40yo / 40 e sentirli...

Writing while above the clouds headed to Shanghai... Yesterday I turned 40, so officially starts my "career" of Master runner.
Sincere thanks to all those who sent messages in any way.
It feels like yesterday when I was a 19yo stud and the idea of enrolling a race as M40 would have been unimaginable...

My original plan for the event was to run the Berlin Marathon as my last race as a "young" and double with the next available marathon 2 weeks later as Master. It has not gone to plans and I had to content myself with an easy bike ride, eccentric stretching and self massage to the tendons. The rate of recovery is slow and still I just try to keep the morale and keep myself in the groove of waking up early to make bike rides to keep fit...



ITALIANO:
In volo per Shanghai...
Ieri ne ho fatti 40 e onestamente posso dire "40 e sentirli tutti"...
Zoppicando appena alzato dal letto ha dato subito un concreto elemento del perche' comunque 20 e' sempre meglio di 40...
I'll mio piano di celebrazioni prevedeva di correre 2 maratone a cavallo della data fatidica per fare un ultima gara da "giovane" e poi lanciarmi in una gara da "master". Non e' andata come sperato e mi sono dovuto accontentare di un giretto in bici attorno a casa.

In questo periodo e' realmente difficile non mollare la presa, I'll recupero e' veramente lento e mi devo sforzare per mantenere I'll ritmo di alzarmi presto ogni mattina per fare almeno un po' di bici..prima o poi arriveranno tempi podisticamente migliori

Amazing MTB

Well, this morning I took a bold move and went for a real MTB ride in Dongguan... we have mountains back here but it not really evident if there are tracks/road or whatsoever.. the usual situation is to take some dirt road and after 100m you meet a cluster of barking dogs guarding some farms or else...
Also the name Dongguan (world's factory city) does not really resound with ideas of dirt tracks and mountains. Mostly is a endless stretch of factories and dusty industrial towns...

So to my amazement, I really got the right way and found an amazing climb of 6,5km, mixed dirt and some concrete stretch. I guess that they will add more and more concrete on the road to make it a kind of park or else, but for the time being it is amazing. It was a good 50 minutes climb and my HR was well above 165/170bpm for most of the time... from the top, wonderful view of the surrounding mountains and all the town.
Now I am looking forward to do it again tomorrow!!...

for those with time, here the link to the GPS tracking

Photo 1: view from the top

Photo 2: only in China... a cement mixer did try his way on the dirt road and end up like that...

(photos are awful quality because the phone was wet)