pan-mass challenge

I officially signed up for the 2007 pan-mass challenge this morning (well afternoon here, but registration was 9am eastern time). It is something I am really looking forward to doing; its a great cause, its not that hard, and it should be fun. With the myriad of charity rides out there, it is not often I see all that many racers showing up to participate, which I sort of understand (sketchy bike handling, etc.) but I think its something all of us should do, and if its just a part of our normal training, why not raise some money for a good cause (cancer research in my case).

Personally, I am happy my mom and dad agreed to do it as well. It will be a huge challenge for them (and for me) at 110 miles saturday, 82 miles sunday (or so...) but with my mom having gotten and beaten cancer twice, and her mom having died from cancer, I think it will be a very special "life experience"

If you read this and think I am talking about mars, then read more here:
http://www.pmc.org/

Also, if anyone wants to contribute money towards the $3,600 I need to raise, leave a comment or email me and I can set that up (its easy, you can do it all online w/ a CC, I would assume its all tax-deductable but don't quote me).

Anyways, that will give me good incentive to keep on training on top of the fast approaching race season (pro racing in australia already started, wtf) and hopefully will keep me motivated this winter/spring/summer....the ride is only 200 days away.

gym

I have been hitting the gym quite a bit in the last week...Feels good to be getting some excercise again. Then my knee started to hurt, so I stopped with the lifting for a day and took a sauna, which was amazingly nice. I need to get one of those in my dormroom.

Today I travelled to Ferrara. We saw a jewish cemetery, had a great lunch, then visited this massive castle. By far the coolest part was the dungeons, of which you could go into 3 of them. One had grafitti from prisoners from 500 years ago...The poor guy spent his whole life in the dungeon...he was let out at 81 years old, then was thrown back in shortly after for "treason" and died there. They were very small, cold, dark, drafty stone rooms with no windows and multiple heavy doors...Very creepy.

Picture adequately describes thursday night....in fact, I don't even remember where/when it was taken...

uh-oh

I think I have been in europe too long....I had a craving for nutella after I finished lunch today (which by the way was an amazing sandwich of bread, oil, provelone, some other italian sounding cheese, salami and prosciutto....the same thing I have had every day for lunch since getting to this country).....well, maybe it was more of a desire for nutella and less of a craving.

Check out colin r's cool new(ish) cross result site

http://crossresults.com/

its a great procrastination tool and fun to play with...

molto bene

got my pictures working.....just a few for now:
the alps have snow, contrary to popular belief
we are clearly not stateside anymore....piazza bra, the collesium
and the view up the river from the footbridge at castlevecchio (i think)

ouch

I have blisters on my feet, and it hurts. Right in the arch on the side, on both of them. I woke up at 9am here (our time) today and decided to go for a run. Got dressed (its warm here, mid 50's), grabbed some euro's and the ipod and decided to go to the path on which I saw tons of cyclists, runners, etc...

I did an hour ten minutes, not sure of the distance, I think I got to the next town over, perona? It was very lovely scenery, I will do it again with a camera at some point. I saw soooooo many rollerbladers, I guess that is a big thing here. Many were wearing cycling type jerseys, I saw one old guy in a Fasso jersey and rollerblades. A bunch of teams out on training rides rode past, which was cool. Despite it being warmish out (I'd guess mid 50's) I was wearing long spandex top and bottom w/ a sweatshirt and was hot, rolling up sleeves, etc....everyone else was bundled up warmer than I do for riding in winter in Maine. Full on hats, face guards, gloves, booties, etc. etc. Crazy. I would be running along and then anwhere from 6-20 guys/girls in matching kits would whir past. Hopefully I will be able to find a bike soon so I can ride if it stays nice, if not, our residence has spin classes in the gym a few days a week. I think I am just going to walk into a bike store (I found one wandering around yesterday) and in broken Italian say something along the lines of "I am an american cyclist here for awhile who would like to do some training"....we will see how that goes.

My Italian is actaully not that bad, I was fully able to order drinks last night at the bars and also ask questions of the waitress at dinner (about the food) and also in the residence. Last night was a big fesitval where they burned a giant witch in front of the collesium thingy. Sort of cool/weird, I didn't have a camera but many of my friends did. It is 7:51am at school/home, wake up sleepyheads.