Having been thwarted in France in 2022, I ran my first ‘international’ parkrun in Athlone, Ireland last year, though to be honest it felt a lot like any UK parkrun. That run did however reconfirm that doing an easy parkrun the day before a Marathon is absolutely fine, so there was no doubt that I was going to do a parkrun in Rome today.
Rome has a couple of parkruns, however Caffarella seemed like the easier option as it is closer to the start of tomorrow’s Marathon, which is near the Colosseum. I therefore found a hotel which was only a 25 minute walk from Caffarella park, though there is a Metro station only about 5 minutes walk from the start of the parkrun, so it is easy to get to from a lot of locations within Rome.
Ironically by choosing this weekend to do this parkrun, the pre-run section of the morning felt a lot like a UK parkrun too. It seemed like the vast majority of those running were tourists, and the vast majority of those were British. There was therefore a lot of the normal chat you get at parkrun the day before a big event, albeit I’ve never seen runners being interviewed by the volunteers before.
The pre-race briefing was an entertaining affair, after a short briefing in Italian there was a longer version in English. The course was described and we were urged to stick to the main roads because “The small paths lead to hell” and also reminded to keep an eye out for bears. Trying to work out where to position myself at the start was pretty much impossible, so I went for roughly in the middle on the basis I’d find my place within the first few minutes anyway.
Parkrun routes vary greatly in terms of complexity, but this was towards the simpler end of the scale. We followed a path downhill before reaching a large field, which we ran around twice in an anticlockwise direction before following the same path back towards the start, though then breaking off for a very short anticlockwise loop through to the finish. Most of the run was on dirt paths, and whilst there were a few puddles and muddy patches, they were easily avoidable and trail shoes were definitely not required. Which was handy because I’d only brought the shoes I’m wearing for the Marathon tomorrow.
I didn’t give a huge amount of thought to my pacing. I set out at what felt like a reasonably easy pace, albeit an easy parkrun pace is invariably faster than an easy solo run pace. It was a pace at which I was able to take a few photos during the run, albeit the bright early morning sunshine, though extremely pleasant, did make taking a decent photo tricky.
As I entered the final kilometre, I decided to do a few strides to help my preparation for tomorrow. This did lead me to overtake a few runners, and the increase in my heart rate has seemed to confuse my Garmin which has deemed my training status to be ‘Unproductive’ despite being ‘Peaking’ at the start of the week. Thankfully those strides felt pretty easy, and I finished in an unofficial time of 23:51. When I did the Athlone parkrun last year, I did 24:36 on a harder course than the one I did today, so I’m content that my pacing was good.
Whilst much of the parkrun had felt familiar, post-run had a very different feel to it, at least compared to this time of year. There are water fountains everywhere in Rome, and it was very refreshing to be able to cool off before doing my usual post-run yoga, and then be able to walk back to my hotel without worrying about getting cold. There were multiple cafes where I could have stopped along the walk back had I wished to do so, though given I don’t like coffee I decided to continue onto my hotel and enjoy some porridge instead.
Overall I definitely recommend Caffarella parkrun, albeit I’m interested to know what the experience would be like at other times of the year. Obviously Rome attracts tourists throughout the year, though never as many running tourists as this weekend, so their average attendance is a lot lower than today’s attendance was. This afternoon I’m off to get my race number, then it will be plenty of pasta, lots of sport on TV and then an early night ahead of an early start tomorrow.
Scorpo Stories 