Seventy days of running and 14 pairs of worn out shoes: from Los Angeles to New York Alex Bellini is back as a runner

Difficult undertakings, extreme adventures are above all dangerous due to the risk involved in the idea, the structure of the project: one does what no one had ever dared to do before, one goes to a place from which others have never returned. Then for their realization: the potential failure, the threat of death, the loss of face, the inability to bear the drift that is the potential counterpart to any memorable action worthy of a medal collection. But difficult undertakings, extreme adventures, are dangerous even in the event of a happy outcome, because in the society of hyper-specialization and record-breaking, the success of a project risks linking the name of its architect to that single event forever, branding it on fire with the iron of victory, a thoroughbred horse from which no disappointment or yielding will be expected; or by imprisoning his creativity, which by its nature would seek to be expressed in other future initiatives, perhaps in different fields because they are even more challenging.

Alex Bellini is, for most of the public who remember his courage, simply “Alex of the Oceans”. After two failed attempts in 2004, one of which was shipwrecked, on 18 September 2005 he completed the crossing of the Mediterranean and the Atlantic by rowing, for a total of 11,000 km. A few years later, swearing never to set foot on such a boat again, he crosses the Pacific, 294 days of navigation and three million paddles concluded with an emergency tow a few miles from the coast due to climatic conditions adverse. From the day the tugboat Katea touched the wharf and the feat was still recognized as valid, Bellini earned the nickname that will forever link him to the success of one of the greatest feats of his life.

But that’s not all, and to force the multifaceted ingenuity of this modern Ulysses is demeaning to say the least. The most loyal will remember that Alex’s “going to sea” began a long time ago, when the playgrounds weren’t immense expanses of water but sequences of mounds of sand or moors of white snow as far as the eye could see. And where the only oars were the two very long legs of a mountain man who only later lent his services to Poseidon.

Destiny, in order to be found, forced him to go around a wide circle, to an unthinkable circumnavigation and yet – in hindsight – all in all coherent, useful, necessary. To the delight of the physiotherapists, the giant from Aprica chose running as the first means of moving towards the realization of his life project. Very young, perhaps driven by the exotic childhood memory of his father who sets off on his motorbike to Africa, he points his finger at the map and finds it immersed in the sands of the Sahara. The first starting line he sets foot on is the legendary Marathon des Sables. He’s a kid who doesn’t really know what he’s doing, why he does it, but he knows he has to do it and there’s no arguing about that. The big blue eyes, in the slit of the keffiyeh that protects his face from the dusty winds, they observe an invisible line between the heaps, the trace of the demon of the Self who invites them to follow it, to continue.

There is no road in the desert, but that is surely the right way. Running is an intrinsically meditative discipline, which carries within itself something of contemplation and therapy, something that responds to the need for order and inner knowledge. The oracle of Delphi must have run towards the tower of Marathon, before changing jobs. Finding himself on that route meant for Alex also starting to gather signs, suggestions for subsequent adventures scattered in places and among people. Not surprisingly, someone among the Berber tents asked him if he had ever heard of the Alaska Ultra Sport. The answer was no, but the description of the race revealed a feat too crazy not to be listened to, dreamed of and finally realized.

Thus Alex’s legs carry him to the high latitudes. He goes back to his original subject, the Valtellina accent and the long levers have good grip in the deep snow. Alaska Ultra Sport is a race in the snowy tundra, a tremendously hostile natural context that once a year becomes a huge playground for slightly nutty athletes with a passion for downward temperature inversion. A shock compared to the heat of the Tropic of Cancer. The 2002 expedition, the first, counted only 600 km of white woods. In those nine days, however, something significant happens. The regulation provides that each runner pulls a sled inside which it is necessary to stow the equipment and food supplies for total autonomy during the enterprise. Alex had learned something from Morocco, and once back in Italy he had refined his technique, chosen the material more carefully and diversified his training sessions. He had asked the village butcher to be able to spend a few hours a day in the cold room of the shop; once outside, he practiced dragging a few truck tires tied around his waist. At that point, no one could take away the nickname of the town’s madman, and there was little objection.

It was the sled he had built that proved to be a great teacher for the feats to come. It was too big, too heavy, very unwieldy. These equipment, in extreme conditions, really reveal themselves for what they are: rescue tools or, at worst, vehicles of death. A few days’ walk from Anchorage and McGrath, Alex finds himself – alone – having to make a steep climb in deep snow. Thanks to the cold and fatigue, he discovers that he is unable to carry the equipment over the col due to the shape and weight of the sled. Exhausted, he tries with all his strength to make it go downhill, succeeding. At that moment, Alex realizes that a good explorer, forced as he is to always converse with the Imponderable (as he liked to call the unexpected Walter Bonatti), cannot be penalized by his equipment. Preparation must facilitate success, not prevent it: the sled his size could have turned perfectly into his coffin. It’s time to grow up. Destiny pushes forward, but he asks for something more.

Alex says that, compared to Morocco and Alaska, the Atlantic and the Pacific have been two wonderful successes and two great losses, faced for the first time with the help of a small team from the ground. “It’s like a part of me is asking to die to make room for the man I would become.” How can we make the object of a definitive nickname two special undertakings that are only preparatory, cathartic, transformative for the growth of a man and an explorer? Alex is Also Alex of those Oceans to whom he owes a lot, but no less than Alex delle Dune or Alex delle Nevi, Alex dei Copertoni half-length or Alex lunch break in the cold room. It is intriguing to see how the meditative power of running has been preparatory to success at sea, how the ancestral dimension of the runner has been an effective antechamber of other, different adventures, with different tools and different perspectives.

But what happened after Fortaleza? A hero of the sea should ride the wave into old age, squeezing success and tying his name to the mast for eternity. But this is not the story of Robin Knox-Johnston or Bernard Moitessier. Alex with his multifaceted talent goes back to tying his running shoes, and he does it while eyeing another crazy track. But this time he’s not joking, he’s no longer going on adventures as in his youth, since many are the teachings – most recently – that have left the water and his dangers. What better way to test your experience than in the solitude of the race?

“LA-NY was a way to test what I understood.” And this time with the constant help of a mobile team (during ocean crossings the ground team was thousands of miles away). Alex blossoms like a mature flower, opens up to a new experience and to work with other professionals. It is an escape from the solipsism of the explorer, who here entrusts himself to the hands of other women and men united by that enterprise. LA-NY is an acronym for the two extremes of the Race Across America, Los Angeles and New York. Seventy days of racing, 5300 km of mixed terrain, asphalt, gravel, on the edge of barren and burning fields, on state roads and secondary roads. “By the third day, my body stopped working. Everything was in excruciating pain. As the physical therapist sorted me out, I thought about what mental strategy I should adopt for the next sixty-seven days.” If Morocco and Alaska were in all respects wild races, both for the landscape and for the athlete’s attitude, LA-NY was the race of strategy, of attention, of times, of values, of concentration aimed at goal on time.

Without detracting from the poetry of the adventure, crossing the United States on foot meant mending a child’s passion with the thoughtfulness of an adult: it meant truly becoming explorers, one of those who accomplish great feats and go to sleep in their own bed in the evening, among the arms of one’s wife, after a kiss on the cheek of one’s daughters. Alex used fourteen pairs of shoes to complete the course. His bladders were drained, his contractures manipulated, his camel-backs filled constantly to keep his saline level and hydration high. All thanks to the commitment of a team and the determination of one man.

Isn’t it strange that there have been foot races between the two oceans? Races that made Alex find the Oceans and races that made him test what he learned at sea? : “Yes, indeed. The ride dimension was a place I felt I had to go back to to take stock of everything else.” The intimacy of the race was, for Alex whose name is firmly linked to maritime enterprises, a way of seeking and finding. Personally now, when I follow his exploits around the world – the crossing of the Icelandic Vatnajokull glacier pulling a sled (!), the 10Rivers1Ocean awareness project aboard canoes built with plastic and wood waste (!) – I see nothing heroic, but rather something integral, united and complete: a last specimen of an endangered species that no longer wants to go into danger, but to take the right steps in the right direction, for itself, for our society and for our planet. However, although successes related to something else reach the ears of the public above all, it seemed to me a duty to pay a tribute to Alex Corridore, “that other one”, the one who made mistakes and corrected the shot to bring order and quality to everything else.