Like other marathons, the Rome Marathon now leverages chip technology to provide runners with a lot of feedback and perspective on their performance…maybe too much “perspective”.

As I was basking in the accomplishment of completing the run…and enjoying the admiration and attentive care of my spouse (Sarah handed me 4 Advil and a glass of warm tap water), I started looking at the list of results….here is what I found using the site’s filtering mechanisms…

* Out of 11,725 “finishers”…I was 8,949th…(bottom 25%).  Ouch.  But there were a lot of non-finishers!  So there.

* Out of 9,118 men…I was 7,318th…(bottom 20%).  But there were…were…are no other excuses to be found.

* Eleven…11…10+1…men & women over 70 had better finishing times than me.  Wow…that hurt.

After letting that fact sink in long enough to be a sullen, unresponsive dinner partner…I went back to the filters and found…

* No…zero…nil…persons 80 years or older beat my time!  Although one 80-year old guy was only 15 minutes behind me.  (I have absolutely no…none…zilch…information on who tripped him at Mile 22.)

* Also using the “nationality” and “age” filters, I found that I finished #9 or in the “Top 10” of American men 55 and older.

* And of those 9…at least 4 had Italian-sounding surnames…which I am absolutely sure gave them some type of home field advantage.  So effectively…

I finished in the Top 5 at the Maratona di Roma.

Chairete…Nikomen!

Click on this link to see the impressive video of my performance near the very end of the race.  CE611773-2A29-468E-AB2F-DA3A9A21A99E

When I say to myself “I am going to walk for just little while to the 39K point and then start running…well maybe to the 39.5K point…well maybe the 40K point”…I mean it!