17 km long run on Sunday, November, 20th

Hi to everyone,

On Friday, November, 18th, Stefano sent me this photo which was taken last summer while I was running a 6 km race. He found this photo through the web.

My training is going well and today I did 17 km with the group. I was delighted with the time taken which was   1 hour and 25 minutes because the track was hilly. I'm running a 10 km race next month so I'd like to increase my speed on that distance.

In the meanwhile, all the politic scenario is going to change around the Mediterranean area: from Italy to Greece and from Tunisia to Libya and Egypt. I hope politic and economic conditions will be better soon! The photo above shows  Muammar Gaddafi, former Arab nationalist  leader of Libya.

I hope you'll have a nice week!

Italy's economic turmoil

Here are my thoughts about Italy's economic turmoil. Is the Italian Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi, a simple cause of the Italian illness? He is a symptom of the a political system who does not offers alternatives to the right or the left. It happens in many other countries, but in Italy it is more blatant. He is obviously without conditions to lead a country in crisis, but Italian politics don't come up with other names.

The picture below is the cover of the economic British magazine "The Economist" and it was published three months ago.

Since January, 2011, French and German Banks, such as Deutsche Bank and BNP, haven't bought Italian bonds. Consequently, people's Bank of China has followed them. That's the domino effect!  This week the Italian Prime Minister said: "Italy does not feel the crisis" and he described the Italian bond sell-off as "a passing fashion ... the restaurants are full, the planes are fully booked and the hotel resorts are fully booked as well". But, while he was speaking the Italian bonds were (and are now) near the danger zone and Europe's stock markets decreased. Anyway, getting rid of Berlusconi is an essential (and first) step in getting the Italian economy back on track.

I'm boring you with Italian economic issues :) On the running front, I haven't plan to run any race this month, although my training is going well enough. The photo below was taken while I was  running  the Ostia's 30 km race, on October, 9th.

I hope my blogger friends will have beautiful running adventures!