3 months running (and counting)

Back in mid May I futurized a 10Km run after 30 days of training; I was far from being credible but guys here I am, I reached (and broke) the 10Km limit yesterday in a one hour, partly under a smooth rain, evening run near home (10,42Km, 1:00:08; 5′ 45” per Km).

I had to move really far from home not to fall in temptation to stop and go back: since my body wanted to relax my mind was forced to choose different (physical) paths to keep me moving forward and more distant. I’m really impressed on how much the nikeplus system was strategic to achive this result: it provide me with music, statistics on the run (eh eh) about time, distance and speed.

I recently reprogrammed my training so to be based on time more than on distance so to force me to properly manage energy and speed: I used to run very fast – 4 mins per Kilometer – at the beginning, and slightly moving down to 6 mins per Kilometer at the end of the run), the result is that I’m increasing the distance ran in the same time (thus increasing the medium frequency).

I’m really starting to love running; it makes me feel better, healthier and more mentally relaxed. I burn stress and I can free my mind of every thought but the feeling of my body, the feet, the legs, the arms. Once finished I really feel nicely tired, satisfied. And it’s a nice discussion topic too (my morning breakfast barman is a runner too and each and every morning asks me about my latest achivements :-) ).

Nikeplus is genial: easy to install, easy to use, one button to fire it up. But guys: let our web site experience enhance with the next release and – please oh please – provide me with a solution to the lack of data pairing between iPod and iTunes after I substituted the shoe sensor. I can say i already tried with no effect this, this and this.

What ecommerce should learn from Lambrusco wine

This is not a wine blog. But I really love good wine and I’m mad at the discovery of new bottles, and that’s why this is the second post about wine in less than a month.

To tell the whole truth I won’t speak about the (note: landing page in Italian) marvellous Lambrusco that I found last year in a wine show in Mantua but I’m going to tell you about an experience.

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Wine is love

My first "wine lovers" bottleI’ve recently applied for the Francesco Zonin‘s (Cantine Zonin is one of the greatest Wine companies here in Italy) new marketing initiative named Wine is Love (more on this on the linked Francesco’s blog, in Italian only) where some wine lovers bloggers are going to receive premieres bottles from the wine maker just to enjoy them.

The first bottle I’ve received is a Primitivo di Manduria (note: the English version of this Wikipedia page does not exiest) produced by the Masseria Altemura (which is owned by the Zonin’s) and has layed a couple of months in my cellar waiting for the right chance to be opened. I’ve to say that I proposed to our friends on the upper floor to celebrate each of the bottles I’m going to receive with a special wine tasting dinner to give these wines the respect they deserve.

For the Altemura di Altemura we arranged a full black suite table with demi-ballons glasses, black water glasses and design cutleries.

The main course was a superbly coocked roasted guineafowl on a bed of spinaches and green beans. A bamboo cup of chinese rice boiled with garlic made the rest.

We started the evening by reading the birth of this wine from the words of its creator (I’m gonna ask permission to Francesco Zonin to have this published) while the bottle sat opened on the table for more or less half an hour; we decided not to read the organolecptic table but to desume them by ourselves (we prepared a couple of “technical” booklets where to annotate our feelings about this wine and the dinner).

Smelling (with my wife trying to make me laugh)

The wine is plenty with strawberry and mixed berries, with a round corpus and well balanced tannines (I’m absolutely not a technician in this field and my English vocabulary is lacking too many wine related words to going deep into the description :-) ); we thought it would have had a great benefit of another couple of years rest to reach complete perfection, but it was a marvellous wine indeed.

Just a final note about the last sentence we wrote down: “Immediately order a couple of dozens of these bottles“. I wasn’t able to find any ecommerce on the Zonin’s site; Francesco: can you help?