morning. Just as we left the area, there were people cheering on at the sides. It was nice to see that even though I know that they were cheering more for the 10km runners! Hehe!

At every crossing, we had precedence to go even though the traffic light was red for us. It felt like such a privilege, as if we were a celebrity or a a royalty somewhat. I don’t envy the vehicles on the road though, they were honking at the policemen like mad, but it’s not like they’d have a work appointment to rush to!

It was a pretty easy run since we’re all running on a solid, flat path and we went to picturesque areas where we’re seeing with different eyes, the sights that we’d have missed as we ran through instead of rushing over in cars.

And before we knew it, we’re running next to Castel San Angelo (which is directly opposite of San Pietro) and thus we’ve already made a complete round and close to the finishing line already.

And we finished it in about 20 minutes or so. Hooray! Such a nice feeling! What would make it better is if I had my own entourage cheering me on, but that’ll be asking too much

And here are how we looked like after the race. Still fresh and clean! Not so red this time as it was an easy run for us.

And here is Cart.

Still looking good and hensem! I feel like such a bad wife for leaving him, as much as I’d prefer that we start and complete together, Cart needed to go at his own pace. Hopefully he’d go for more regular walks with me in the future

(Instead of always being glued to the computer … *coughs coughs*)

I’m a little bit disappointed in the goodies though, not much food freebies this time round. I spotted a stand where only this cake and a cup of water being distributed. But I shouldn’t complain much as it’s all for charity.

Next year, I’d love to try out for the 10km one. Each participants have medals … I want a medal too! But I think I just have to train a little more, for me, my aim is just not to be last and be forced to ride the “slow bus”

Here’s a video of the race :

On a slightly unrelated note, Alex, Claire’s fiancé joined us as well as her brother Peter and his girlfriend Katie who were in town and we were chilling out around the area after the race.

One of the places that we went to was Gelateria Pierrot where I found this interesting machine. It’s sort of like a blender/mixer. Intrigued, I wanted to try something different instead of a typical gelato.

And that was when I learnt that Frappè is milkshake = gelato + milk. There’s also the frullati which is like a smoothie made of fresh fruit + milk.

I was quite fascinated looking at my ice cream and milk being shaken together in the machine and some minutes later this is what my pistacchio and hazelnut frappè looks like.

Mmm! Totally yum! (I didn’t share) But with the amount of calories in there, my lunch was already settled

My friend Claire, exhilarated from her run in Brussels asked me to join her for the La Maratona a Staffetta. We both participated in the Roma Fun Run earlier in the year and so, I thought that it would be fun to participate in the 4km non-competitive run.

We met at the Flaminio metro station and walked towards Piazza de Siena in Villa Borghese. Coincidentally, there was a demonstration going on at the time hence a couple of stations were blocked, and the subway didn’t stop at there.

I was amused when she passed me a banana and asked me to eat it. And I started to hum this banana song.

Claire  : This will help to reduce the lactic acid when you run, so you don’t feel cramps

Me : Oh! Ok! *nom nom nom*

Claire and I both reached the piazza about 1.5 hours prior to the race and registered ourselves at the booth. There was one queue for the kids race, another for the 4km non competitive race and the last row is for the 10km competitive race.

After we registered, we were given our bibs and t-shirts. And this is our official tee shirt shaped like a bus. How very cute! I’ll never open it!

But I was very surprised to see a double digit numbers on our bibs when all of the previous runs that I’ve been to has always been at least in the thousands. Turns out that there were only 30 something people participating in the non competitive run and about 100 odd people for the 10km one.

Look, Claire is 22.

And here I am posing with my number 21 bib.

Anyway, I think that the low number is probably because the the race corresponds to another marathon the next day hosted by FAO which is a very well known organization. Also, I suppose this marathon was not that widely publicised and the fact that there was a demonstration going on perhaps. Also I guess the rougher terrain kept away casual runners (as you’ll see later)

Another thing that I didn’t expected was the amount of freebies that we got. I mean for 5 euro, I really didn’t expect to get any freebies at all. But I guess the lack of participants meant that we had more stuff. One of the booths were from Atac Roma, the public transportation in Rome which was the main organizer of the event.

This was what I nicked off this booth :

The round tin container is full of sweets, below it is a watch (which I have no idea how to use, but it’s cute anyway) a lanyard with a lipbalm attached to it (cheapo me is thinking that I’ve saved 3 euro from buying a new one) and a bus keychain. These alone costs more than 5 euro.

I feel proud of my freebies, more than this trainspotting guy

The next booth that we went to was this booth that had juice, cookies and gatorade.

I took a chocolate cookie here to much on before the race.

And there was the centrale del latte di Roma (Cart’s favourite) booth. But I only saw yoghurt being given out instead of milk. There was a big queue anyway, as the kids race had just ended.

Oh! Speaking of which, all of the kids had medals. *jealous!* How come we don’t get one too?!

They also had their own freebie booth too, where they could get a nice cotton candy, popcorn and balloons.

And if they were not tired enough from the race, they could hang on in this bouncy playbooth. I was fascinated by the dog’s head bobbing in time with the music.

And here is the stand, all ready for the winners of the marathon. I can only dream at this point of time. While I can run 10km, I’m pretty much just a casual runner. Running against professionals freak me out.

And of course before any race, it’s always good to empty your tanks. It’s not a good feeling to be running on high tide. So it’s a good idea to head to the toilets. Or so I thought …

Just look at the guy on my left grimacing as he left the porta-loo.

It was horrible! You can literally see all the crap floating in the hole made by other people. That by itself was scaring me off! Also there were dubious drops of liquid on the ring. I was so nervous putting my naked butt on it that I had to line it with toilet paper (luckily there was enough to do so)

Once is enough!

And then it was about 15 minutes to the start of the race. I quickly scanned through the path that were were supposed to go to and confidently thought to myself that it will be pavement all the way.

We queued behind the ‘real’ runners (they all looked so very fit and skinny) and watched them run off in front of us.

And just for posterity, we had a ‘before’ picture taken by a nice person who offered to snap a picture for us. Look at how nice and clean and shiny we looked. Oh, and also notice our sling bags.

I think I was the only fool that was carrying a bulky bag like that. But I couldn’t do much because I didn’t have a proper runner’s bag and there wasn’t anywhere we could deposit our bags 

And in no time, it was our turn! It was so strange looking at our group of 30 odd people. Smaller than when I participated in a school run even

Claire and I decided that our goal was to simply not be the last. But as soon as the signal was made, everyone else ran off quickly, and it seemed like we were last which freaked me out a little.

But I didn’t plan to sprint off because I prefer to keep to my own pace on a constant. We saw 3 young ladies who zoomed off at the beginning and when we caught up to them, they tried to run away as soon as they saw us. But in the end, it seemed that they wore themselves out too quickly and they cheated by walking through the barriers. Horrible! 

Nevertheless, I found out that we managed to run past at least 5 people.

It was a very challenging run in all honesty. While 4km seems like chicken, the fact that we were on a terrain made it really hard. We ran on gravel, earth, wet leaves, slopes, roots and whatnots. It’s (almost) like climbing the jungle.

I was dying! Luckily Claire was there to give me motivation. Here she is approaching the 3km mark. She’s amazingly fast! But I still prefer to keep to my own pace. I don’t want to kill myself more than I already am doing 

The run seemed to go on forever!  And my sling bag was bothering me, as well as my jacket which flaying all around (because it started to get too warm to be jogging with it on) This is why we need to have our partners with us to support us … and carry our bags!

But at length, we were approaching the finish line. The crazy thing is, as we almost reached the end, one of the competitor from the 10km run whizzed past us (they ran the same route as us, only twice) Woah! That’s crazy impressive!

But eventually, we reached the end (Claire saw the three cheater at the finish line before us. Boo!)  Nevertheless, we felt quite proud of ourselves. It was quite an achievement!

And here is our “after” picture. I have a “I’m gonna die!” look while Claire’s face looks really red!

By this time, I was too tired to get more food freebies as my brain felt quite fried. I’m not sure if I’d want to do this race again

But we are going to participate on another marathon this coming 1 November! Anyone want to join us?