When teams from the PIE class aren’t pushing their products forward, they’re finding ways to continually push themselves. Last weekend, five athletes from PIE participated in an overnight long-distance relay race, Hood to Coast (which also happens to be one of the longest and largest relay races in the world*).
Just like building an amazing product, it didn’t come without some intense preparation and a hint of pre-performance anxiety.
“If you would have asked me a week ago if I would ever do this to myself again I would have responded with a very confident ‘NO!’ The training is rough, and more than anything I was bitter about how much time it took up in my day to day routine,” said Megan Fisher of BlkDot. “Typically I run 2–3 miles, tops. The thought of running 19 miles with a total of 45 min of sleep in 48 hours isn’t something I was fully confident that I could pull off. It’s pretty amazing to push yourself to limits you didn’t think you could reach.”
Krumplr’s James Stuckey is no beginner when it comes to races like this. “I think I’ve done it seven times,” he told me. “Right now, I’m training for the New York marathon in November and then the Paris marathon in April.”
In my mind, I was thinking—wait a minute. You’re a developer in a startup, you’re part of an accelerator, AND you’re a steadfast runner?
“I’m running about 30 miles / week, which is an interesting challenge with the whole startup thing going on.” – James Stuckey
Yes. He’s everything.
Kirsten ran on team #shrimpbird, and while she obviously wins at pretty much everything PIE related, I was curious to hear how she fared last weekend. Her thoughts were short and succinct:
“How was H2C? A man once tweeted, “pushing that last 5% harder than your competitor is so often the difference between success and failure.” So thats what I did. I won hood to coast and I won a van full of new friends.”
Sean from Switchboard who also ran on team #shrimpbird chimed in with his experience too. Grab a tissue.
“Hood to Coast isn’t really about running or the runners. It is about the volunteers. A wise man reminded me that “without them, we could not run.” Obviously we could run without them, but it wouldn’t be the same. This year team #shrimpbird was lucky to have the greatest volunteer in the history of the Hood to Coast – Boots. He went above and beyond the call of duty, driving all the way to Astoria after his shift at Exchange 24, just because he didn’t want to get in the way of the runners. There would be no team #shrimpbird without Boots.”
Congratulations Megan, James, Sean, Kirsten and Tara for still being able to make it to work by Monday morning. Also great job on the race—I hear that’s quite an accomplishment.
*Source: Wikipedia. (Don’t take my word for it.)
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