A marathon runner's approach to interviewing

Posted by Katie

This summer I have been attempting to find a job and have developed a sort of routine (as I do for most things) for the in person interview. In my field and at my experience level the interview typically involves a 1 hour presentation (by me), followed by 7+ hours of interviews usually each 30min-1 hour and with 1-4 people at a time. So in short... it is a long long day and being on your A game is critical.  So below is my routine and for the runners reading this blog it may look a little familiar....

Pre-Interview day

• Extra hydration all day
• Choose outfit and shoes, lay out all items for speedy transition
• Dinner: pasta with pesto and chicken
• Sleep: as much as possible! old-lady bedtimes encouraged

Interview day

• Wake up: unnecessarily early
• Breakfast: bagel sandwich
• Drive to start: also unnecessarily early (just in case!)
• Pre interview pit stop: usually a local starbucks to spend the extra 1.5 hours that I accidentally have
• Emergency provisions: water bottle, and secret stash of energy chews in breifcase
• Yup you read that right... I bring energy chews (honey stinger aka candy) on every interview

 

#ready

So there you have it, my interview routine, which if you just swapped out the word interview for marathon... would be exactly the same. Personally I find there is something really comforting about routine. Cross your fingers for me that this crazy routine leads to gainful employment soon! 
 

Weekend of fall kick-offs

Posted by Rachel

This weekend of September is always significant, but this year instead of two things happening there are three (note- only one is training related):

1.) Kick-off to Healdsburg half training
I made my training plan for my goal fall race. Admittedly, there are a lot of unideal training scenarios incorporated in this plan (for example, being out of town for 10 days in a row starting this Friday). So I made the not-quite-ideal-but-as-good-as-it-will-get-given-my-travel-schedule training plan. I kicked off training by running my first double-digit mile run in over 3 weeks- 10.2 miles. The pace was good but today my legs are sore. I feel kind of like a rookie. It should be an interesting fall.

2.) NFL kick-off
This is probably my husband's favorite part of this weekend, despite #3 below. Luckily for him, I also love football, and brunch + football Sunday is a common occurrence in our house.

Foreground: Scrambled eggs w/chive and ricotta on ciabatta toast w/fruit salad

Background: Major Patriots debacle (surprise Bills victory not shown)

3.) The anniversary of the biggest party we've ever thrown

Here are some fellow bloggers :)

Fall 2014... here we come!

The last week of August (including Oakland Tri race report)

Posted by Rachel

Taper week

Taper week started last weekend post Livermore ride/wine tasting/earthquake. The first activity of taper was bioluminescence kayaking. We did this up in Tomales Bay and it was AWESOME. The weather was great, the water was warm, and we saw a lot of bioluminescence. Unfortunately, when you try to photograph biolumescence it looks like you took a photograph of black construction paper, so instead you'll need to imagine what that's like and enjoy these photos instead.

Go ahead and leave your vote for "best dressed" in the comments 

The work week began with me eating a whole lot and training barely at all. I always worry that I'm going to gain weight at this stage, but luckily I don't own a scale so I can only speculate and I don't actually have to quantify this.

Expo day

Fast forward to Saturday. It has been a while since I cooked so we decided to host a pasta dinner for the triathletes and supporters. In the morning, I prepped by making the cake and the pasta.

I didn't get any pictures of the final products but you can imagine what these raw materials may have turned into

Then we went to check out the expo. The expo was pretty cool- small enough to feel like an intimate local race, but big enough that it had interesting stuff to buy/look at. Afterward, the guys "practiced" the pedestrian footbridge that we had to cross twice during the race- once during T1 and once in the middle of the 10k run. Of course, I had practiced extensively the week before, analyzing average time to cross and whether I should take every step or every other. It was amusing to see a stairway that is almost always deserted littered with triathletes practicing going up and down stairs.

An important part of the race!

Race day

This was one of those nights that I didn't sleep well before the race. I think I was anxious about having mechanical issues on the bike, because I kept having dreams that my bike was not functioning. I love triathlons, but there is so much more gear to worry about than just running. Finally at 4 am, it was time to wake up. Fellow blogger Brandon and I left the house (we rode bikes to the start- love local races!) a little bit after 5 in these stellar outfits:

What sport are we doing?

Traers isn't as Type A as me, so he left the house about 40 min later and somehow ended up getting a better spot in transition. Such is life :p By the way, the 3 of us did the Olympic distance for this event.

The swim 

The swim was in the Oakland estuary, which as a resident is slightly disturbing. Considering I had already paid to do the race, I was resigned to the fact that I'd have to get in there at some point. They were very transparent about the water quality results (which were actually good from a bacterial standpoint), and I knew people who did training swims in there and survived, so the outlook wasn't too bad. The water was warm (66 degrees) and I wore my sleeveless wetsuit (which I had never swam in before). I LOVED the sleeveless. I felt so much more like myself when I was swimming, and I highly recommend it to others if the water temps allow.

The Oak Tri did something interesting- they started all men and women 30-34 in the same wave. I had started with men once before at Alcatraz, but I wasn't really competing in the swim at Alcatraz so I was pretty chill about letting people do their thing and being patient to work around others. Here, I wanted a PR and a good swim and I wanted to go after it. As we were lining up, I noticed there were a LOT more men around me than women. As it got close to the horn, people (men) started really pushing line (kind of like what happens at a concert when the headliner is about to come on). After the start, it was quite a bit rougher than I'm used to. It wasn't necessarily aggression-I've been in swim starts with aggressive women; it's just that the guys are a lot bigger. Up until the first buoy (~150 m?), there must've been at least 30 people with gold caps in front of me and I felt like I was swimming in a washing machine. After the turn, I went toward the outside and most of those people faded a lot. Apparently they didn't realize they had 1350 m left :p The rest of my swim felt great. The swim times were way fast due to the aid of current, but I was thrilled with my strategy and pacing- I felt really strong the whole way. T1 was LONG (0.36 miles according to my Garmin, plus the pedestrian bridge which is 3 stories of stairs), but by ~24 minutes after I had started I was already on the bike.

The bike

With the triathlon being in Oakland, I was very familiar with the bike course. It was dead flat with only about 4 miles of it being directly into the headwind. The real disadvantage of this course is that it had so many turns. I am really, really bad at turning my bike. I had a secret goal of biking 18 mph, but every time we turned I'd have to slow down to < 10 mph then get all the way back up, which really does expend quite a bit of energy. Nothing really remarkable happened on the bike course. I didn't love the whole ride but there were times when I was actually having fun on the bike, which is nice. The bike course was 2 loops and we got to see our awesome fans (Chen, Sandi, and Will). I drank a whole water bottle and ate twice on the bike, which I'm also really proud of because taking my hands off the handlebars at any time can be a risk for me. I knew I was doing pretty well when Travers didn't pass me until mile 20 or so (we had started together). I rolled in at 17.9 mph- just shy of my goal. For me personally, turns slow me down way more than rolling hills, so I think on any comparable, straighter course I would have made my goal.

The run

T2 was unremarkable (although I'm a pretty slow transitioner). At the expo I had bought one of those race belts because I didn't want my bib on my shirt during the bike ride. I won't make any admission of guilt here on the internet (I'm not sure if this is a punishable offense), but I may or may not have forgotten to put on the bib for the run. $10 well-spent for sure. When I started the run I felt GREAT, but I tried to hold back because in all of my tris except Monte Rio I started the run strong only to realize later that the great feeling did not last. The run was very "home turf-y"- it passed right by our place at mile 1.5. I was holding pace in the 7:20s and it felt awesome. I passed Travers around mile 3- he looked great too and made me feel better about that mistake I alluded to that I may or may not have made in T2. Eventually I got to the pedestrian bridge in mile 5 and I still hadn't crashed yet. There were some random people cheering and I smiled and thanked them and they said I was the only person smiling. What can I say...running is just so much more fun than biking :p I came over the bridge (sprint tri athletes who were walking up the stairs were super courteous about moving out of the way in the narrow stairway, which was awesome and I was grateful for) and STILL felt great after the bridge, so I hammered the last mile and broke 7. My 10k ended up at 44:44 (it was a little shy of 6.2 on the Garmin, but the footbridge added a minute to the times so it was probably sort of close). 

Overall it was a 9 minute PR for this distance (total time 2:34). The course was fast but I felt a lot stronger than previous races and I trained really hard this summer. This is a good sign, since I'm about to start training for one that's 4x as long. 

The celebration

We had PRs all around (Travers and Paige) which was great. The food/beer line was long, which I was fine with skipping except we missed out on an awesome mason jar. We spent the rest of the day lounging and drinking (some more than others).

Next up: I become a runner for a couple of months (keep the cross training with volume reduction, and add running miles). My plans to do a fall marathon have been changed slightly with my goal race being the Healdsburg half. The course is challenging with some decent climbs, but I've had a couple of good runs at the ends of tris this year so I'd like to go after it. But first, a week of laziness.

Planned and unplanned excitement

Posted by Rachel

Planned

You've probably heard of Napa, and possibly even Sonoma. Well, northern California has another, much less well-known wine region that tourists wouldn't really think (or want) to visit- Livermore. Yesterday, some friends of ours planned a great 30 mile bike ride through this region which of course ended with a picnic and wine drinking. (Thanks, Michelle and Danielle!)

 During the drought, brown is the new green

Because of its lower popularity compared to Napa and others, the roads are actually much more suitable for biking. You can find miles of relatively nicely-paved roads with very little traffic. We did have one encounter with a man in a tiny porsche. We (a fairly large group) were stopped at a stop sign trying to figure out which way to go, and the car was approaching. It wasn't slowing down and instead, the guy lays on the horn as he comes up on us. Were we taking up 1/2 the road? Sure. Was there any sign of human life or any civilization that would prevent him from maneuvering around us? Absolutely not. He flipped us off as he passed too, in case we weren't sure how he felt about cyclists :p

Staying true to our blog namesake!

Unplanned

There are two types of people in this world- those who would sleep through a magnitude 6.0 earthquake, and those who wouldn't. I'm the former. Travers is the latter. So I was woken up for 10-15 sec (?) of pretty legit shaking, although I somehow missed the initial jolt. I was groggy and our floors were creaking, and I was hoping that our place wouldn't fall apart. It didn't... but it was a good reminder to have an emergency plan.

Opposites Attract

I’m going to do a race report even though there is a push to document more of the training.  To be honest, there wasn’t any real training on my part anyway so I don’t have much to talk about on that front.  Here is a report of the Paavo Nurmi Marathon that Sandi and I ran on August 9th.

Our experiences were on each end of the spectrum.  Sandi was the 4^th female over all, but hated almost the entire experience.  I had a blast and felt great, but posted a time 70 minutes slower than my PR 9 months ago.

I’ll start at the beginning.  We made our way over to the finish line where we boarded a bus that took us up the road to the start line.  On the way to the bus we drove past the local high school athletic fields; home of the Hurley Midgets.  That has nothing to do with the marathon, isn’t a lie, and is absolutely worth mentioning.

 

 

We arrived at the start line where we joined less than 300 other runners to start our journey towards Hurley, WI.  We were both a little nervous, but ready to go.  At 7:30 the gun (a large woman who yelled “go”) fired and away we went.  Immediately Sandi began to pull away while I tried to keep it conservative.  The first couple miles are downhill, so it was very difficult to keep it as slow as we should have.  Neither of us succeeded but both were able to settle in around mile 3.  I ran with a guy for most of the first half who competes in Ironman 70.3 and 140.6.  I believe he qualified for the 70.3 championships in Mont-Tremblant next month so this was just a training run for him.  The rest of the first half was pretty uneventful.

Here is an elevation chart from MapMyRun because my Garmin Connect isn’t working and I can’t get to my activities.  This chart minimizes the impact of the last three peaks, but I can assure you, they seemed a lot like the Alps.  In all seriousness, there is only about 560ft of climbing so with the right training and good weather it has the potential to be a great race.

Mile 15 was a game-changer for this race.  Sandi missed the water stop which started a downward spiral that ended in a mouthful of vomit and walk breaks.  My trip was more of a gradual slide as the heat and long rollers started to take their toll.  The second half was void of any shade and temperatures crept into the 70s.  Water stops were more frequent in the second half (about every mile or two) and each one had bags of ice and cold sponges.  I learned a lot about running a hot marathon.

Keys to running a hot marathon:

1. Drink the electrolytes
2. Use the sponges, even if they smell strange
3. Accept that you should run a slower pace than your ideal-condition marathon pace (I’m going to start calling this “CIM Pace”*)

*CIM – California International Marathon: known as one of the fastest (if not the fastest) marathon courses in the Western US.

The finish was probably the most difficult finish of any marathon I have ever run.  It is an up-hill finish on the shoulder of a busy highway without shade.  Further, there is a large group of Paavo veterans who had the insight to leave enough in the tank to power through as well as fresh-legged relay runners who constantly fly by you.  Through the adversity Sandi was able to hold on and salvage a great time of 3:38:20 and 4^th overall.  I, on the other hand, was greeted by my old friend ITB* who I thought I got rid of.  I went into this race with woefully low levels of training and made the decision to run based on perceived effort, which would be apparent if I was able to show my mile split times here.  I just wanted to keep my heartbeats in a range that would allow me to stay just on the edge of comfortable.  I made the decision to walk through the last water stop (~mile 24.5) in order to get enough to drink before making the final push up to the finish.  I took my last gulp, threw the cup to the side, and began to accelerate from a walk back to a jog.  That acceleration lasted two steps before coming to a complete stop.  The quick walk through the water stop was enough time for my ITB to tighten up and made running impossible.  I took time to do some targeted stretches to see if I could stretch things out, but had little luck.  My next idea was to attempt a fast walk to see if I could loosen it up with dynamic movement.  This also was a failure and I began to accept that the running portion of the day had finished and would likely post a PW.  Lucky for me, my worst is so much slower than my normal times that even a complete blow-out won’t do it.

*ITB - Iliotibial Band: connects the knee to the pelvis and stabilizes the knee during running motion.

 

It is likely that we will be running this race again.  And at this point you might be asking yourself how I came to that conclusion based on how terrible this was for both of us.  Well, Sandi feels as though the race got the best of her and she needs to get her revenge.  I feel as though this race would be even more amazing if I were to have put just a little bit of effort into training for it.

 

Now we are both going to focus in on the fall training plan that will include a couple 5Ks in September, a half marathon in October, and CIM in December.

Will

Mt. Hamilton ride and a weekend of heat training.

Posted by Katie

If I had to chose one word to describe this weekend's training it would definitely be... HOT.

Our weekend started with an open water swim, in a shallow lake... getting shallower by the day thanks to California's massive drought. Lately the swim lane that is marked off is so shallow that long armed folks (like Matt) are hitting the bottom during their stroke in one corner. I think the shallow water is also contributing to the temperature rise or at least it feels that way...Having the wetsuit on was nice for all of 5 seconds of getting into the water and then promptly too warm. A friend with us swam without one and remarked that it felt just like swimming at the pool. We pushed on for a mile swim that I felt pretty good about. The sun started to break through the fog just as we finished the swim and the temperature rose rapidly.

After about a 30min transition of driving back to our place, changing, consuming some food... it was time to run. At this point it was probably about 80F (but it felt like 105F). My longest run thus far has been 8 miles (a month ago?), and lately really just 6... so I am definitely behind on the running and planned to get 10 miles in post swim, an ambitious jump. Starting out the run for me immediately became a mental challenge. At 1.5miles I felt like a big noodle, no energy, things were hurting.. not a good sign. So I convinced myself to run for a half mile, then walk... then run 1 mile, walk, then 2, and a gu... finally around 4 miles I started to hit a rhythm and ended the run feeling strong (or at least much better than it started). Miles 7-10 we spent thinking about what I wanted in my post run smoothie (strawberry, banana, and yogurt) which I made immediately upon entering the house.

No time for cups... smoothie consumed directly from blender.

Sunday we decided to ride up Mt. Hamilton in San Jose. Let me say right now that this ride was an a$$ kicker in every sense of the word (total gain = 5,100ft).  We parked ~5 miles from the base of the climb which is 19 miles of pretty much continuous up (with two small dips). The best thing about this ride is that the grade is super gentle.. no more than 6.5%. This nice gentle grade is due to the observatory at the top, or more specifically the trucks that have to carry observatory equipment to the top. 

Yep that's a mountain.

I would like to reach out across the internet and give Cal Fire in Santa Clara a big huge hug. At the base of climb part 2 of this ride there was a fire station with a table out front and a huge jug of iced water. We just happened to stop there because one of our riding buddies needed to change a flat. All 4 of us on the ride agreed that had we not stopped for water there we most certainly would have bonked on the next section. Not only was it super hot and exposed but the pavement was that new black tar style stuff that was literally roasting us as we biked. So ya... full waters were necessary! Thanks Cal Fire!!!

At the top we were rewarded with amazing views in all directions. Also there is a visitor center for the observatory, complete with bathrooms, cold water, a gift shop, and vending machines which sold gloriously cold Gatorade and other treats.

Lick Obersvatory

We made it!!

View of the crazy windy road.

Gatorade (in cans?!) cheers.

The ride down was fun! Lots of curvy roads but again, not too steep. Matt says there are supposedly 365 turns on the road. Call me crazy but I really liked this ride. I would definitely do it again, although next time I would want to start much earlier and avoid the heat.

Post ride of course we were all ready for food... ASAP. The pizza below was for just Matt and I..

Me in the background for scale.

Training in the heat sure feels heroic but I don't know if that translates to any sort of added fitness. Likely not. I suppose if we were getting ready for a tri in Florida we would be set.

Last entry of documented training week

Posted by Rachel

It's finally here- the last day that I will post the excruciating details of my training. I'm also going to give a quick overview of the Oakland Triathlon bike course, in case any participants are stalking the internet and looking for something like this.

Saturday:
12 mile flat run at MLK Shoreline. It was warm and a little bit rough. The pace would've reflected this sluggishness if a fellow blogger (I won't mention any names Sandi) hadn't decided to make the last 5k a race. It's ok though, it meant we got finished sooner and made it to Stag's just in time to beat the line!

If you live in or near Oakland, seriously just go here

Sunday:

32 mile bike ride. This is a little bit short on miles for a peak week, but I felt I've done plenty of hilly 50 or 60 milers.. way more than necessary for a flat Olympic distance tri. I needed to go grocery shopping and do some chores so I saved time by skipping the extra 20-30 miles :p We rode the loop of the Oakland Triathlon bike course* (described in detail below for any random internet stalkers who are wondering) and then Skyline. 

And that's a week of training in Rachel's life. I'll mention here that Travers crashed his bike today by running into a giant piece of asphalt, which is basically the same thing that got me a couple months ago. Watch out for these things, people... they can sneak up on you!!

Oakland bike course:

I didn't ride this course exactly between miles 2.5 and 4.5 but the rest is legit. So below outlines the part of the course I did ride. The course is mostly flat although you will notice slight changes in your pace due to gradual elevation changes. The course CAN be windy although in the morning it's usually not too bad, and it's almost always from the west-ish.

North on Broadway to 30th: This part is net uphill (although << 100 ft, so barely noticeable). Pavement quality varies although may be better when the lane is closed.

Left on 31st: There is a one block incline shortly after the turn that most will have to gear down for, and there are speed bumps throughout this section that I wouldn't take in aero (disclaimer: I'm not a great biker). I skipped some of this part heading west today, but I know that once you hit Mandela the pavement should be nice. Net downhill, but again barely noticeable as the net change is pretty much insignificant.

Right on Grand to Frontage & 7th: Another short (~1 block) incline before the left turn, then downhill after you make the left on Frontage. At the end of Frontage through 7th, you go down under some underpasses to cross freeways that are a little bit torn up. They were actually filling in a lot of the holes when I rode by today, but the pavement is still less than ideal in some parts so use caution. 

Out and back on Maritime: The pavement in this section isn't smooth, but it's ride-able.

Port of Oakland: Once you curve around 7th to Middle Harbor, you have a tail wind and some decent pavement the rest of the way. There are 3 "speed bumps" on Middle Harbor that are very gradual/low height + low slope.  Most riders could probably take those in aero. 

Throughout the entire course, there are several sets of (unused) railroad tracks you will cross. Most of them are 45 to 90 degrees to the direction you'll be riding so there shouldn't be too much of a chance of getting caught up in them as long as you're paying attention. I usually turn my wheel but just slightly when going over most of these and I'm way overcautious.

I still have mixed feelings about an urban triathlon course, but I do love Oakland so we'll see how it goes in 2 weeks!