I am happy with the return to the #sportingmemories thematic contest because in my teenage life I dedicated a lot of time to sport, I was strongly motivated to become a sportsman but I didn't really know which discipline. So I tried many disciplines: football, volleyball, basketball, swimming, running and gym. I have always committed myself with great determination but in the long term I cannot stay constant and the situation has worsened for a couple of years, I have literally become lazy!
But at the age of 18 I was particularly good at running, I trained 3 times a week (Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday) and was joined by my father, a runner for 30 years, who further stimulated my passion. On Sunday morning we used to join a very dense group of runners, about 30, all friends of my father, registered with a local sports association of the discipline. The starting point was a tennis sports center which was located in the suburbs and from here you could choose different routes based on the length and difficulty of the route: 10 km, 14 km, 16 km and 21 km. After a few months of training, I managed to complete the 16-kilometer lap with the group, without falling behind. A good result given the many years of athletic training of the runners.
It was 2002 and I participated in my first race called Vivicittà held in the city of Bari, a 10 km course in the center of the metropolis, a very famous race and every year about 10 thousand runners, high-level professionals from all over the world participated. the the European and African continent. I participated in the beginner's edition, being my first competition and not being registered in the professional register. The route was not difficult, I was trained, and I started at my pace: my strategy was not to start very fast immediately because the probability of having difficulties in the first 2-3 km would have been higher. And so I went at a standard speed, without acceleration, up to km 6 and then I decided to start increasing the pace.
When you are in the race, you don't know how you are actually doing, a lot of athletes overtook me, others I managed to put them behind me. I remember well that I had taken a good pace but I found great difficulties in climbing a long bridge and with a good slope. Usually in these stretches you change pace: short and with a higher frequency. Taken by the desire to continue at a good pace, in the middle of the climb I felt a great difficulty in moving my legs: they felt heavy, as if they were made of stone, I was in full crisis and I wanted to give up. But the finish line was not far and with great willpower, rather than physical, I continued at a slow pace and only 500 meters from the finish I resumed the previous pace and kept it until the end.
I arrived exhausted, I thought I had done double the kilometers, but I paid for the inexperience and the management of my emotions. But in the end I got an excellent result: 56'23 "which is not bad time to be in my first race. To be clear, I was better than many athletes in my father's group. The first classified instead finished with a time of 32 about minutes.
It was a really good experience and I like to remember it because commitment and consistency over a long time always pay off, a rule that applies in sport as well as in any other sphere.