Life Stages: Retreats

I've experienced lots of retreats and weekends to get away from the chaos of the day to day and focus on God.  This weekend was another one with the young adults (mid twenties to early thirties) at Highrock Church.  We were out on a lake in New Hampshire, and were sharing the camp with a large group of middle schoolers.  Some basic observations:

- Camp rule:  You must have been born in the 1900's to have coffee (cutting out a very disappointed half of the middle schoolers.
- Middle schoolers require 1 leader for every 5-7 students, in contrast to our group requiring 1 leader for our 50 young adults.
- College retreats were very structured with particular things set out to learn and do and come away with (different tracks with a curriculum etc).  With the young adults, all that was needed was a speaker to provide some input, and then a space for us to talk to each other.  That was enough to foster the most valuable conversations tailored by default to each of our needs.

I accidentally woke up at 6:30 the first morning and beat the sun.  Morning photography on a lake is so cliché, and yet I always appreciate it.  I went running through the orange forests later in the day, sadly without a camera.  Love it.

There was a lot more to the retreat than beauty, but I'm still trying to wrap my head around it.

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.

 

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  ;)

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.

Run FAAS

So almost a week ago now it was race time.  I had been injured for about a month before I could finally start logging kilometers again (logging miles is a thing of the past). A 3km, 2km, 5km, and 7km run got me up to speed for race day.  Two friends from work, Karen and Jordan, ran along with me as team PUMA.  There were a good 433 runners in the race and Karen and I got stuck starting near the back.  We spent the first 4km just trying to find gaps in the crowd to squeeze forwards.  It was okay though since our main goal was to finish without pulling any muscles.  Jordan started at the front and stayed there finishing in 2nd place with a time of 33:41 (a 5:23 mile pace), over a minute behind first place but more than a minute ahead of third place.  My first 6km were pain free so I took off and cut a minute off of my pace for each kilometer after that and came in a respectable 48:31 (originally paced for 52:00).  Rank? 146.  Better luck next time.  On a side note, both 2nd and 3rd place (as well as place 146 and 210) were all rocking really awesome PUMA FAAS Running shoes.  I think it is safe to say the shoes cut a full minute from our times.  Not really fair for the competition.  Anyway, lots of fun, a beautiful day, and looking forward to my next race, a half marathon in May.

"Wow that number is wrinkly!" you say?  A friend of mine from RIT, Zach, taught me to wrinkle up my number so it isn't so stiff and uncomfortable.  Did make it rather difficult for them to scan my barcode at the finish though... oops!

Nike Flyknit

So I realize that I work at PUMA but I can't help but recognize genius when I see it, this time from Nike.


This shoe is knitted, which means they can put more fabric exactly where it is needed and take it out where it's not.  It doesn't need lining.  The laces are wired directly to the outsole.  I imagine the materials are super cheap but super quality, and since you are not cutting the shapes out of a roll of fabric there is practically no left over scraps aside from a few inches of string.  They are coming out in July in time for the London olympic games and I can't wait to try on a pair.

Go here for nike's version.  There is another video and more thorough comments.


On a side less important note, it also looks sweet so they will be integrating the technique into their lifestyle shoes too.

Learning too much!

     It is a pleasant Saturday after a hectic but enjoyable week.  This morning (well 11:30...) I went running for an hour, and can honestly say I enjoyed every minute of it.  I like it when that happens.  Anyways, all the important people in my department are in Vietnam this week and next week, developing shoes on site.  Interns aren’t permitted to go, so I’m holding down the fort for my division.  A fair amount to do, but it’s less stressful knowing your boss isn’t going to walk in any second.  The most exciting thing this week though was the progress made on my “Best Practices of Running Shoe Design” project.  I don’t remember how much I’ve talked about that so far.  Basically it is a presentation that a designer, developer, product manager, or anyone else could read with little prior knowledge on running shoes, and then come up with a great biomechanically sound design and eventually shoe.  It should smooth over the disconnect between the folks doing research and the people actually making the new shoes.

     This past week, on Wednesday evening, another intern and myself got to take a drive to Switzerland.  The Rennbahn Clinic located in Basel Switzerland is one of the top clinics in the world attracting both recreational and professional athletes from all over Europe to come for professional advice, gait analysis, etc.  They see a lot of patients, and do a lot of research.  They basically know everything there is to know about running and soccer biomechanics (soccer is Karen’s project, the other intern).

     In summary, we arrived in the evening and got settled in to the expensive hotel that PUMA paid for, took a short tour of the area (self guided tour, pictures coming next week), got a great nights sleep, got up in the morning, checked out, went for breakfast, headed to the clinic, misjudged the time we needed, had an hour to kill outside in the cold (but with a great sunrise), finally met two of the owners of the clinic who are two of the top pioneers in the field, and then asked them questions for about 5 hours (I tested their ideas on my run this morning), before they took us to lunch (which would have been super expensive if we’d had to pay for it!), and sent us on our 5 hour drive back to Herzo. Yes, that was a run-on sentence.  On the way back, driving a manual VolksWagon Golf Variant I hit 200 Km/h (125 mph), drove through 9 or 10 roundabouts (traffic circles), and got good practice with stop and go traffic trying not to stall the car.  When I did stall though, the engine automatically restarted which was nice.  Also, at traffic lights the engine would automatically turn off to save energy.  Eventually we had to get gas (about twice what it costs in the States), but were at a loss at how to open the gas door on the side of the car...  I searched all over for a lever by my seat.  Karen came around with her little flashlight to look some more.  Finally I found a lever, pulled it, thought I heard something pop open, though the gas door was still shut, before Karen discovered that if you just push the door, it pops open!  Side note, the popping open that I thought I heard was actually the hood of the car.  We drove the last 50 miles with it open a few inches.  Oops... kept the engine from overheating I reckon  ;)   - In the end, we arrived back in Herzo just in time to go to the Internationale Studenten Treff where we were baking Christmas cookies.  Delightful!  I’m making some more this weekend with my mom’s recipe to bring to work on Monday.

holidays, shoes, and the like

It's been a bit since I've written.  Life goes on though so here is the scoop.


November 1st - German Holiday - no work! Prayer brunch with SMD.  In addition to prayer it included weißwurst (white sausage) and Bretzeln (soft pretzels) both with sweet mustard.  Weißwurst is super traditional in Bavaria, though the feelings about it are quite mixed.  I enjoyed it though.  There is some debate about the proper way to eat it.  It's rather soft so it is encased like many sausages to hold it together.  The question is whether you poke a whole in the end and suck it out, or slice it open and scoop it out.  I went for the slice and scoop method.  The other didn't seem socially acceptable.


That afternoon I joined a few friends at their apartment complex and we made Christmas cookies.  They don't have thanksgiving here so Christmas is already on everyone's minds.  They are rolling out all the Christmas decorations at the mall right now actually.  I left the christmas cookie pics at home, so apologies there, but we decided against bowls and instead piled the flour on the table and shaped it like a volcano and put the wet ingredients in the top and then mixed it with hands =) with lots of love.  The girls made their cookies with steel... but they still tasted okay.  I finished the day with a trip to a cake shop with a friend.  We ate outside and froze to death.  Most of the cakes had some sort of alcohol in them.  Germans are pretty obsessed =)


Next evening was SMD, which was swell but let's move to Thursday.  I went to the international student group (IST).  We learned some Bavarian words and expressions.  They say "That is sausage" to say "it doesn't matter, it's all the same."


The other main thing that was exciting for me was finally meeting with the head of innovation for PUMA and talking about my project with him.  Turns out he graduated from Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh!  Anyways, another intern was already doing a project on soccer cleats and they mentioned that they might give me the same project for a different kind of shoe.  I was so scared they were going to assign me to cricket or handball!  In the end, it's RUNNING!  I was thrilled.  Running biomechanics is even cooler than soccer in my opinion because it's so advanced but so regular so you can study it really well.  Running is primarily done in Boston so they'll be teaming me up with someone there to talk with.  They mentioned maybe sending me there which would be sweet, but then they remembered the Boston guys are coming here in a few weeks so there is now need... schade (what a pity).  We'll see what happens but I may end up training for a marathon depending on how this project turns out.


Check out Octobers PUMA magazine here!  Unfortunately some of the info is only viewable from PUMA locations...  Talks a lot about the new 32 year old CEO of PUMA, Franz Koch.  He has a longboard!  Also Volvo Ocean Race!


K I gotta run enjoy the sun before it sets (at 5pm!)