Palma de Mallorca , October 17th, 2012,  hours 9.20 Half Marathon ( 21.098 km )

Time: 1h 33 m 07 s Position : 169/2200 Category: 21

Upon my arrival in Palma de Mallorca the weather did not seem very special: black clouds , strong wind and no hope for the change for better the next day. In fact, when I arrived the next day, one hour and a half before the race to get my bid number, it was raining and the whole area of the start, located on the waterfront was wet. The runners started the race with 10 minutes of delay from one another ( marathon , 10 km, half-marathon and relay), an idea which ended up being quite unfortunate because in the second part of the circuit of 21 km which passed through the narrow streets of the town , it was difficult to overtake both the runners who were naturally slower, and also the majority of the runners of 10 km, which walked along the circuit . The race was organized by the Germans of Tui and because of that fact there was a massive participation of runners from Germany ... the speaker spoke German ... in short, I felt as if transferred into Germany , also because of the weather  which seemed truly German. I managed to start among the first and the first 4 or 5 km I run at 4 min per km , after which I slowed down and kept a steady pace of 4 min and 20 sec for the entire first half of the race at the waterfront. Then I lost some second per km for the fault of those narrow streets but only 2 km before the finish I was right on time to  close the race with my personal best. Unfortunately, although it would be enough to run in 4 min and 30 sec, I slowed down a lot because of the strong wind that blew from the front. Despite of this fact, however, I stopped the chrono at the finish at 1 hour 33 min and 07 seconds , the best result of the year and the 21th position in the category that the next day would not have been mine anymore.  The city run was very nice, the supplies were excellent with plenty of great food and drinks on arrival, with the addition of non-alcoholic beer. I got the medal and delivered the chip and knew  my result immediately.  Everything was organized well enough, the only negative fact was that the T-shirt cost much more than it is in the European standards.