I arrived here in Rome yesterday morning. After a couple of hours of rest, I went out for a 4-hour walk around the city and came back in time for the mass at the shrine of our Mother of Perpetual Help in the afternoon. I went to bed early, trying to shake the jet lag.
Very early this morning I ran for two hours along my favorite running route: the Colosseum, Terme de Caracalla, Circo Massimo, Capitoline hill, etc. I was filled with memories of the runs I did here during the four years that I was studying in Rome (1991-1995). This was also where I trained and ran the marathon in 1995. The same beautiful view – what is different is that I am 15-19 years older and I am doing it barefoot (which I thought would have been impossible then). There was one famous runner who ran barefoot in Rome before – during the Rome Olympics in 1960 – and this was Abebe Bikila, the Ethiopian runner who won the marathon. So this morning, I felt that I was running in the footsteps of Abebe Bikila. Now I can feel the freedom and the joy of running barefoot. Running on the ancient cobblestones is not really difficult or painful. So this is what I will be doing everyday while I am in Rome for a month. This is my final training for my 800 km running/walking pilgrimage on the Camino de Santiago in Spain next month.