Civitavecchia bike sharing scheme

I haven't been blogging since August, 18th and I'd like to write a short post about the bike sharing scheme which my town inaugurated this summer in July.  

The Mayor decided to follow the example of other towns around  the world (as you can see in the first two photos). Unfortunately,  some people are unhappy about the distribution of the stations because entire boroughs of Civitavecchia have been left out. Moreover, less than 30 bikes are available! it's a very small number considering that New York's bike share scheme offers 6,000 bikes. Obviously, I know that the "Big Apple" is bigger than my town and the two towns are incomparable. 
Yesterday I  did a good run with two friends although I haven't planned to run any race at the moment. After the warm up we ran 30 minutes tempo run and  4 x 5 mins repeats. Weather was (and still is) perfect! 

The last picture below shows how I got carbs before the workout. It's a beautiful pasta dish with a delicious shrimp on the top which I had yesterday at lunch. The name of this traditional type of pasta is Tagliatelle: they (that name in Italian language is plural) can be served with a variety of sauces. Tagliatelle dish, which you can see in the picture, have been made with whole wheat flour, eggs and ... red wine. That's why their colour is red.

Nice weekend to all my blogger friends!

Change of scenery

I'd need to give my body and mind a break! Last week I ran less than other weeks. I went swimming twice, 25 minutes on Wednesday and 30 minutes on Saturday. But I swam in the sea and as a consequence I didn't try to work harder than in a regular pool. During this summer I'm going to run three times a week and swimming (or biking) twice a week.
I'm not running a race in July and August, so I'm doing something other than running to give my body and mind a break. Since the 25th of June I've started cycling and swimming once or twice a week. Of course I'm not training for triathlons. If these activities gave me a stronger aerobic engine my running would improve. I should usually see some gains.
I've read a debate focused on the relation between running and routine: the psychological effects of following the same routine can be just as limiting. After about only three or four weeks of the same low or high intensity training program, the benefit of running tend to decrease. Most experts say that "runners are creatures of habit, but this can be often lead to stagnating performance".

I hope that all you blogger friends of that running community will have a nice training!

Running and biking off-road

I began to run three weeks after I had had a bronchial flu. I slowly ran 50 minutes yesterday around the town while the weather wasn't rainy or cloudy and this morning I rode my bicycle across the hills. So I'll try to run next week and sometimes I'll likely go swimming or ride a bicycle.

Running and riding a bicycle off-road, often over rough terrain, through mediterranean woods, country roads or natural parks offer us enormous environmental opportunity. We can discover a lot of sites which are "significant" from a landscape point of view. If we run or rode a bicycle around historic centres we can see monuments and sites which are considered "non-traditional tourist attractions" of the old town.

Although I've lost my running speed it's important I've begun to run. I didn't run quickly yesterday but I understood that I hadn't lost the strenght.