August 7, 2023, edited by Camilla Pizzini
If you asked Alessio to describe himself in three words, with a scowl on his face, he would tell you: versatile, emotional, and a dreamer. He hates being put on the spot, but after an interview that delves quite deep, a concise beginning was needed.
You have been running for years and we have seen you in many different races now; how did your passion for running begin?
I started to see running as something serious in 2016, after spending a few years doing a few races, but without ever applying any method or dedication. That year I was on Erasmus in Norway, and I had set my mind on running the Trans d’Havet, an 80 km race that runs through the small Dolomites, a route that appears before me every time I leave the house. For me, finishing that race meant having arrived, having achieved what I wanted to ask of my athletic self. I finished it, and it was such an intense and all-consuming experience that what was supposed to be my ultimate goal became the first chapter of a long story.
And so a great passion is born, and not only that...
Over the years I have dabbled in everything from triathlon to cycling, passing through mountaineering and ski mountaineering, I never went “all in” on running. I have always appreciated sport as something I liked to do, rather than something to do to pursue a result. For this reason, my growth in trail running was not so fast or steady, but in the end I liked it that way: I discovered things about myself and met people who would later become my references as well as friends. Then Covid arrived: running was the activity with the fewest limitations and the game was to do it more, increasing the burden of expectations towards something that, until that moment, was important but not that much. The result became an end, a way to prove my worth, to myself and to others.
Competing as the only way to compensate for insecurities, using running as an anxiolytic, took the healthy relationship I had with sport and turned it toxic; a toxicity that began to contaminate other healthy parts of my life as well. Every now and then, a good result, a race well done, made it seem like everything was going great, but it was not a mirror for the magpies and little by little my body began to give me signals. What I did not want to listen to found another way to make itself heard; so my anxiety from insecurities arrived in my stomach and the races started to go badly, always, because if the stomach does not work, everything else follows suit.
A very famous quote says: “Strength is built on failures, not on your own successes.” Was it the same for you?
Feeling so bad, failing continuously, was the best thing that could happen to me. At first, as a good engineer, I started to study, read, and inform myself about everything related to the food part. I changed my lifestyle, the food tactics in races became more and more studied, I took all kinds of supplements and spent hours cooking healthy food. It was a great turning point, which brought great benefits and above all gave me a great awareness of food - still extremely useful. But thinking that solving stomach problems of a psychosomatic nature by cooking organic food and taking pills of ferments and Omega 3 meant doing something, but not the right one. It proved effective but not sufficient.
Did it go as you hoped or was there something deeper? How much does the psychological part affect such work?
I found myself back at the starting point; and yet, I was eating well and taking all kinds of pills. There are two phrases I remember from this period, both coming out of the mouth of one of those people I had met in that healthy phase of my sports life: “But when will you stop thinking that your stomach ache comes only from what you eat, and maybe start really thinking about how you are?” - “Well, now that this race has gone well, that you feel so good and in balance, it is the right time to go to therapy.”
It was April 2022 and I had somehow finished my first 100 miles: I don't know how I decided I would try it, surely I would enter, I would have a session, I would come out convinced that it was useless and that my problems were now water under the bridge - in the end, I have always had anxiety and I was good at living with it. So good that, in the first six minutes of the first session, I had already cried twice. So used to living badly that, in the end, I had almost grown fond of it.
Three months later, I won the Trans d’Havet, crowned a dream that started six years earlier but above all my sport had returned to a way to have fun and know myself and the result, a consequence. In the middle of many highs and lows, at least, the stomach problems had a first and last name: anxiety. And by listening to it, going deep, little by little things seemed to take a positive turn.
But your growth path as an athlete did not end here, right?
With still great difficulty I decided to entrust myself - and trust again - to a coach, whom I chose because he is competent as well as empathetic, besides being a friend; the figure I needed to get a huge pebble out of my shoe: to get revenge after three withdrawals at the Lavaredo Ultra trail. In October of last year, I told him: “I want to run the LUT, finish it and finish it in 14h30’; I am in your hands”. So began a 9-month journey, made of patience, the one I had lacked, and many small steps, remembering what the goal was. They were beautiful months, where I felt that I was building something solid, where my anxiety returned every now and then to tell me something, but no longer ruined what were my dreams.
Tommy, my coach, and I built a great project but above all he made me understand that I could leave my toxic insecurities aside. I trusted, I ran the LUT, I ran it as I wanted and I finished it in 14h 27’. There is not much else to add. He taught me that, in the end, when you run a race, the only thing not to do is fall into the infernal circle of over-thinking, where I was constantly looking for something that was wrong, without ever focusing on the feeling and perceiving the effort most suitable to finish the race. During the LUT, I did not look at anyone around me, I did not make comparisons with other athletes, at every problem I looked for a solution and I always remained focused on myself. The only tactic that finally worked.
Any plans for the future?
For the future, the biggest project is to continue in this direction, because in a few weeks there is the UTMB, another big pebble to get out of my shoe. For sure this year has given me great vitality and desire to continue competing by changing the races, because, around the world, it is full of incredible scenarios to run and live. Next year is all to be defined, I always like to keep in mind that I would really like to run the Diagonal du fou on the island of Reunion, the Western States - lottery permitting - and why not, the Leadville 100, just to get a buckle to match the finisher belt obtained this year at Canyon 100 K.
© photo: Camilla Pizzini, Federico Bruttomesso