our choices show what we truly are

I wanted to celebrate the first day with the Daylight Saving Time with a big run at night. I got home at 6:30 with plenty of light but I soon discovered that my neighbour had his house flooded. He opened the sprinklers but one of the pipes going under the roof was damaged during the winter by the freezing weather and started leaking, when he got back home two hours later his main floor was under 10cm of water everywhere. By the time I got home most of the water has been removed, but the ceiling was still dripping, I helped him to put most the furniture on some logs to avoid further water damage.

I went running at 7:30pm enjoying the last 30 minutes of light and it was really pleasant, at 8pm was already dark but I was by the lake, no cars and no artificial lights, with enough light to be able to continue until 8:30 when it was really dark. I did 6.2 miles in 55 minutes.

Nice run 5 miles trying to finish at 10k pace. This was my progression: 5:58/k, 5:17, 4:55, 4:55, 4:17, 4:17, 4:11, 3:58. Overall 37:57, 4:43/k. It feels good to reintroduce some kind of speed in my legs.

Another progression run finishing 8 miles with the last four at 4:30/km, overall I am feeling great 8.1 miles in 1:06:06. In the next two days I will be in Padova probably I will be able to run friday morning, saturday I want to do another medium run on the marathon trails.

I am in Padova no time to run.

Second day in Padova  too tired this morning to go running before going to work. Tonight I will be back home and tomorrow a long run will bring back my normal schedule.

Today my plan was to stay out on my feet on trails for three hours with at least two big hills. This would be a good way to become acquainted with the upcoming trail marathon.

This morning I was not alone, Daniele, came with me. We started at 8:15am going straight uphill for about 4k, the first 1.5k were still not that bad then the really steep part began. We managed to keep a "running pace" without walking, once on top we turned around we went downhill, not very fast because the terrain was rock and roots infested but we reached the bottom safe and sound, after 400m of flat terrain we climbed our second peak. This one was longer and a little bit higher but overall was more runnable, once on top we were just 10k from the start, but it took us  about 1:20minutes. At that point we went downhill on a asphalt road for 2k and  then we jumped on another trail to dive for another 2k straight downhill to teach our muscles to survive the downhill damage. At this point we had 4k on a flat sandy section where we struggled to keep 6:00/km the sun was high in the sky and it was hot because there was no shade. At the end of this section our car were just 2k away, but we were not totally  trashed yet and we had 140 minutes only in our legs, we decided to climb again the first hill, but this time halfway from the top we were forced to power walking first and then pushing our hands on our knees to keep moving. The last few downhill km to the end were really hard, our legs were heavy but overall we were really satisfied. We did almost 15 miles in 3:05, next week will try to replicate this effort to achieve a decent conditioning for the race.