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!

More Marathon

More Marathon
Originally uploaded by juliainitaly.

I just got the "Okay" from the running magazine that I write for to go to New York to cover the "More Marathon". I AM SO EXCITED! It's a women's only event. I've never run an entire marathon with only women. Most of all I'm excited to be going to New York City in the springtime. Wow, now I REALLY have incentive to get in shape for the spring. If you're interested in coming, please drop me a line. Here's the site for additional information:
http://www.nyrr.org/more/home.php

Strength (or weakness)

Affondi
Originally uploaded by juliainitaly.

See this hot fitness model in the photo? She's performing an exercise called the lunge. At the beginning of every training cycle I always start out with strengthening exercises. They keep your muscle tone up and I try and work on specific exercise that'll help me with my running. The lunges are great because they work right on that 'ole gluteus maximus and whips it right into shape. Last monday I decided that I needed to do a few...come to think of it I couldn't remember when the last time was that I'd done any. So after a 30 minute warmup run I did 10 x (20 walking lunges/100mt uphill sprints). Walking lunges are easier for me to do. When you get back up, instead of taking the step backward to go to your original point of origin, you go forward. Well, it must have been awhile since the last time I did this specific exercise. I could feel every-single-muscle in my thighs and butt for the next four days. I did them again yesterday and it felt fine. No pain. Which means next week I have to increase the intensity...

Mr.Virus Sponge

Dreamy Evan
Originally uploaded by juliainitaly.

I was all excited in September when I saw that Evan had been given a spot in day care. In my town the day care is partially city funded so for a relatively small amount of money you can have your child attend from 8.00 am until 12.30 pm. The school is fantastic and the teachers are wonderful and I was finally going to be able to get back into a nice work routine. We had just finished what they call the "insertion" where he goes first for an hour a day, then two, and then the whole four hours, when he got sick. A little fever, a cough that wouldn't go away, I kept him home for three weeks until he was better. He went back and after a mere two days he was sick again. It was a fever again but this time it stuck around for a week and then he got a cough and then an ear infection which required antibiotics. He stayed home a full month. Last monday he went back to day care again. It's really difficult when he doesn't attend for awhile because then it takes him a few days to get back into the routine and get used to the enviroment. I remember one day (maybe wednesday) I told him "say goodbye to everyone". He went straight up to this little girl, took her face in his hands and gave her a kiss on the mouth. It was so sweet, but the first thing I thought to myself was "let's hope she was germ free..." Ugh. Saturday he woke up coughing and hacking. Then he vomited twice during the morning, and to make things worse he has a case of pinkeye in his right eye which I had to beg the pharmacist to give me an antibiotic for. I don't know whether to insist with the day care because if it's not this year it's next year that his little immune system will have to get used to processing germs OR whether I should just wait another year. This would mean I'd have to get another babysitter and pay out mucho dinero which I really really don't want to have to do. Sigh. A mother's dilemma.

What's your strategy?

Christmas Cookies
Originally uploaded by juliainitaly.

Every Christmas I gain a few pounds, not a lot but probably three or four. Too many Christmas cookies, too many bites of chocolate. There's a certain point where I just say "what the heck..." and eat whatever passes by me. This year I am in a really good place mentally because I feel very very good about myself, but I have to find a way to not gain any weight because from past experience it is really difficult to take off. My first strategy plan has been to sign up for an important race right after the holidays. January 15th I've signed up for a half marathon where I want to try and go under two hours. But then what? Realistically I AM going to be eating, and I certainly don't want to deny myself my favorite christmas cookies so how do I work it out to a zero weight gain? I'm thinking that maybe I could allow myself "free" occasions to eat whatever I want, like one cookie baking day, Christmas day and New Year's Eve, but nothing else in between. After all they always say that it's not the one day but the entire ongoing two weeks that makes people gain weight. Please notice that I talk a lot about christmas cookies. I love cookies and they just remind me of my Mom and my sister and yes, there's a lot of emotion tied up there if you consider that my Mom passed away thirty years ago and my sister lives on the other side of the world. I have a specific set of recipes that I get out that my Mom used to use plus I like to make cookies with my own children.

Also, I'm commited to exercising every single day from the 23rd of december until the 6th of January (still a holiday here in Europe). I'll have plenty of relatives that want to stay with the kids so I won't have to worry about finding a babysitter. I'll have plenty of time to sleep if I need to recoup from workouts. Any other suggestions? What are you going to do?

Marathon nr.23 in the books!

It's only the 1st km!
Originally uploaded by juliainitaly.

People have asked me several times this year how many marathons I've run. I would always shoot off a number, but in reality I had no idea because I'd never bothered to count them. So as I put away my Milan City Marathon Medal from last Sunday in my running book I took out all the medals and certificates and photos and counted. Milan was number twenty-three. Before you're too impressed you should know that I've been running for fifteen years now so that's actually not a big number. On the other hand it's not shabby either...
I had a really great time at the race. My friend Lucy (on the right in the photo) ran the first 12km with me and then conveniently took a subway to the finish area. It was freezing a** cold outside and for the first 30km they only had icy cold water at the refreshment stations. Then I hit the 35km station and they had hot tea! Gosh, that was delicious. I had three cups and then took off again. My ending time of four hours, thirty minutes and forty seven seconds was nothing special, but as usual I learned a few things about myself along the way:
- No matter what the time is, I still enjoy the run. I've just learned not to get all bugged out about the final time and just enjoy myself.
- I really really enjoy the training process and can't WAIT to get training again for the next.
- Before I run another marathon I want to go under two hours for the half marathon (right now I have a timing of about 2h02', so it shouldn't be difficult to improve).
- I still have to work on my stamina for the last half 'cause I just did too much walking in the end. I do have to say that I always felt good running though.

My next marathon will depend on working circumstances but should either be in Rome or New York, both on March 26, 2006

I'm lighter!

So I was finally able to cross off the number "1" item on my lightness list: I now have an italian driver's license! This has been weighing on my for y-e-a-r-s. Short story: I have a california driver's license that I obtained when I was sixteen. I moved permanently to Italy when I was twenty-one and they have a law here that if you stay for longer than one year, you have to get an italian license. But I always found a way around this. I renewed my foreign license for about ten years, I lied about how long I had been in Italy. I was stopped every once in awhile (in Italy they can make random checks on cars for no reason) but even though they always told me that it would be better to get an Italian license, they always let me go. Until four years ago. That's when they slapped me with a huge fine and told me I had to get one. Please note that in my twenty-nine years of driving I have never gotten a ticket and I have never had an accident.
You're probably wondering why I didn't just go get the dang license. Well, for one thing the test is really difficult. The written test has lots of trick questions and most Italians can't pass it. Second, the whole thing is costly. From start to finish I probably ended up spending about a thousand dollars. Lastly, it just takes a lot of time to do. Time that you probably have when you're sixteen and can't wait to get behind the wheel, but when you're forty-five and have two kids and a husband and a full time job, the last thing you want to do at night after you've put everybody to bed is study to pass a driving exam. But I did. Especially when I figured out that the written exam was more like a grammatical test, that I had to be really careful to read the question and understand what I was answering. Once I passed the written exam I had to go back to driving school and re-learn how to drive the way that they wanted to see me drive during the test. This was really hard because after you've been driving for nearly thirty years you have little habits that you just don't notice anymore. Like not keeping your hands on the wheel all the time, shifting down without braking, going just a little over the speed limit...I'm proud to say that on the day I took the driving test I was the only one of five candidates that passed that afternoon. See, it was hard!
I can tell you that getting the license has made a huge change in my life. I don't think about it anymore (whereas before I thought about it day and night, literally) and when I DO think about it I'm just really proud of myself. A little ashamed too. I could have done this years ago and I didn't because I thought I wouldn't be able to do it. But I was. Now I have to think about how many other things I don't do because I think that I can't. But I can.

Creative Energy

I think in a previous post I already spoke about my love for self help books. The nice thing about me is that if they tickle my fancy, I do follow through with the books' advice and actually get something out of it. I don't follow every single thing, but there is usually something that strikes a cord and I go with it. Take "Coach Yourself to Success". The only thing so far that I've zeroed in on is page 3, entitled "Eliminate all those petty annoyances". Anything that you've put off, anything that you think about all the time should be dealt with. I made my list of about forty items and I update it every month. Next week we'll see if I'm successful with the number one item...

So last week I ordered "Getting Things Done". I didn't really like the way it's written. Mostly because he's more of a businessman trying to make other businessmen productive so the linguistics stricter and more rigid. My eyes grazed over a lot of stuff, but what I did get out of the book was a system for dealing with my office clutter. My office room is now beautifully clean and coordinated and I have an "in" box that I check out once a day. I had 120 emails in my incoming mail that just sat there. Whenever I would close the computer I always felt that my work was incomplete, which it probably was, every other day. So now I have just two messages in my incoming mail, I'm waiting on an answer for them and then I can deal with them. I closed my work computer at 6.30 pm and felt like I had done a nice days work.
This is all aimed at freeing up your creative energy and to give you more productivity so that you can work easier. In both books they talked about things just "coming to you" when you've done the exercises correctly.

Today as I was sitting there gloating about what a nice clean desk I had when an old client of mine called on my cell phone. It's a really really important client that starts with an "N" and ends with an "E" and is one of the biggest sport manufacturers on the planet. They wanted to know if I could coordinate a convention that they'll be having at a half marathon race in March. "Of course, no problem!" Now, I've never done this before, but I don't see it as being that difficult. The triumph for me is that this is the same client that four years ago told me that I would never set foot in their offices again. Why? I had worked heavily and almost exclusively for them for three years. I had just finished a big project and was supposed to maybe start a new one when they just stopped answering my telephone calls, emails and phone messages. At that point I understood that they weren't interested in further work for that season, but since we had seen each other every single week for three years, couldn't they bother to give me a call and say thanks but no thanks? Apparently not, because they're the biggest manufacturer on the planet and they don't need to do that. I did something that I do not regret even though it probably cost me a lot of money: I called they're bosses in Holland. I told them what happened and said that all I wanted was for a phone call from the Italian office saying that they no longer needed my services. I wanted closier. They'd be seeing me all the time anyway, why not be on a friendly basis? I am at every friggin major running event in this country, my husband has several athletes that are sponsored by them, so why not be nice? Holland said they would get back to me.
The next day I instead got a call from the Italian boss. I'll spare you the details but his parting words were: "You'll never set foot in this office again".
Oh yes I will. Next tuesday, in fact.
The creative energy flows...

I'm in white with bad posture

Carpi 2005
Originally uploaded by juliainitaly.

If you don't see any posts it's usually because I'm either too busy or think I have nothing interesting to say. Or both. What I've been doing:

- Evan went to two weeks of day care and then got sick. Really sick. The poor babe burst an eardrum and we wouldn't have known because he doesn't cry about these things. But when we saw blood coming out of his ear we knew things were bad. We rushed him to the pediatric emergency where he was pumped with antibiotics and told to not to send him back to school for three weeks. He's better now, but I have to go through the whole introductory to school with him again. Ugh...

- I ran my marathon. I did not do well. I did finish it. I decided to run another one in november, in Firenze.

- After a few week of unsupervised and careless eating (but no weight gain!) I have been reinspired and am now back to another eating regime. THIS time I dusted off the diet my dietician gave me four years ago and am having a go at that. The one catch is that I'm using Fred's idea (www.onephatman.com) of taking one day off per week from dieting and having a "free" day. I did this in 1993 during my first post pregnancy diet and it was not only efficient, but fun. I'll tell you about it in a soon-to-be written entry.

- Do you remember my "lightening" list? Well, I almost have the number one heavy burden crossed off of it. Don't want to jinx it though, so I'll only let you know when it happens. Until then...

Once upon a time...

This last winter I got a call from a new client. Actually, three new clients since it was three women that wanted to train together. I met them at the local park the next day so that I could see what shape they were in and start them off on a running programme. LEAD-girl was the one that had made the call. She was the obvious group leader because she talked about seventy percent of the time and answered for the others even when she wasn’t called upon. Very pretty, by the way. FAST-girl was the fastest in the group. She mentioned that she’d been running for awhile, but she seemed fine about coming along for the ride and slowing down to run at the other’s speed. SHY-girl was the most soft spoken. She didn’t really say much and sort of looked like she wasn’t comfortable about doing this whole thing with me. She was also overweight by about thirty pounds, which doesn’t sound like much except that she is five foot six inches and it all sat on her rear. I watched them run, showed them some exercises, timed a kilometre where FAST-girl came in first, LEAD-girl came in second and SHY-girl came in third by over a minute. I explained the programme for the first month and gave them an appointment for the next. They trained with me the whole winter, through cold and wet and snow. Nothing seemed to stop them. Each time we met I saw that they had a little more enthusiasm and that most of all they were improving. Surprising, the one who was improving the most was SHY-girl. She was a little less out of breathe and she was asking a few more questions each time. I also saw her small hidden talent: she moved her feet really well. What most runners don’t understand is that in running, your feet are what make you move. Most people concentrate on getting an aerobic base (very important), or getting strong legs (also very important), but the area where you can make the most improvement is in using your feet the proper way. If you have a strong heart and legs and then shuffle your feet, you “X” out the first two factors. SHY-girl moved her feet. Tick-tick-tick-tick-tick she’d run by me, still red in the face and still a little out of breathe, but faster and more at ease every time. LEAD-girl started to have trouble because, on the other hand, she had a really long gait. CLOMP-CLOMP-CLOMP-CLOMP she’d run past me as I timed her.

Sometime around february it became inevitable that I’d have to start giving them individualized running programmes if they wanted to further improve. I knew that they were running faster, but since I needed to put some numbers on the amount of improvement they’d had I asked them to run 1km on the track so that I could get a better perspective of their speed. I started FAST-girl off first ‘cause I knew that she was still going to be the leader here as far as pace was concerned. LEAD-girl went next followed by SHY-girl twenty seconds later. After one lap around the track something strange happened: SHY-girl was gaining on LEAD-girl. As they rounded the corner SHY-girl picked up the pace and just went flying by her. At the same time LEAD-girl, as soon as she got passed, immediately stopped in her tracks and started to walk. She wasn’t even going to finish the last lap. She came over to me and started to talk about feeling tired lately and that something was wrong. I asked her a few questions (are you eating nutritious foods, do you have your period, are you working a lot?) and then asked her the final one: “I noticed you stopped just as SHY-girl passed you...” Suddenly LEAD-girl turned into this venom spitting, green tailed psychopath. She started yelling about how she was always first in everything she did, that she couldn’t lose, that she wasn’t going to stand for having SHY-girl pass her. I tried to explain to her that this wasn’t a race it was just to see where they all stood and that it would help me to calibrate the running load so that I could give her a programme to help her improve. But at that point there was no way to reason with her so I just let it go. SHY-girl looked shyer than ever and FAST-girl just looked the other way trying to pretend that nothing was happening.
A month went past and I didn’t hear from them so I wrote a group email asking how things were going. LEAD-girl said that she was injured and wasn’t running as much. She talked about some sort of inguinal pull...then a month later talked about a hernia in her neck (very rare, and I assume that she got it from her job as an estetician since she leans over a lot for most of her operations). FAST-girl was vague about everything, but I sent her a programme anyway. SHY-girl said things were going great, had I heard from the others? And when did I think that they would be up and running together again? I told her that it was hard to tell since I didn’t really know what LEAD-girl was doing. I started to send SHY-girl her programme again. This time I knew how fast she was running so it was easy to write and even easier to see fast results. Since I knew that she would now be running alone I invited her to come running with me and some of my friends, which she did. It’s on one of these runs that she told me about how the whole drama behind this group started to unravel. After the track episode, LEAD-girl had started to speak badly of me. She said that I didn’t pay enough attention to her and that she was going to be looking for someone else to train her. We all knew what had really happened: she was used to being the center of attention and all of the sudden, with SHY-girl passing her, she was now the last in the group. A position that she obviously wasn’t used to and refused to be in. From this one single episode I know that the threesome is no longer running together. They still speak to each other, but it’s become tabu for them to even talk about running. LEAD-girl is still running but is being trained by someone else. I know she’s had various injuries that she still hasn’t healed from. FAST-girl is also injured and looks like she’s gained a few. SHY-girl is still training with me and she completed her first half marathon last month with a time of 2h13’. I am trying to have her meet as many “nice” runners as I can. It is now my mission to get her to become as efficient a runner as she can. We have a plan, we will follow it...me, vendictive? Maybe, but at least one nice runner will benefit from it.

Early Winter

No, I haven't slipped away...still here...just went through a hormonal induced two week depression bonanza that seems to have finally left my body. Whew! I only have two more weeks until my marathon, two weeks more of training, but I seem to have lost a little focus. This always happens to me a few weeks away from the event. I think it just comes from being ready to do it NOW and not wanting to wait anymore. But I do need to taper and I do need the extra time to get it together mentally for that 42km trip.
I'm pretty sure I won't be able to run a BQ time of four hours, but I probably be able to trim some time off my 4 hour 21 minute springtime marathon. I have a lot of friends that are coming to run with me, supporting me the whole way, and that is a nice thought.
My biggest problem right now is the weather. It started raining this last week and it literally hasn't stopped. Yesterday I went for an 80 minute run and it poured three times during the session. Today I was supposed to run for two hours but it just won't let up and I'm going to have to come up with plan "B". I'll go meditate on that now...

Be. Here. Now.

Katrina over Florida
Originally uploaded by juliainitaly.

Be Here Now. That was the title of a popular esoteric, funky, spirtual book from the 70's. I remember I used to see it on the coffee tables of people's houses, next to the joints (hey, I grew up in California during the 60's and 70's!). It always stuck with me because sometimes I forget to be in the moment. I am always yearning for the past (sadness) or worrying about what will come in the future, whereas I have a really difficult time with what I am doing right in this moment. I have a really short attention span, I am constantly juggling doing three or four things at once and I often start doing something before I've even finished with the last thing I was doing.

Last night I had a really difficult workout:

15' warmup run + 4 x (1km fast/1km slow) + 20' + 4 x 1km fast, rec. 3'.

While I was warming up I was worrying about the eight km after and then while I did the 8km I was thinking about the faster 4 x 1km that I had to do. Why can't I Be.Here.Now? Think about the moment, concentrate on what is going on NOW instead of constantly having my mind somewhere else. I wasn't really super happy about the 8km that I did, but then the 4 x 1km went super. I was able to run them all at 4'57"/km. This is like a 35 second improvement for me from this last spring and that is a lot! Four more weeks to go on this marathon training but I really have to concentrate on each single day and not worry about what is to come.

Fitday!

I just bought the PC version of Fitday. It is fantastic! If you are trying to keep track of what you eat, this is the software that you MUST buy now. Over the years I've tried loads of dietary software and internet based trackers but have never been satisfied with them. I wasn't even that crazy about the fitday.com site. Then they sent me a message that if I wanted to download it, I could for just $ 19.95. I thought for that price it might be worth a try. It was, it is...go here if you want to check it out. Too bad I don't get commission on this!

Funky new glasses

Glasses 2
Originally uploaded by juliainitaly.

I am back! I survived two weeks down at the dreaded Mother-in-laws house at the beach. I think the change in my mental attitude helped a lot. I don't care about how she/they treat me anymore (well, sometimes it does bother me...) so I'm not offended anymore when they get in weird moods. I averaged three runs per week and tried as best as I could not to gain too much. I got away with only gaining one kg, which is a miracle if you could have seen all the food that passed in front of my face: pizza, foccaccia, tons of fresh watermelon, grapes, great wine, delicious fried calimari fish...the list goes on and on but I used a lot of control and am very happy with that. Please note that when I go down south for vacation I have ALWAYS gained at least 4kg, so this was a victory.
Evan was accepted for part time day care. Yesterday I went to the preliminary meeting. I love the school and really liked the teachers. The building itself is airy and has lots of space and fun toys and activities. I think it's going to be a good thing for him. If you don't know it, the area that I live in has the world's best day care centers. People come to study them all the time to see what they're doing right. So, he starts next tuesday for just two hours a day with me present the whole time. Then we'll slowy take it up from there until he's able to stay at the school from 8.00am to 1.00pm without me. Olivia starts school on Wednesday also and I can't WAIT for that to happen. Spoken like a true mother!

I bought some funky new glasses last week. I don't know if they make me all that attractive, but they are so comfortable that I just can't take them off. A good thing too since I can't see clearly without them!

(Not) Another Challenge

I belong to an online list called "Triathletes of the Dead Runners Society " aka TRI DRS. I joined it in 1995 , the year that I raced my first triathlon. I wanted to talk to people that had actually done triathlons and get more information for myself on what the heck I was doing. For any of you out there that participate in triathlons or are contemplating doing so, join us! So this week they started a weight loss challenge. At first I wasn't going to join, but then I went here to check out my Body Fat and it gave me a 29% reading! Hmmff! I think it's the wide hips compared to the bird-like wrists facto that gives me such an off reading (wrist = 6.5 inches, hips = 41 inches). In any case, I decided to join them in yet another desperate attempt to blast off my last pounds. I used to HATE the challenges that people would launch when I was on the WW lists. So dull, so boring...but this one has MONEY riding on it. Twenty bucks per participant, winner takes all. I already know that I'm not going to win because I just don't have that much weight to lose, but it does make it a bit more interesting. You can check out the Challenge Page to see how it goes. By the way, if any of you are overweight and putting off exercise until you lose enough, a few of the people on this list have quite a few pounds to lose and yet have no problem in participating in Ironman distance races. Like they say: just do it!

Hot in oh so many ways...

Garden
Originally uploaded by juliainitaly.

Yesterday one of my neighbors stopped me while I was taking out the garbage. She lives two stories above us and has a terrace that overlooks our garden. She stopped me to tell me that we have the most beautiful garden in all the condominium and that it was a joy to look at. That made me so happy! I just wanted to make it even prettier for everybody to enjoy. It's not even close to how I want it to be, but do y'all remember those seeds that I planted? All the flowers blossomed and I have a ton of tomatoes and lettuce coming up every day. Goes to show you, anybody can have a green thumb.

It's now confirmed that I'm in the middle of a very early menopause. I know because now I'm having hot flashes. When they first started in the middle of June I wasn't feeling them as much because it was already a hundred degrees out anyway. But when we went up to Switzerland in July, THEN I could really feel them. It starts out with a heat that radiates from my chest and spreads out to my arms and face. I start taking off any excess clothing I have on instantly and try to get cool. The peak only lasts for about twenty seconds but the hot feeling stays for at least five more minutes. Yesterday during the day I counted ten of them. At night it's the worst 'cause it wakes me up, plus I tend to sweat a lot and I'm having to change the sheets more often. I looked up some literature on it to see how long this will go on: up to ten years! Oh, the joy of being a woman...

Once a year...

Rosy
Originally uploaded by juliainitaly.

I am sitting in my studio dripping with sweat. It is literally running off my skin...and it's only seven a.m.! I have to go fill up the kiddy pool before it starts to get too hot.

My husband is a professional athletic coach so we have a pretty set schedule year round (and always will) on where he has to be and what he's doing. The Olympics are every four years, the World Championship every two, European Championship every two, etc, etc. Then there are the races that each individual athlete chooses such as the fall and spring marathons or smaller races here in Italy. A professional athlete cannot train in hot, humid weather during the summer, so they usually pack off to the mountains for at least three months. The number one choice for the month of July for most pros is St. Moritz, Switzerland. It's at 1800 mt altitude, it usually around 15° so they can run all day long without any problem. It is expensive. Very expensive. But hubby and I have worked out a system that cuts the costs for us, mainly so that his family (me and the kids) can be with him. We rent a house. Sometimes we share it with one or two of his athletes (as was the case this year) and we buy most of our food in Italy which is only a half hour over the border. I bring my work with me and go to this posh hotel where they have a Wi-Fi in the lobby. Free internet! My days are uneventful but relaxing. We follow the same rhythms that hubby's athletes do:

- Get up and eat breakfast around 8.00 am. Breakfast was either whole wheat pancakes or oatmeal or bread. All with tea and fruit.

- 10.00 am. While hubby did first training session with athletes I brought Evan to this fantastic park. It had a 300mt slide and trampolines and lots of wooden bridges and more slides.

- 12.00 - head back to the house and start lunch. Lunch was always a meat dish with a huge salad and fruit to follow.

- 14.00 - Watch the Tour de France while working on writing, articles or big group that I'm training at the Venice Marathon.

- 17.00 - Second training session for hubby's athletes, one and only training session for Julia. I learned SO MUCH about running this month. Actually I should say that there were a few concepts that really clicked in my head. I've started to apply them to myself to begin with and...they work! When I came back home I did a track test and it showed that I am really on schedule for my Boston Qualifier. I'm trying not to get sidetracked though and will just keep my nose to the grindstone for the next few months.

19.00 - Time to start dinner! Pasta or a bean soup or homemade pizza (no cheese!) or rice accompanied by a big salad and fruit.

21.00 - Five minutes of watching television in German. Eventually give up and read a book. Bedtime at around 22.00.

This was it, day in and day out. At the end of the three weeks I did not want to leave. I was so relaxed, so rid of stress, I'm only hoping that I can keep it up somehow.

Now I'm back home and Hubby has changed mountain location. He'll be flying up to Finland on the 10th to assist the young lady you see in the photo who will be running the women's marathon. If you happen to follow it on television it should be televised on Sunday August 14th.

I in the meantime am back to sweating in 100° weather. I'm heading to that kiddy pool now...

Vacation!

Well, sort of a vacation. I'm spending my last days in beautiful St. Moritz , Switzerland where my hubby is working with some athletes and I'm soaking up the beauty of it all. I'll be back home this weekend and will write some nice entries on what I've been doing: running, eating well and enjoying life!