Rome is a ghost town in August.  From about the 12th until the end of the month everyone gets out of town leaving it, well, perfect!  I can run by many of the monuments on the hill and not see anyone - A moment I crave all year long.  What I wouldn't do to freeze this month in time.  No traffic, pollution, noise.....

Just a small bit of what I hope to find in my near future.  I shall be searching for stateside jobs until I find one that is suitable...and then I'm coming home.

After a week of nightmares chock-full-of-self-doubt and cryptic Freudian denotations I finally finished my first 5k in 365 days...alive!  The Race for the Cure in Rome had 40,000 participants this year and I spent at least as many seconds dreading it!!

I finally met the rest of my team (they are brilliant) about 30 minutes before and having other women to warm up with helped me push through the anxiety to make it to a very crowded starting line. 

It's as almost as though the starting gun pierced a hole in the firmament because it poured down with rain immediately after the start and didn't stop until I rounded out the Colosseum at about 3k mark.  As an Oregonian (proud) I can say that I was perhaps the only one who wasn't bothered. 

Besides the heavy breather that accompanied me for the race in it's entirety (he was my worst nightmare), and wet slippery cobblestones, all was well and I finished 13th with my slowest time ever of about 20 minutes and 10 seconds or so (I am still looking for the final race results); my teammates finishing 2nd, 3rd, and 8th.   

So after this race I have learned that:

1. It's not where you are but where you are going that matters.
2. I lost 40,000 seconds that I can never get back for no apparent reason.
3. Heavy breathers should be forced to wear identification at the starting line.
4. It's time to do some speedwork.

I remember watching our black lab sleep when I was a kid and giggling when her legs would twitch in the midst of some elaborate dog dream.  She was chasing a pheasant or mailman or playing with us kids or swimming in the stream near our house we'd always guess.  I wonder if she dreamed about her fears....

I had a dream last night about the upcoming Race for the Cure that I'm doing on Sunday (I can only guess that this is why).  It starts with me stopping to tie my shoelace that would magically come untied every time I would retie it.  I was thinking my time is going to be reeaaally slow, damnit!! Next after I finally get it tied, I get up to start running again and there is noone in sight.  I went around asking everyone where the course was and noone knew!!  I kept thinking that the race organizers were odd for making the race disappear like that and how the hell did everyone get so far ahead of me and....then I woke up.

I cannot help but try to analyze my dreams.  Last month I had a dream I was being stalked by three dogs in masks and I hid in a house with a cat named Dave who scared the living shit out of me.  Well, analyzing that one just made me think I need to change something in my diet. :D

I do know what this dream meant, however:  I think it is due to the fact that I've been putting in the mileage but not the speedwork and I'm nervous about Sunday.  I'm terrified to run a slow 5k!!

It's time to start getting mentally prepared and just take races as they come, no matter what my shape.  I don't think my childhood pup ever had to worry about any of this....

I'm moving out of my apartment in a few weeks to go and live elsewhere and have decided to record the memory of my room with a qvtr movie....It's always nice to change it up but now I'll never forget my surroundings with this digital memory..... You just have to mouse around and can zoom in and out:

I will miss my Aussie housemate, but won't miss her early morning waking hours. I won't miss the crumbling ceiling although it is very french chic my friends tell me. I'll miss opening the door to find the old Napolean accordian player and his music.  I won't miss the smelly punk heroin addicts with the big dirty dogs though.  I'll miss having Todis (an amazing grocery store) 5 meters from my front door: they have the best yogurt imported from Germany. 

This is how I've gotten to know Rome.  I've lived in 5 apartments so far and most of my Italian friends think I'm crazy for moving so often (Some of them still live at home with their rents).  I've learned about the city this way...new people, new places, new runs...it's enlightening.  I used to need the stability of one place for an extended period of time until I realized that stability exists in my head, not in an apartment.  Plus carrying boxes is a good alternative to the gym.

:D

I came to Rome in 2003 after some time in Portland.  I never once got sick of the rain when I lived there and I can't explain why.  I used to love going out in the rain to go for a run...(it always made me feel like a bit of a jungle warrior running in the hills in NW.)  I actually miss the smell of Portland.  I miss the smell more than anything.  There is this shrub that everyone uses to line their yards in Portland and it's pungent and anything but "pretty" but it reminds me of the city and I'm crazy about it.

It's 30 minutes to the sea by train and i've got no excuses not to be there on the weekends. Santa Marinella...out of the house by 10 in the morning, home by 7.  I've lived in this city for nearly five years and have never ventured out to the beach by train until last weekend: it was one of the most relaxing moments I've had in years.

Perhaps it is the fact that Rome has been covered in spring clouds for the last month or maybe it is just because it is new, but I finally get why the beaches of Italy are lined with thousands of visitors each day in the summer.  The atmosphere is that of leisure and leisure only with a light smell of salt and fried fish.  I've found my Italian equivalent of that shrub in Portland.

What a world we live in...ahhh

I was looking through the Harvard Gazette News Archives (eh eh eh...aka surfing the internet and stumbled on) when I found an article that added supporting evidence to my theory that runners are pretty amazing (aka superior).  I know that runners are usually smarter statistically than a non-runner (aka footballers, rugby players, and/or couch potatoes) but who would have thought that perhaps we are helping evolve our race?:

Running paced human evolution

Thanks to us, our offspring and our offspring's offspring will develop larger brain masses and thus become smarter than us (most kids think they are anyhow). 

Alright, it might not be true but it's fun anyhow. :D

Here's to you: the smart, healthy, darwinian-ly superior runner that you are.

The blog area of runnerspace has been a bit stagnant as of late!  My guess is that this is a good thing: means everyone is out racing instead of sitting in front of the computer. :D

I've got my new team and lots of running folk as well.  It's nice to have other humans around on runs.  For now all men and I'd prefer having females to run with...Italian men talk about soccer all of the time...  When they start going on about it my brain starts doing the Peanut's "blah blah blah" .  I'd rather clean my kitchen floor with a q-tip than talk about "calcio" (soccer).!! :(

I'm dealing with a busy week at work as usual but have been given some time to create and have been playing with photoshop here and there.  It is my second favorite hobby these days and by far my classic favorite of the adobe CS3 suite...I've added a few pics...hours and hours of work for just a few images.  wow.  And still miles to go before I get better at it!!

This week the documentary that I edited last fall has been accepted into three more festivals now for a total of ten. The most important for me is the Rome independent film festival www.riff.it because it is local.  I hope that this is just a little step closer to a better paycheck someday soon so that I can fuel my running/travelling habit! :D The documentary is called Uno degli Ultimi (One of the last) and I can't wait for my friends to see it with me on the 18th of April.

I hate doctors. I'm terrified of them*. Wait: I hate to go to the doctor. A dentist, I can handle: I look forward to going to the dentist for an entire week beforehand just so that I can get shiny, happy teeth. But a doctor, at best, can tell you that you are healthy, and at worst that you have one of thousands of possible sicknesses. I don't like the probability.
*See also: flying, yellow and brown spotted orchids.

One of my friends from college, Susan, was just diagnosed with ovarian cancer and a rare form Leukemia. She is a lovely human being and very kind and is my age (late twenties) and fit. I can't put my head around it. I cannot help but question my own mortality and wonder how or why these things happen to healthy people at such a young age.

I guess it all started when I was a kid. I lost my dad to a ten year battle with multiple schlerosis while I was just out of college. I remember running around all over the Pacific Northwest from hospital to hospital...spinal taps and blood tests always accompanied by that smell: fear and cleaning products and mothballs maybe. The hardest thing watching my poor dad as a human pincushion, each notice from the doctor worse than the next...amazing that he remained so amazing until the very end. It was a ten year stretch that formed my family to who we are now and I think it has made us all better people. Unfortunately, it also left us all with a little bit of fear of going to the doctor.

I've got to go to the doctor in about 20 minutes now and it is just a routine athletic physical. Heartrate, bloodtest... They are also going to throw me on a treadmill and perhaps check my pulse so not exactly that scary dreaded doctor's visit...I've got that finger tingling, sweaty palm thing I get on airplanes though...

If anything, I need to remember that this is a good time to feel lucky to be healthy. Even if you have a sports-related injury, most runners are otherwise very healthy and thus very lucky. You've had a bad day? - you are still healthy and breathing. Why is it so hard to forget?

We are all racing to the end at our own pace and there is no better time than now to enjoy it all.

Got a new team: Running Club Futura.

This will provide me with the opportunity to meet some new training buddies, get workout feedback, and travel to races. It sounds like they are sponsored by a well known radio station that pays for all of the fees associated with races. Good: I'm not overflowing with funds.

Apparently they've got some of Rome's best and are competitive with the other top team (Esercito - Italian Air Force).

I've found out that many of the runners in this club live in my area and am prepared to bust some chops to run together: I have not run with anyone since the summer of 2007. It's time.  I get to go to my first meeting right after the easter holiday.