I am going to be in Italy from tomorrow (22nd) to next Thursday (29th). Meeting dentist and friends. If you feel like…well…call me.

can I be just happy today? I don’t have anything specific to say but I just want to remember that today I was really happy. Without any particular reason

Fusku

Today I start the Fusku dance course. Fusku is a kind of  dance very popular here in Finland: more and more people are dancing it in Lavatanssi.

A video to explain a bit better how it looks like:

My website about homemade pizza is almost done. The ebook is ready, I just need few more pictures.

I am just sorry that it’s all in italian but of course if you are interested you can take a look here. (Pizza fatta in casa)

And here there’s a blooper from the video I took to show better how to make the pizza

After following a link found on an italian blog I found myself married

It started from this video (but don’t forget to check the second video…that starts automatically so you need to stop it hehe)

and this is how I ended up married

If you need to find love let them help you (it will take 5minutes)
http://www.bjornborg.com/en/Love/

Sports

Good morning. Today I want to talk again about sports. We are almost at the end of the year so I can make a review of the 2008.

Running

Well, in 2008 I run for 1820km (and I still need to count the 150km that I will run this month). Compared with the 810km I run last year we can easily say that I made some progress. Even speed increased, now the minimum pace is 5min/km that, translated for people not so much into running, it means that I never run 10k in more than 50minutes (even for slow training). This year I took part to a 10k competition and two half marathon (all in Finland).
2009 goals: go under 40min for the 10k (5minutes better than my record) and run the half marathon in 1hour and 40minutes. If I reach this goal I could think about running the Helsinki Marathon 2009 (but I am not a big fan of marathons).
I am learning to train better, avoiding stupid injuries because of the over-training. Too many times last year and in the beginning of this year I had to stop because of over training injuries.
I am waiting the seasonal discounts to buy a new pair of running shoes (the 4th pair of my running career)

Basketball

I finally found a basketball team. We train twice a week. I still haven’t play any official game but I love to train trying to improve my shooting from the field.
Thanks to Marco S, he is also driving me to Espoo all the time.

Football

Well…if you told me few months ago that I would be playing in a football team I would have said you were crazy. But here I am….the goalkeeper of the MagniFiga, an italian football team in a finnish championship. Till now we won one game, twice we manage to make it same score (how do you say in english when no one win hehe) and we lost one game. Friday is training, Sunday is game day.

Cycling

ok….I don’t do any serious cycling but I bike at least for 5km everyday. I use it to move around the city here in Helsinki: rain, snow and wind included in the price. The only problem is that when temperature goes under 0°C everything starts to freeze and bike…starts not working. Gears don’t work, breaks don’t work and you can imagine…it’s extremely cold to bike with -10°C.

Tennis Table

I am not playing as often as I used to in the beginning of the year but for 6months I used to play twice a week with the best player here in Helsinki (and with people from Uzbekistan, China, Brazil, England). Let’s say that I managed to improve my service but my forehand still sucks.

Ultimate (Frisbee)

During the summer I played Ultimate with friends here in Helsinki. The all point of the game is running trying to catch the Frisbee. If a friend throw is….catch it…if someone of the other team did it…intercept or try not to let them catch it. A very sweaty game. There are official rules, federation and championship…in the US. But as a game is very popular here in Finland.

That’s all?

I don’t think I am practicing more sports at the moment. Ok, I do some muscular training home and in the forest where I found some equipment, but that’s all.
So in the next post I could talk about my dancing course…and then I am almost done with the sweating activities.

In italian – in finnish

4.52

Something has changed in my life lately. Few times I went to bed before midnight, almost never before 2am. But the last month I’ve been getting up early in the morning, wake up at 4.52am everyday (included weekend if I don’t go out with friends)

Now…why do I wake up so early?
Basically it’s the desire of improving my productivity: at this time there is no one awake, so telephone is not ringing, no chat, no messages…nothing. By 10am I have worked already for 5hours without interruptions..then I can go running and I have the rest of the day practically free. I know, I had to sacrify something and to wake up at 5am I have to go to sleep around 21 everyday. Often I am in bed already around 8.30pm with a book…and around 9pm I am already aspeel
But this way I cutted all the activities that were wasting my time: facebook, gmail, msn etc. etc. and I have more free time to do what I really like to do.

But why 4 52?
In the beginning I choosed 6am. Then I thought: if I have to wake up at 6 I can go to sleep around midnight, 6 hours are enough for me to rest. And doing like this I would have gone to sleep around 1 for sure…compromizing the all project. So…I picked 5am…cause if you have to wake up at 5 you need to plan perfectly the time you will go to sleep. No mistakes allowed .
And then of course I picked 4.52 because 52 is my favourite number and come on….how cool is to tell everybody that you wake up at 4 something everyday

Finnish Version :: Italian Version

Helsinki City Run

Last saturday I took part in the Helsinki City Run, the biggest half marathon in Finland. For those of you that doesn’t know it, an half marathon is a 21.1km running-race.

I didn’t reach my primary goal: cross the finish line with a time between 1h40min40sec and 1h42min30sec. But second goal was satisfied: I was the 700 crossing the finish line on over 8000thousand partecipants .
Final time: 1:44:17

But to be honest I’m really satisfied and I had lot of fun. It was the first I took part in a official half marathon competition and yeah, as a first time I can’t complain

Thanks

I would like to take my friends, met during the route. Johanna, she was waiting for me in Töölölahti during the very first kms before going to work. Then Jere and Stippe, unespected, met around the 6th km. And Oliver, he followed me in different part of the race taking really beautiful pictures. And last Kaarina, she came to the Olympic Stadium but at the end we didn’t manage to meet.
And of course I need to thanks Pigi that re-introduced me one year ago to the magical world of running and Roberto Albanesi, we never met but I consider him my virtual  personal trainer.

Race Analysis

A short analysis about the reasons why I couldn’t make it to reach the goal I had when I started training.

In Italy, because of the training on hard condition, I injured my self on the right knee. So I had to skip 15days of training, all the central and most important part of my program. Now I will rest untill June, hoping that the knee will recover 100%.

The day before the race and the same morning I had some stomach problem. And even during the race I was suffering about it a little bit.

I didn’t sleep enough the week before the race. Tention before the race but also my fault, I should have focused better on sleeping more.

During the race I followed a good strategy. I was very concentrated and focused on the race the morning. Then I made a good warm up. I started slowly, without following the crowd that started really fast.
Half of the race my time was 51:31, perfect. The point is that I didn’t make to do the perfect second half. I run a bit slower the second part (52:57), maybe more for mental problem than phisical problems. The last meters in the Olympic Stadium I had a great sprint, so probably I didn’t use my energies properly during the race. I think I underestimate me cause I was worried not to be able to finish it. I had 2 small crysis but I managed to run the all time. Slowest km was the one between 17 and 18 (pease 5:16min/km), also because of a long really hard hill. Fastes km was the one between 12/13 (peace 4:38 min/km)

Two more aspects to consider: weather and my ipod.
Min temperature was 20degrees celtius, max temp 22celtius. It was hot, really hot, the all time. After training the all winter with the snow I wasn’t expecting this kind of weather but I manages anyway without suffering too much and my drinking strategy worked quite well (I drunk a bit at every stop but alwasy keeping on running).

About the music, no excuses: after few kms my ipod’s battery was empty. I spent an entire day creating the perfect half marathon playlist. Plus I couldn’t believe the battery was empty, cause the ipod was charged, so I tried couple of times to make the ipod work again and I think I lost couple of minutes + I wasn’t mentally focused on the race.

Km  Time
—————————
1     0:04:46   
2     0:09:34
3     0:14:30
4     0:19:22
5     0:24:19
6     0:29:16
7     0:34:11
8     0:38:54
9     0:43:57
10   0:48:50
11   0:53:47
12   0:58:36
13   1:03:14
14   1:08:12
15   1:13:18
16   1:18:27
17   1:23:27
18   1:28:43
19   1:33:54
20   1:38:55
21   1:43:55
21.1 1:44:23

Goal: 4:46/4:51
Real average peace: 4.56

Pictures are on my facebook account

Fight Club

Tomorrow it’s April 26th, an important day for me: i moved in Finland exactly 2 years ago, 26.04.2006. And after I’ve been living two years in Helsinki, I can say I still love it, more and more all the time.
And what about the language? Well…I start to understand more but I don’t speak that much…yet. So it’s time to make some changes.
Everybody who goes in Italy can easily learn the language in 1-3months. Why? Cause you can’t speak english in there, italians we don’t speak english.
So how can one learn Finnish? In a creative way, I’m going to be the one that doesn’t speak english.
From tomorrow it’s going to be like I don’t know any english. My first language will be finnish, even with friends. Clearly in the beginning it’s going to be hard but I believe that around the end of the summer…mmm…we will see

The rules of the Suomi Club

1. if I’m talking with someone who doesn’t know one of the 3 languages that I sort of speak (Finnish, Italian and French) then it’s going to be english
2. if it’s the first time that we meet I’m autorized to use english, just to explain who I am
3. With friends I can’t use english
4. I can use english just when I’m with someone for more than 1 or 2 hours during the same night…so at least there is going to be an amount of time in finnish.
   
5. these rules are valid also on the internet
   

Please help me

Training

today I started again my training. Now I’m training for 10k. I had a slow 10km today, 5:20min/km. It was a good run even if it was snowing