Running at Google

On Friday I traveled to the Googleplex, Google's headquarters in Mountain View California, to run with my Berkeley classmate Glen and the Google employee lunch run group  

I thought about

 complaining about all the problems I have loading pictures and charts into this blog (Blogger is owned by Google), and complain about my startup's poor ROI on our adwords campaign.  But I am just way too exhaused as we race around the landfill area next to SF Bay.  As you might expect at Google, the runners are intense - several are competitive triathletes.  

Supposedly even Google has been forced to cutback on expenses during the global economic crisis - but any austerity drive was not apparent to me.  After the run we quenched our thirst with unlimited free smoothy drinks and showered in the comfortable employee changing rooms.  And it is a challenge to choose from the unlimited free food prepared by world-class chefs in the cafeteria - spicy green curry soup, black sea bass, masala chicken - it went on and on.  

Palo Alto Tri Club

I lived in Palo Alto, California from roughly 1997-2002.  In those days I thought a lot about becoming a triathlete but did little other than bike through the rolling Peninsula hills and occasionally join a group jog on Wednesday nights through the streets of Palo Alto.

 

On Wednesday, I finally make it back to the weekly 5.5 mile run.  Of course I intended to keep up with the leaders and demonstrate how impressive I have become.  However I get cutoff at a light at around 2 miles and never manage to catch up. 

Just like in Tokyo the group goes out to a Vietnamese restaurant after the run.  Vietnamese food seems to have become the universal choice among run clubs.  Except in this case it is a spacious restaurant in a strip mall along El Camino rather than a cavernous hole-in-the-wall.   And I also could also tell this was America because with everyone at dinner talked about their jobs and their investment portfolios.

Sitting there it felt that nothing had changed since 2002, but then I recall that at least now I have some claim of being a real triathlete.   

Kanagawa Half-Marathon

I hoped to run a solid half-marathon today in Kanagawa.  And I did reasonably well.  

I clocked a 1:19:38 which is my fastest time in over 3 years.  I still feel like I am not quite achieving the 10k an

d half-marathon times I am capable of running.  But doesn't everyone feel that way?  And my philosophy about the sport is 

based on enjoying the training and events, rather than too much periodization and sacrifice anyway.

The Kanagawa event is really about running a fast time (rather than say admiring pretty scenery), and this seems to be successful for the organizers - over 10,000 runners jammed the rather narrow registration area, porta-potties and  starting area.  

The crowd slowed me down a bit for the first 3k, which served 

to make the next 15k that more enjoyable as I passed hundreds of 

other runners, as I scurryed from drafting off one pack to the next to minimize the im

pact of the wind (see the smiling picture courtesy of Chad Clark). I seemed to be the fastest gaijin (non-Japanese), and so I was helped along by the crowd yelling "gambatte namban rengo". 

I was beginning to struggle at 18k and feared that I would not manage to at least break 1:20, but when I saw the time of of 1:16:05 at 20.1k I closed my eyes and pushed to the finish.