There are people for whom sport is not born from a competition, a goal, or a time to beat. It is born much earlier, from a need that is difficult to explain: the need to be outdoors, to move, to feel nature all around, to rediscover that part of oneself that seems to breathe better outdoors.
We talked to Clara about exactly this. About sport, of course, but also about identity, body, listening, and freedom. About what it means to prepare for new challenges without losing touch with what makes us feel alive.
The result was an intense and sincere conversation, where trail running, endurance, and the outdoors become a way to get to know oneself, respect oneself, and stay true to one's most authentic self.
Your passion for sport and the mountains comes from a long way back. Do you remember the exact moment you realized that the outdoors would become an integral part of your life, not just as a hobby but as a life choice?
The truth is, I can't give you a precise moment, because to do so, I would need a memory of myself without nature, and that memory doesn't exist. I was one year old when we moved to the countryside, and from then on, everything I have been grew on that land, amidst that light, with that outdoor smell about me that I have never stopped seeking.
However, I do remember when I realized I was different. I couldn't explain it, but I felt it: my peers didn't have that hunger I had, that physical need to go out, to move, to be in things rather than watching them from a window. I wondered if it was strange. If I was overdoing it. Perhaps, but I never really wanted to scale it back, because that part of me was, and is, the part I love the most. The one in which I still recognize myself today without having to force it.
Then years pass, and you learn to read yourself better, and what I know about myself is always the same thing: when I feel good, I mean when I truly feel good, nature is always involved.
A path, the wind, my hands in the earth.
And when something isn't right, when I feel out of place and heavy and distant from myself, it's almost always because I'm trying to do without that connection, to give it less space, to convince myself that I can do without it. It never works. I've always known that when I'm outdoors, I'm home.
From the Marathon des Sables desert to alpine trails: every race tells a different story. Which experience transformed you the most, as an athlete and as a person?
To be honest, it still makes me laugh a little when someone calls me an athlete, maybe because I have a version of myself that downplays a lot, especially in sports. I honestly don't think I'm strong, but I appreciate the determination with which I tackle the things I set my mind to. The truth is, I've never experienced races as competitions in the traditional sense of the word, times to beat and rankings to climb. For me, they have always been adventures, entire days thrown into something big, experiences that my body can have and that my mind transforms into something lasting. This changes everything, even how I remember them.
However, the race that transformed me the most as a person was my first ultra, with almost three thousand meters of elevation gain. Physically, one of the hardest things I've ever done, and at that moment, I understood something I had always put off understanding: that I could ask something of my body.
A body that for years had also been an enemy, something to fight rather than to listen to. That day, it returned to me different. And where the body gave way, the mind held on, and holding on is something you don't forget. Then there's the Marathon des Sables, which is a separate chapter, one of those that aren't easily summarized. The thing that surprised me most is that physically, I handled it much better than I expected: I was trained, I never arrived exhausted, and this gave me something unexpected, the time and space to take a journey within myself instead of just through the desert. Without the distraction of physical pain, I had nothing left but to look at myself.
And what I saw, that person who finally stopped waging war on herself, was perhaps the greatest discovery of all.
Among your goals this year are the LUT - Lavaredo Ultra Trail and your first triathlon. What prompted you to accept these new challenges and how are you preparing to tackle such diverse disciplines?
Yes! This year I finally got into the Lavaredo Ultra Trail, and when I saw the registration confirmation, I was as excited as a child. Last year I tried for the 50k but wasn't drawn, so this time the satisfaction is double. The LUT is one of those races that every trail runner carries somewhere in their mind: it's iconic, it's beautiful, and it runs on trails that speak for themselves. I don't call it a finish line, but it's certainly one of those milestones you feel when you reach them. I've never run an eighty-kilometer race, so it will be my first, and I say it with genuine joy, because I really enjoy being a beginner at something.
When I tackle something new for the first time, I enjoy everything differently: I focus on the sensations, on the people I meet along the way, and on what is happening rather than on where I need to arrive. As I always say: meet people, eat, and play sports. If I can then stay within 12 hours, I'll be happy, but mainly because I wouldn't want to run too much at night, but the important thing will be to arrive in Cortina (where Gea will be waiting for me!).
Triathlon, on the other hand, came about almost naturally, as happens with things you feel are yours even before you do them. I'm not a big fan of asphalt or circuits that feel too much like a commercial event: it's not for me and it doesn't represent me. So when I found the Eaglexman in Abruzzo, I immediately knew it was the right one: open water swimming in Lake Campotosto, cycling through the Gran Sasso mountains, and then a trail with a significant elevation gain. When I saw it, I thought: this is it. I will do the medium course, and I am more curious than ever to see myself in that effort.
For my preparation, I am coached by Filippo Zanobi, who is a coach I really respect: empathetic, he listens and builds the program around you, not on an abstract model of an athlete. Since working with him, I feel concretely improved, and that matters more than anything else. Right now, I'm greatly extending my outings: weekends are dedicated to long runs, even five or six hours on my feet. But the truth is, they don't weigh me down, because what is now called training used to simply be my lifestyle. I swam in the sea, went mountain biking, and did day hikes.
Now I do the same things but projected towards a pinned race bib. It's been an evolution, not a revolution, and that's exactly how it should be.
Endurance races and intense training require great attention to prevention and recovery. What are the rituals and strategies that are essential in your sports routine?
The first thing I always tell anyone who wants to push themselves a little further is the simplest and most difficult at the same time: learn to listen to yourself. It sounds trivial but it is not at all. Understanding when you are overdoing it, understanding when your body is asking for more fuel, understanding when you lack salt or when you have drunk too much or when that tiredness is not tiredness but something you need to stop and listen to: it is a skill that is built over time, with patience and much honesty towards oneself. At this moment, I have an awareness of my limits that I did not have a few years ago, and that awareness is worth as much as any training.
Prevention for me is the basis of everything, because without it you can't truly enjoy yourself, and enjoyment, for me, is the starting point of everything. Recovery, on the other hand, has been the great lesson of this journey with my coach. I have always had a tendency to accumulate, to do a lot and then a little more, without building a serious recovery strategy around it. He taught me this, and now I am very careful. Massage, massage gun, foam roller: everything that helps the legs to be legs again after long days. And then plenty of water, excellent and abundant food, plenty of sleep, and much kindness towards an active body: these are small things but together they make a difference!
In athletic preparation, sportcare plays an increasingly important role. Are there any products or measures you use to prepare your muscles, protect your skin, and promote recovery after exertion?
I can speak about this topic with authority, because over time I have learned, sometimes at a high cost, that taking care of your body is not an option but is as much a part of training as the miles you put on your legs. I am a loyal user of WARMUP CREAM by SPORTLAB Milano, and I say this without any exaggeration. I apply it about ten minutes before going out, especially before bike rides and before races: it stimulates microcirculation, deeply warms the muscles without being aggressive, and gives you that feeling of ready legs that I love. Now everyone at my house uses it!
Then there's the COOLDOWN CREAM, which is the other side of the same coin that I use after almost all outings, and the difference, using it consistently, is noticeable: muscles deflate faster, recover better, and the next day you don't start already in deficit. Another product I've learned to love, and which I never thought I'd use so much, is the SLIDER, the anti-chafing cream. I use it for swimming but also for running when I wear tank tops that might rub. This winter, when I was swimming in the sea in Liguria in my wetsuit, it literally saved my neck: the first few times I went out without it, I ended up with raw skin, and from that moment on, I never forgot it in my bag.
My absolute favorite product, the one I constantly run out of, however, is ACTIVE SUN 50+. For me, sun protection is not a matter of habit but almost a personal responsibility: in my family, we have a history with melanomas, and this has always taught me to protect myself from the sun, every day and in all conditions. ACTIVE SUN 50+ is an amazing product precisely because it is made especially for those who live outdoors: colorless and odorless, sweat and water resistant, you don't feel it on you while you train, and it doesn't interfere with anything, and the two years of research and testing with athletes in the field are definitely noticeable!
Sport is often an inner journey, even before it is a physical challenge. What message do you want to convey to those who dream of transforming their passion into a lifestyle?
Don't be afraid to be who you are. Don't be afraid to follow what makes your heart swell, that fire you have inside that you often pretend not to feel because it seems too much or strange or because others don't understand. I tell you these things not from a pulpit, but because I have experienced them firsthand: for many years I hid and didn't listen to myself, and I tried in some way to annihilate that diversity I felt, that part of me that wanted the earth under my feet and the open air and movement as a form of life. And it didn't work. It never works when you try to make yourself smaller than you are.
Things changed the moment I said enough. The moment I stopped pretending not to know who I was.
There's a narrative that circulates a lot around sport, and endurance in particular, that has always bothered me a bit: that of sport as a challenge, as a war against oneself, as a test to overcome to prove something to someone. I see it completely differently. For me, sport, and endurance especially, is a love story. It's the moment you decide to face your limits not to fight them, but to finally stop fearing them. You're not waging war on yourself, you're making peace!
So take what you do, your runs and your adventures and your challenges, if you want to call them that, and treat them as exploratory journeys. For yourselves, not against yourselves. Learn to love yourselves, because no one will truly love you if you don't do it first. And if you need a starting point, a means, something to help you find that path back to yourselves: sport can be that. It was that, for me.
When you stop waging war on yourself, you discover who you really are, and usually, that's someone worth knowing.
It's difficult to add anything to Clara's words.
What remains is the image of a sport lived not as a battle, but as a way to inhabit one's body with more kindness and to seek outside what, often, we need to rediscover within.
And perhaps it is precisely this that makes certain stories so beautiful to tell: they speak not only of kilometers, races, or finish lines, but of that much more personal path that brings us closer to who we truly are.
