DO NOT WALK, DO NOT WALK!

I have walked your way a thousand times in my dreams.

All my companions told me that it was better not to face you, that it was early, that many of you stop after you, that I would no longer have the strength to run again!

But from the little worm that you were ten months ago you have become an insurmountable Giant in my thoughts!

I had to sign up well in advance … so you called me!

Not a day passed that I didn’t exorcise you: with a word, with a joke, with a thought, with a strategy, with a joke!

In the previous days returning from a race I drove you … almost to challenge you! You immediately showed me your enormous dignity: hairpin bends, climbs, endless descents … and you never ended … never … but … you attracted me even more … I was moved by thinking of you, of thinking about the arrival … of how … if!

Strategies: organization, shoes, T-shirts, changes, mineral salts …… but I feared you!

I feared those hairpin bends, those gorges, that green, those climbs … those infinite descents!

Then in the morning: Florence, that square, that heat … those tourists … and the runners who, probably like me, were waiting … waiting for you!

We recognized ourselves for the bag with the design … and for the obvious clothing, for those paper bags that “showed” … as if to say I’ll be there!

Finally 15.00 … in front of me an inscription on a shirt: I was there fifteen times!

All this showing you makes me fear about difficulties! Here is the departure … here we are!

The race is extreme … hard …. sultry …. sometimes terrible … I no longer feel my legs for many kilometers … but I read an inscription in the dark: Marradi! Auf!

But I don’t even realize how much you still have to inflict on us!

There are no more columns of runners … but rare people, with the most disparate lighting means, lost in the dark! But … they are not people … they are dreamers like me!

I once read on a T-shirt of one who traveled faster than me: “goal: run!” … this was what we were doing in the darkness that I interpret as a metaphor for life.

The straight ones begin … the infinite “straight ones”: there are no more strategies … the legs … they don’t move except for that slow and very hard automatism they have taken for some hours!

You don’t have to walk, you don’t have to! This was my challenge!

Even the stars that appear from soft clouds covering the moon no longer interest me … the thought is in the breath, in the pain .. in finding another resource within me to continue.

You dear and indispensable friend follow me, help me and give me courage, but a migratory pain first in the chest then in the legs and then again in the spleen … it lands me … it almost makes me waver, it becomes the pinnacle of my thoughts!

I try not to think about it … and I go on … times get longer, thoughts also … distances remain inexorable!

Last refreshment … finally more or less ten kilometers … … in half an hour there are!

Maybe!

It has become an hour and more … someone passes me … what anger … but what an honor!

The whole race I felt the Magone at the thought of arriving in that square … on the finish line ….

Now … I feel that there is no room for emotion … but I have to get there … to conserve that residual energy to beat you! Do not walk! Do not walk!

And, great as you are, you give me revenge … those two who had passed me I see them … I see and recognize their shirts! Friends of fortune … the Passatore calls me I must pass you in these last infinite meters that separate me from that square, also coveted by you, the passatore grants me final revenge … and … when some other runners who have already finished the race incite me on arrival … I take back my sweaty place in front of the two gladiators … and I cross that incredible goal!

And now after two days I am here and I think of you … with battered bones and muscles that remind you … and with melancholy I say thank you … but … also: wait for me again … I fear you too much not to challenge you again!