Giorgio Calcaterra: 2012 IAU 100 World Champ Interview
April 23, 2012 by Meghan Hicks · 3 Comments
Giorgio Calcaterra of Italy defended his IAU 100k World Championship by winning the 2012 race in his home country of Italy in 6:23:20. Hear what he has to say about his performance.
Ps. Thanks to Maurizio Crispi of www.
[Due to the poor audio quality of the video we're posting the transcript first. Sometimes there aren't better options on location and we're forced to take what we can get.]
Giorgio Calcaterra: 2012 IAU 100 World Champ Interview Transcript
iRunFar: Good afternoon, I’m with the 2012 IAU World 100k Championship Champion, Giorgio Calcaterra, of Italy. He’s a native of Italy so he just had the win in his own country. It’s just a short time after the race now, how are you feeling?
Giorgio Calcaterra: I’m feeling very well but just after the race I felt a little bit tired. After having some drink and a little bit of food, I’m feeling much better.
iRF: So just a “little bit tired” after having run 100k?
Calcaterra: Quite so.
iRF: You had a great day out there. You ran a personal best by about 2 minutes. How do you feel about your personal best?
Calcaterra: I am very happy and I know that this one is my personal best in the 100k. But I have already run a personal best at a very difficult race and since that one was so hard, I knew I could run better here.
iRF: This course in particular you found to be a challenging course to set your personal best?
Calcaterra: It was quite comfortable here because it was very flat, very few bridges to run up, and the temperature was quite ideal especially in the first part of the race.
iRF: Let’s talk about your race. As the day went on, were you competing with your watch, against time, or were you keeping your competitors in your mind?
Calcaterra: I was careful of who was behind me but as time went on, I competed against time. (Significant background noise.)
iRF: So running mostly by other people and then later with your watch?
Calcaterra: No, this special race, I was careful of other runers. Other races, I look more frequently at time. This race, I was careful with time/kilometers because I was afraid of running too strongly. (Significant background noise.)
iRF: So the last 20k, by yourself, running through town, what was going through your mind?
Calcaterra: During the last lap, I was quite afraid of being passed by others behind. I had no information about their position. So since my pace was slower than the first laps, so I was careful…
iRF: Well, obviously you saved enough for that last lap, enough to achieve the winning position, and also achieve a personal best. He saved enough that he wasn’t overtaken and won by several minutes and had a personal best.
Calcaterra: I was confident I could reach the finish line with a personal best. I was very tired at the end and I was afraid of not managing it.
iRF: Congratulations on working through those challenges. Congratulations also on your championship for the second year in a row. On behalf of us at irunFar as well as all the folks watching this, we say, “Congratulations!”
I would also like to take a moment to thank our translator, Maurizio and to acknowledge your website. You are a journalist and a photographer for a running website here in Italy. Please tell us your about your website and your name.
Maurizio Crispi (Translator): My name is Maurizio Crispi, and my website is www.ultramaratonemaratonedintorni.com.
iRF: Thank you and thanks again for the translating today.
Giorgio Calcaterra: 2012 IAU 100 World Champ Video Interview
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Filed under Interviews and Profiles, Races, Video ·
Meghan Hicks is iRunFar.com's Senior Editor, a contributing editor at Trail Runner magazine, and a columnist at Marathon & Beyond. The converted road runner finished her first ultramarathon in 2006 and loves using running to visit the world's wildest places. For more information on Meghan and her adventures, please visit her personal website.
All posts by Meghan Hicks
Poor Meghan , her videos sometimes get drowned out by terrible background noise. Nice interview all the same. Giorgio is a machine.
Sorry about that Graham and all. I knew this interview’s audio would be pushing the limits of do-able. I hope you can, in addition to what comes from the transcript, get a sense for Giorgio’s cool, kind demeanor and how humble a fella’ I learned he was. The perfect gentleman and champion.
Grande Giorgio!
He works as a taxi driver in Rome, and if you’ve ever been to Rome, you know how crazy traffic is over there. No wonder he’s mentally prepared for the hardship that comes in a fast 100k.
Ten years ago he used to race marathons and run 20/30 of them in a year: everyone blamed this “subversive” attitude, but it eventually led somewhere: Campione del Mondo, twice in a row!