Roma Pineto parkrun
9:42am, 8th Jan 2024 | Roma Pineto parkrun | 3 Comments
Blog by 57.5 Degrees of Pain
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I was lucky enough to spend New Year in Rome, which gave me the chance to visit the city's two parkrun events. Both advertised that they would be on for New Year's Day, so I selected this one for Saturday 30th as it would be slightly trickier to get to using public transport on January 1st.
The Pineto Regional Urban Park lies northwest of the city and parkrun takes place at the northern end of the park. There's plenty of options to get there, I took the Metro A line to it's western terminus (Battistini) and caught the 146 bus north which stopped close to the park entrance. The Gemelli station on the FL3 regional train line is 500m from the entrance. A run from the centre of the city would be about 7-8km while the most scenic approach would be to take the Metro A to Valle Aurelia and run 5km or so through the park.
I met a couple from Kirkcaldy in the bus, they'd bussed up from Naples (2.5 hours!) as this was the closest event, they found a coffee shop very close to the park entrance while I went to look for the view. The park is about 80m higher than the city, and there is a rather famous Vatican dome to act as the centrepiece of your photo.
It was easy to find the start by some picnic tables, and with the 14° temperature and a number of English speaking tourists, standing around chatting was very pleasant. As 9am approached we had a tourist briefing in English, tourist introductions, acclaiming a local doing his 100th run and the main briefing in Italian (no lack of locals on the run) before we set off.
The course is a two lapper, but compressed into an inverted U shape. You set off up hill, then descend in a wooded section which brings you back close to the start after 1km or so. Then you loop around a meadow on fairly flat ground before a long gentle climb back to the start and lap 2.
Looking back to the start from the meadow
Almost all is dirt path, with two short sections on grass, excellent in road shoes in the dry but probably slippery when wet. The first 1km has some tricky footing where the terrain slopes down to the left and you have a choice of several narrow dirt paths running in parallel on slightly different levels.
I have had a bad back of late, though it is worse sitting and lying than running, so set off conservatively in about 10th place. Three speedsters disappeared quite quickly leaving a nice group of us to run together for the first lap. The back warmed up (Rome temperatures help!) and I overtook the 5th and 6th runners near the end of the first lap, maintaining a steady pace to stay in 4th until the finish.
With 54 finishers (a typical number), it was all very.laid back organisationally. No marshals (but comprehensive signage), cones for a finish funnel, the requisite number of finish volunteers but no more, like parkrun in the old days.
What they did have was a trumpeter (more enthusiasm than skill, but they say he is getting better!) and two tables of cakes, prosecco and other goodies. While the person doing their 100th run was the excuse for the celebration, apparently it does not take much excuse!
Plenty more food and drink appeared from those cool bags!
The Pineto Regional Urban Park lies northwest of the city and parkrun takes place at the northern end of the park. There's plenty of options to get there, I took the Metro A line to it's western terminus (Battistini) and caught the 146 bus north which stopped close to the park entrance. The Gemelli station on the FL3 regional train line is 500m from the entrance. A run from the centre of the city would be about 7-8km while the most scenic approach would be to take the Metro A to Valle Aurelia and run 5km or so through the park.
I met a couple from Kirkcaldy in the bus, they'd bussed up from Naples (2.5 hours!) as this was the closest event, they found a coffee shop very close to the park entrance while I went to look for the view. The park is about 80m higher than the city, and there is a rather famous Vatican dome to act as the centrepiece of your photo.
It was easy to find the start by some picnic tables, and with the 14° temperature and a number of English speaking tourists, standing around chatting was very pleasant. As 9am approached we had a tourist briefing in English, tourist introductions, acclaiming a local doing his 100th run and the main briefing in Italian (no lack of locals on the run) before we set off.
The course is a two lapper, but compressed into an inverted U shape. You set off up hill, then descend in a wooded section which brings you back close to the start after 1km or so. Then you loop around a meadow on fairly flat ground before a long gentle climb back to the start and lap 2.
Almost all is dirt path, with two short sections on grass, excellent in road shoes in the dry but probably slippery when wet. The first 1km has some tricky footing where the terrain slopes down to the left and you have a choice of several narrow dirt paths running in parallel on slightly different levels.
I have had a bad back of late, though it is worse sitting and lying than running, so set off conservatively in about 10th place. Three speedsters disappeared quite quickly leaving a nice group of us to run together for the first lap. The back warmed up (Rome temperatures help!) and I overtook the 5th and 6th runners near the end of the first lap, maintaining a steady pace to stay in 4th until the finish.
With 54 finishers (a typical number), it was all very.laid back organisationally. No marshals (but comprehensive signage), cones for a finish funnel, the requisite number of finish volunteers but no more, like parkrun in the old days.
What they did have was a trumpeter (more enthusiasm than skill, but they say he is getting better!) and two tables of cakes, prosecco and other goodies. While the person doing their 100th run was the excuse for the celebration, apparently it does not take much excuse!
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