I am not a morning person. I really wish I was, but I’m not. Even if I get up early to work or for training purposes I’m still not “awake” for an hour or two. But then once a year I get up for this local race called the Run 5.30. There I am, up at 4:30 AM so I

The Flora Mini Marathon (actually a 10k) is the largest women’s only race in the world. It’s been held in Dublin, Ireland for thirty years and ‘d always wanted to go and see what it was about; to see 40,000 women run together. I had really high expectations for the e

I’ve received an overwhelming number of emails and messages from friends asking if I’m doing okay and if we are safe here in Modena. I am and we are. On May 20th we were woken up at 4.00 am by photographs that had come crashing down on our bed. I recognized it as an earthq

It’s Half Marathon Week here at Up & Running! We recently added our 12-week Half Marathon Course to our e-course lineup so we’re celebrating all things 21K, including a sneak peak at the Course and chance to win a spot. The Half Marathon course is self-paced course so

Last week Up & Runners from ten different countries descended on Bologna for the first ever Up & Running LIVE retreat. Three days of running, wine, good times and pasta-scoffing culminated with the Julia Jones Running Festival race. Today Julia looks back on her big day. If yo

The last few weeks have been crazy busy, like working 7 days a week and feeling behind schedule every minute of the day. The problem is that I’m not going to have a break from the pressure for another month! I know that a lot of people would give up the exercise and fitness part

Yesterday I spent the entire day in the car traveling back home after Easter celebrations in the south of Italy. I knew there’d be extra traffic thus taking the 800 km ride more than the usual seven hours, so I packed extra magazines and books to read while my husband drove. Som

A few years ago a very small town near my home asked me if I could help them organize and all women’s race. I wasn’t too keen on the idea since I thought that with such a small population it might be difficult to get women not only to participate in the race but train for

When I moved to Modena over 10 years ago one of the selling points to choosing this city in the Emilia Romagna region was that it had an active running community. Local races every weekend, lots of sports clubs, plenty of parks and one really great annual running event. On 31 January

As I ran over the finish line I looked at my watch: 5:01:57. My first asinine thought was “Where could I have saved two minutes?” followed by “five hours ago you didn’t know if you’d make it to the finish line so shut up.” End of conversation. I got my