The Ponte Milvio

This morning I went running, and ended up at the Ponte Milvio. History buffs (I'm thinking of you, Dad) may recognize this name as the location of a pretty important battle between Constantine and Maxentius in 312 AD. Constantine won, and attributed the victory to divine intervention--he had a vision of a cross in the sky right before the battle. So he decided to tolerate Christianity in the Roman Empire, instead of persecuting all the Christians--not a bad idea, if you ask me. It's pretty awesome to stand there and ponder all that.

Another reason the Ponte Milvio was significant this morning is that it turns out it's just over 4 miles away from where I live. That was perfect for an 8 mile out-and-back route. Why did I want to run 8 miles this morning? Because I couldn't think of anything else to do with my class-free morning? Umm, not quite. The real answer is...I'm training for a marathon! There's one here in Rome on March 21st. My friend Evan decided he'd like to train for it, and somehow managed to talk a whole group of us archies, including myself, into training for it too. We're half way through week 2 of training! If you're a serious runner AND good at math you're probably adding up the numbers and saying "but Caroline, don't you need more than 8 weeks to train for a marathon?" The answer I have is: I hope not. :-) We drastically adapted a 16 week program we found online, and it's going alright so far.

In other exciting recent news, I learned the other day that one of my favorite saints, St. Josemaria Escriva, is buried here in Rome!!! I'm not sure why I didn't know that earlier, and hopefully I'll get a chance to go visit that church soon. Perhaps I could make it a stop along a run one of these days...