In December 2014, I donated one of my kidneys to my youngest sister who suffered from polycystic kidney disease...She had always wanted to visit & tour Rome...But with her disease, she never felt well enough to travel. After the transplant, that changed & as a way of thanking me, she gifted me a trip with her so that I could run the Rome Marathon!

As you can imagine, the scenery was incredible! The race started & ended by the Coliseum which was my favorite site of the whole trip. There was good crowd support & people cheering the whole 26.2 miles -- Well, they actually call it 42.195 kilometers. Unfortunately it rained the first 10 kilometers (6 miles) & the last 12 kilometers (8 miles) which made for some slippery traction on the 6 kilometers of cobblestone (I swear there was more cobblestone than that!) New Balance was one of the sponsors so in addition to the beautiful medal that looks like two old Roman coins, we also received a very nice technical shirt & a fantastic (large) backpack that you were to use to check extra clothes. Fortunately, the apartment where we stayed was within walking distance of the Coliseum/Start/Finish Line so we didn't need to check anything. There were aid stations every 5 kilometers (3 miles) which offered acqua (water), salt (Powerade), & frutta (oranges & bananas) -- No energy gels of any kind!

My Facebook profile photo that is part of this review is not from the Rome Marathon, but is from the Paris Marathon that I ran a week later -- Review of that race to follow!