Writing

Being self employed had never been any goal of mine. It was something that just evolved, mostly out of desperation to be able to take care of my child, then children, on my own time. The only thing I had going for me when I started out (as a freelance) was my monthly writing gig at the National Running magazine. I've been writing this column for twelve years now. I remember the first year I wrote the column it took me almost the entire month to write, rewrite, clean it up and finally send it. Slowly over the years I've able to cut down on production time and now if I'm really pushed up against a deadline I can spit it out in a couple of days. But I'm still not able to do what I've always dreamed of and what I imagine real writers do: sit down at my desk with a cup of tea and have the words just flow from my fingers and onto the ex-paper, now computer screen. All of the sudden I'll have something much more important to do: clean up the house, look at a web page I needed to look up (which leads to never ending websurfing), write up some training schedules or whatever I can come up with to momentarily put off writing. I have tried to impose schedules, make myself sit in front of blank screens until I write, deny myself fun if I didn't get X amount of words written. And I can't say that I've ever found the winning combination. The joke of this is that writing has become my mainstay. I make my living from writing, yet I don't want to admit to myself that I am indeed a writer. In Italian even!

I'm putting the finishing touches on my book. It's a book on running for women. If you don't know me, I can affirm that I've gotten thousands of women in Italy to start running. My editor asked me to write a book for women and I will be looking for typos and errors and grammatical corrections throughout the text this next week. It took me four years to write it. Four F******* years! That's a lot of stareing at blank computer screens. At some point it started to block my entire life and I had to just get it done and over with and get on with something new. I was scared of the criticism (Italians are VERY fast at that) and whether I really had anything new or different to say. There was also the newborn, the teenager and husband who is away working 300 days a year and the other freelance jobs that I had...oh, and the housecleaning and cooking for four that seemed to take up a lot of my extra time. But now as all the pages come together I do know that my outlook is different and that my way of living sports and running is unique. I had a meeting with my editor thursday to decide on the cover graphics. What they want really shocked me and then got me excited and now seems perfect for what I have to say inside all of those pages. I can't wait to show it to you, and I will as soon as I can.

Beijing - here he comes!

Ottavio Andriani, an athete my husband Piero has trained since he was thirteen years old, has qualified to be on the Italian National team for the Olympic Men's Marathon in Beijing.
I am so proud of them both!

(p.s. this is the third athlete that he's trained to reach Olympic level...)

57 km week

Did I mention I'm running a marathon in FIFTEEN WEEKS??

Yes, it's true. Last week I did my first "official" training week, so the countdown is on. I ran five days out of the week which put me at 57km. I'm a little sore but I survived. This week I'm just repeating the same workouts to see how it goes...stay tuned.

Scattered

My concentration problems have been resolved with sleep. When we got down to the beach house my mother in law had started working on creating a new apartment. There were builders hammering away from 6 am and you would think that I'd have had a horrible vacation. Not so. I slept through everything, then I'd sleep in the afternoon for a few hours and then go to bed early. I did this for the first three days and then I was cured and ready to work normally again.
The day before we left to come home Evan said that he wanted to stay at the beach with Grandma. The next day he changed his mind and said he wanted to come home...but then he changed it again one more time. I hate hate being away from him but it is also the perfect opportunity to get my work projects out of the way and GET ON WITH LIFE. Sorry, the shout out is for me...Piero was asked to go up to St.Moritz to train the Olympic team for the next two weeks and then they'll decide whether to send him up there again. So it's me and Olivia at home. Rather it's me at home and Olivia running around town with all her friends doing summer stuff that you do at fifteen years of age.

I do have to say...don't tell anybody...shhhh...I'm enjoying this time right now. I wake up and eat a leisurely breakfast then I start to work. I work and get four times as much done as I normally do and then around 8.00 pm I go for a run. Right now it's about 95° every day so I wait until night to go running. Plus there's light out until about 10 pm. I've also gone out to the movies twice, a pizza dinner out with friends and on friday I have a cocktail date with my friend Linda. Yep, I'm really living it up here! Ha!

One week vacation down south

Tomorrow we're leaving for a week down south where I plan to
- Swim every day in the sea
- Eat my weight in watermelon
- Write, write, write (books, articles)
- Spend some one on one time with my Honey
- Run, if heat permits (it's been 100° every day here for the last ten days and running has been really ugly)
- Try and find some peace with myself, something that has eluded me lately...

Inexplicable date

I've been cleaning my studio space up a bit this week, rearranging books and shifting dust from one bookshelf to the next. I took down this wood box where I have all my old letters in and set in on the couch. Later that evening Olly was sitting on the couch talking to me and she started to finger through the letters. She asked if she could look at them. I said sure, just a part of my past - I'm not jealous of them if I'm there. It was interesting that she didn't want to read the Italian letters, only the ones written in english. As if the Italian was too real for her while the english was part of some sort of life I'd once had. She wanted to know about the gay best friend I lived with for a year and the boyfriend that I had for so many years that succumbed to ALS in his early thirties and also my little brother who used to write me a letter once in awhile. Very short, very sweet.

"How come these people used to write to you?"

"Because, Honey, when I was younger the internet didn't exist, as well as cell phones with sms messaging. We would sit down with a pen and paper and write a letter and then the other person on the other end would wait anxiously for the postman to deliver it." She laughed at that.

The world has changed, for the better and for the worse.

So yesterday I was listening to some music I had downloaded and inexplicably started crying for like fifteen minutes. All I could think about was my brother and how much I missed him. I re-read his letters and thought about how I used to read them all the time and that in actuality the pain of his not being here has lifted ten fold during these years. It used to seem unbearable. Now I just get really sad.

This morning P and I went and had a cappuccino together at the local bar while we read the paper. I looked at today's date: 29 june 2008.

A ha.

Yesterday was the anniversary of his death. I didn't even remember that, but maybe that why I was somehow drawn to the letters and the box and the tears. I feel better now, as if I needed to do that. I'm glad I remembered in some way.

No news is good news

I turned the television off for today. I usually like to clean the house or iron while I watch some trashy show that's not worth sitting down to. Lately I've been questioning how much garbage gets syphoned through my head. Especially the news. Triple that for Italian political news. Lately they've been covering Vatican ties with the mafia, including kidnapping agreements and bodies being buried with illegally within church walls. Then there's the President who owns three television channels and asks political favors in exchange for putting girlfriends and wives into soap opera roles. It just all makes my stomach turn and look in total horror at this society I've chosen to live in. I'm sure it's better and worse around the globe, but right now all I want to do is hike into the Sierra Nevada mountains for a month and cleanse myself from all this b******t.

So I'm turning my tube off today. I'm writing and doing some work on articles that are due next week and then Ev and I have Yoga at six o'clock and P is coming home...my day is full!

School's out!

Today is Ev's last day of day care, he starts again in mid september when he enters into the "5 year old" class. He's really excited about that, big boy at the school and all. Olly is taking a remedial class for geometric design. She has to re-take a test in september before being promoted to the sophomore level so she'll be on pins and needles for the whole summer not knowing which class she's in.
I know this is turning more into an update diary about what we're doing, but I just can't do better than this right now. I have my projects to clean up by the end of July, and then I start anew. By some sort of stroke of Attraction a women I had worked with on my Running Clinics for Women wrote me an email that she's interested in producing a DVD for next year and it looks like she's willing to do most of the work. Sometimes I feel like I get things handed to me on a silver platter...I DO appreciate it and I DO know when it's happening. To get ourselves creatively motivated on the project I've decided to go to La Parisienne in september. It's a weekend of women's running with a huge expo and 6,5km race. Last year they had 13,500 women which is HUGE for Europe. I'm sure I'll get a lot of great ideas there, if anything, I'll absorb all that great female energy!

Patience, mostly with myself

I've been having a lot of problems lately with concentration. My mind weaves back and forth from one activity to the next and I can't seem to find the focus to finish anything unless I totally and completly put all my energy directly into it...which seems like nothing at the moment. It seems like I get interrupted every three seconds by one of the kids...or it's time to fix the next meal or do something like, I don' t know, sleep. I don't know what to do about me, myself and I. I've tried every trick in the planet except totally seclude myself which at this moment in life I just can't do.

Have I always been like this? I think so, it's just gotten worse lately. Sigh.

I'm working it out even by just writing here for a few minutes.

You're probably all dying to know what I've been doing in the last month. Let's see...

1- My mother-in-law came to stay with us for 2 months. I survived.

2- I "raced" another sprint triathlon. Totally cool, in the south of Italy on the Ionian Sea. During the swim I could see sand and shells and fish. I won my age group in 1h25'03". I was the only one in my age group to show up. (don't tell...)

3- Evan's been sick three times with subsequent weeks of staying at home from day care.

4- I'm getting my running up to a decent pace and should be ready by mid july to officially start my marathon training for NYCM.

5- I didn't get depressed about the whole entry topic situation, just still trying to figure out the solution. This is a pretty major accomplishment for myself. Go me!

Wherever you may be

The strange thing about when people pass away is that they never grow old in your mind. My sweetheart little brother who today would have been 46 years old will forever be 22 for me.

I used to cry for him every day for about five years in a row. Then I realized that I just couldn't keep it up forever and I really needed to get on with life.

But that doesn't mean I don't think about him almost everyday. Especially on his birthday and even if he'll never grow old.

Baci.

Sprint Tri: my workouts

As you can see from my blog updates I've been super busy with little time to write here, or race. But I really wanted to take part in the Viareggio Sprint Tri because it's organized by my team and one of the first races I ever did (in 1997...). My training two months before leading up to the event consisted in: 2 pool workouts, one of which was a full 750mts just to make sure I could cover the distance (!) , 1 eighty km bike ride + 1 forty km bike followed by a fifteen minute run, 4 various runs which never went over fifty minutes, and 20 yoga lessons averaging twice per week.

Ready?

I did three minutes better than last year - finishing in 1h29'05".

I'm totally sold on the yoga. My left leg is totally healed and whenever I go out and run hard and start to feel pain I just do some of the asana that I know will take care of the problem and I'm good as new.

Now I have to start a slow build up for NYCM, in the meantime I'm signed up for another sprint next weekend. Workout and race strategy is the same - why mess up what's already working for me?

Marathon nr. 27

See this footer here? This is what I signed up for the other day. I'm really really excited not only to be going to New York, but also to be running a marathon. I'm also a little scared. My last marathon was in 2006 (Thailand!) and since then I've been trying to resolve my back problems. I don't want to get too excited if I end up having to not race, on the other hand maybe my enthusiasm will help me heal. Let's all cross our fingers and toes! I have six months to prepare so there's plenty of time to work things out.

Green-Red-White

Or is it White-Green-Red? The Treviso Marathon had this idea that they would have three separate starts for their marathon and assign a colour of the national flag to each one. At the half way point the three roads would meet and, having supplied a appropriate coloured hat, they would form the Italian National flag. It was really complicated to plan everything, but in the end it all worked out. I put just one pacer from each start point and coordinated it so that they would meet up with one another at 21km. THAT worked too (amazing!). It was actually very emotional, lots of tears were shed. The picture here is of the three 4h15' pacers. The guy in red was sobbing uncontrollably at the finish line.
One of the women I train, Alessia, ran her first marathon there. She wrote a nice story about it (sorry, in Italian!), though there is one excerpt I thought was funny: "While I was at the start sitting on the ground so I could take off my long pants and hide the gels, tie my shoes, I start a conversation with a couple. They're nice. I tell them this is my first marathon. 'Really? Good luck!' Then they see I have the blue bracelet to follow the four hour pacers and they ask me how many long runs I did. "15 miles" I tell them. They look at me shocked and then say "and you want to follow the four hour pacers?? Are you crazy? 15 miles is not enough, you'll never make it!"

Apart from the fact that this is the rudest thing to say to ANYBODY at the start of their first marathon...The long slow run is a useless exercise. Her 3h58'31" finishing time with negative splits proves it! Plus, she doesn't even look tired at the finish line...

Olly Blue Eyes (actually they're green...)

I think every parent secretly waits for the day that someone tells them that their child is a genius, has a special talent, will grow up to be a special person. Tuesday I went to the bi-annual parent teacher conference. Ugh. It's so hard for me to calculate whether she is doing okay or not just because the system is so different than in the States. Seven teachers said that she is "smart, intelligent, stands out from the rest" but hasn't quite brought her work up to a good standard. On the other hand she does have the capability to do it so it's all really up to her.

Her photography teacher says that she has vision unlike anybody she has ever taught, including any of her senior students, and she's hoping Olly will pass this year because she wants to have the honor of teaching her for all five years. (for anybody not following she's enrolled in an Art Institute, five year programme). I told her what her photography teacher had said. She was moved to tears, enough to go and study for an Art History exam. I'm just crossing my fingers that she gets all of this and understands what a great life she could have with this talent she possesses if that's what she wants.

Busy things I've been doing

Not a lot of blogging time lately. From March to May I'm always really busy with my business and this year seems to leave me little time for anything but work and family. Here's what I did just this last week.

We went to Rome for the marathon. Piero had an athlete running , though he pulled out at the 28km mark with a muscle problem. I 'm not crazy about the Rome Course, but the start/finish line cannot be beat! Here they are taking off in the picture above and then in the picture below...

...is just before all the marathoners started arriving.

Evan is the best traveler. For now we can throw him into any situation with absolutely no protests. On marathon morning he got out of bed at 6.00 am and we all went to the start together. And he's smiling too!

Earlier in the week we brought Evan to a Dinosaur exhibit in Cremona put on by the London Natural History Museum. It was fantastic! Ev is really into dinosaurs right now and has them all memorized. They had live sized mechanical models with sound and all.

The best thing that happened was my little girl turning 15 years old. The cake in the foreground is the Coconut white birthday cake that Evan and I made for her. It turned out yummyummy...

Retail Triathlon Therapy

Yesterday I was feeling really down. I don't know why but it's been this way for a few days. I've tried all the usual remedies but nothing seemed to be working so I decided I'd try some retail therapy. I put my road bike in the car and brought it to my bike shop. I bought myself some new shoes (Gaerne g-opal) and pedals (Look) and left the bike to be cleaned up for spring. While I was there I looked at a few bikes and have decided that once THE project is done I'll take the advance money and buy myself a bike. The choices at the moment are between a Pinariello and a Trek. I feel better :-)

Circus, Italian style

Before entering the big tent would you prefer a cappuccino or a glass of champagne? We went for a lollypop and a coffee. The lady behind the bar had on the biggest pair of fake eyelashes I've seen in a long time. Kind of went with the circus theme. Lots of acrobats but every few animals. Eighteen dancing ponies and four camels. We enjoyed it just the same.

Leave of absense

If you have now or have ever had any sort of creative block in your life (and who hasn't?), go out now and buy this book. I finally understood where my imfamous writing block is coming from...whew! Now I can get back to work!
All this means that I've set due dates for myself and announced to various people that projects I've put off for---ever are now coming before the summer is over. I have to put in more concentrated time on my projects and less on superfluous internet activities. I'll still put stuff out there once in awhile (ps - I'm leaving in an hour for Rome to run my half marathon--so excited to have a weekend with friends!) , but the concentration will be on THE project.
Wish me luck!

Yoga 201 (!)

I went to my doctor yesterday to get my blood tests ordered up. He asked me a couple key questions which sort of all added up to the type of tests that he's asked for. I'll have to wait until the end of february to have them done (Hello nationalized medicine!) but when I went home I looked up one thing in particular. The key symptoms are:

• Fatigue (yes)
• Weakness (um, yes)
• Difficulty in losing weight (check!)
• Course, dry hair (battling all the time with that)
• Cold intolerance (I use hot water bottles during the day while I work to keep warm)
• Muscle cramps (day and night! Do you remember my swims last summer while I battled not drowning while I worked out cramps that would last for several minutes. Happens during yoga too)
• Depression (I try and keep it at bay...)
• Irritability (hard to say...ya know when you just get bitchy?)

So, the verdict won't be in until the end of the month and I hate to do an internet self diagnosis...so I'll just wait on it. ZZZzzzzz...

In the good news my yoga teacher, after ten lessons together (once a week) asked me to switch classes and go to the Level 2 with another teacher. She thought I needed something more challenging so yesterday I tried the new class. Apart from the fact that I was totally intimidated by it because whereas my "class" had lots of nice comforting housewives in it, this one had YOGA BABES. But I just closed my eyes and concentrated on myself. Everything was a lot more challenging and there was even one position that I totally could not do. (like the above bridge pose but with your legs shooting up towards the ceiling. You achieve this my just flipping your legs UP) . I asked the teacher (and studio owner) afterwards if he felt this was the right class for me (cause I was feeling TOTALLY like it wasn't) but he told me that I'd done really well and that most people in the class had been practicing for years. Whew...I decided to go twice a week. Once with the advanced class and once with my first teacher - but on friday when she has a few more advanced students. One of my 2008 goals was to make it to level 2 - I just didn't expect it with a month!

Time for a check-up

I know I haven't blogged lately about my running or triathlon training...so now is a good time as any to do that! In three weeks I'm racing the Roma-Ostia Half Marathon. I've been regularly training since the beginning of december but for some reason haven't gotten into the kind of shape that I would expect from regular workouts. I always think that it's just because I'm just not fast or that my back is hindering any progress but I always leave any real physiological reasons until last. Thursday was a holiday here in Modena, the patron saint's day "San Giminiano". They have an annual race every year which I already wrote about last year. For the 2008 edition there were only two girlfriends instead of five - well we know WHO is consistent now! The race is an odd distance: 13,400 metres and I was able to average 5'55"/km for the race , which I was happy about considering how I've been feeling lately. The only problem was that my heart rate was really high for that measly speed. How am I feeling you ask? Run down, tired, sleepy. I went on another run friday and had to take a nap in the afternoon and then another run this morning where after twenty minutes I had to take walking breaks. There are some huge red flags waving here and I need to get it all checked out. Tomorrow I'm going to the doctor to order some tests. Mostly iron levels and hormone levels. If nothing shows up I will be going back to my homeopathic doctor. To all the naysayers, he's the only one who's ever cured my energy problems (no, this is not the first time that I've had this problem).

This is the Military Academy where the race starts from...

Here I am walking in after the finish line...and while I was running my race...

Piero and Evan were assisting Bald1ini while he ran a lactate test (I think he's preparing for the London marathon again ...)

Kind of humbles you when you're complaining about your energy problems and six minute k's!