Running another Marathon

Before Sonja and I had children I ran a few marathons. I had done the Silicon Valley marathon in San Jose, the Rock'n Roll in San Diego, Big Sur and the San Francisco marathon. Then our two boys came, work somehow got more busy and the time to train for a marathon wasn't quite there anymore. And to be honest, I sort of lacked the drive to go out 4-6 times a week and run a lot of miles. I have decided to change that now and run again. Other people can do it, so I should be able to do it as well. It's just really good to be in a good shape and just be able to go out and run 10 or 15 miles without suffering. I signed up for my second Silicon Valley Marathon in San Jose which will be held November 4th.

I bought a new pair of running shoes and have already started running again. And I started planning/searching for routes to run. There is now a handful of web sites that let users draw routes on maps (Google Earth let's you do it as well). I have tried the USATF web site and walkjogrun.net and they work reasonably well. I already planned a 15 and an 18 mile run for later in my training plan. Let's see how that goes. Anyone interested in joining?

My first 6 weeks @ Google

Tomorrow I will have completed my first six weeks at Google and I have to say I love it. I work on a very interesting project that has nothing to do with JavaScript. The food is as good or better than I expected and I haven't grown tired of it yet. So far I have managed to avoid the Google 15, the (apparently) average number of pounds new employees gain because of the abundance of food. And I have reduced my coffee consumption significantly, which should work out for me well in the long run. Compared to Yahoo! which features staffed espresso bars I now have to make my own espresso drink and more often than not I pass on coffee altogether. And in the spirit of getting/staying healthy, I decided to pick up running again and try for another marathon but more on that in another post. Anyway, Google is pretty cool, so far I have no regrets leaving Yahoo! And, drinking Koolaid once an hour isn't really that bad ...