Hiding from the Sicilian heat

I'm in Italy for a famous road race, but the tarmac is almost melting outside, and I'm far from feeling fit and ready to roll

Castelbuono at night - the only sensible time to be outside.

I’m writing this week’s musings a little later than usual, as I’m in Sicily in Italy for the 97th running of the Giro di Castelbuono, one of the world’s oldest road races. All morning I've been following Italian men around this baking hot mountain town, wondering what is going on, and where we’re going, and why, and spending a lot of time waiting for them to finish talking to people they pass on the street, or to people who call them up on the phone. Italians really, really like to talk.

After all the shenanigans, including a trip to the race museum, and then some lunch in a cool restaurant overlooking some parched mountains, I’m now sitting back in my darkened hotel room hiding from the mid-afternoon heat. 

In the restaurant at lunch, I bumped into Kenyan runner Edward Zakayo - who was having lunch with Muktar Edris, the Ethiopian runner who beat Mo Farah over 5,000m at the 2017 World Athletics Championships. I asked Zakayo what he thought about Castelbuono. “When you go outside, it’s like you are on fire,” he said.

Yep, that sums it up pretty well.