How I Ran 100km With Zero Marathon Experience and 8 Months Training

My experience of the Italian ultra-marathon, il 100kmdelpassatore

I arrived in Rome in October 2015, three months after the end of University. Having written and read dead languages for three years, I was hellbent on trying to actually speak a current one. I had originally wanted to go to France, but after no luck finding jobs there I managed to land a job teaching English in Rome. I came with my then girlfriend (a bit hasty for someone so young, I hear you say), and you’re right; after living together from October we split up after Christmas, and after lived in different parts of the city and were much happier for it.

I’ve always been sporty, but since I had decided to hang up the rugby boots after university and with no chances of casual 5-a-side straight away whilst living in a new place, I was struggling. Half-hearted jogs, infrequent sets of sit-ups and press-ups, circuit training sets in nearby parks were what I was trying to keep up but I wasn’t inspired and often hit snooze and stayed in bed.

My situation at this point made me realise that there are two things that make me want to exercise: one is exercising with other people or in a team, and two is having something to aim for. For me, doing exercise because I feel I have to is the biggest de-motivator of all.

It was the first of the above that made me sign up for 100km. I started a language exchange with my now good friend, Marco. He was a running enthusiast and showed me this 100km race he had done for the last 2 years. I have to admit the first time I heard 100km I laughed at the idea. Not in a million years, I said. I’ve never run a marathon, let alone just under two and a half. But the event itself looked appealing. It started in the historic centre of Florence, went past the Duomo, to the outskirts of the city, wound up through the hills Italian Job-style, into the mountains, past small Tuscan towns, followed the river through the night and finished in Piazza del Popolo in Faenza. Maybe I could walk it?

So when Marco explained that there are 3 checkpoints (35km,48km,65km) where you can pull out and still get a medal, I saw no reason not to. It all went from there.

On returning to England at Christmas I decided it was time to commit. I bought some new trainers, downloaded Runkeeper and went on a jog, the goal being 8km (I had never attempted to run more than 6). It was hell. In England it was raining, I was dodging puddles, running down identical-looking country lanes, looking up at grey skies, seeing my breath in front of my face and wondering whether I had miscalculated the route and run double the distance it felt so far. That’s an important thing. I’m not sure whether I could have done this in England. Italy is almost always blue skies. Even in the winter when it’s cold and crisp the skies are still blue, and this made a world of difference for me when getting out the door to go running. What’s more, I got to run around the incredible Villa Pamphili, the villa of an old Italian family open to the public, with amazing gardens, paths and buildings.

At first it was hard but improvement in running is all about consistency. People often ask me how I run distances of more than 10km regularly. There’s only one way — slowly, with a gradual increase in distance, and with initial discomfort which then subsides when running becomes a regularity. I followed the marathon training schedule of shorter runs midweek and a long run at the weekend with roughly a 10% increase on the long run every week and on the shorter runs every couple of weeks, and it almost became a routine. However, one thing I didn’t ever do was beat myself up if I missed a day. Some weeks I might even have run once or twice, but that didn’t matter. If I was enjoying it, no problem.

After missing the sign-up for the Rome half-marathon I just jumped in and ran. No problems and I completed it in around 1hr 35. However, I did have time to sign up for the Rome marathon — I finished in 3hr 23mins, which left me pretty chuffed.

So finally the day arrived. 100km. I was only 1 of 3 Brits to take part, and born in the same year as the youngest competitor (1993). I travelled to Florence on high speed train with Marco and another running friend Filippo. The atmosphere at this race was fantastic. If a marathon could be compared to a Sunday morning church service then this was a private christening. These were the real enthusiasts, and so many people knew each other personally. They were all kitted-out. I don’t normally feel self-conscious wearing generic cotton adidas sports socks but in this crowd everyone had on running-specific synthetic asics. Marco, Filippo and I met a man whilst waiting for the toilet who had done over 600 marathons (he was in his sixties), and that year had run 10 in 10 days. Indeed, the average age was probably closer to 50 than to 30 — I was amazed that these guys were about to put themselves through such an ordeal.

I can’t count the number of times Marco had warned me on our practice runs, “walk the uphill at the beginning”. Even whilst running the first leg I started talking to an old man who told me to take it easy in the first 50km, because it’s almost all uphill. So you obviously know what I chose to do. In Italian they use the word testardo, literally translating as stubborn but with more of a kick of criticism than the English. I’ll never forget the word, or the pain which ensued from being so stubborn.

The first 20km ascended into the mountains on some quite steep uphills, giving a spectacular view of Florence and the Duomo reflecting the light of the evening sun, placed in the centre of Florence’s distinctive clay-coloured roofs. As we climbed through the hills the gated houses left their hoses hanging through the fence, and some families set up their own tables of fruit and drinks. More people were running and talking, and as is common in the Passatore, many runners had friends cycling along with them. The race organizers provided restoration stations every 5km which included tea, coffee, water, gatorade, even wine, along with a feast of food options ranging from banana to nutella wraps. 100km is an uphill battle from the start (in this case quite literally), and your body can only digest around 200–300 calories per hour, so it’s recommended to start fueling from the very beginning.

As the afternoon drew on and the sun turned from crayon to watercolour, I realised I’d made a big mistake. My legs were tired, my face was even more tomato than normal, and despite my own objections at 30km I had to start walking. I’d run 62km in training without stopping, and I knew that if I was walking already this was going to be a long ordeal. But things got worse. I started to stumble, dizziness came over me and I was forced to sit on a wall for a while to recover some energy. On arriving at the next checkpoint I went into the ambulance. My blood pressure was low, although my heart rate was strong. I was offered a ride back to Florence, but with 18 hours left until the race closed, I backed myself to recover with a drink and a few nutella wraps. It took 30 minutes until I began to walk again, thanking the volunteer ambulance staff (all restoration station and ambulance teams at every 5km are volunteers in this race), and only having 65km ahead of me.

This was unquestionably a low point, and in my mind I would reach 48km then bail out. And this may well have happened, if it hadn’t been for a 48-year-old Neapolitan university professor called Alessandro Piazzola. At first he was like a guardian angel, although I wouldn’t feel quite the same 12 hours later. Alessandro looked a bit tubby to be tackling 100km. At the time I met him he was walking, and had been doing so for most of the race. He was strangely direct, asking what I did for a living before he asked my name (I think he was trying to conserve his energy by working out whether I was someone he wanted to talk to). I found out later that he was a professor of maths, was extremely fussy with numbers and measurements, weighing the exact amount of pasta he ate for each meal, and finished every sentence with the word capi? — the Neapolitan for the Italian capito, “understand”, the present form of which gives us the famous mafia word capisce!

But however annoying he later became Alessandro was incredibly important, explaining “the plan” to me down to the minutest detail at a time in the race when I couldn’t have been lacking more in direction. It would take us one hour and ten minutes to walk to this point, after which we would get a massage, change, eat, drink, and then move on to the next point which, if things went to plan, we would cover in around 55 minutes, after which we could, depending on how we feel, run the next stretch which would bring us to the next massage station — capi?! This was Alessandro’s third time doing the race. He had previously got a very good time but had picked up a foot injury this year round, or so he said. But it did mean that every so often he would say something like “if I’m right then there should be a small drinking fountain round this corner”, or “we should soon turn right over a bridge and get to the restoration station”. Annoying, perhaps, but reassuring all the same.

However at this point we were still at 35km. We walked to 48, which was a winding and steep road uphill following the river. As the darkness set in other things came to life. It was champions league final night, and as we followed the sound of the river over quaint bridges and through small villages, we passed bars glowing and buzzing with what must have been the sum total of each village’s inhabitants. At 48km you can get a massage and change into your clothes for the night, strapping on your torch and every luminous armband you could find in the shops.

From here it became difficult. Downhill, yes, but it’s hard to describe how reluctant my legs were to move at this point. After 18km more of running we walked the rest. Stoppages were longer, food and drinks, were more, and every time I had to stand up after sitting on a bench at a restoration station my legs screamed at me to stop. The country lanes seemed to go on and on, interrupted every so often by a cobbled town and a wide street. When dawn arrived I felt like I was looking at it behind a screen. It was incredibly beautiful, stretching over the Tuscan fields and the hay bales and small huts, cutting through the vineyards, but the numbness I felt physically meant I couldn’t fully relax and appreciate such a thing emotionally in the way I normally would.

We had almost arrived. We were still walking, the streets were empty and all that could be heard were the sound of the birds. This began to feel like the long walk home after a big night — everyone just wanted to arrive, most people were becoming a bit quiet, and there was something which felt a bit unnatural about being up when everyone else got home hours ago. Mine and Alessandro’s brief friendship had peaked and troughed, and I was ready to lie down in a dark room and start to feel human again. Lots of people stopped to take a picture of the 99km sign, and Alessandro and I had now joined forces with two others which gave me some sweet relief whilst he asked them whether they capied for a while.

But if it felt like hell for the last stretch, there was something special about running into the square in Faenza, seeing your name on the big screen, taking your medal (and more importantly complimentary three bottles of wine), and finally heading to bed. I finished in 15hrs 56mins. If it sounds like a long time, I can promise you it felt a lot longer.

It’s incredibly life-affirming to do something like the Passatore, and this reason more than any is why I think it appeals to those who do it. If before you felt self-conscious sitting in a restaurant and eating on your own, that doesn’t seem an issue any more. If you doubted your ability to solve a problem, complete a task, handle a difficult situation, the knowledge that you’ve completed such a difficult feat gives you a sense of calm which it’s difficult to acquire without putting yourself through something so testing.

I don’t know yet whether I will attempt the Passatore next year. There’s certainly something special about the event, however crazy it might seem. For me personally, it felt like the climax of my year in Italy. The knitting together of learning a language (I couldn’t have communicated with the ambulance people or indeed Alessandro without Italian), the physical challenge, but also the beauty of the Italy and its people.