Marina di Carrara, 8 Feb

It was rainy most of last week--did some workouts in the gym at work, 4-10K on the threadmill, alternating with 30-min on the elliptical. But exercising on machines was not much fun. The weekend was supposed to be a washout too, and I spent a wet Saturday morning cleaning out moss from the courtyard and stairs. Ended up with extremely sore arms and shoulders--that took care of upper body workout for the week. Surprise, surprise, this morning the sun actually came out for a short time. We grabbed the opportunity to try out the bike/pedestrian path in Marina di Carrara, starting late morning. Parked in a quiet street (no doubt this place would be hopping in the summer) next to the ocean at the end of M-d-C. We were confronted with an interesting sculpture just across the road, then saw another in front of the beach property where we parked the car (photos above). This is Carrara after all, home of the famous Carrara white marble, used for centuries by sculptors including Michaelangelo, to produce masterpieces found in museums as well as on quite ordinary streets. Other interesting sculptures encountered on our run today included that of a worker carrying a slab at the entrance of the waterfront where blocks of marble await loading onto ships; and an interesting piece at the entrance of an open beach (right).

Back to running--we took the sidewalk for bikers and pedestrians, and found ourselves heading back toward the car after only 7.7K. We decided to veer off to the road toward Carrara town, heading towards the hills that were dark with storm clouds, passing warehouses with cranes and huge blocks of marble in the compound. The return route to the car gave us a total of 10K. After the run, we drove down the other fork of the road that leads to Pisa and found there was a decent jogging path along the road heading into Marina di Massa. We agreed that would make for a longer run next time. As we turned back toward La Spezia, the skies opened up, our timing was perfect although the run itself was slower than usual. But we did get in our run for the weekend. Looking forward to resumption of the marce next week!