Letchworth is Lovely

So there is this lovely Stat Park nearby called Letchworth.  This is my 5th year as an RIT student and I've never been there.  2 friends and I decided to take the hour drive over and run through the gorgeous terrain.  We did about 8 miles in a little over 1.5 hours because we kept having to stop for pictures.  There are 3 sets of waterfalls along the way that were super cool and they are all set in a deep gorge.  We decided to do the gorge trail (most of the photos) and then tacked on the Mary Jemison Trail (video 1).  Love it!  Sorry the videos are shaky!  Enjoy.

 

Autumn's Glory

In front of my apartment after an early morning run on a glorious, brisk, Autumn day.  Favorite season of the year.

Boston

So I realize I abandoned you back in May, but it's not entirely my fault.  You see Germany doesn't really have summer, so I had to skip it  ;)   Well I suppose the bigger part of it was less and less access to internet and more and more to get done.  It did enjoy those last months in Germany.  When it came to a close I baked three cakes to split between 2 going away parties.  One party in German, with friends from Erlangen, and 1 party in English with people from work.  Soon enough I was home and my family was getting more hugs from me than they knew what to do with. 

So during the year I was working on a running shoe related project.  The running team is in Boston though, not Germany.  I had met a few people from the team but not the majority, and few of them knew what I was up to.  We arranged that after my internship finished up and I went home, that I could visit the Boston office for 2 days enjoy everything that goes with that.  I had never been to Boston before but have been wanting to visit for some time.  It's a beautiful place.

I landed Wednesday night and took the train into town and found my hotel, which was really a bed and breakfast called The College Club of Boston.  Delightful.  I believe is used to be a women's college.

After a recommendation from the gentleman at the front desk I met with Andrea, who used to study with me, at the Parish Restaurant.  I enjoyed a meal called Elephant Walking on Eggs "Sandwich from the Mountain".  Then we met Adrian and he drove us the harbor to explore.  He showed us this red line painted through the city called "the Freedom Trail" that leads you past many of the sights of Boston.  Getting pretty late though so we all headed our separate ways.  1 perk of Boston, I already know lots of people who live there.

Thursday morning I rose and enjoyed a good breakfast with no deli meats (a German peculiarity).  I then walked the 45 minutes through town to PUMA as an excuse to see more of Boston.  I got to work at 9, found out I was presenting at 10, and promptly was toured through the office to meet a million people (or meet their desks for those who weren't there) in quick succession.  The meeting started 15 minutes late because that is the PUMA way, and because designers were involved.  In the end, the seats were filled, and hardly even standing room left.  It was a great way to start off the day.  I spent the next two days meeting people, and seeing how things work in the Boston office.  I went for a run with two of the other developers at lunch just like in Germany.  One of them used to log 100 miles a week in his prime.

To conclude the trip I got to go to the preliminary round of the Red Bull 2012 Cliff Diving World Series Boston.  Pretty crazy stuff.  The Olympic high dive is 10m.  This was 27.

Then I flew home.

That's all.

oh and I got 2 new pairs of shoes in Boston  ;)

Biking Far! (to Nürnberg)

So Nürnberg has always been just out of reach.  It's a 30 minute commute by train, but it's about $10 for a round trip, so not something I want to do so often.  It's about 14 miles away, and now that the weather is delightful, it is bikeable.  I did it the past two weekends.  This picture is from the first.  It's nice being in Nürnberg with a bike because then you are not stuck in the city center, but instead can go out a little further and find nice places like this.

Saturday, I biked to "Summer in the City" to hang out with some friends at the artificial beach there.  Quite pleasant.

Yesterday I just ran 14 miles.  Maybe by the end of the summer I'll run to Nürnberg and back?  We'll see. let's not get too far ahead of ourselves.

(side note - I finally got 10,000 views to this blog  =)

Half Marathon

This weekend was a climax of a story dating way back through the winter months.  Back before Christmas Karen persuaded me to sign up for a half marathon in Munich.  It seemed so far away at the time that I wanted to do a full marathon instead.  I ended up with the half and I’m glad I did.  After many weeks of running through the snow, I ended up with many weeks injured and not getting to train as much as I had hoped.  Icing my heels at work meant wearing flip flops in February.  My colleagues gave me a hard time about that.  I got healthy, trained a few weeks, and ran a 10km, and then re-injured myself playing soccer.  With 4 weeks left to go I recovered again worked my runs up from 3km to 16km as carefully as I could.  The last few days I rested up well, loaded up with carbs, (caught a cough), and prepared to run fast.

We spent Saturday in Munich hanging out with a few Canadian engineers (very similar to American ones) walking through parks mostly.  There were a lot of discussions I hadn’t had in a long time (Mac vs PC debate, Formula Car, Fluid Mechanics, etc.). We stayed the night at a hostel (with lots of loud late night people).  After loading up with lots of breakfast and more than lots of water we headed towards Olympia park.  Really cool place (see photos).

Olympia Park - Munich

The stadium at the park with grass colored seats.

Come time for the start at 10:00 it was raining, and there were puddles everywhere.  The guy on the microphone was trying to think of things to say enthusiastically so he ended up yelling things like, “do we want 32 degrees (88F) and sunny?! or do we want today’s weather!? yeahhh!  (it was maybe 8C or 45F and rainy).”  Karen and I worked our way as close to the start as possible.  The gun went off and we sprinted through a big puddle and off to the races.  For the next 5km or so an endless stream of people flowed past me.  They kept making me want to go faster, but I did NOT want to crash before the race was over. I was aiming for 1:45:00 total time over the 21.1km race (13.1 miles).  So each 5km needed to be 25 minutes.  I finished the first one way too fast at 23:00 because of the fast start, so I hit the breaks and did the next 5km in 24:00.  9km in I got lapped by the leaders, meaning they were already at 14km, both African and super skinny.  The third 5km I tried to slow down more, but only managed to slow to 24:08.  For the last 5km I decided I was close enough to the finish to not worry about crashing and took off, finishing it in about 22:00.  The last 1.1km sprint to the finish was even faster.  After getting passed so much early on, it felt good to not have a single person pass me on the last 6.1km of the race.  Instead I passed back 60 people finishing in 1:37:41, more than 7 minutes faster than my goal time.  Karen also did really well coming in at 1:44:23 beating her goal of 1:50:00

Ready to Run Fast!

PUMA tatoo on race morning.

Official Race Photo - coming in for the finish.

As to overall standings:

Ryan:

185 of 1034 total runners

173 of 734 male runners

53 of 193 male runners younger than 30

Karen:

349 of 1034 total runners

31 of 300 female runners

11 of 132 female runners younger than 30

Off to a great start to our long distance racing careers.  I’ll keep running all this summer and would like to do a full marathon some time in the near future.  Maybe next spring in Rochester would be nice.

We finished off by going out to eat at the best restaurant in Munich (in my humble opinion), “der Pschorr” with some friends.  All 4 of us ordered apple fritters to finish off our meals.  Those fritters were actually the highlight of Munich for a few of my friends who visited in March.

I like running.  Running fast is even better.

BE COMPETITIVE!!!

So a friend asked me a question that I thought was worth a blog entry.

“As a PUMA employee, are you nudged to compete/be active?”

Short answer is no.  Perhaps at some companies it would be more, but at PUMA we (well I should say ‘they’) are proud to be a lifestyle brand too.  That attracts many employees who have null interest in sports and the company is okay with that, and even encourages that.  At the same time though, there is still a good crowd of people who like sports a lot, and if you hang out with those people, that becomes a bigger focus in life.  People always warn that if you hang out with the wrong crowd you’ll end up on drugs and an alcoholic, but it runs other ways too.  If you hang out with the athletes, you’re a lot more likely to find yourself competing.  In my particular case, in addition to the people I hang out with, my research on running shoes has triggered a fascination with running and running shoes.  Running isn’t just breathing hard now, but rather a study of efficiency, strength, and durability.  That keeps it much more interesting, as do my running buddies of course.

Closing Time with Parents

For my parent's last real day in Germany we traveled back to Nuremberg, and got them checked into a hotel right across from the airport.  Their flight was 6:30 Monday morning, so minimal travel was best.  We decided to take the subway and then pop out in a part of town where I had never been before.  It took a few minutes to get oriented but it was beautiful and there was a good panini shop nearby.  Eating there was a relief after all the heavy German food we’d been having.  Karen joined and we all went outside the city to Docu Zentrum where Hitler gave many speeches and marched his army in a parade before audiences of 200,000 people.  There had been a big schwastika built into the wall but they blew it up after the war.  Now the whole area is a big sports complex.  They were playing American football when we were there.

We headed back into the city for a nice Italian dinner.  We also got some white asparagus.  It is in season in Germany this time of year, and everyone is really into it.  I had some and it tastes fine, but just very plain.  I don’t know what all the fuss is about.

Anyways, it was such a blessing having my parents get to come visit me here.  We had a lot of good quality time together, lots of catching up, and of course the fun that you’ve seen through my last few entries.

Garmish-Partenkirchen (cool mountains)

So it got to be Saturday morning so we took the train to the town of Garmisch-Partenkirchen.  They had the winter olympics there back in the day.  It is know as the German gateway to the Alps.  Sounded cool to us.  It's a tiny town with the Alps as the main attraction.  We arrived and took this train below over to the foot of the mountain.  From there we transferred to the 'Cog Wheel Train.'  It has wheels with teeth so it can climb steep hills (like the alps).  Suddenly we disappear into a mountain and come out 25 minutes later at the top (almost).

 Amazing no?  It was April, and people were skiing here.  It was 30 degrees C (86F) at the bottom of the mountain but 4 (39) at the top, and windy.  From there we took a short ride in the cable car to the very top. You can see below how the train had to just pop out of the ground at the facility because there is no other access to it.  We enjoyed excellent food at the restaurant there.

From the very top we took a good look around.  Here is the Austrian side - mountains as far as you could see.  Can you imagine?! Hannibal took elephants through here!  

And here is a look at the German side.  The Eibsee (lake) is below. 

 Here is our picture with the gold star marking the highest point in Germany at 2900 odd meters.

Back at the bottom, at the Eibsee, it was hot again so we posed. 

Fränkische Schweiz with Americans

This week my parents came to visit.  On Thursday we ventured to the Fränkische Schweiz.  It was quite pleasant.  We started with Ebermannstadt which is just a small German city that is the entrance to the region. A quaint main street and a nice stream winding through it all, plus a sweet old lady who served us coffee made it all delightful.

After some time we moved on to Tüchersfeld and climbed up this large rock that just sticks out of the middle of the city.  Really cool features.  Here was the view from the top.

Easter Weekend - part 2 of 2

Wow, 3 weeks late - here comes Graz.  The faithful mall internet has failed me.  I wondered if I had been blocked for using it too much, but here it is again!

Sunday morning was the most beautiful Easter morning I have ever had.  Taking the train from Vienna to Graz goes directly through the Alps.  I like that a lot (more on the Alps next week I hope!)!

I forgot what most of this is called, but there is this big rock in the middle of town that you can go up via windy path or by train (incline really).  At the top is this cool building and nice view.

Top left is “The Friendly Alien” - a design museum that looked awesome but we arrived after it closed.  So sad.  On the river is the manmade island that looks like a shell.  The open part of the shell is an amphitheater and the closed part is a cafe.  We enjoyed coffee there (I settled for hot chocolate, but Karen insisted on the weird espresso with egg yoke in it.

There is the group shot with Markus who we were visiting.

That night we all went and played pool which was fun.  I hadn't played much in a long time.  I finally started to get the hang of it again. 

The next morning we headed to a castle outside the city of which I have no pictures, but there were lots of peacocks.  The scenery was lovely.  It was the one blue sky of the trip which made it all the more terrific.  After a nice lunch we found the train and made our way home to begin another week of solving the world’s performance footwear problems at PUMA.

My parents are here this week!  Tuesday to Monday.  You’ll hear about it later.  Fun stuff planned.  Should be lovely!

Easter Weekend - part 1 of 2

This past weekend was Easter weekend for those of you who missed the memo.  At PUMA that means a 4 day weekend (Good Friday and Easter Monday).  Karen and I grabbed the chance to see two lovely cities while visiting a retired intern from days gone by.  We started off in Vienna, Austria.

We arrived Friday afternoon and checked in at the hostel.  My first experience in a dorm setting (6 people to a room).  We then made our way to the city center for a look around.  We quickly found these brilliant traffic lights. 

 Nice gardens, parliament, the city hall, and an Easter market with loads of painted eggs, some very ornate and others simple, but all real.  We split a giant apple cinnamon frosted pretzel.  We made our way to another market and tried Langos, this fried bread bigger than your face, coated in butter and garlic salt.  So delicious, and made us both feel rather bad upon finishing... We had just finished talking about our families’ heart attack histories.  I was sure I was going to have my first heart attack right there.

It seems everyone in Austria likes Mozart since he is from there.  We saw one guy dressed as Mozart with PUMA shoes.  I did take a picture, but am not bothering to post it. 

We stumbled across this cool “Explosion” on the south side of town.  I think it was supposed to be a frozen shock wave, milliseconds after some sort of bang.

After collecting ourselves at the hostel briefly we set out again to find some Sachertorte, a chocolate cake with an apricot layer in the middle and a special blend of chocolates from various manufacturers who produce chocolate solely for that purpose.  On our way we swung by the Nike store, because their shoes are absolutely amazing.  I love the new NikeFree 4.0.

After a short night’s sleep we both got up around 6 (don’t ask me why, it just happened).  Karen went for a long run, which I had to skip out on because of injury before we headed away from the city to see Castle Schönbrunn.  Absolutely HUGE building and property.  It included a labyrinth with games throughout it that included poles to climb, bells to ring with your feet, and crazy mirrors.  It made for a fun morning.

 Lunch was at a ridiculously large market.  Wiener (Viennese) Schnitzel from veal and Almdudler (served in CocaCola cups?), a drink like ice tea that tastes like Litchi.

Clock museum in the afternoon was full of fun little treasures.  Karen got in trouble for touching the clocks.

 The main event came that evening.  We had read that we could get standing room tickets at the Opera for 3€ so we lined up and got some.  “L’Eliser d’Amore”  (The Love Potion) was playing.  It had quite the shallow story line, but the opera experience was a fun one.  They have this crazy system for the standing room section that enforced by the staff.  Once you have your spot, you mark it with a scarf and then it is reserved for you.  You can’t mark it with a jacket, or a bag, only a scarf.  The guys next to us didn’t have scarves so they made the pages from the program into a scarf to draper over their spot.  Impressive.  That was the program for Vienna.  Stay tuned for the second half of the weekend in Graz in which we meet Markus and have even more fun.