Medal of honour

[Please be aware donations are still open. If you want to support my effort please do so.]

Running, or maybe better to say jogging in Hyde Park on a beautiful sunny day in late summer with 15,000 other women, when all we’ve been waiting for was rain all day was priceless. 5 km in 39 minutes. The rain at the end arrived, but once we had already left for the pub.

I started from the end of the end of the tail along with many other girls who ran for Endometriosis UK having no attempt to make any records, I ran for the experience and for those who supported me and the most important thing to me was to get to the end without stopping, and it went very well.

I tried to concentrate on this day, I did not recognise any of the girls around me from their Facebook messages and to be honest I was not keen to ruin the experience of that time talking, as many of them, about scars, operations, and other bad times for some past and for others to come.

The training in the months prior to the race was a real disaster to be honest, I have not trained three times a week and I went on holiday twice, where no training was considered seriously. But once back, I went straight on the treadmill to get the legs going.

To run with me at the race there were women of all ages from three years old to more than 90 years old, each at their own pace and each dressed as they pleased even in sandals. They ran with husbands at their side or immediately off the path, or with children in their arms ready to greet their wives with text messages of love on home-made placards.

Endometriosis UK was just one of the 1,600 charities present on the day.

Before the race we had a warm up of Zumba and aerobics on the grass, that was great to boost the excitement.

Once the race started I realised that I could do a better time than I thought, listening to music on the Brazilian and South American bands along the track made you want to stop dancing, and the cheering on the sides was very important too, but even more the whispering about how far the finishing line was.

At the end of the race the adrenaline was super high, I received my adidas goody bag with lots of goodies sponsors (including a bag of Kellogg’s Special K, Nivea cream, toothpaste, mints and a bag of tea) and couldn’t wait to celebrate this achievement with friends.

It was a wonderful experience that I would repeat perhaps with the goal of making it in a better time, and I invite all of you to do it again with me.

Many thanks to all my friends who have supported Endometriosis UK with me! For those who have not yet done so and still wanted to help I’m happy to remind you that the Financial Times will match the amount raised, which at the moment is a great £140!

If you still want to contribute please do so.

Last month I was invited by a friend to go and see Arsenal – West Ham at the Emirates Stadium. It wasn’t my first time there, but it was my first Premier League match, as last time we went to see Italy being hammered by Brazil in a friendly. Now, let me give you a bit of background so that you can put my consideration in perspective.

I am a big football fan. Big. I support AC Milan, and have a feeling for West Ham over here. I used to be season ticket holder for now-Serie B team Triestina (my home town team) where I used to stand on the main supporters terraces. I used to go on away games, too, for a period of time. It was a good time, and surely an exciting one for a teen.

But I have been at “neutral” matches, big and small, and I am generally aware of what’s going on around the stadium. So, I was curious about finding out the atmosphere at a Premier League game.

The occasion was Arsenal – West Ham, last month, and I was invited to watch it at one of the private boxes thanks to a friend of mine. Let’s start with the result. Arsenal won 2-0. West Ham was never in the game, missed a penalty in the added time of the first half (they would have gone 1-1), played the whole of the second half with a one-man advantage and still were shite. Enough with that.

The way I felt at the stadium was a bit weird. There was a team that I liked which was being rubbish. Been there many times. But I felt like a spectator rather than being supportive. Of course, I was in a non-standard environment (the boxes seats are very different from the other seats), and I was supporting the away team, so no much room for anything except applauding was “self-allowed”, but still, it felt strange.

The chants from the terraces also are a very different thing than what you usually experience in Italy: they come from all over the stadium, no matter where you are, whereas in Italy they come 99% of the time from the home team stand behind the goal. We noticed this also at Craven Cottage (where we watched Fulham beat Shaktar Donetsk courtesy of LondonGeekFussball and our friend @cyberdees), so it must be the case in pretty much every occasion.

I was also surprised by how many people get to their seats around kick-off time, 5 minutes before to 5 minutes past it. Again, to me this feels like watching the game on telly, where you switch to the channel just before the kick off, and switch to something else at half-time and immediately after the game is over. I remember going to the stadium about one hour before the games, and having good fun and kicking off the singing well in advance.

All in all, as you would have guessed so far, I wasn’t really impressed. I think I will need to give English football some more chances, trying different stadiums and, why not, lower leagues maybe.

What’s your take on the game in England? Fancy leaving us your comments?

Hi guys, Sorry for the recent silence. Rest assured life’s been treating us nicely, we’ve just had Gioia’s family visiting to celebrate her graduation and we are about to take a little break for a few days in cold Stockholm. We are really looking forward to it, we will fly tomorrow (Friday) in the afternoon and head back to London on Tuesday.

Some little updates on our end: we have given the notice at our estate agent to confirm we will move out early in January next year, so we’ve dived into some serious flat-hunting, although we haven’t identified any good candidates so far. Still some 7 weeks to go, we’re pretty positive.

I have also taken up refereeing again after a break since we moved to London. I was a qualified football referee in Italy and got my “license” transferred to the UK so now I’m a qualified referee for the FA, too. In 10 days’ time I’ll be assistant to the ref at a South East Combination womens league game, I’m really looking forward to it.

Anyways, speak soon when we’re back!

Yes, we won BritBowl XXIII!!!

What a weekend it was! We drove towards Doncaster on Saturday, leaving Finsbury Park around midday. A big, double-decker bus, plus a trailer for all our kits and bags and, needless to say, the London Blitz in their best shape. We spent the night by Barlborough, having some rest, dinner together and the very final meetings to recap what we’d been studying for the last 2 or 3 weeks, to be 110% ready to take on the Coventry Jets.

In the morning we had a last walk-through of the game-plan and a nice brunch, then the whole of the team squeezed into a tiny room to watch this video:

And the second part

This was incredible, you could see tears in the eyes of many of us, and this is what I think made us all realise we were there, ready to go, ready to win.

We finally got on the bus to Keepmoat Stadium in Doncaster. The feeling was incredible, 70+ guys all dressed the same, all focussed on a moment only a few hours away, all focussed on a game to win and a trophy to hold.

We did so. We beat the Coventry Jets 26-7 (the only 7 points we conceded them in the 3 times we played them this season), obtaining a well deserved revenge after last year’s final. We practised hard all season, we won games and stayed focussed. We won, and we celebrated.

I’m so proud of being part of all this.

Team. Pride. Blitz. Family.

(you can see, and buy, Dan’s pictures pre-, post- and in-game)