Rookie runner

I’m used to 14 hours, multi-task multi-purpose working hours; my average working day starts at 6 and a half with the first mails and web check and usually ends after mid-night; but I’m a full-formed lazy boy for everything concerned with sport activities. Yes, it’s true that I love skiing, I play tennis, I swim and try to perform in other sports too… but these are not daily activities, nothing I can say I dare to to every day. The opposite is true!

But as my business/dinner lunches grows in number and in quality as my weight has re-started growing; I needed something that, without forcing me in a diet I would never have been able to maintain in the long distance, granted me a loose in fats and – hopefully but as a side effect – could also get myself fitter.

I started by evaluating the Nintendo Wii together with the Wii fit; but as the summer approaches it’s getting harder to perform fitness activities at home; I don’t have enough spare time to dedicate at least 7 hours of my week to go to the gym (and when I tried I never been able to reach the objectives I had due to my early abandon of it).

Speed graph on Nike+ siteBut then I’ve seen a commercial of the Nike+ Men VS Women challenge; basically Nike+ is a sensor, integrated in your left shoe to track speed and distance, wirelessy (via Bluetooth, I suppose) connected to your iPod (Nano or Touch, I own the second one) to organize, measure and maintain your running activity.

That was exactly what I was looking for:

  • It’s something geeky and innovative; something that reallly excites me;
  • It has a companion web site with cool functions and intuitive UIs;
  • It gives me the chance to share my results with friends and followers in a load of ways (email, Facebook, web, etc.);
  • It let you create your own challenges (personal or VS someone), running tracks (using Google maps), and objectives (calories lost, distance, speed, etc.).

I think these qualities are keeping me on track: I’m really enjoing running and I having the first results after just five days of activities: I started on Monday with a 20mins, 2.5 Km run and ended my Running Week on Saturday with a 25mins 4,7Km performance, nearly doubling my first effort!

Here belowOn the right column you’ll find a widget that connects to the Nike+ server and let me share with you my results; hopefully you’re going to see a 10Km run in the next 30 days!

Oh my!

I was adding WordPress as one of my Linkedin profile apps (since its “Facebookization”) while I noticed it’s been 85 (!!) days without updating Yellow Line: oh my, oh my! My loyal RSS feed readers haven’t been abandoned with pics from Flickr and links from Yahoo My Web. but what about the rest of You? For those who cares, obviously!Let me share with you a quick, and casually ordered, “facts of notice” list in Matteo’s life:

Are some of this bullets going to become blog posts? Hopefully I’ll be able to use this list as a track for future work on Yellow Line!

The importance of the place

St. Andrew church, MantovaI’m writing from my parents’ couch in Mantua, a small and ancient city a couple of hours from Milan, the city who hosted me for the first 18 years of my life; before moving to Padua for the University and then to Milan to start my “adult” life.

Mantova in the last 15 years has become a liveable city rich in culture events (Festival Della Letteratura, Mantua Jazz Festival, live concerts, etc.), museums and, last but not least, an almost endless choice of restaurants.

My wife always enjoys shopping in Mantua due to the small dimensions of the city itself: you can tour it by feet all its trendy shops in a couple of hours; and you can also stop by an excellent bar for a delicious cappuccino; doing this it’s not unusual to step by one of my childhood friends (just tomorrow I had a chat with Zelo, who’s now working part-time at a local bookshop plus continuing his artistic career).

Life in Mantua is stressless and quiet; you can feel the raising lifestyle od the inhabitants; and the food is terrific.

In Milan everything is fast. You don’t have time for nothing but business. Chaos & disorder are powerful forces in this city. Concrete is everywhere. You barely can use your car to do shopping but public transportation really deserve an empowerment.

But I still leave in Milan. And I’m so happy with this that I just bought a new and bigger house (we’re still in the redesign phase; I’ll post some shots on Flickr once we cosolidate the architect’s proposal).

Why?

I think that part of the answer reside in Richard Florida‘s theory on Creative Cities (and Milan is the Design World capital): The Frontiers of Interaction wouldn’t have been possible in Mantua; meeting with top-notch professionals such as Leeander, Simone, Flavio, the people at the Bicocca University, Fabio and many many others barely unthinkable.

But the rest of the answer is about potential; Milan has the potential to become more liveable, to transform itself from the ground up cutting the distance between the city and its inhabitants; continuing to remain an innovative city. Milan is a city for the youngsters, for the makers, for the thinkers.

Milan is a city where this is possible. But this and this too.

My professional life is still based in Milan and my forecast is that this won’t change in the next 10 years. But I won’t age in this city: I prefere move my family to cities more similar to the one I was born in. I prefere a return to my roots while keeping my innovation potential intact.