Mergozzo Half Ironman - Part II

My training had its ups and downs all summer. I'm sure that it wasn't "conventional" triathlon training, at least nothing like what I've seen on this list. In June and July I tried to get to the pool a couple times a week and swim at least 2km. I have a chlorine allergy problem and they really load the pools up with it during the summer over here which is why I could never stay in for more than an hour. I went out on the bike as much as I could, which was probably not often enough. My running...well, it just was. I've been having back problems this year which extend to my left leg and hips. Sometimes it's not pretty to watch. My husband had me doing posture exercises while I ran and I was finally able to see my favourite osteopath in August who thinks part of the problem is in the lung region. I had x-rays done the other day that will be ready in a few days...(UPDATE: x-rays came back and I have a really bad scoliosi which curves right where the lungs are) .I needed to keep my running to a minimum so as not to aggravate the problem.
For the month of August we went down to our summer house in Apulia on the Ionian Sea. http://tinyurl.com/eteqs Since I couldn't bring my road bike with me I bought a really cheap mountain bike (usd 130!!) but it was so uncomfortable after a few hours that I never stayed on it for more than that. What I did do was a lot of uphill intervals. Once a week I picked this hill that was about two km straight up and I just road it up and down until I dropped (an hour and a half - I have no resistance). My thighs would quiver when I got off the bike, but the next day I was fine so I knew that I just needed to keep it up. It really worked because when I got back home to Modena in September it was like I had little jets on my legs, riding about 5kph faster than before. My tapering was, hmmm, long. I went on a five day trip to London with my daughter. We had a hotel room next to Kensington Gardens so I went running every morning, but... that was counterbalanced by a visit to Starbucks twice a day and many delicious English Carbohydrates.
The week before the race I went to the pool once and then road my bike for a 45km jaunt...and I started to have my doubts on whether I would actually finish this race or not.

My main problem was this: I knew I would be last. People always talk about what a wonderful country Italy is with the Italians so laid back. Yeah, they have siestas and two hour lunches and one month vacations, but when it comes to sports, they are very very competitive. It's not entirely their fault, they're bred that way. In school when they play sports they're encouraged to participate only in sports that they excel in . No, you're not supposed to run because you enjoy it, you run if you're fast and can be competitive at it. Otherwise it's considered a waste of time. They carry this mentality with them into adulthood and that's where you'll find your competitive "amateurs" . This mentality has laxed a little on the running scene, but not yet with the triathletes. My age group, 45-49 women? There are four of us. Four. In the entire country.
The second problem was this: even though there was no drafting allowed in this race, from the look at the previous year's results everybody was drafting. I knew this because I had already competed against some of the women in Olympic triathlons and they had ALWAYS come in behind me. Knowing that I absolutely would-not-draft I was pretty sure I would be last. The time limits were 1.5 hours for the swim, 6 hours for the swim/bike and 8 for the whole race. My main goal was to finish within the eight hour time limit.

Mergozzo Half Ironman - Part I

The last triathlon I remember participating in was in 2002 near Trieste. There was a Bora blowing (http://tinyurl.com/guhk4) and I nearly drowned during the swim and could barely get any speed going on the bike portion. I guess that was part of the adventure though because at the end of the race I was already making plans with my friend Giorgio to go back the next year. That never happened though because that winter I was pregnant at 42 with my second child. I had Evan the following fall and had a tough time getting back in shape. I did though. I lost the pregnancy weight and I was running again fairly decently after a year. Eighteen months later I ran my first post pregnancy marathon. I really wanted to get back into triathlons but now I had two children and a husband that was away for work almost every single week so I just couldn't find the time to get to a pool or go for a two or three hour bike ride. Running was always easy though so I kept that up. I ran another marathon and then another and then...yawn...another...
One more year passed, and one became two and the thought of running another marathon just wasn't doing it for me any more. That's when I saw the advertisement for the Monaco Half Ironman. OOHHHHhhh...I could do that...now THAT excited me! They hadn't started accepting registrations yet but I got all the information on it from the tridrs list and then from some forums in Italy from people that had participated the previous inaugural year. I was visiting that site every second I could , studying the course, waiting for them to open registration. At the same time I started my triathlon training again: hitting the pool a couple of times a week (the baby was now in daycare), and going for long scenic rides on my bike on the weekends. I had that buzz back, I had a purpose to my training again which is really (for me) ninety percent of my incentive. An email from the Monaco organization announced that they were open for registration and that I'd better hurry since all the spots would be taken immediately. I typed as fast as I could and had nearly gotten to the end of the form when I noticed the price tag. 300,00 euro. A thirty percent increase in price from the previous year. It's not that I couldn't afford it, but I just couldn't justify plopping down 300,00 euro for a half ironman. Not right now. Not for a re-entry race. I was a little crushed but then my friend (and ex tridrs member) Mauro Mongarli suggested the Mergozzo "Medio" of 2km/90km/20km. Mergozzo is a very very small lake an hour north of Milan right above Lago Maggiore and just a few kilometres from the Swiss border. The entry fee was only 60,00. I signed up the next day.

Happy Birthday Cutey Pie!

Birthday number three!! (Isn't he just the cutest thing you've ever seen?!)

London

I can't remember the last time Olly and I had some one-on-one time together. Probably years, probably too long. She has a lot of behavior that she puts out that shows that she craves my attention, but sometimes I just don't have it. Too much work or Evan needs my attention or I'm busy with something else. Or can find it, and that's a horrible thing. So I told her we could go on vacation together, just the two of us. She chose London. We left Evan with his grandmother at the beach and P went to work for the week in Rome. It was a wonderful vacation for both of us and I learned a lot from spending time with her. I don't know if any of you have teenage children but somewhere around the age of ten or eleven they are at school all day and then they come home and close themselves in their room and play loud electric guitar music full blast. At least that's what's happened over here for the last three years. She's also had problems fitting into the small urban catholic school that she chose to go to. Well, when we landed in London she really fit in. I could really see her leaving Italy for a few years and living abroad when she gets older. She's very creative and has a lot of fantasy and ideas, she just needs to be stimulated more. She is also a hot head and loses her temper quite easily, and that is something we have to work on. We walked everywhere! I booked a hotel room right next to Kensington Gardens so I could go running in the morning while she slept in. We went shopping and marketing and took all the obligatory photos of the various monuments that she could show her English teacher. We went to Starbucks twice a day. I ate too many empty carbohydrates but they were delicious...We're already thinking about where to go next year, she's mentioned Berlin. I'll go wherever she wants.

Magic

We have two cars. One is a 1999 Volkswagon Polo (mine) and the other is a Lancia Dedra (sedan, Piero's). He bought it in 1996 and it has 412,000 kms on it. While all you Americans are trying to figure out the mileage, let me tell you, it's a lot. He travels a lot for training plus we go back and forth to his hometown at least twice a year and each drive round trip is 1400 kms.We've known for about a year that we'd have to start saving money to get a new car, and we have been saving, but then we had to get two new computers and I had to borrow some money out of the savings...anyway, we had enough to buy about a quarter of a car. The insides but not the body, the engine but not the rest of the car.
In the meantime P kept looking at what kind of car he wanted. He looked on the internet, we went to several dealerships: Toyota, Volkswagon, Audi, Fiat. We got in behind steering wheels and pretended they were our cars for several minutes. He would pour over the car manuals and add up how much it would cost to get the extras that he wanted. "So, what car should we get?" he would ask me. A few years ago I had a definate opinion. I didn't want a SUV and I didn't want an oriental car (Mitsubishi, Yyangsong, Toyota). As the years passed however and P changed his mind several times over on what he wanted, I started to not really care. I don't know about you, but I think this is much more a guy's thing. Cars. Too me a car is a car. I see if it pleases me ecsteticly, if it gets good gas mileage, but that's about where it ends for me. Guys get into fuel injection and horsepower and engine mechanics. I do get it, I mean I do understand where that can get really interesting and exciting but after you've been talking about it for two years solid in your free time, I just wanna get it over with. We finally settled on our dream car being a Volkswagon Passat station wagon. Last year we even went to this used car place in the south of Italy where they have new cars with under 5000 miles on them that they sell with a twenty five percent discount. Apart from the fact that we didn't have the money, P wanted to wait until the "new" model came out because he like the look better. Whatever. We were just dreaming anyway.
One day in the month of august, the eighth of august to be precise, P was looking on the internet for the dream car for the 128,948 time. I told him "Look, you talk about this car all the time but you're not doing anything to really make it happen. You just talk about it. You have to make it a REAL thing, something that you can touch or see." I told him that in order for it to be real, something he really wanted he had to print out a picture of his dream car and put it up in our office space so that he could see it every day. He was hesitant about printing up the best car. "Don't question whether you have the money or how much the car is going to cost or how it will happen. Just print up the car and it will happen".
On august 10th we drove down to Puglia clocking another 800 kms on the odometer. On August 12th P drove two of his athletes to the airport to go to the European championchips. Two hundred kms round trip. When he arrived back in town he took the road that headed to the beach but after five minutes on the road the car died. He said it made a big "click" sound and just died. Right on front of our mechanics house. The mechanic had been eating lunch and heard the noise and came out. He pronounced it dead on arrival.
The next day we went to the New/Used dealership. The one affordable car they had was a Volkswagon Passat tdi diesel, sedan. It only had 10,000 miles on it. We really wanted the station wagon but then the dealer showed us that the back seats come all the way down on the inside so that if you open the trunk and have the seats down you can fit as many bikes as you want in it (our main concern). The super magic part came when he showed us that he had a really good financeing for it and we could sign up right then and there and take the car away right immediately. And we did. The car is a HUGE improvement over the Dedra, but that's mainly car technology that's changed in the last ten years.
Please note that from the time I made P make his dream real and the moment we had a new car in our hands not more than a week had passed. I don't know how this works, but it does.
When explaining it to his brother P said "Do you have a favorite actress? Well, print out a photo of her..."

Buone Ferie!

We're off to the beach for the month. My husband's family has a huge house in Puglia just two minutes from the Ionian Sea. In the morning I can go for a swim in crystal clear warm water, bike on the coast and then go running on the hills. Oh, I'm bringing my computer too 'cause I do have to work...gotta make a living. But there's nothing better than working for yourself and being able to move your "desk" wherever you want. I'll post from the coast!

Dream Conclusion

Do you remember that dream question I wrote about in my May entry? If you're new you can go back and read it. I think it's somewhere around the 18th of May...anyway, I did come to a conclusion. An anonymous "Rusty" is the one that I think came pretty close as he/she said in the comments section:

"The fear of leaving things behind may not be the worst one, but for sure is the one more able to destroy our present – I mean making you unable to live it full force! The ability to live the present is probably the life itself, anyway, but a recurrent dream tie us to the past just because we want it, I think. In the end, it's always us: it can be scary to think we're not so different from 20 years ago, but it's always scary when you're TRULY in touch with youself, isn't it! hugs! Rusty"

I read that over and over. I thought about it a lot. Like three months worth of thinking. It's sort of hard to explain the whole thing without going into a huge autobiographical entry about my life, which could be boring and over dramatic. Then again I don't want to not complete the May entry, so I'll just try and keep it short.

I had one of those typical write-a-book-about-it childhoods...Mother dies in car crash when I was ten, alcoholic, separated father who works night shifts left with four children to care for on his own. He remarries twice to the wrong women, all within four years. I left home when I was sixteen and managed to finish high school and get a B.A. all on my own.

I had lived in Italy for a year after high school and then a year in college and I decided to go back there to work for a few years after I finished school. Everything had been so difficult up to that point that I just remembering thinking to myself - from now on life is just going to be grand! And it was for a while. I had a nice job and a boyfriend and I was young and living in Europe. But I never really thought that I would stay, I just wanted to play for a few years and then I'd go back home...
...and then my little brother died in a car crash and I just wanted to run away. I went back to Mill Valley for the funeral and we spread his ashes on top of Mt.Tamalpais and he was gone. I went back to Italy and picked up my plans to move to San Diego with my then boyfriend...but now I didn't want to go back. I just wanted to avoid reality for a bit and pretend that nothing ever happened. What happened was I fell apart. Before Billy's death I felt like I had already paid my karmic dues. As if all the bad things that were supposed to happen had been put into this little package that lasted until I was 21 and then after that I wouldn't have any more worries. Well, now I know that life doesn't exactly work that way, but it was a little more difficult for me to take when I was younger.
So the boyfriend moved to San Diego and I stayed at my job in Italy. It payed well and I liked it and I met another guy, and another...and all of the sudden I had a job in television, then modeling, and a few years went by and then a few more and then it gets to a point where it's more difficult to go back and start over again than stay where you are.

Twenty eight years have passed since I came to Italy. I've spent more time here than I have in the States. But there was never a moment when I ever said to myself "Okay, this is where I want to stay. This is my home."

Since I came upon this realization some of my attitude has changed.

More importantly, I've stopped having the dream.

Aceto Balsamico

I love Balsamic Vinegar. Love, love, love it. Whenever I've done test for food intolerance they always find me intolerant to yeasts. I can do without bread and cookies and even tea for a certain amount of time, but I absolutely CRAVE the balsamic vinegar. It totally changes the flavour of a salad or even on other vegetables. My bonus is that I live in the town where BV originated. They have "Acetaia", vinegar estates everywhere and they put it all sorts of food preparations, even ice cream. Balsamic vinegar is different because it's made with a specific grape (usually trebbiano) and then at harvest they're crushed and boiled down to 50% volume. Then theyt're aged in wood barrels for at least ten years...and voilà, you get this thick, aged liquid to pour on your veggies.
The other day I was at the supermarket getting groceries and I ventured to the Balsamic Vinegar section. Up until now I've always gone for the moderately priced ones that didn't have any artificial colouring in them because what many will do is take regular vinegar, dye it black and slap a BV label on it. While I was studying the various brands labels there was another man next to me doing the same thing. All of the sudden this lady plowed between the two of us and grabbed five bottles of one brand called "Due Ponti". The gentleman and I exchanged popped eyed stares at each other. I stopped the lady as she was walking away and asked her about her choice. She said she thought this was the best choice with a quality/price balance. A 250ml bottle costed € 9,10 euro, twice the price I've been paying. But I decided to try it out and see if she was right. OMG! What have I been ingesting all these years? The new brand was thick as syrup and you really only needed a few drops to get this wonderful cherry flavour. Makes me want to lick my plate!

Internet Fancy and rain break

I'm not very good at codeing...or rather I actually could be good but I don't have the patience to sit there and figure it out for very long. Short attention span. Anyway, please notice that I've put a new feature in my right side bar: my workouts. Fancy, fancy!
This morning I had scheduled the babysitter to come at 8.00 am so I could go running. Instead she came at 8.30. This is totally inconvenient because it's like a hundred degrees here every day right now and I don't do well in the heat (Thailand withstanding...). I was supposed to do 1km intervals but all I could do was just run them without looking at the watch. I DO have a new determination because even though I was really going slow I just kept saying to myself that I HAD to get through the workout. And I did.

It finally rained here today after two months of no rain at all. Too bad I couldn't have gone running this afternoon!

My longest ride

My original plan was to go out for a three hour bike ride. My instructions from IronMauro (friend and personal Triathlon Guru ) was to find some hills. So I headed out towards Reggio Emilia and turned up to a little town named Baiso. The most important thing I learned today was that I really do have to eat or ingest something every 30 minutes. At 30 minutes and then 60 I took a PowerGel and was doing fine. Then I started on the uphill portion of the ride and met with two guys that were riding up also. We started chatting and I forgot to take my gel. At the 40' mark I started to get the shakes. My hands were trembling and I grabbed the other gel I had and took that. Within two minutes I was fine again. At the top of the hill I refilled on the water, stopped at a bar to eat a simple briosche and then take off back down the hill (wheee!!!) . Going home I took another Gel, stopped and bought (and ate) a banana and then had still some energy to cruise at a decent 25km/hour.

Total distance: 85.39 km
Time: 3h44'10"
Average: 22.8 km/hr.

I got home and felt fine. Felt really good. So now I just have to persist!

Fickle

Did I tell you that I was training for a half Ironman? I don't remember 'cause I talk to myself a lot and think I've told someone or written about it and then realize I just have lots of scenarios running around in my head.
First I was going to do the Monaco 70.3, but then they wanted to charge 350,00 euro for the entry fee and I just won't pay that kind of money for a half ironman. A full yes, a half no. So then I found an alternative Half in Italy at the Lago di Mergozzo in the lakes area above Milan. So I was training for that but then Piero started going on week long, out of town business trips and I was discouraged about actually finding the time (and babysitter) to train for the race. So I slacked off. Then those scenarios in my head started playing around and all of the sudden me, myself and I decided that I wasn't doing the Half anymore.
Fastrack to yesterday afternoon when Hubby and I are looking at our calendars from now until the end of september. First we're here in Modena, then he goes to Gotenbourg for the European Athletic Championships (he has three marathoners running on the teams), then down to Puglia to the beach for the rest of august, and then before school starts I'm taking Olly for a "girls only" trip to London.
"And then you have that Half Ironman Race on the 17th"
"Oh, I'm not doing it anymore".
(Blank stare)
I started to explain that I didn't have time and he wasn't helping me out and I really needed some encouragement. He went on that I knew how to train myself better than he ever could and that my schedule was so erratic that I really had to live it day by day rather than write out a schedule that I try to stick to.
One hour later I was on my bike doing a 60km workout.
I have eight weeks to get ready for it.
If I cut out all my "waste" time I can do this.
Today I'm going swimming. Maybe running too...

Epilogue: Bangkok

We left our cocooned existence in Phuket on thursday morning, but before returning to Italy we decided to stop in Bangkok for three days. Our first wake up was at the Phuket airport where we realized that Linda's travel agent had not put us on the same flight, and she had missed her's by two hours. A little scrambling around and exchange of credits cards, they were able to put her on a flight right then and there, but in first class. Not only did she have to pay for the upgrade but she also had to pay a penalty on not taking the other flight. Never heard of this before, but, whatever. In the end it all worked out and we met up again at the Bangkok airport. Bangkok was sweltering hot and we took a bus to our hotel. By now we were slightly spoiled by our luxury resort enviroment and the more than adequate hotel room in Bangkok seemed small to us. Oh, well, we didn't really have to spend a lot of time in the room...It was about five o'clock at this point and the we just started wandering the streets looking around. Bangkok is an insane city. It has tons of traffic, lots of pollution intermixed with all different kinds of people. At one point we were just starved so we walked into this local restaurant where they had a picture of the food for a menu. Guess they're used to the international crowd... There were about ten cooks crowded into this little kitchen. I ordered some sort of chicken curry with rice dish and Linda a vegetable and noodle dish. It was really,really, really good and we only paid six dollars for the entire meal for BOTH of us. On the way back to the hotel to watch the world cup game (Italy vs Rep. Ceca) we stopped in an eyeglass shop where I ordered a new pair for myself (only seventy dollars!). Day two in Bangkok is sort of a blur. We started out thinking that we would just go shopping and actually we DID do that but we had two problems. Problem one: We couldn't find the stores we really wanted to go to. We kept getting sidetracked down all sorts of strange and crowded streets that then lead to scary quiet ones. Problem two: I ate something that my intestines did not like. I had to keep finding bathrooms and at the end of the day had hit them a total of about fourteen times. I was afraid to really go to far from anyplace that looked like it might have a restroom 'cause when I had to go, I had to go. A few times we were so frazzled and hot that we went back to the hotel just to sit in a quiet air conditioned room for an hour. On our last and final day we decided to go to a huge market on the outskirts of town. We found directions on how to get there by public transportation and were successful in getting there (Whee!!!) . It more than made up for our no shopping day from the day before. The market had everything we had hoped for: food, clothing, souvenirs, jewelry, spices, paper (I love buying paper in foreign countries), shoes. It also had animals and a lot of local Thais doing their weekly shopping for food and fruit and veggies. The one thing that I haven't talked about on this trip are the Monsoons. Every day has been in the 90's and then about three times a day it rains. But it doesn't just rain a little tropical rain, it pours like someone is pouring a big bucket of water from the sky. It usually doesn't last for very long but the force is so strong that the sewage system that they have can't handle it. Everything clogs up and gets swamped. This happened both in the city and at our little market place on saturday. We were pretty much trapped for about an hour because anyplace we wanted to walk to had a foot of water. We both had on disposable shoes but Linda was kind of squeemish about not knowing what was in that water. The monsoons reminded me of all those Vietnam films where they picture troops in the rain for days and days. It was always this pouring rain, at that really is how it is. We finally made our way back to the overrail transportation and went back into Bangkok. We stopped at a few of the really huge , five story, indoor malls (gigantic!) and then went back to the hotel to pack and leave. I'm pretty sure that I will go back to Thailand again one day. It is a really beautiful country and has such wonderful people. Definately a part of the world that I've enjoyed visiting.

Phuket Marathon, Part II

Running in heat and humidity is not easy. To run 42km (a.k.a. 26 miles) in heat and humidity is even more difficult. It's doable, but you do have to set a few rules for yourself from the startline. Rule number one: forget about any record times. You just have to concentrate on the experience and not pay much attention to your stopwatch. Rule number two: drink, drink, drink. Throw water on yourself, dunk your head in it, do whatever you can to cool down. The organization had set up water stations every 2.5 kms which was really great. Only trouble was that when we came up to the first water station (and it was still pitch black dark out) I think I was one of the few that actually stopped. It was really humid out even at 5.00 a.m. They had big tubs of ice so I took handfuls of that and put it down the front and back of my bra and inside my hat to try and cool off. I ran the first kilometre with all the other journalists but then Liz and the Running Times girl took off so I just stuck to my own pace. Around 6.00 am it started to get light and there was a nice breeze that came along with it. The course went down a lot of country roads where people were sitting around breakfast tables on the sides of the roads looking sleepy but awake. There were some really cute kids in pajamas sitting on their front porches waving to us as we went by also. Someplace around the 21km mark we hit the coast...ahhhhh, a really nice sea breeze accompanied us for about 5km. My half marathon time was 2h15. The refreshment stations started to have a better selection with the halfmarathon one full of fruit. You could also see who was in front (or in back) of you. I was surprised to see Liz only about 3km in front of me, and even more surprised to see Julia (RW Australia) 3km BEHIND me. Last year at the Thailand Temple run she had run an hour faster than me. As soon as I came off the coast and headed back to the inland it started to get hot. It was about 8.00 a.m. at this point and I would estimate it to be 30° (about 90 degrees fahrenheit), but the humidity is what kept me filling myself with ice and trying to stay cool. We were routed on a main road with a little traffic. The drivers were cool though and not zooming too fast as they went by. There were some big hills that we had to climb up and I opted to just power walk them. I was doing fine, humming along, passing people that were walking but pretty much having a good time when I came upon Liz, the RW UK journalist. She was walking really slow and not having a good time. Don't ask why but she was wearing LONG pants and a LONG SLEEVE shirt. I don't know how she thought up this outfit. I mean, I would have run naked if I could, it was so dang hot. She said she felt dizzy but she didn't want to take off any clothing for fear of getting sunburned (she was that pasty white, english pale rose type). So I had her stop at the next water station and fill up her shirt with ice and drink more gatorade instead of just water. I made her walk a little faster and then got her to run one minute and walk one minute while I talked away...and this is what we did for seven miles, all the way to the end of the marathon. My thinking was that it was better to get her out of the sun and finish the race rather than walk a slow death march. It worked. She actually wanted run the last kilometre in. Our final time was 5h21'. We were 159 and 160 out of 280 runners. The first thing I did was hit the massage tent and have a foot and leg massage. Now this is something they should have at EVERY marathon. They had also set up a VIP tent for us where I had a delicious meal of rice and some Thai cooked veggies with curry. Yum! I would probably vomit at the thought of eating something like that after an Italian marathon, but it seemed to fit in fine in Thailand.

Phuket Marathon, Part I

Those squinty eyes come from me sleeping about four hours for the night. I tried as hard as I could to get to bed early, but when you're not tired there's just no way. The alarm clock went off at 3 a.m. and I immediately turned on the television to get in some Italy vs. USA soccer World Cup action, unfortunately I didn't get to see the best part. Anyway, I got dressed, ate a Powerbar, a banana and made myself some tea. Linda was also up and about and concerned I wasn't eating enough. I wasn't hungry at all and frankly just couldn't stomach anything at that hour of the morning. We went down to the reception where they were very sweet to have prepared a breakfast box for us to eat (bread, fruit, cookies, and other unidentified foodstuff). Too bad I hadn't seen it earlier. We took the hotel bus to the start which was only about a kilometre from the hotel. People were just kind of roaming around, getting excited. There were all the Japanese journalists filming everybody and a few Japanese personalities trying to get in their TV appearances. I just walked around, went to the restroom a few times and tried to relax. My favorite pre-race photo (courtesy of Linda) is this one of the product "Counter Pain Cream". That's what the girls t's spell out and they had to walk around together in the same line order for about two hours. At about 4.40 am the speaker for the race started asking us to line up. There were 280 runners signed up for the marathon so it wasn't a huge crowd yet. A lot of the half marathoners were already there even though they weren't schedule to start until 6.00 am. I lined up with a few of the other journalist that I knew: Liz from RW UK and Julia from RW Australia. There was a new girl that hadn't really introduced herself but I knew she was from Running Times. Slim and fast with about 2% body fat. Definately not in my league. Just as we were about to take off other journalists from Australia came racing down the road towards us. Apparently they didn't hear the alarm clock and woke up at 4.30 am! They blew some sort of horn and we were off...

Pasta-Rice-Curry Party

While Linda went to lounge at the pool and walk on the beach I went and did a course inspection in the morning and then a press conference in the afternoon. The course inspection was pretty uneventful though about three or four miles of it was on the beach area where the Tsunami hit the hardest. This is low tourist season on the island 'cause it's technically their winter, so there were few people out in their hut/shops. In the afternoon they held the press conference at the Dusit Laguna Resort where a very cute and sweet Naoko Takahashi, gold medal marathon winner at the Sydney Olypics talked about her involvement in the Phuket race. Apparently the japanese won't travel to Phuket because anyplace that has had many deaths is considered bad luck. It's true that countries hit by the tsunami received a lot of monetary support to reconstruct damaged buildings, but only 50% of tourists have come back to the island so the real people suffering from all of this are the common workers that live off of tourism. Naoko Takahashi brought about one hundred Japanese runners to the race plus a handful of journalists and two television crews. She's hoping to bring more next year and show her country that all the "evil spirits" have left.
At six o'clock that evening we went to the pasta-rice-.curry party. It was held at our hotel which made it even better. I didn't eat pasta, but plenty of rice and a really good chicken dish. There was a great dessert spread too and everything was in bite size pieces so we indulged there too. Yum.
Our wake up call was to be at 3.30 am so we skidadled on out of there right after we were finished eating.

Fantasy, oops, it's Fantasea Land!

On the first night we were in Phuket the Thailand Tourism Agency offered us a dinner and show at "Fantasea Land". This photo with Linda is really dark and you can't see much but I'm sure you can make out all the neon lights in the background. The entry was FILLED with neon lights and we sort of thought it might be like a fun park with rides...but it wasn't. They had all sorts of booths where you could knock down pins with balls and other assorted '50's type carnival games. We went straight to the buffet dinner which was actually kind of nice. Well, to me anything with curry and hot sauce is great so I'm not a very good judge on that. Also if just plain steamed thai rice is involved I'm okay. Plenty here too. After eating and getting to know a really nice journalist from Singapore (Wayaong was his name, not so sure on the spelling), Linda and I feigned sleepiness and asked to be taken back to our hotel. The others stayed to watch the "Fantasea" show of elephants and plenty of thai dancing with chimes. What we actually did was get dropped off at the massage place next to our hotel and had a foot massage. Two Thai ladies spent one-whole-hour massaging and pampering our feet. If you haven't ever had this done you have no idea what you're missing...

(picture of yummy chicken curry and fried noodles)

Take off

I have this thing about goodbyes. I hate them. Has to do with never getting to say goodbye to people that then never came back...so everytime that I have to go on a long distance trip I just relive it all over again. I'm a mess, I cry, it gets really bad, and I pretty much don't get over it until I'm on the airplane and practically in the next country. I had to say goodbye to Evan and Piero at the Rome airport where they dropped Linda and I off to take our flight. Evan just waved and said "Bye Mom!". I told Piero to message me even if I was on the plane so that when we landed I'd get all the messages. The flight was pleasant, all eleven hours of it. They showed a bunch of bad movies that I didn't watch 'cause I was busy reading "The Da Vinci Code". I think I'm the last person on earth to read that novel. I was captivating and I finished about three quarters of it on the plane. There was a plane switch in Bangkok and then the next flight down to Phuket. We got picked up at the airport and swept off to the Laguna Beach Resort. It is so so beautiful. Tropical and calm and beautiful...

I had to go to a lunch right away where I met all the other journalists. There were most of the RW's from around the world (except the US, surprisingly), plus Running Times and many Asian publications. Lots of Japanese since there was a huge Japanese contingency running the marathon. After lunch I went back to my room where I hung out for an hour and then I went down to the pool...which is right in front of the beach. The pool is huge and has all sorts of places you can go: caves, waterfalls, slides, a jacuzzi corner. Very very cool. Tomorrow I'll tell you about this freaky place we went to for dinner called "Fantasea land".

We're off!

Thai Air said that Linda could get on the airplane, no problems (if it had been her leg, the answer was no). So, I'm scrambling to get everything together. Tomorrow is a huge busy day 'cause I have to bring Olly up to Milano, then go to the physical therapist in Parma on the way back. We've decided with the broken arm dilemna to spend the night in Rome, where we leave from Fiumicino airport at 15:20 on thursday.
Linda was feeling bad about coming and being a "burden", but I'm so happy that she CAN come I really won't mind cutting up her tropical fruit for her. Positive points: 1) good thing she didn't break her leg 2) good thing she wasn't planning on running, cause then she would have done all that training for nothing. See you on the other side of the world!

OUCH! Oh no!!

Yesterday I had my last long run before the Phuket Marathon, 2 hours for a total of who-knows-how-many-kms. Linda, my travel companion, was ever so nice as to offer to follow me on her bike so that I'd have company and she could hand me over my water/gatorade. We were in the last half hour when I need to stop for a second, so I said "stop!". She did, but she wasn't able to get her right cleat out of the peddle so she fell to her left. She wasn't moving when it happened and instictively put her left hand out to break the fall. A little bruise, nothing bad...until this morning when she saw that it was swollen. She want to the hospital to have it x-rayed. The wrist is broken. She's in a cast up to her armpit. She's calling around to see if they'll let her on the airplane on thursday when we're supposed to leave for Thailand together. I feel so bad...I've never broken anything but I can't imagine being restricted in a cast like that.
I hope she's still able to come with me. Ten days in Thailand ALONE would really be, well, lonely.

Mobile

We bought Evan a bicycle last year and for the last twelve months he's just sat on the seat. No matter how many times we tried to get him to peddle, it just wouldn't connect for him. At school they told me that he would try all the tricycles by sitting on them and then saying, "Nope, this one won't go", as if they're supposed to magically move by themselves. Last week I noticed that he was getting on the bike by himself. He'd just sit there, but it was already a step ahead that he was able to get on and off without calling me a million times to do it for him. A few days later I saw that he was able to move the left peddle. He's back track and then move five inches, backtrack and move five inches. A couple of neurons must have clicked together in that baby brain of his 'cause all of the sudden he was peddling! What freedom! Now he peddles around and around and around the building for twenty minutes at a time (which is a lot for a two year old). Today he even dared to wave to me with one hand! The helmet is mine, he insists on wearing it rather than his Mickey Mouse helmet.

Tuesday the 6th

I have so much stuff going on I don't even know where to start!
Last weekend was a three day holiday here in Italy, so no school on friday and the kids were home with me. I practically slept for three days. Friday morning I slept in until 8.30 am (as opposed to the 6.00 am wake up) and then in the afternoon I took a three hour nap with Evan. Saturday, um, the same. By Sunday I was feeling pretty rested but I slept in until 10.00 am 'cause Piero was home and could take care of Evan in the morning. I decided to not feel guilty anymore if I need to sleep. I'm nicer, don't get as sick and am much more pleasant to be around if I get my sleep. Sunday afternoon I had a 2 hour long run scheduled. I was a little apprehensive about this since my running has been going so bad lately. But I put my Heart Rate Monitor on and decided that for the first hour I would not let it go past 150 bpm and then on the way back I would just do fartlek work between 150 and 160 bpm. I'm happy to report that I never had to stop and I made it back with no problem. I think I'm finally getting over the anemia bout. Yay!
The other thing I did was finally go see a physical therapist. I've been having a lot of problems with my back and the muscles down the back of my legs , from the gluteus maximus all the way down through the ham strings. I can barely get out of bed in the morning without some sort of strange maneuvers. Then I warm up and I'm fine. Doesn't hurt when I run, but on the other hand the "injury" involves such an important muscle group that it couldn't NOT have some effect on my sports.
So he looked at me and figured out that my pelvis was blocked and slightly twisted to the right. This, probably thanks to the last pregnancy and consequent explusion of junior (which is when I started having the pain). I also have a vertebrae out of place and he asked me to have an x-ray so that we can see if it's hereditary or not. He did a osteopathic type treatment and then showed me some exercises that I'm supposed to do every day at home. I already feel about 20% better, which doesn't sound like a lot, but for the type of pain I was feeling is really a lot.
I'm also thinking that maybe this is why I was finally able to run continuosly for the first time in a few months.
So, in short, things are looking up :-)

New Tech, Old Tech

I'm so upset...Last month Piero bought me a new computer. It's a very weird story too. I didn't really want a new computer, I had a nice comfortable ASUS laptop that I used with no problems except for that every once in a while the cooling fan would get stuck and make this weird noise. Anyway, he insisted so I let him buy me a new Toshiba - very basic, no frills, but the ASUS I had bought in 2001, so the Toshiba had five years of technology on the ASUS. This was wednesday evening. Thursday morning my ASUS wouldn't start up. It just literally died on me...the weirdest thing, like it was waiting for that to happen. Or maybe it got offended that I bought a replacement. Anyway, I just discovered that my new computer doesn't have an infrared portal, which means I can't download photos from my telephone! I am so bummed. I went on this ride sunday and took a ton of photos to decorate my blog with and now I have nothing to show you!
The ride was 70km and it took me 3:20:21 to do. The pics you would have seen:

- Leaving from Modena the first town you would have seen is Maranello. Maranello is known for one thing and one thing alone: Ferrari. I took a photo of the test track (you can see it from the road) and then the front of the Ferrari office building, which is actually kind of boring. I think it was constructed in the sixties and they've never updated it.

- This particular road I took goes up to Serramazzone and has a 15km 7% climb. I kept getting passed by a bunch of cyclists as if I was standing still so I got really really excited when I saw that I was going to pass someone. I even took a picture of him as I passed. In the picture you would have seen his yellow WOOL jersey (which should have given me a clue there...) and his LEATHER cleats (clue number two...) and I just about laughed out loud when I saw the poor guy was about eighty years old. WHEEE, I passed you old man!!!

- Several pics of the beautiful Emilian mountains and farms.

- A lovely photo of the pastry I ate back in Maranello on the way back. I swear I do this ride JUST to be able to eat those things...they're this crunchy pastry layered thing with a Chantilly cream inside. Comes in small or super large. I've only ever bought the small so far...I'd have to do 100km to buy the super large. The picture at the top was the best I could do...

Thailand, again!

I don't think I've mentioned it but I'm leaving for Thailand in three weeks. I went last year when I was invited as a journalist to write (and run) about the Thailand Temple Run .
A few months ago they contacted me again and asked me if I'd like to come and write (and run again!) a new marathon that they were organizing in Phuket. Um, yes, I'd like that very much! I talked my friend Linda into coming with me and I'm making it into a mini-vacation. I'll be leaving on the 15th, arriving in Phuket on the 16th. The run is on the 18th and starts at 5.00 am. Linda will probably do the half marathon, though if her foot continues to give her trouble we'll rent a bike and have her follow me. I'm really excited about the prospect of going snorkeling and sitting on a beach with nothing to do. I'll take my computer so that I can write the article under a palm tree while I sip on some tropical drink. Did I mention that a Thai massage here for one full hour costs about three dollars? I'll be getting one or two a day!
On the way back we've decided to stop in Bangkok for some shopping. We went online to look at hotels...OMG, they were so inexpensive! I'm so used to New York, Paris and Rome prices, which are sometimes bordering on ridiculous. The most expensive hotel that we saw was the Marriot Resort and Spa, a whopping $110.00 dollars for the room for one night. But we thought that we'd then have to "dress" the part and really didn't want to have to bring along formal clothing. So we went with a nice three star superior called the Narai Hotel. It has nice rooms and a pool and a fitness center and three restaurants. Breakfast is included in the 40.00 dollar per room per night tarif. That's twenty dollars apiece. Last year when I was in Bangkok I went to some all you can eat Asian Buffets for four or five dollars. I think I could retire here...
Plenty of photos will be coming on this page at the end of the month. Stay tuned. The kids? Oh, they're going with Piero to Grandma's at the beach. They'll be out of school next week so everything is taken care of on that end. WWWHHHHEEEEEEEEE!!!!!

Body Composition (or Fat fat, fat)

In my quest to put the scale away and ignore the numbers, I went and had my body compostion tested. I had already done this in 2001 when I was training for my last "half" Ironman, so I had old numbers to work with, specifically 64 kg x 19,7% body fat. I felt really good then, it was easy to maintain and racing triathlons was FUN when I didn't have to worry about stuff jiggling.
Since having Evan I really felt that my body comp had changed. Some of that could be age or just having another baby, but with all the physical activity that I do I knew that I could reverse it a bit. Most people will look at me and tell me I'm thin but I knew that my composition was off...and now I have the proof! I measured out at 67,5 kg x 25,2% body fat.

Gulp.

For women, a body fat of 10-12% is essential, 14-20% is considered a healthy range for athletes, 21-24% is healthy for fitness, 25-31% is considered an 'acceptable' range and anything above 32% is considered obese.

So I'm not obese and I am "acceptable", but from an athletic point of view, I have to knock down some of those numbers. I'm even slightly out of the fitness range. I'm actually excited about it. I'm not interested in "losing weight", just in changing that fat number. I'll need to gain some muscle too, which is why the numbers on the scale won't be important to me.

I'll go back in about 8 weeks to re-test.

Excuse me now while I go have breakfast...

My First...um...Ultramarathon

I didn't really mean for it to be an ultramarathon. Actually, I didn't even mean for it to be a marathon! I had signed up for the Pisa marathon back in february. I liked the course because it was in the area where I used to live in Tuscany and I really hadn't gone back since then. But then a few things came to hinder my even getting to the starting line:

- my blood test the month before with the low iron
- my getting a huge charley horse cramp in my left calve that left me limping for days before the race
- Evan coming down with a 101° fever for three days before the race.

Well for the first consideration I just thought I'd run the marathon and not care about my final time. For the second I put hot packs on my calf and then ran a half hour on the saturday before the race and it seemed okay. We took Evan to the doctor on saturday afternoon where he was given an antibiotic and said he'd be fine.

It rained just as we started out, but then the sun came out. It was hot every once in awhile but not unbearably so. Don't ask me what happened but I had to hit the bushes THREE times within the first 12km, at that point the "race" part was pretty much over for me and I just decided that it would be a lovely day to walk to Pisa. It was. The weather was beautiful and I had a friend that walked/ran with me and we were having such a nice time that right after the 34th km we found ourselves alone. We kept going forward and then we got to an intersection and demanded to know where the course was. The police officer said: one km back! AAACCHHH. I stood there stunned for a minute, looked for a way to cut the course, but there wasn't. So we walked back the whole one km and rejoined the race. I ended up finishing 44,195 km in 5:26:32. It really proved to me that I don't EVER want to run anything beyond a marathon. No thank you.

Dream: what does it all mean?

Please help me. I know how many of you are reading these entries, I even know where you're from. I have this "problem" and I really need some collective anonymous advice.

I have this dream that I dream periodically. Sometimes I'll have it once a month, other times I'll have it even more often than that. This week I've had it three times already. Last night was even more intense than usual.

I've had this dream, on and off, for the last twenty years.

I've always read that a recurring dream is an unsolved problem and once you get rid of the problem you stop having the dream.

For simplicity I'll give you the dream I had last night.

The Dream:
I'm in Italy. I'm the age that I am (45). I don't have children. I do have Piero. I decide that nothing has really happened for me here in Italy professional-wise and so it's time for me to go. I have to go back to the States and start over again. Much of the dream is centered around planning what job I'll have, where I'll live, whether I'll go back to school. I always start out with zero money so I have to get like a quick waitressing job first in order to get back on my feet and have some cash. I'll send for Piero later when I have some money. I'm sad that I wasn't able to make anything out of myself in Italy. Really sad. But then I realize I have another 20 years to be able to do something with myself in the States and I get excited.

End of dream

Through the years the dream morphs. Sometimes I have one child or both of my children. Sometimes none. Sometimes no husband, or sometimes he'll come "later". Many times I'm going back to school to be re-educated, other times I spend all the time looking for an apartment to live in, in San Francisco.
There is always a huge sadness at leaving Italy and not doing something with myself there. It not happening or my not having done anything. I'm always really excited about the new prospects, the new life, though still sad to leave the rest behind.
When I wake up there is always a huge relief. Or is there?

What do I have that is unresolved?
Is there something in this dream that I'm not seeing or don't want to see?

If you need any pieces to the puzzle to help me out I'll be glad to answer any questions.

Payback

This has been a really difficult and emotional week. Olly is having some problems that we're trying to sort out, but in the meantime it's a daily battle. Throw in PMS for both of us, Piero gone for the week (solo parenting), I was really a wreck yesterday.
When I went to pick Evan up and nursery school at 1.00 pm he was all happy 'til we got to the car and he started to cry because he wanted the other car. After that he cried for anything and everything. Finally at about 2.30 pm I took him off to bed. He fell asleep within five minutes and didn't wake up for another four hours. When I woke up an hour later I found Olly asleep on the couch. Then at about four o'clock she started sleep talking and asking where all her friends had gone. I led her back to the couch and closed her eyes. She slept another hour. Surprisingly we all went to bed at 10.00 pm and slept instantly, waking up at 6.00 am.

Last night we all piled into the same bed. I had already turned off the lights when I heard this really feable "I love you Mom". She was so faint in saying it that I had to have her repeat it a few times. She did too.

This morning while I was getting the laundry Evan made me stop and lean over to him. He caressed my face and said "Tu sei brava" (you're good, as in a good person) . Almost made me cry. It certainly made up for the emotional crummy week.

Finding Myself

I don't remember how it came to me or what made me even think about it. One day I was surfing the web and found THIS.
I've always wanted to do a half, in fact in 2001 I actively looked for one to do but the closest was in England but I didn't have the time to travel for it. Instead I found one on the Island of Elba.
It wasn't a full half (make sense?), but with a 2km swim/66km bike/14km run, it was pretty close. I can positively say that in the summer of 2001 I was in the best shape of my life. I finished that triathlon and felt fantastic. Which brings me to now...When I saw the Monaco Half the first thing I thought was summer 2007. Then I thought, why wait? I always say I don't have the time to train but if I cut a lot of the wasted time I produce during the day and get myself (and the family) a little more organised, I do have the time. The most difficult in training and on the course will be the bike. If you're so inclined go check out the bike course.
I'll have to do some REAL cycling training. I have some good size mountain ranges near my house and then we'll spend the month of july in St.Moritz so it shouldn't be a problem finding training routes.
So this will be my new focus. It's interesting how your perspective changes. I'm slowing weeding out the fat loss blogs (especially people that don't do the talk or walk the walk!) and replacing them with inspiring Tri Blogs like this one or this one.
Monday (a holiday here) I road 60km on my bike. It was good to do that. It confirmed that I'm still in good biking shape but that I'm a little rusty. Second it reminded me to lubricate certain body parts for me next ride. Ouch!

Not always what you think...

This photo has nothing to do with my entry, I just thought I'd put it up 'cause Evan's a sun- shiny kind of kid that is always smiling and happy. He makes me happy and smiley too!

I went to a new doctor in Milan a few weeks ago. For the new and memory lapsed, I'm having trouble with perimenopause, I like to look into alternative medicine thus, the new doctor. He had me do a food intolerance test and talked about how I should eat. That merits a whole other entry so I'll do that at a later date. ANYWAY, he asked me to do a few blood tests to look at my hormone levels. My sister in law is a lab tech so I had her do the tests and she decided to include everything else she could think of. I got them back and noted that I have iron levels at an all time low. I've been really really tired and sleepy and lethargic. I am so happy to know that there is a cure! For your info I looked at the Sideremia (Iron). Normal levels are 50 - 160mcg/100 ml. Mine were at 2. Two! And the minimum is fifty. Sheesh...I'm still waiting to hear back from the doctor on this (It's a never ending holiday over here between Easter, Liberation day and Labor day), but I'm pretty sure the new diet will take care of it. Just to be on the safe side I'm taking a supplement until I hear from him. It's only been a few days but already I feel better. I didn't even have to take a nap yesterday!

Update! Update!

So busy, so busy, no time to even give a thought to anything but writing (for work) and my kids (who are wonderful, but a lot of upkeep). Let's see...

- I ran the More Marathon and had a great time in New York City. My final time was 4h20'15" which for me is a mini post baby PR. I'll take anything ... I didn't buy too much stuff in NY, but I did buy a lot of junk like easter bunny cookie cut outs and neon food dye. I love cooking.

- Before I left for the marathon I thought I'd go get my legs waxed. Fine, I do it all the time but this time the girl asked me if I wanted the bikini area done. Okay, I said. I mean it's starting to get warm so I might as well start now...OUCH! Talk about brazilian wax job! I had a hard time convincing my husband that NO I wasn't not going to the States to have an affair even though my pube area was now...oh we won't get into it...

- For one week after the marathon I had a speeded up metabolism. You know what? It almost bothered me. I me, you're hungry all the time and you have to think constantly about what you have to eat and do it. Otherwise you pretty much can't concentrate on anything else. I'm glad to say that it's back to normal now, sluggish and slow.

- The book. The editor called. Where's The Book. Oh, it's almost ready. When? May. (HA!!!) You all might not hear from me until then...

Mezza (Half) Maratona (Marathon)

Before too much time passes by I guess I should let you know that my convention and following half marathon race went okay. I did learn something valuable about myself in both instances. The convention: the speakers were all very good and there was always a crowd of people seated listening to whoever was on the podium. The best speaker and the one that drew the largest crowd was of course the doctor that spoke about FOOD! Food allergies and myths about them and how they can help or hinder your race performance. Anyway, back to the opening of the convention...I gave my opening (3 minutes) and then started down the list of who would be speaking. I came upon the coach of two Olympic gold medalers...and drew a blank! Yikes! Then I had to look down at my paper, no light, and try and make out the names. After that I was shaky and kept kicking myself for it. The race: it was supposed to rain, but then it didn't. In place of the rain there were head winds for the entire thirteen miles! Ugh! It was really difficult fighting them. I tried to tuck in behind other runners but sometimes it just wasn't possible, other times there was nobody around. The last two miles were the most difficult and I probably lost another minute right there. I managed to come in at 1h59'15", my first sub two hour run in a zillion years. The lesson: I can never pat myself on the back and be proud of what I did. For the convention, even though I got lots of compliments I just kept kicking myself for that one 4 second hesitation. The race? Before it I said I'd be thrilled with a sub two hour. Afterwards instead of being thrilled all I could thing about was what kind of race I could have had without the wind. There's a lesson for me here, I just gotta dig it out...

#9: I hide food in my clothes closet

#9: I hide food in my clothes closet

Last summer when we spent the month of July in St.Moritz I would go shopping about once a week at the local grocery store. It was a COOP and it had just about everything in there from cosmetics to fruit and vegetables. I love going to grocery stores and shopping, especially foreign ones. I don't really buy much, but I love looking at the different types of products they have on the shelves. St.Moritz has got to be the most expensive town on the planet, including the local COOP. I limited myself to buying different breads with lots of seeds and different mixes of muesli for my morning breakfast. The last item displayed before you went to pay at the cashier was the chocolate. Swiss chocolate, belgium chocolate, italian chocolate, you name it, they had it. I was very very good and didn't ever buy any but I promised myself that before I left I would purchase a few bars to take home with me. A few weeks later I went sans babe and took my time in choosing what flavours I wanted. Dark chocolate, one with hazelnuts, Toblerone in various flavours. I think I chose about ten and then hurried them off to the freezer bag I had prepared for the trip so that they wouldn't melt on the way home.
Once home I put them in the freezer and didn't think too much about them until my sweet hormonal about-to-be teenage daughter spotted them and asked me if she could have one. "Of course you can," I replied innocently, "just don't eat too much." I remember hearing that freezer door open and close a few times, but I was totally shocked when two days later TWO DAYS LATER I realized that she had eaten all-ten-chocolate bars.

Now I read a lot of these fat busting blogs and at least once each writer touches on the subject of the Mom - Food connection. I too remember eating a ton of food at that age, though mine was balanced out by a lot of physical movement on my part. There was no Mom around so I was able to stuff myself as much as I wanted without anybody saying anything to me. Anyway, a lot of the bloggers accuse their mothers of creating these strange situations or telling them how fat they are or limiting their food intake. I have never done this with Olivia. What happened though was that from september to december she gained 10 lbs without growing in height. I never tell her NOT to eat anything, but if I see her going back and forth from the kitchen a lot I'll tell her to start hitting the fruit instead of the cookies. I try as much as I can not to buy junk, but you can't not EVER buy it...In any case it's not one or two things that is going to get a person overweight, it's the huge quantities of things in a repeated pattern that gets them into trouble, like what she is doing right now. After the Swiss Chocolate incident I started to hide food. I like to eat nice sinful things every once in awhile and it's really frustrating to buy them and not find them when you want them. Even worse is that she'll eat whatever it is right away, the entire box, package tin is consumed in one afternoon. So I had to hide the food. At the moment my stash consists of Lindt chocolate easter eggs in various qualitites and Mini Kitkats. The KK's are great 'cause they come in packs that are only 85 calories and I can have one without feeling morally and calorically bad.

Last night O asked me to make her out a food chart. With her help I did, though it was just telling her and trying to make her understand that she has to eat breakfast + snack + lunch + snack + dinner and she'll lose weight instantly. Geez, I'd love to have a teenage metabolism! I even told her to make sure that the afternoon snack was a chocolate thing so that she wouldn't feel deprived. Today after lunch while I was in the bathroom I heard her go into the kitchen cabinet. I came out (while she tried to hide a piece of chocolate cake) and just told her in a nice and understanding way that I wasn't making her go on a diet. If she wanted to eat she could eat, but that if she wanted to lose some weight she did have to put order into her eating habits. I emphasized again that I wouldn't put any conditions on her eating but she had to be the one that did it for herself.

I'm sure that twenty years from now she'll blog about her Mother that didn't help her out and let her eat too much...Sigh, parenting is such a hard job...

Ten things you don't know about me: #10

#10: for many years I made my living as a "Plus" model.


I used to get stopped on the streets on a regular basis by modeling agents who thought I should get into the business. The only problem was that when I'd go for the first interview they'd always tell me to lose fifty pounds and then come back. I'm 5'10", so I'm tall enough, but they were asking me to get down to 120 lbs, a weight I was at in fifth sixth grade. If I go below my present weight of 140 lbs I start to look skeletony from the waist up. That big rear just stays put. I just don't have THAT kind of model structure. Now back in those days I did weigh a good fifteen to twenty lbs more than I do now and I still wasn't into wanting to lose it yet. Or rather I was but I wasn't doing it...Then a female agent I had in Firenze suggested I go for the new "plus" sizes since these models were difficult to find. In Europe a plus size model wears a size 12 or 14 (as compared to normal models that wear a size 6) , so this was perfect for me. Since the "real" models didn't want these jobs (considered beneath them and only 'cause they had gained weight) I was happy to take them up since the pay was exactly the same! In my plus modeling stint I worked for Max Mara, Luciano Soprani, Versace, Laura Biagiotti, and my number one moment was a fitting session for Valentino WITH Valentino. Well, actually it was for Valentino, his gorgeous blonde American lover and their four dogs. I was flown down to Rome for the occasion and worked the day at his atelier next to Piazza di Spagna. Unfortunately I wasn't asked back because he thought my rear was too large for his fitting clothes. Oh well, thanks anyway Valentino! The last job I did was in 1993 at the ripe age of 33 (I lasted a long time 'cause I always looked younger than I was) just three months after having given birth to Olivia. If I recall correctly it was catalog work. I brought her with me and breastfed her in between photo shoots. That one job was fun with her but I couldn't see it happening again and in that one moment I was just happy to take the time to be her Mom.
A few months later I started running regularly and got too thin for the "plus" clothes. End of Plus modeling career.

A First

Yesterday I was huggling with hubby, which is easy to do since in our studio his work area is side-by-side to mine. I just hop off my desk and plop myself in his lap and get myself some hugs and kisses at any time of the day! We've been together almost ten years now, but I still like to ask him useless questions like "Do you still love me?" where he has an obligatory answer. We do it at least twice a week. Cheap fun. So while he was correctly answering all of my silly questions he said, "Just don't lose any more weight".

Now Hubby is a man of very few words. In terms of emotion or expressing how he feels it's like pulling teeth. If he says anything significant to you, you have to take it seriously 'cause he'll only say it once. He's seen me at my low of 137 lbs and my high of 190 lbs. and has never said ANYTHING about either values. NOTHING. Just kept loving me exactly how I was, and for that I am very grateful. So I had to really listen to what he was saying.

"You don't like me like this?"
"No, you look good, just don't lose anymore."
"I thought you liked thinner women?"
(no answer = not necessarily true)
(me puzzled 'cause I thought it was true)
(I've just discovered after ten years that Hubby likes my big butt)
"So, if I stay at this weight it's okay"
"Just don't lose any more. You start to look run down and too thin".

It's true, I did lose the weight for me and I am very pleased that I am happy with myself, but I can't tell you what a mental uplift it was for me to know that THIS is what is attractive to my Husband. What I am right now. I don't have to worry about losing anymore, just maintaining and being happy where I am. I must say that the mental shift has been nice. Last night I went to the fancy gym to train and thought more in terms of firming than losing. Time went faster while I pedaled away for 80 minutes on the bike plus the another twenty running (think marathon training!).

Sunday Run

I had a fantastic run today. I should say a fantastic long run since it took me two hours and ten minutes to finish. Since I'm lazy and didn't feel like writing myself up a new marathon plan, I just took the one that Hubby had written up for me in the fall and cut and pasted it into spring. Today I had to do:

1h30' + 6 x 1km, rec.2'

I had to get reinforces for this since I had the babysitter come watch Evan and then Shygirl followed me on the bike. With workouts up to one hour I'm fine by myself, anything longer than that I really need to be with someone, otherwise I can talk myself into shortening the kilometres or going slower in no time at all. I did the first ninety minutes at a casual pace. We yabbed and gabbed and gossiped the whole time. We also planned what we wanted to do in New York 'cause Shy girl will be coming with me and running the half marathon. I got to the 6 x 1km and was able to get them all in at 5'20"/km. I am really really pleased with this because I remember running the same workout last fall and I didn't even bother taking the times of the km's since I knew they'd be slow. Yay me!

I also temporarily resolved the maintenance dilema. I'm going to go up to 1800 calories for a few weeks and see how it goes. I may need to increase that to 2000 calories as I get closer to the marathon date. For 1800 calories I'll break it up into 400 at breakfast, 200 snack, 500 lunch, 200 2nd snack and 500 dinner. I choose all healthy foods but allow that the second snack be anything I want (even chocolate!). By the way, when I was limiting myself to 1600 calories dinner and lunch were 400...anyway, this structure seems to work for me right now. I feel comfortable with it for some odd reason. Again, it's what works right now. I've learned in my dieting "career" that this could change - and then I have to find a new trick to pull out of my hat.

Tag

I was reading a post written by DG who quoted reading a post by Nancy which I then went to read and found out it was all about weight maintainence, which is exactly what I'm going through now. Now the positive side to this is that everybody has noticed that I lost some weight. Yep, there's nothing more gratifying than having people notice it in a positive way. Also, my running is so much easier without having to lug around those few last pounds. I run faster and that's satisfying. What's difficult is still learning how much I can eat without gaining it back. Right now it's even more difficult because my period is late and causing me to retain water like crazy. I can go up and down by five lbs in just water weight. Ugh. One thing they did get right in the article from Nancy's site: exercise is something you have to do almost every day. I work out four to five days per week and if I didn't I would surely gain back weight pretty quickly. Speaking of exercise, my trip to the More Marathon in New York City is confirmed so I better get cracking. I also got an all expense paid invite to THIS marathon in Thailand. Whoooeeee!!!!

Update! Update!

A few weeks ago I started to get this sudden build up of work. People were calling out of nowhere: old clients, new clients, current one's with more referrals. All of this has been coupled with Hubby's new work assignment in Rome. For the next year and a half he will be going to Rome for two to five days per week, which means that I solo it at home with the two kids. I decided that the ONLY way I was going to be able to pack all of this in would be to get up early. Now the trick to getting up early is in going to bed early, something I've always had difficulty doing. This week I really forced myself to do it though, aided with the fact that I was also really tired. It worked! For one week straight I was able to rise at 4.45 a.m. It really works out well because I love the time to myself in the morning when nobody wants/needs me to do anything for them. Plus, I get assignments started and then interrupt to take the kids to school. When I come back home I'm already half way through some work and I can finish it...or go running without feeling guilty since I already have part of the work done anyway. I never really got anything done late at night anyway.

I took a ten day hiatus from running so that I could get over the flu. I started back last week but every time I went for a little forty minute run it felt like hell. Friday I went again and it was better so I felt encourage to go ahead with my plan of running 22 kms on Sunday. Shy Girl and I did it together with a 30' run/5' walk combo and I was surprised that I actually made it with no problems. This morning (the day after), no aches or pains. Now I just hope that I'll be able to continue on with the training. I just need to focus...

Weight is steady at 65 kg...

Ugly HTML

Yes, I'm better now, thank you.
I've been spending my Sunday working and one of the things I have to do is surf and look for races where we can go and do marathon advertising. My head is dizzy from all the really bad sites I've seen! I mean, html has advanced, but that doesn't seem to have allowed anyone to take web graphic lessons. Here's an example .
My challenge is coming to an end and I am VERY proud of myself for having kept it up for a whole thirty days, or rather twenty-seven 'cause I still have three more days left. I'll be ending it with a few photos since this has not only been a thirty day effort but a whole 2,5 years! You're all just getting the tail end of it.
Then I have to decide whether to close this site...I'll think about it later...

Weight lost so far: 2,6 kg
exercise today: 60' run
water consumed: never enough!
Days left in challenge: 3

K.O.

After having taken care of a sick baby for five days, I finally caught his intestinal flu. Fever, nausea and intestinal discomfort have been with me for the past few days. You think that along with eating NOTHING it would be enough to make my weight budge? WRONG!! Seven more days left to the "challenge"...

Winter Break

Modena Sporting Club
Originally uploaded by juliainitaly.

I'd made a date with Shygirl to go running the other night but the only time that she can go these days is after six o'clock p.m. Here in northern Italy that means it's dark, cold, icy, freezing, and you might find snow on the ground. I could go in the morning or the afternoon by myself but I just hate thinking about her running around that park by herself in the cold, dark night. The forecast was set for snow so I wasn't really enthusiastic about going running outside, however, an hour later there we were going round and round the park in the cold night.
Now this has really been an odd winter. Where I live it generally snows once at the end of january. I mean it's cold and everything, but it's not freezing. This year it started snowing in mid november and I can't even count the number of times it's snowed since then. It's never a lot, maybe a couple of inches, but it sticks for a few days and is really slippery.
I'm pretty hard core when it comes to exercising. I will go under ANY circumstances, but this was getting old. We didn't want to join a gym 'cause I HATE gyms. I'd much rather run in the snow than be indoors. On the other hand we both felt like we needed some sort of boost to help us get through another month of outdoor running. Then it came to us: couldn't we find a way to just go once a week somewhere? Detto, fatto!(said and done!). We signed up for 25 entry passes to the M0dena Sp0rting Club. It's THE most expensive gym in town. It has plenty of machines and classes at every hour of the day and a huge weight room. But the best best part? It has a spa! Men's and women's is separate. It has two saunas, a turkish steam bath, four jacuzzi's, These Roman dipping baths (freezing water) and deck chairs where you can just chill out. Optional is massage and pedicures. We went last thursday for the first time and spent 20 minutes on an exercise bike, 20 on the step machine and 20 on the running treadmill. Then we hit the spa...
I can't wait to go back...for the spa...and you know what? The next night we went running on freshly fallen snow and had a wonderful run. We were just in need of a change attitude!

Weight lost so far: 2.5 kg
Calories: 1640
Exercise: 45' + 10 x 100mt uphill
Days left in the challenge: 11 (I can't believe I've lasted this long!)

Down & Up

Yesterday I could only only get in a quick thirty minute run 'cause Hubby was leaving for Rome. When I got back home I did some floor exercises and then got this crazy idea to lift some weights. I have a balance bar on the porch with some 10 kg weight on them. I only did ten squats where I went halfway down and then up again before I got distracted by Evan. As I put the weights down I thought "It's not going to do anything anyway..." Well, today I can feel it. A lot. Right on my butt where it counts too! I'll have to do that again soon sometime.

Weight lost: 1,1 kg
Calories: 1585
Water consumed: not enough!
exercise: running 30' + exercises
days left: 14 (2 weeks?!)

Up & Down

Weight lost so far: 1,4 kg
Calories : 1620
Water: 1,5 lts.
Exercise: rest
Days left: 16

This is where I start to falter...

So. Explain this to me: Friday, good day. I stayed within 1600 cals plus I went on a 11km run with ShyGirl around the park. Woke up yesterday and had gained 200 gr. Nothing to get excited or upset about but notice the upward trend...Yesterday was a nice cooking day but I was really careful about what I ate. For lunch I had bought a squid which I had fantasized about frying but immediately talked myself out of it since it wouldn't really fit in my calorie counting regime. So I invented a stuffed baked squid recipe. Very tasty and dietetic too, I might add. I took some rice and partially cooked it. Then I added a chopped onion, a squashed clove of garlic, a zucchini, salt and pepper. Then I stuffed the squid with this filling, put it in a pan where I had layed down some sliced tomatoes. On top of it all I poured a half a glass of white wine. I baked it covered for 30' and then uncovered another 30'. It was so, so good! So I ate probably a half a cup of rice and 100 grams of squid.
For dinner we had guests and I made foccaccia and layed out fixings for it: mozzarella, bresaola, stracchini cheese and rucola. I only had one piece. I had also made some pastries (too involved to tell you how I did this), but I only ate half of one. Anyway, at the end of the day I figured that I had eaten approx. 1580 calories. Still within my budget.

SO WHY DID I WAKE UP WITH A 1 KG GAIN!

Anyway, this morning I raced a 12km and was very very happy that I averaged 5'21"/km. I haven't run that fast in years.

I'm just going to keep concentrating on the challenge. I am not going to worry about the slight, freaky, non explicable gain. This is usually where I give up but I want to make it to the end of the challenge so I can have a more scientific conclusion to the whole thing.

Does this ever happen to you?

Weight lost so far: 1,1 kg
Calories : 1580
Water: 1,7 lts.
Exercise: 12,4 km
Days left: 17

Icicles

Last night I went running with Shygirl. I couldn't get a babysitter until five o'clock so we knew that we'd be running the second half of the training session in the dark. Since we needed an uphill to do some sprints plus a measured 1km we had to go to Tre Olmi. It's about seven minutes from my house by car. It's on the outskirts of town, with lots of fields around it. It's really taking a lot of will power to go running these days because of the weather. It is FREEZING outside, and last night was not an exception at -4c. So we did the warm up and the sprints and then another fifteen minutes of running, then we were supposed to end it with 4 x 1km. By that time it was really dark, plus it was foggy so it gave this ghost like feeling to the whole experience. At the end of the first km I felt my hair and I had icicles growing off the ends! Shygirl said that she could feel them on her eyelashes as she was running. We were happy to have finished the workout but we've decided that in order to mentally survive the rest of the winter we're going to try and get one day passes to a gym someplace and go at least once a week.

Weight lost so far: 2,1 kg
Calories : 1550
Water: 1,5 lts.
Exercise: 20' + 10 x 100mt uphill + 15' + 4 x 1km @ 5'00"
Days left: 19

I LOVE FOOD!

One thing that I have learned about myself in the dieting process is that I truly love food. Not just eating food, but making good food. I want every bite to count, I want the best quality and I really want to enjoy whatever it is that I'm eating. Luckily along with this trait is that fact that I love to cook. My mother passed away when I was ten and my father worked as a radio announcer at night so he was always happy if one of the four of us children (is that correct english...?) pitched in to cook. I remember sometime around the age of twelve I decided that wednesday would be my cooking night. I asked my Dad for a budget and he was happy to let me do that. This is where I learned to really cook. My Dad liked to cook also so he had a lot of cookbooks. We had the Time-Life series of recipes from around the world. I made Paella from Spain and homemade Pizza from Italy. Once I made this really complicated meat dish that went into a pastry covering. It took hours to do. I can still remember everybody waiting around the dinner table for it to come out of the oven. When I came to Italy my first fifteen years here were spent in Tuscany. I used most of that time figuring out how to make "Ribollita" or just a nice simple version of Lasagna. They were always shocked that an American could actually cook since we're always portrayed as women that slap frozen dinners on the table or run off to a fast food store to pick up an order for the family. In a funny way it was also my forte with men. They loved that I knew how to cook and would brag about it to their friends. I figured it was some sort of strange mother/girlfriend psychological entanglement.
Oddly enough both of my siblings are in the food business. My brother has a degree in restaurant and hotel management and is supervisor for a group of thirty restaurants in the South (USA). My sister owns a chain of ice cream stores in the Hawaiian Islands. I always felt that eventually I'd do something with food. So far all I do is eat it, but I have plenty of years ahead.

This is a link I read almost everyday: The Girl Who Ate Everything
I love reading about all the things she eats. She LOVES her food, in a good way...

Weight lost so far: 2,1 kg
Calories yesterday: 1652
Water: 1,5 lts.
Exercise: zero - no babysitter
Days left: 20

The Crack of Dawn

The organization of my time pretty much revolves around the children. Olivia at 12 is not so much a problem on a day to day basis, but of course Evan at 2 is my main worry. I know by now you all think I have a one track mind with running, it really isn't that way. I've organised my life in such a way that I'm pretty self sufficient except for when I have to go running. That's the only real time daily that I need someone to watch Evan. Since in order to keep my sanity I need to go running at least four days a week, whenever Hubby leaves for the week to go work somewhere, I have to find a babysitter or friend who can come and watch the baby for an hour. This last weekend Hubby went to Sicily to speak at a convention. He flew home sunday night and then monday he was to take off for a four day training session with his top athletes on the coast of Tuscany.

"What time are you going to leave on Monday?" I asked him this in hopes of getting in a run before he left.

"At the crack of dawn."

Now, I get up at 6.15 a.m. every morning to bring Olivia to school and quite frankly, I have never seen him up and dressed at that hour. But of course I wanted to believe that he had this urgent need to leave at "the crack of dawn". I came back home at 8.20 and he was still puttering around at the computer. At 10.00 he decided to have breakfast. Finally at about 12.00 pm I said "I need to go to the post office and on the way back I'll take a quick forty minute run in the park". He looked at me like that was completely normal and fine. So I did.
Men truly have their own time schedule.

I ran 40' and then went on the track and did a "run 'til you drop" 1km in 4'40". I was a little disappointed in the time 'cause I thought that I could run it about ten seconds better, but maybe it just wasn't my day.

Hubby finally left at 3.30 pm.
The crack of dawn...

Weight lost so far: 1,2 kg
Calories yesterday: 1601
Water: 1.2lts
exercise: running - 40' + 1km @ 4'40" - about 8km
Days left: 22

I've subscribed again to Fly Lady. I'm not quite yet into doing the entire routine, it would be too much for me to handle right now. What I am doing is just "Cleaning the Zones". You concentrate on one or two rooms per week and do a thorough cleaning of each. This week for example was the kitchen. On the list was defrosting and cleaning the fridge (done!), cleaning the oven (done!). All things that I hadn't done in over six months - yikes!


Weight lost so far: 1,2 kg
Calories today: 1605
Water: 1.2lts
exercise: running - 10' + 5 x (1km/walk 3') + 10' = 9km
Days left: 24

Half a Gorgeous Day

The days here have been absolutely beautiful. Clear skies, very blue, lots of sun...and freezing. Like - 4 c° in the morning and not past 6c° during the day. It's really frustrating to look outside and think that it's a gorgeous day until I actually do go outside and freeze my butt off. I'm aching to get working in my garden, which like all winter gardens looks horrible right now. I'll probably have to wait another seven weeks or so before I can even think about it. Oh well, I probably don't have the time anyway.
Hubby went away for the week and Evan still has a cough so he'll have to stay home from day care. I'm trying to set up a schedule with my babysitter, but to no avail so far. Tomorrow my friend Lucia is coming over to watch Evan while I go running. I'll have to see what happens with the rest of the week.

Weight lost so far: 1,2 kg
Calories yesterday: 1589
Water: 1.5 lts
exercise: running - 20' + 10 x 1' fast/1' slow + 15' - approx. 10km
Days left: 25

The New Cure

garlic
Originally uploaded by juliainitaly.

My husband's sister and mother are always coming up with new cures that we have to do to get healthy. Cures that, by the way, they rarely follow through on their own. Sometimes I'll follow them on something, sometimes I won't. A lot of that has to do with the fact that I grew up in the Hippy Dippy area of Marin County, California so I already SAW all of this way back in the 70's. Nothing new, yawn. So yesterday they sent a bottle of this "Ancient Tibetan Homeopathic Remedy" that is supposed to be a cure all for everything. It's basically a garlic concentrate. Three hundred grams of garlic marinated in alcohol and kept in the dark for I-don't-know-how-many-days. You're supposed to take it like a regular homeopathic remedy. Before each meal starting with one, two and three drops which then increase over a ten day span until you're taking twenty-five drops thrice a day. I was going to chuck it down the toilet when I saw on the paper that it promised to straighten out slow metabolisms. WOW! I'm goin' give it a try. The only thing I'm really afraid of is masking the garlic odour that might result from the cure. I've been to China and the Middle East. Garlic breath can be deadly. Believe me. On the other hand if the results is a speeded up metabolism, it just might be worth it!

Post number ONE, Two zero zero six

Did you see that my last post was on the 22nd of december? The next day we were supposed to all jump in car after the kids got out of school and head south one thousand kilometres. A eight hour drive for us. Well, the next day Olivia woke up feeling awful and by the afternoon had a 102 degree fever. Hubby woke up with no voice. Evan was still hacking away with the cough. So much to my dismay :-) we cancelled the trip and decided to stay home. This of course meant that with me being the only healthy one of the group, I played Florence Nightengale for a solid week. Everybody ended up happy (sort of...) and healthy after about eight days. Illnesses and viruses nothwithstanding, I had a nice week.
I did eat anything I wanted though I did try and practice a little restraint when I felt full (as opposed to continueing stuffing myself 'til I felt sick). All this ended in a one pound weight gain for the holidays. ONE POUND. I'm so jazzed. I've been exercising every day, mostly running, sometimes swimming or biking, and I think this really helped in keeping the pounds off. The other nice side effect is that I've been in excellent moods. Never depressed, never down, actually quite happy. I'm pretty sure that I can attribute the exercise to this, which makes me want to keep it up the new year. A depressionless 2006!