The day after a marathon is always the best day. You sleep, you get up at your leisure, you move a little sorely going down to the breakfast room of the hotel but you also enjoy, in a certain sense, the aches and pains… After breakfast you go back to walking around the city where you ran the day before, you see the kilometres, the refreshment points, the places of fatigue that have returned to their usual normality. It’s fun to scroll through social media the day after a marathon. Especially after the New York Marathon which, for those who love and run at a high pace, is the mother of all marathons. The next day we were all heroes, tired, stunned, satisfied. Heroes who count minutes and seconds. Who measure the routes with GPS to make up accounts that don’t add up. Heroes with blocked legs, muscles screaming, stiff, like any Pinocchio going down the stairs. Heroes stopped on the sides of the roads. Uncertain and sure-footed heroes, Heroes with the smile and joy that only a conquered dream can give. There is a time for everything but there is no time for the marathon. Two hours and fifty minutes? Three? Three fifteen, three and a half, four? Numbers. AND who cares of numbers. There is no time in the marathon because everyone has their own and it is the best time. Strong, very strong, slowly or walking, athletes and runners who do two different sports. But it’s not a technical fact. There are no walls to break down or climb over. The dream is the same for everyone but they are a thousand different worlds. There are those who don’t give up, those who always push to the end, those who have to be personal, those who would sell their soul for a minute less, those who stop if it’s not a bad day, those who take a selfie an inch after the finish line to post on social media, those who do 42 kilometers and you’d never know it. There are those who laugh, those who get angry, those who cry and there are those who suffer because there are also a thousand ways to exorcise fatigue. And that is always there, for everyone. There are those who high five, those who reach the finish line with their children, those who applaud the bands playing, those who applaud the Bersaglieri, those who find the strength and agility to even mention a couple of dance steps. There are those who believe it and those who pretend not to believe it. There are those who say never again and those who say until the end of days…You have to take on the marathon, then it stays inside you and never leaves you. Especially the next day…