5^ Maratonina di San Martino

Passo Rolle's JWOC 2009 Long

Last week I spent two days running orienteerig in Primiero with my friend Kvaal. My feelings on running in the forest with a map were actually quite rusty, but I really enjoyed the few trainings we did, even if the November weather makes you more tired and consequently less inclined to train.
We ran in Passo Rolle on the JWOC 2009 course, which is in my opinion one of the best long distance tracking of JWOC I have ever seen. We organizers weren't very lucky on that day; it was on July, my team was putting the controls and checking the course and what I perfectly remember is that, during the day of long distance, I was very closed to be frozen at the refreshment point for the whole race and, looking at the runner's faces, what I can believe is that it was a kind of tough day for them...
I was supposed to run MOV last Sunday but unfortunately, as on Saturday afternoon my orienteering club decided not to go there because of the scary weather forecast, I decided to run an half marathon in the town of Paese instead. Since I could have met some friends and good competitors there, I feel sorry about not to have been in Venice this year. I guess that I was ready to run well there.

Maratonina di San Martino (11. November 2012)

Concerning the half marathon, the weather conditions in Paese were almost the same I've found a few days ago in Venice (and -as Paese is closed to Venice- the same which where expected by the weather forecast in Venice). Definitely, November is not a good time to enjoy running here. At least, I was lucky with the temperature: there were about 14°C, which isn't cold at all for November.
Although the course -entirely tracked in a flat terrain- permits any runner to run his/her best, due to the weather conditions, on the starting line there were about 600 runners, not as many as in the last year' editions. I was firstly running with my Moroccan friend Abdoullah Bamoussa, not even trying to follow the crazy machine who was leading the race from the first meter (i.e. the Kenian runner D. K. Tum). We ran together for about 5km, then I couldn't stay with him, even if the speed wasn't so high, and I crossed the 10km line 1'30'' later than him. My feeling wasn't good during the first half of the race. Fortunately, in the second part, I started feel more fresh and I finished the race at the 3rd place in 1h10m21s, which allowed me to win also the regional half marathon tile.
The men's race results of the 5th San Martino Half Marathon follow.

1. David Kiplagat Tum (Ken/Avis Macerata) 1h05’55”
2. Abdoullah Bamoussa (Mar/Brugnera Friulintagli) 1h09’00”
3. Giancarlo Simion (Silca Ultralite) 1h10’21”
4. Gabriele Cossettini (Atl. Dolomiti) 1h12’05”
5. Francesco Duca (Violettaclub) 1h12’41”

Full results here.