SURPRISE! CENTRAL PARK ARRIVES AT KM. 43 And 790
I’m all right, even if they are not trained to these race distances, and my preparation for this race was not objectionable, I’m tired but not destroyed.
We are finally in Central Park, missing 2 km. I try to live a wi fi share with friends the final stages but can not find it, after a few kilometers. a straight face, I become coach of myself and work on my mood, get back on the field smile, I look around happy while recording video.
Meanwhile, I continue to look for energy exchanging cheers and thanks to the public that has not stopped pushing me for a moment. One of them, which immediately became a friend offers me a chocolate, I take it with enthusiasm, I had eaten gels and bars regularly until now, but a chocolate I like the idea.
We go from Central Park to walk a few hundred meters of Park Avenue, and then re-enter to the final piece, I expect the last climb and the finish line. I raced always alone, apart from means, the company of all the friends and fans Yorkers a couple of kilometers including two dance steps with a friend dell’oncologico Romagna. In this part of the race I would love to see a friendly face with whom to share the arrival, I try to look also in the audience to feel at home.
Stefanoooo! Here is a friendly voice, I understand why my name called and not Jorge, is the fantastic Mariella, without her we would not be here, I find it in the audience of the last kilometers. I press on toward his infectious smile, I go to the barricades to hug her, I am grateful for this gift.
Now it, the Garmin gives me 42 km but I see the arrival, now walking just, I love the last applause, the cheers and smiles Jorge let’s go, thank you all, a little ‘I cry a little’ laugh.
Here they are, I can finally see the stands in the top of the hill, I look around, I smile at all and I get smiles while doing the last steps of this journey, another time I will not forget and that, like all important achievements, changed again my life.
MEDAL AND THE GREAT EFFORT
Cut the finish line, I would kiss the ground as do the samples, but arrivals are followed and stewart invite us to not stop. In passing the finish line seeking a friendly face, someone in the group, I finished four marathons in my career as a runner and I was always alone, I miss her a hug right now.
In so many events space reserved for athletes is not open to spectators, physical contact, so important for me, it is something that is totally sacrificed to security.
Here’s my finisher medal, to sanction the completion of the most beautiful marathon in the world, now I can say I, I ran in New York! Tomorrow, as we have recommended all, made an around the city with the medal around his neck, yet understand something of the relationship that these people, with those who have sweated and snorted through the streets of its beautiful and bustling city.
You will be welcomed as a hero in every public place, to congratulate the road will be the result of public incitement on the course, two days experienced by the protagonist are well worth a little fatigue and sore legs.
Here, finally, a friendly face, Alberto Belli sat on the sidewalk, shortly after the area where Ups trucks have brought the bags with dry clothes, speaks little and shivering, did not even have the strength to get up and take the mantle windproof aluminum, has tried, despite being an Ironman just over a month, I’ll take it to him and I cover how does a dad with his son.
For sure is not thinking of getting up to hug me, but now it myself, I would change my sweaty clothes but the temperature only and does not recommend it, sins of a super-efficient organization, there are no spaces repaired to perform the operation with a minimum of comfort.
Fatigue takes soppravvento, the race is over, now we can feel tired. During a test of endurance the mind controls and manages the ineffective perceptions keeping the focus on the lens, but just after the stop, in the operation is finished, resurface the primary needs, rest, refreshment of the body and mind.
In New York, the last thing I had anticipated concerned the return to the hotel, another challenge, but that’s another story.
The day, which kicked off at 4.30 of a clear November morning in New Yorke, so the name of my fellow adventure and room technician like me, Alfonso Ruocco Gragnano, the country’s best-known pasta and good in the world, coming to an end.
We expect a shower a little ‘rest and the usual dinner at Serafina, an Italian restaurant on Broadway. By the way … where Alfonso, the way he went alone, briskly toward his dream and when I came in the room his phone is there where he had left in the morning, but he is not there.
He speaks little English, like me, maybe even less, arrived more than an hour before me, so I said Mariella, when I call to put the current worrying absence of Alfonso, who has not returned yet.
But that’s another story that I will tell between a thank you and the other, in a few days, along with other moments of the trip that changed my life and the lives of all of us that we were among the thousands of runners of the marathon New York 11/03/2019 exactly so, as we write the Americans, to whom we first and largest.