Race Report: Saint Anthony of Padua Marathon

Here’s another one of my older race reports. Sorry for the lack of information. This one was for the Maratona S.Antonio in Padua, Italy. My sister, Annelle, and I (along with our friend Irene and Steph) were going to visit my parents and little brother who lived in Rome, Italy (at that time). Since we were going to be in the “area,” I thought, why not run a marathon out of this trip! So Irene and I ended running our first “international” marathon.

Below is the brief report that I did.

-M

Saint Anthony Marathon – 4/24/05

This is one very organized marathon for a small scale. The Italians are very friendly, and even try to talk to me in Italian… even if I look very Asian. With the hand gestures, one can understand and if you listen carefully, you can get some words. Overall, it was a wonderful experience.

The rain made it a little difficult because the roads were slippery and my shoes got a little heavy. This is a point-to-point marathon, where you run through about 9 little towns.  The crowd is not that great except in Castelfranco and when you finish in Padova.  When you enter most of the little towns, they have a crowd of people screaming for you, most of them were proud to see the few of us female runners, screaming, “Brava! Brava!  Fuerza!”   An announcer on a microphone even called out my name! I think that was in Castelfranco(?)

On the long countryside roads, though, if you’re a slow runner (like I was, compared to most of the other runners there), you better have some music with you because you might find yourself alone, unless you try to catch up to the person in front of you…

If you’re not used to running on cobblestone, you better practice running on some, if you want to run this race. I wanted to sprint to the finish, but that was impossible because it was cobblestone for about the last couple of km’s – till the finish line.

Overall, it was an awesome experience for me. I would definitely recommend this to someone who wants to experience running a small international marathon.