Summer time

Personally, I guess that if you would like to know a nice way to waste your summer holiday, then you should probably ask to any runner preparing a marathon in the Autumn. I wouldn't want to send the message that training is bad (well, sometimes it is), but I think that deciding to spend the whole summer by conditioning your choices with the fact that you are going to run a long competition in September/October can be sometimes frustrating, especially when you look outside the window and you see empty streets (everyone is of course on holiday!) and the sun is shining, whispering you: "seize the day".
I've been working in Stockholm for two years (right, it has been a long time, even if it feels quite short) and I started understanding why Swedish are going so crazy when there is a sunny day; simply because the weather in this Country is not as nice as one would expect. So, Summer season is a kind of big breath that is trying to compensate all the "pains" that you have during the winter, while you are always upset with the weather ...

Summer 2015 - Stockholm from CSG Office in Södermalm

This is the second year in a row that I decided to spend the whole summer working in Stockholm. I did that on purpose. I want to try to give a last shot for preparing a marathon. Time as passed since I was able to train more than once a day, but I still feel that I can at least try to be in a decent shape for that. Last year I tried to prepare Lidingöloppet, but I didn't fully succeed. I was in quite a good shape before leaving for Italy, in the beginning of August, but then something changed, so I ran the course way slower than my initial target, which was 1h45m (I ran 1.47m). Of course, this year I will try to not do the same planning mistake.
Back in June I called my trainer Johnny Schievenin and asked him a program for targeting Venice Marathon (end of October), starting from July. He looked pretty happy about that and enthusiastic to face this new challenge. In the beginning of July I started following that program. Kind of tough, I would say, but it is exactly what I needed. It includes one session per day, 15-20km average and, compared with the programs I was used to follow while I was a student, it is trying to squeeze everything so that in 8-9h per week I can get enough quality on the sessions. Translated: lot of workouts.
My plan now is to try to follow as much as I can that program (I would say that completing 80-90% of it would be already awesome), for then going home to Italy to spend one month of vacation and basically train hard. And that is the reason why I started writing this post that way.
For now I feel quite confident. I wouldn't still target a time for Venice Marathon, but I do not want to "run it for participating".
The first three weeks have been completed (9h - 130km, 9h - 130km, 8h - 120km), but there is still a long way to go. I'm looking forward with a lot of curiosity to the upcoming months, knowing that I have some actual limits, but I am rather happy to face this challenge.