Let's clarify, I think I've never explicitly talked about the origin of my nickname, @ mad-runner, born almost by chance, but which goes very well with certain periods of my life, or with certain decisions, too. at the running level, which had implications that actually bordered on madness, or mad equal mad and runner equal runner, starting from the runner, about 60,000 km traveled in many years of amateur activity testify to the goodness of the affirmation, crazy, crazy also because I discovered a very strong passion for Texas Hold'Em, the poker-racing combination is very discordant on paper, and not easily conjugated, when one takes over the other.
End of the digression, let's go back to the chronology of the running activity, resuming from the autumn of 1985, growing physical shape, nothing transcendental, but the first small decent results, the first races on the track in the spring-summer of the following year, the first chronometric results worthy of being reported, with the speed that began to approach 4 minutes per km, which could be maintained for about ten km on the road, while my performance on the track was much higher, the classic times on 5,000 meters and 10,000 meters were not they lied, they were from that summer on 17 and 49 on 5,000, while in the double distance I stopped the time trial on a 37 and 50, demonstrating that I could hold the 3 minutes and 47 seconds of pace for 10 km.
These times as my personal bests held up for many years, thanks to the relative scarcity of races on the track, but also the fact that the absolute peak of my maximum performance occurred 8 years later.
But the track was only a relatively close parenthesis, albeit an important one, because almost all of the common races took place on the road, even if the times on 5,000 and 10,000 meters raised in a certain sense the quality of a runner, not being able to be put in question, being by nature certified in the distance and not contestable, my 37 and 50 out of 10,000 that was, not a second more and not a second less.
My first experience in another typical competition, which can always be played on the athletics track, also dates back to that period, the fascinating Ora in Pista, a race that consists in covering the maximum possible distance in exactly one hour in time available.
For that debut I used to force myself on the time I had obtained on 10,000 meters, to immediately try to break down and conquer the 15 km wall, which represented a good distance, nothing particular, but "travel" at 4 minutes per km for one consecutive hour was the limit of the "decent" runner for that time (now doing 15 km per hour is considered a half phenomenon, given the general decline of the current level ....)
Go on....