OUTSIDE THE LINES: This is not a record

He calls it “my adventure”, and it’s exactly that “my” that makes understand how much Flavio Ghidini, an 30 years old trail runner from Bergamo, cares about this experience. The motivation that pushes him to get himself in the game is not the fame or some sponsor. The motivation that pushes Flavio to walk for an entire day on a 24% uphill is the wish to challenge himself, to see where he can arrive.

His idea is very simple: walking up on the Carosello 3000 Mountain, going down with the cableway, and then up again, within the opening hour of the lifts, and feel how his body and his mind react run after run.

The single run counts 3,5km lenght (going up almost vertically under the cableway line), and 850m positive drop, probably one of the biggest in the entire valley. To make the “adventure” even more difficult is the altitude: almost the whole path indeed, is above 2000m.

He doesn’t have a real objective, it is more a challenge with himself. But actually Flavio has an idea about where he wants to arrive with his adventure: he will be satisfied if he’ll conclude at least 6 runs, even if he’ll try his best to do even more.

And hence, in the early morning Flavio starts his adventure, direction Carosello 3000: the first runs are the easiest: he doesn’t feel the fatigue yet, and his legs are perky and quick. At the third run he scores his best time, 47 minutes.

It’s more or less 1pm, and Flavio starts the sixth run: he starts to feel the fatigue and his times get higher. In about one hour he arrives at the top, where now his parents and his friend Stefano are waiting for him, and again down to start the seventh run. At this point it’s really hard, it’s more than six hours walking uphill and warm of the central hours of the day he starts, as he says, to “see the stars”. He arrives at the top relatively early, so he goes up again for the eighth time. His legs, regardless the good training, are now hard and rigid, the speed is definitely slower comparing to the morning runs, but his willpower is still strong, and at the end Flavio arrives another time at the top of the Mountain.

He goes down, his “sufficiency” has been largely reached and overpassed, but at this point he finds another objective. Indeed Flavio walked 6800 meters of positive drop, another run until the end would have been too long, but 7000 meters drop are there, really close. So he takes for the ninth time the uphill, until reaching 7012 meters drop walked in a single day, and there finally, stops.

Flavio’s adventure has been carried out, he got in the game and he has been able to overcome himself. But he doesn’t want to talk about record, because the challenge that he issued is only with himself, it’s a “personal” adventure between him and the Mountain, who tested him and pushed him to the brink. And through the fatigue, he found his freedom.