Roma Pineto parkrun, Rome

This parkrunday I’ve added one new Italian location to my list and visited the beautiful Roma Pineto parkrun. This comes after my last international trip to Riemer parkrun in Munich and adds to my other Italian venue, Milano Nord parkrun. First things first: Roma Pineto parkrun is a wonderful event, with a great course and it is hosted by a fun and welcoming team. You have to come, if you are in Rome and enjoy visiting new parkrun venues. However, maybe don’t come here in the middle of summer. Rome is already pretty unbelievably hot in summer and this venue is nearly 100% without shade. Look at the video highlights below, it seems we were running in the middle of an Old Western movie.

I will admit to being close to obsessive addiction. This year, we decided to go on holiday to Italy for just shy of two weeks. Two locations and somehow I booked the flight to Rome even when another airport was closer to the first destination. What should you do when you decide to fly out of Friday afternoon, right? So, if anything goes according to plans, Roma Pineto parkrun will be the first of two new Italian venues I will tick off. Yeah, I am moderately mental, but there are worse addictions, I think.

There are two parkrun events in Rome. I had no specific reason to pick Roma Pineto instead of Caffarella, but the alleged views on St. Peter’s did it for me. And they are really beautiful. Caffarella: next time I will pass through Rome. And I will.

If anyone wants to guess what new locations I will try next week before I publish the next video, give it a try in the comments. The winners get a shout out in the next weekly YouTube video on my channel. Impressive prize, I know!

Anyway, enough with my rumblings. It’s time to dive into some more info about Roma Pineto parkrun!

Trip to Roma Pineto parkrun and parking

The event takes place in the Pineto Sacchetti park, a large green (or brown) space in the inner outskirts of the Italian capital. Besides the tree-covered areas and the large meadows, this park hosts a deep and long ‘valley’ that makes for some pretty nice visuals while running on its edge. Funnily enough, it is called Hell Valley. With August weather, it fits very well.

Rome is a wonderful city with an incredibly high number of great things to its name. A great public transport network is not one of them. So, if you are staying somewhere central, getting there might not be as easy as it is for other events. According to the official event site, Gemelli is the closest station. This is an urban mainline train station that links to both branches of the underground network elsewhere. So a few changes will be needed. Once you get there, you will have to follow google maps for a 500m walk to the start.

Since I was just spending a couple of days in Rome on the way to another destination, I booked an hotel next to the start. I picked the Pineta Palace Hotel, less than 10 minutes walk from the start. Nothing extraordinary, but it is a nice 4-star hotel with reasonable prices. They also offer a shuttle service to Piazza del Popolo, if you are here for a few days of sightseeing and you want to get to the centre conveniently after your run. A taxi ride to the centre is about 30 euros, so on the expensive side.

Roma Pineto parkrun: start and briefings

The meeting point is next to the North West corner of this section of the park. You can enter the park from Via Montiglio, where there is a gate close to a small car park serving a local church. Once you enter, keep walking for about 50m until you are met with a nice view of the Vatican straight in front of you. Here turn 90-degrees right and start walking down the hill. After about 100m, at the bottom of the hill, you will have reached the meeting point.

There are some trees providing shade, where the volunteers seem to congregate and also prepare the post event spread. A couple of benches are also available, for bag drop and preparations. The team seems to be very well knit together: I suppose regulars have been attending Roma Pineto parkrun for a long time and you can sense the feeling of familiarity. That said, the many tourists were made feel welcome and never sidelined. I guess this must be an event that receives a small contingent of visitors most weeks. The event I visited coincided with the beginning of a bank holiday weekend, but it was also cursed by August temperatures, so that must have limited inflow from the UK. Sizeable contingent visiting from Poland, I think.

When it comes to briefings, this seems to be a very informal setup. There was no First Timers briefing, with most people being educated about the route one on one. I also think there were a couple of genuine first timers and I’ve heard one of the volunteers explaining how things work.

Just before the start, the main event seems to be a group picture. Nice tradition to have and everyone was invited to come together for it. Then it is time to move towards the start line, which is just a few metres from the meeting point. When everybody is ready (and has tied their shoes), a couple of sparse words from the RD and it is straight to countdown.

The countdown then comes, loud and clear. 3,2,1.

Go!

Roma Pineto parkrun course review – star ratings

Roma Pineto parkrun course review – route highlights

There were 41 parkrunners on the day I visited. This is not massively lower than during the last few weeks, which saw numbers of around 50 pretty consistently. There might be a seasonality effect though, because up to the end of June it was not unusual to see weeks with 70/80 parkrunners. If it is seasonal, it is understandable. The weather was horrendous, very hot and humid. And they told me it was worse earlier during the summer. Anyway, it is a small event that never felt busy, but also well attended enough that you are always around someone else. The route is very open, so, in theory, it could accomodate many more joiners.

There aren’t any bottlenecks around the course. A couple of tight turns and one segment where the turn is combined with a change in gradient and slightly unstable path, but that’s about it. Pay attention to your lines and your feet and you will not have any problems around this route.

Surface-wise, it is all hard path. There are holes and stones here and there, so it’s not a smooth one, but it is a very hard one either. Volunteers called it a cross-country course and I guess that’s a correct definition, but there was no grass, no major elevations and definitely no mud. I guess in winter it might get muddy, but I suspect that’s not a frequent occurrence. Road shoes are absolutely fine, unless you want or need some more ankle protection.

Elevation-wise, at 44m elevation gain over 2 laps, this course should be classified somewhere between flat and mildly undulating. The evil call to have a hill immediately after the start, however, will imprint in most participants and it will make calling it flat impossible. The counter to that is that the finish stretch is downhill: at least Italian course designers were not as sadistic as some UK ones that gifted us hills both at the beginning and at the end. The hills are fairly mild and there are very long segments where it feels completely flat. You will not run a PB here, but if you run it in mild weather you could end up with a good time.

In terms of course design, it looks like 2 interconnected loops that joined form a whole lap. And then you run both twice. I will let your imagination describe what the route plot looks like. My mind is naughty, so I won’t put down what it suggested. Furthermore on the course design, the central point where the two loops seem to connect is actual not a real connection. Here, differently from several other ‘figure 8’ designs, you never have points where parkrunners meet each other.

A quick Relive route plot is on my YouTube Channel, with longer video highlights embedded below.

This is a bit different, I will start with a weather report. I understand from the local team that it was not as hot as it had been earlier in the summer, but for my weak body acclimated to the British climate, it was borderline hellish. Hell Valley nearby kept smirking at me as I soldiered through. The run was a haze interspersed with delirious memories, so I might not be as detailed as usual with my course description. I had fun though, or at least that’s the memory I have of it.

Once it is time to go, everybody lines up facing towards the entrance of the park. You want to break everyone’s spirit early, so here you are immediately served with a nice uphill start on grass and hard path. It is not very steep: in terms gradient and length it is very similar to the start in Morden, the newest event in London as of August 2014. But I ran Morden at around 20 degrees, 10 less than I would enjoy in Rome. So I felt that little hill. That I did.

At the top of the hill it is time to turn right for a short straight crossing the fields. While there is some grass, it is mainly hard, dusty path. With several imperfections: we are talking about fun trails here, not a pressed park avenue. This straight section faces the Vatican, so if you are not hallucinating yet, enjoy the views. Towards the end of this flattish segment, there is an S turn under some trees that leads to short segment on a brittle path with some cross elevation. Careful not to trip or fall here. It is not dangerous, but it requires a tiny little bit more attention.

After the path levels up again, a gentle right turn brings up back nearly 360 degrees and starts an irregular straight section that borders the ravine of Hell Valley. It seems pretty steep down there, nice views if you decide to stop and take a peak. There is a good distance from the path we have to run on, so you will only catch glimpses through the trees. This section has a couple of minor uphill bits, but again, individually they are not something you should be concerned about.

At the end of this straight, another wide uphill right turn gets us up level to the start. Immediately after this turn, we take a hard left and start a short segment with trees on the left and meadows on our right. At the end, we reach the central point of the two loops and volunteers will be there to help us avoid temptation and don’t cover the short distance to the finish funnel. They have a fairly easy job during the first lap, but during the second one, skipping 1K will be VERY tempting!

Instead, it’s a 90-degrees left turn. This leads to a long straight with meadows on your right and Mediterranean bush on your left. No shade, this is the start of the second mini-loop. At the end, go around a fitness area, cross another small tree-covered area and then turn right and cross another open field. As tempting as it is, it is not time to come back yet, even if you can see runners going up the way back metres away. Nope, sadism time again. Turn left and start heading away from home again!

This will head towards an old, dilapidated building. Once you are close to it, take a slight right turn to enter a path that goes right by it and then turn 90-degrees right immediately after you have passed it. Cross the fields again and turn right: you are now on the final straight, the home stretch!

This is now a long(ish) straight segment with a couple of mild elevations. Towards the end, you will reach two small areas of trees on your right. After the second one of those, take a hard right and you will find yourself at the beginning of a fun downhill segment. This leads you to the meeting point area, where the finish funnel also is. First time around, muster some willpower and turn left again, to do it all once more. Second time around, enjoy the wonderful downhill finish and head towards the mini finish funnel/area.

Congratulations on completing Roma Pineto parkrun!

Facilities at Roma Pineto parkrun

There are no facilities in the park, besides a fairly interesting fitness walk. There were no toilets to be seen and no cafes. The event page suggests a cafe near the entrance of the park, but I was in a hurry and did not visit it.

As a competitor to the McDonald’s index, I am continuing to collect data for the parkbreakfast index: how much is breakfast at each location?

At Roma Pineto parkrun, I skipped parkbreafast. I know, shame on me, but it happens. Rarely though.

Roma Pineto parkrun: Video Highlights

As usual, I’ve taken a few video snippets during the run to give an idea of the course. If you like it, please subscribe, it’s a fun past time for me 🙂

The other parkrun videos on my YouTube channel are all linked on the course review and video highlights summary page.

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Achievements and performance

Conclusions

It was really hot when I visited Roma Pineto parkrun. But I visited in August and it’s Rome, I expected it. Regardless of the weather, I had a great time. It is a fun course with great views and a fun route to go through. I would like to visit again in more conducive weather and I very well might! It is a small event perfectly embodying the spirit of parkrun, something that seems to be very much alive in most venues outside of the UK.

I wholeheartedly recommend anyone who happens to be in Rome on parkrunday to visit this venue. It is great.

Finally, obviously, grazie, Roma Pineto parkrun team for your hospitality!