I have decided to dust my blog off to celebrate my second attemp at completing juneathon. Last year i failed miserably due to a stupid allergy test. this year nothing will stop me...maybe!!

so 3 days have been done and dusted...three days of running!


1/30: 6km
2/30: 8km
3/30: 5km

clinck on the day for evidence:

so far so good :)

I haven't been blogging in a while so here is an update:

a) I had to stop running for 3 months due to injury (ITB).
b) I am back to italy for the summer....and it's getting quite hot

5k

I am being "hired" as a guinea pig for a study that people at my university are carrying out about the effect of electrostimulation on legs muscles. I was subjected to tests with machines that are only used for olimpyc athlets and could be very expensive.

I did a VO2 max test and with it I will be given my lactate threshold. I don't know the results as yet. I have also received a scan to measure my body fat percentage. Not very good news on that front. 31% was the result and my BMI is 24%. these are normal ranges but I found out that I have put weight on lately and I am not happy about it.

In 4 weeks they'll run the same tests again and then the real procedure starts: for 6 weeks, 3 day a week (1 hour each time) my legs muscles will be stimulated with electro...thing (can't remember the name) and then they'll see how strong they've become and the tests will be done for the final time. I am very curious to see how it goes.

future plans

tomorrow morning I am off to the states (L.A and San Francisco). I am going for a conference/job interview/holiday and to be honest right now I feel more nervous than excited!
If the job interview goes well, somehow, deep inside, the idea of moving to the states scares me a bit. if the job interview goes wrong, though, next academic year I will be unemployed, and that idea scares me too. I should just concentrate on the fact that I will see two amazing places (LA and san francisco) that I have never seen before and I should think about what comes when it comes. dunno....

anyway, I hope your holidays go well.

I might be able to blog from there, otherwise I'll "see" you in 2009 )

ciao!!!

for the first time in 3 years and 6 marathons I wasn't sure I was going to make it to the end. my training had been poor and my motivation quite low. the weather forecast had predicted rain and indeed the night before the marathon I could not sleep because of the noise outside: it was pouring down and the wind was strong too!! I said to myself that if the weather was going to be the same in morning I was not going to race.

when I woke up, though, the weather was really nice and I had no other choice than walk to the start line in piazzale michelangelo (there's a beautiful view of florence from there). but once there, I got literally soaked before I set off for my 7th marathon. fate!

From the first minute of my race I knew I was going to finish...not matter how!!! I had a friend along the course who cheered me on on 3 different occasions: 12km, 25km and 41km; I had certainly something to look forward to. my parents were supposed to come to florence too but decided not to the end, because of the weather.

I adopted the same strategy of my dublin marathon: 5 min run and 1 min walk and despite my lack of training, my lack of sleep and the rain I closed my race in 4:56. not my best time, but not my worst either.

The course was nice, even though the stretch from 32km to 38km was pretty boring and looooooong. I had started to get tired by then but at that point I was determined not to pull out. so I kept repeating my mantra ('till the finish line) and alternating walk and run...by then it had become 4 1/2 min run and 1 1/2 min walk. It was a bit discouraging not to have much support by then and some of the people I met along the route kept saying "they must be the last ones", nice!....but I tried to keep positive and I crossed the line with a big smile.

now I am in Italy, at my parents', until sunday and I am eating a lot and relaxing a bit before I start marking exam!

it's really cold here!!!

two days after dublin I finally have some time to blog.

It was my sixth marathon and my first dublin one. after two years in this city and two years of supporting friends and fetchies I finally got to run it myself. I wouldn't have missed it for the world. so, even if my training was really bad I decided to do dublin and use it as a training run for the florence marathon at the end of november.

that was a great choice!

I have been under the weather in the last few weeks. my uncle, who had cancer, got really worse really fast and he died on thursday. I couldn't make it to the funeral and I was (am) worried for my dad (my uncle was one of his younger brothers). I was not in the mood for a race.

I have also been stressed for work stuff and the job applications to the states.

but when I turned up at the dinner with the fetchies and few other people I started to feel the buzz and on monday morning I was ready to go. I finished the race in 4:47, my second personal worst, but I don't care. It was the best marathon ever. The support of the people was just amazing. I couldn't believe it. I keept saying thank you to everyone who called my name or said GO FETCH GO. I was so emotional that everything made me cry, but I felt also very happy. so basically I run the whole marathon with tears in my eyes and a big smile on my face. weird.

I did the whole marathon alternating 5 min run to 1 min walk and that worked very well. My legs feels great now and I am ready to keep training for florence.

there's so much more that I should say about this marathon, but I can always write another post hopefully I'll do that soon.

I forgot to say that I DNF the half marathon two weeks ago. I pulled out at mile 8 :( it was the first time for me and I hated the feeling. It's not fun cheering on people completing their race when you didn't. I know I did the right thing but I did not like it. that'll teach me :)

september was pathetic. I run a total of 72 miles spread in only 9 runs! dublin was getting closer and I was getting lazier. I didn't want to give up the idea of doing dublin, 'cause this might be my last year in this city and I wanted to do this mara once. I love the idea of a race around the place where I live. so I thought: "I'll do dublin as a walk but THERE IS NO WAY I'm doing florence...."

but last weekend something happened. I went to rome for a "running weekend" with some of the people I met on my italian blog. we are now a community of 60 bloggers who leave comments in each others' blogs and we've decided to form a group (a bit like fetch, but smaller). we are the BLOGTROTTERS. the meeting coincided with a 10k that we all run with the same t-shirts.


it was a lovely weeekend. 3 days of eating, drinking wine, chatting and running. what was great about my race was the fact that one of the faster guy, once he finished his race, came back to find me and push me through the last 2 ks which ended up being the fastest ones. even though my time wasn't good (1:00:13) I seem to have found my lost mojo.




Not only have I been out twice this week I have also entered florence marathon. So now the idea is to use dublin as a long run and try to do florence in a decent time. there will be many fetchies in dublin and many blogtrotters in florence, so it's going to be a nice party too!!

BRING IT ON!!