Shaluinn Fullove: "U. S. Women's Olympic Marathon Trials" | Talks at Google

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JEREMY STERN: Good afternoon and welcome to Talks at Google.
I'm Jeremy Stern with Google Fiber.
And our guest today is Shaluinn Fullove.
Shal's been a Googler for 13 years.
She started at Google Search and moved
onto a number of other products, and then became a Sloan fellow
at the Graduate School of Business at Stanford,
returned after her fellowship and worked
on apps and business and Gmail, and then came
to join Google Fiber about three years ago with me.
And when she's not a full time Googler,
she is a full time mom and a world class runner
and endurance athlete.
Let me share with you some examples of her long list
of accomplishments in running.
Her personal record running a marathon
is two hours, 41 minutes, and 57 seconds.
Think about that.
26.2 miles in under two hours and 42 minutes.
That was her personal record set in December at the California
International Marathon, and it was a key race getting her
to this day.
And so we'll talk more about that.
She also ran a 1,500 meter, a mile,
in under four minutes and 35 seconds
in the US Track and Field Pacific Association
Championships a few years ago.
She's in Los Angeles today for the US Women's Olympic Track
Team Marathon Trials, on the road to Rio in 2016.
This is a really big race this Saturday for Shal,
and we're really lucky to have her here.
Please join me in welcoming Shal to Google Venice Beach.
And also her husband Ramsey and daughter Elise and mom Marianne
are in the audience with us.
So welcome also to Google Venice Beach.
Welcome.
It's been fun as a Google Fiber teammate of yours
to follow your path here.
But I'm really excited to have you here
and to share with the Google audience and the YouTube
audience a little bit more about you and your racing career.
So can you tell us a little bit about-- first of all,
you're on the Google Fiber project.
Tell us a little bit about what Google Fiber is.
SHALUINN FULLOVE: Google Fiber is high speed internet and TV
for your home or small business.
And it's a gig, which is a really big deal, right?
So it's a lot faster than most of us
have unfortunately at our homes.
And I've been on the team for about three years,
like you mentioned earlier.
JEREMY STERN: So over 13 years at Google.
What inspired you to move from other projects
to come join the Google Fiber team?
What was interesting about the opportunity?
SHALUINN FULLOVE: I've worked on a lot of projects and products
since I've been here.
I think it's maybe more than 12 products,
A lot of that is because at the time, at Google,
we were launching a lot of new products in early 2000.
So lucky to just be able to move on to new products
that they were launching,
After almost 10 years at Google, if I
was going to continue to be here,
I wanted to be working on something
that was very audacious, and a little bit scary.
And launching a new fiber network seemed to kind of fit
that description, right?
So it's not an easy problem to solve.
And we're chipping away at it.
So I'm really excited.
I've learned a ton about the TV business and internet
and fiber.
So it's really kept me excited to keep learning all this time.
JEREMY STERN: What do you do on the Fiber team?
SHALUINN FULLOVE: I sit on the business development team.
And I work in the strategy and operations.
I work closely with yourself and Irv
and the content licensing team to better understand
what we've signed up for on the deal side,
and help product and engineering understand
how to built a roadmap around those obligations.
JEREMY STERN: So you're a full time Googler, a full time mom.
How do you find time to be a world-- how in the world
do you find time to become a world class marathoner?
SHALUINN FULLOVE: Well it's not certainly not just me.
My husband, who's here, who's also
a Googler, who's been at Google as long as I have,
maybe longer, we're definitely a team effort.
There's a ton of people that help us
get everything done every day.
The schedule is every day a game of Jenga
about who's going to work out when,
who's going to take Elise to school,
what's dinner going to be like.
We have help at home too, which is great.
But we work together.
And it's a lot of working out on the bookends of the day.
But I do get a chance to work out at work a lot.
There's a great group of mostly guys, the Mountain View Lunch
Run Group.
They're not watching right now, probably
because they're on a run.
So sometimes I'm able to get into running
during the workday.
JEREMY STERN: So the race on Saturday,
February 13th, to qualify for the US Olympic team,
it's Saturday in Los Angeles.
Tell us a little bit about the Olympic qualifying process.
SHALUINN FULLOVE: Sure.
So there's basically two standards that get set.
The Olympic standard is set by the International Olympic
Committee, and then individual countries
have their own standard.
So initially, the Olympic standard was 2:43,
and for the US, we usually have a time that's
equal to the Olympic standard.
So if you've met the US standard,
then you've automatically met the Olympic standard,
so you already have that, at least for the marathon.
It's a little bit different in track.
So initially the standard was 2:43,
and I just missed the standard.
I ran 2:43:33 in 2013, so just by like a little
over a second in the mile I missed the standard, which
was a little bit heartbreaking.
But I ran a good race, and I was happy about that.
And so then in 2015, I went and ran 2:41
and hit the 2:43 standard.
And then two days later, my family and I were in Hawaii,
and the Olympic committee announced
that they'd changed the standard to two minutes slower,
so they changed it to 2:45, which
is great news for a lot of women,
because that meant they just qualified for Olympic trials.
Sorry.
The Olympic committee changed it to 2:45,
and then the US committee a couple days later
agreed to change it again to 2:45
to meet the Olympic standard.
So it's a little bit unusual this year.
Initially, it was 2:43.
Now it's 2:45.
JEREMY STERN: Does that mean there'll be
more women racing on Saturday?
SHALUINN FULLOVE: So I think something
like eight new qualifiers were allowed to come into the race
after they moved the standard back about two minutes, which
is great news all in all.
And then on Saturday, the way it works
is there's a little less than 200 people in the men's
and women's race, and the top three finishers
will be the US Olympic team that goes to Rio,
and the fourth place finisher will be the alternate.
So it's a very democratic process.
Yeah.
JEREMY STERN: Where is the race taking place on Saturday?
SHALUINN FULLOVE: It is down by LA Live.
It's roughly a five-loop course.
There's a two-mile loop to begin with,
and then we do four by six miles.
So it's a very spectator-friendly course.
JEREMY STERN: So it's different.
The big LA Marathon is Sunday, and that's
from Dodger Stadium to the sea.
SHALUINN FULLOVE: Right.
JEREMY STERN: Not a straight line,
but A to B. This is a completely different course than that.
SHALUINN FULLOVE: Yep.
It's definitely set up for spectators to see a lot of us,
and it's not even like a real loop.
It's almost like an out and back.
So we'll be able to see a lot of the spectators quite a bit,
which is nice for such a long race.
JEREMY STERN: So have you studied the course?
How do you prepare for a particular race course
when you're getting your game set, game mind going?
SHALUINN FULLOVE: They've had a really good interactive maps
online.
They posted that awhile ago.
They didn't finalize the course until not too long ago,
and they've had a couple opportunities
for you to come down around the course with some officials,
and I think I will probably try to do a couple shakeout runs
on Thursday and Friday.
JEREMY STERN: Step back and tell us about your journey
to this incredible day.
This isn't your first Olympic trial, right?
SHALUINN FULLOVE: Right.
I qualified in 2008.
JEREMY STERN: So tell us about your prior efforts.
SHALUINN FULLOVE: Yeah, so I qualified in 2008,
and they were in Boston, which was really special.
In 2005, I was diagnosed with thyroid cancer
and overcame that.
It took about a year, so I had to overtake that,
and it went really well.
I had great doctors, but personally, I
felt like I wanted to prove that I was like the same or better
than I was before I got diagnosed
with this horrible disease.
And I decided I was going to take some audacious goal
to prove that I had come back stronger from that,
and qualifying for the Olympic trials
marathon was what I chose.
JEREMY STERN: That's pretty extraordinary.
SHALUINN FULLOVE: So it was a hard road.
I had three attempts, and I qualified just seven weeks
before the actual Olympic trials in 2008
at the Napa Valley marathon, so I had seven weeks
to turn around and come back.
And it was a great day, and to have it be in Boston,
which is such a marathon mecca-- Joanie Samuelson
was in the race that year.
I actually ended up running a lot of the race just ahead
of her, but Boston went crazy every time she came by.
So I felt like I had support the whole time,
and every time we came down Boylston,
because it was a four-loop course,
so we came down Boylston four times,
and the crowds were just going crazy.
It was the day before the Boston Marathon too,
so it was a really great experience.
And then I stepped out of 2012, because I was still
on maternity leave.
I had a little baby, and I decided, well,
I wanted to go for it again.
So eight years later I decided to tackle it.
JEREMY STERN: What inspired you to do it?
SHALUINN FULLOVE: To do 2016?
JEREMY STERN: 2016.
SHALUINN FULLOVE: I think you did it one time,
and you kind of want to say, OK, did I just get lucky,
or was it just a fluke?
Do I still have it?
I think the time was three minutes faster,
and I was going to be eight years older, and I thought,
that seems like a really hard goal.
I should just--
JEREMY STERN: An audacious goal.
SHALUINN FULLOVE: Maybe I should just go for it and see.
Sure, maybe I wouldn't get it, but maybe I'd get pretty close.
And in 2013, I mean, I just missed it by 33 seconds,
so I was like, I have to try again.
So I was injured in 2014, and I tore my hamstring
in early 2015.
So there's definitely been some challenges along the way,
but I can be bullheaded at times when it's helpful.
JEREMY STERN: So the race in December in Sacramento--
is that where it was?
The California International Marathon.
Your personal record, extraordinary result--
tell us a little bit about that race and the experience of what
it was like for you.
SHALUINN FULLOVE: Sure.
I was really nervous that week.
The training had gone really well,
but I was really nervous, because the couple
years before when I ran it, it was a really hard day.
It was 27 degrees, and I had all of this horrible memory
of like-- I mean the last mile and a half,
I was losing my vision.
It was just horrible.
So even though I was fit this time,
you just think about how much it's
going to hurt, that last 5K.
But my friends were really supportive
and keeping my spirits up.
My coach is fantastic.
And basically, the gun went off, and you're just kind of
out there.
In full honesty, I was kind of grumpy the first 10 miles.
It was rainy, and it was dark, and I was just like, oh, gosh.
It was crowded, and all the water stops
are crowded, because we hadn't strung out yet.
There were two pace groups, and we were all kind
of just one at that time.
But I remember at like 10K, I kind of
was in a group kind of settling in [INAUDIBLE] in chunks.
So after the first 10 miles, like 11 to 15
is kind of the roll-y part, and by that time, I'm like, well,
I'm out here.
So we're just going to be out here and see what happens.
And 16 to 20, you get a nice little downhill,
and I was feeling good at that point.
I just remember my coach saying, get to 20 under control,
because you can really open up that last 10K if you feel good.
And after 20, I just kept waiting for the wall.
I kept thinking about two years before, where I just was
like dying and like losing my vision.
But it never came, and I couldn't believe it.
And actually my fastest mile was mile 26.
I ran a 5:54 last mile, and I just was gunning it for home.
And at mile 26, one of my best training partner friends was
like, you've got to go now.
And I had my Garmin on, and I knew
I was averaging like 6:10, 6:11, and I
was like, I think I got it.
But I needed to run 6:13s or 6:12s,
so we were at like 6:10 or 6:11 the whole time,
and I had picked it up the last three miles.
But she was screaming at me like I didn't have it,
and I had to run 400 meters.
So I just started running as hard
as I could, which was great because I dipped right
under 2:42, which was great.
JEREMY STERN: That's extraordinary.
So to get to that level of being able to run at a 6:10, 6:11
pace for 26 miles, there's a lot of endurance athletes
in this office and across Google.
Tell us a little bit about your training regimen.
What was it like and how did you set your training regimen up
to hit that goal?
SHALUINN FULLOVE: My coach is fantastic.
He's really a marathon specialist.
His name's Michael McKeeman, and I've
been training with him for about three years.
And his training is very different than any training
I did before.
So in college, I was middle distance.
I loved the track.
I loved my 400s, maybe some I'll repeat.
His training is nothing like that.
His training is a lot of tempo work, a lot of grindy,
sit in it race simulations.
So we do a ton of tempo.
All of my long runs have marathon pace integrated
into it, so the hardest long run I'll do is 22 miles,
and the last eight to 10 are at marathon pace.
So we do a lot of that work, so when the race comes,
you feel very familiar with what is going on.
And you're tapered, so you feel great.
JEREMY STERN: So do you start out--
I mean, how many miles a week-- You're
six months out from the race.
How many miles a week do you run?
SHALUINN FULLOVE: I'm actually relatively low mileage
for a marathoner.
I never go over 75 miles a week, but all the work
we do during the week is very high quality.
So I don't do a lot of double days.
I do one double day a week, and it's only three miles.
But I do a lot of tempo work.
But all the work is a progression.
JEREMY STERN: I'm just doing the math in my mind.
That's more than 10 miles a day.
I get tired thinking about that.
SHALUINN FULLOVE: Well, a lot of women that'll be racing
is on Saturday.
They run 100 to 140-mile weeks.
I mean, their full time job is to run.
But I find that at 75 miles, things
start to get a little frayed on the edges,
and I don't feel-- you start to risk injury.
We do a lot of high quality tempo work.
I told him after this race, whatever
the next race we do, it has to require a lot of 400 repeats,
because I don't want to do a lot of tempo work for awhile.
But it's always a progression, so I
don't start trying at 22 miles and every other week we
alternate.
So if it's not a tempo long run, we'll
do it so that the last half is alternating like an easy mile,
a race pace mile.
Those are his easy long runs.
JEREMY STERN: What else besides running?
Do you add any other fitness into your program?
SHALUINN FULLOVE: I do a little bit of yoga and Pilates.
I have recently learned that my core needs a lot more work,
so I've been trying to integrate a little bit more of that,
especially after having a kid and just
being a little bit older.
You really need to focus on that strong core.
JEREMY STERN: So what about diet?
Do you have a program for maintaining your metabolism
and your physiology for maximum race performance?
SHALUINN FULLOVE: The one thing about marathon training
is carbs.
You have to have a lot of carbs, so--
JEREMY STERN: There are good carbs and bad carbs.
SHALUINN FULLOVE: Yeah, when you're
marathon training though, it's just kind of all carbs.
You can eat all the stuff that they usually
tell you not to eat, because you're going to burn it up,
and your body uses that fuel.
So I don't spend a ton of time like measuring food,
but I just try to think generally
to make sure I'm getting that protein.
I do think a lot about what I eat immediately after the runs.
I found that if after a really long hard workout or long run,
if I am able to get a protein shake within 30
minutes of finishing, it goes a long way to helping me recover.
JEREMY STERN: So what are some of the sacrifices
along the way?
I mean, it's a marathon.
It's a long preparation course.
What are some of the sacrifices that you have?
SHALUINN FULLOVE: Probably a better question for my family,
since they have to put up with every weekend being
a long run, and my husband bikes with me,
and he pulls the buggy with a leash,
and they laid at the three-mile mark with my water,
so their weekends are kind of taken up with Mommy's running.
But I don't really see the sacrifices.
I'm really focused on the goal.
I had my 15-year Stanford reunion during the buildup,
so I had to miss a couple of the things there.
But my roommates on the team, they definitely understand.
They're so supportive.
I don't really think about sacrifices.
I just think these are the things
you have to do if you're going to get your goal.
JEREMY STERN: One of the things you're
mentioned in one of your races like almost losing
your vision at the end, is there's an extraordinary amount
of suffering and endurance racing,
whether it's open water swimming or running or biking
or triathlon.
How do you prepare your mind for that?
I mean, a lot of endurance athletes
that have written or spoken about the subject
say there's a huge part of the mind
game in terms of preparing.
So tell us about that, both in training and racing.
SHALUINN FULLOVE: Yep.
The mental game is huge, definitely,
especially when you're putting your body,
pushing your body to its max.
And I think one of the reasons why
I was able to improve so much in the marathon
over the last three years is the training that I was doing,
not only physically where we're obviously stimulating
the right system in those long runs and those tempo efforts,
but you're really getting your mind into that hurt zone, where
you're like, how am I going to deal with this?
And there were definitely-- the night before these long runs,
I'm emailing my coach.
I'm like, oh, I don't know.
And after three weeks in a row of that,
you're kind of like, god, I feel kind of burned out.
But I think mentally it's training that mental muscle
to get prepared for that.
And I think sometimes you break it into smaller chunks.
So like I did this year at CIM.
It was like the first 10 miles and 11 to 15, and 16 to 20,
so it was little baby steps to get there.
I think on Saturday, having it be a loop course,
I'll be doing a lot of that, so like,
can I get the two-mile loop?
Can I get the first six-mile loop?
And I'm just taking it one step at a time
and really not trying to consume the whole 26 miles at once.
I think also having teammates and training
partners is critical.
Some of these workouts are almost
impossible to do by yourself, but I've
been really fortunate to loop in some Googlers,
some of the guys on the MV lunch run,
and some old teammates of mine from Stanford
have been able to come out and help.
So it's not one silver bullet.
It's a lock in the mental game.
But I actually read the book, "Flow," this buildup
of the CIM, which is really helpful to think about how
to get in this flow state, where you're effortlessly
losing yourself in the moment and thinking about not
pushing too hard but trying to find some flow, fluidity.
JEREMY STERN: So have you ever felt that flow in a race?
I mean, because clearly, there are
barriers, physical and mental and weather.
Have you felt that flow, and how do you keep yourself there?
SHALUINN FULLOVE: Yeah, I think sometimes it comes in spurts,
especially in the marathon.
I wasn't feeling any flow the first 10K to 10 miles at CIM.
I was like, I'd rather be doing almost anything else right now
than doing these first 10 miles.
But yeah, kind of in the middle, you
start to kind of-- your body starts to remember.
You realize you're here.
You're working with people.
You realize you're getting closer.
I was holding back a little bit that last 10K,
because I was bracing myself for the wall to hit me pretty hard.
But then with the last 5K, I realized it wasn't coming,
and I really just needed to go for it,
so I started to embrace it and really push.
But the truth is there are more races where you don't feel flow
than when you do.
So when you feel it, you really embrace it and try to enjoy it.
But more times than not, you're grinding.
It's hard.
It's going to hurt.
JEREMY STERN: So I guess the opposite of flow is suffer.
How do you-- you're suffering at mile 15.
What inspires you, and how do you-- because it's not
just your legs and arms moving.
It's your mind, again, taking it back to the mental game.
How do you pull yourself out of that?
SHALUINN FULLOVE: You've got to stay positive.
In the marathon, it's going to ebb and flow.
Mile 15 could feel horrible, and then mile 16 and 17,
you could feel like a million bucks.
So I think you just really have to tell yourself
this is going to pass.
One of the things we do in yoga is
you notice when you're uncomfortable and acknowledge
that I don't feel great, and I'm going to let go of it,
and I'm going to keep moving forward.
You just have to keep pressing and believing that.
You've train for this.
Other people are suffering.
We're working together.
Just keep getting to the next mile and next mile.
But the reality is the running, it hurts.
Racing hurts, and it's not hurting,
you're probably not doing it right, so you kind of just
have to accept that it's going to hurt.
Admit to it.
You can't run away from it.
If you don't want to hurt, you probably shouldn't try to race
or do running.
You should probably do something else.
I coach a high school team in Palo Alto,
and we talk a lot about the pain cave.
JEREMY STERN: What is--
SHALUINN FULLOVE: The pain cave, it's
like how the deeper you go in the pain cave, that's
how you reintroduce yourself to like new stimulus
and new pain, and throughout the course of the season,
we talk about how we've already gotten this far into the pain
cave, so now this time, we're going to try to go further,
and by the time we get to the championship,
we're going to commit ourselves to going the deepest we've ever
been into that pain cave.
So it works for the high school girls [INAUDIBLE].
They like it.
JEREMY STERN: What has been the most challenging part
of maintaining this level of performance for so long?
SHALUINN FULLOVE: I think I've been fortunate
that if you mapped it in broad strokes,
it's been a really nice progression.
So I came out of college being a middle distance runner.
My coach, my marathon coach initially, we
did a ton of track work, so that felt
like a natural progression.
And now I'm with a new coach who does a lot
of marathon-specific training.
I don't think right out of college
I could have jumped right into the training
that I'm doing now, and I've been fortunate enough
to not have many injuries along the way.
I've had a couple just in the last two years,
but I've been able to overcome those as well.
So it's been a natural progression.
I love it.
I have a ton of friends that do it.
Stanford actually has upwards of nine
or 10 athletes that are going to be competing on Saturday,
so it's been really great just after all this time to still
have that camaraderie from the Stanford team.
JEREMY STERN: Do you have any words
of wisdom for the endurance athletes here in this audience
and in our TV audience on how to keep going,
how to keep inspired?
SHALUINN FULLOVE: I don't know if I
have a lot of words of wisdom or inspiration to share.
But I think for me, being surrounded by teammates
and training partners is like the number one thing.
I run for an all women's team.
They're actually an apparel brand named Oiselle.
We have the most women at the trials on Saturday.
We have 18 women who qualify, and being
a part of that community has pushed me
and helped me reignite a fire for this sport
that I've been doing since I was-- I've been competing
since I was five years old.
But it's been so amazing to be surrounded by so many women who
are-- we have at least woman who has a really good chance
to make the team.
She made the team in 2012-- to women
who just run on the weekend, and we all on social or at meetups
support each other equally, which is fantastic.
For me personally, having a coach is critical.
There is no way I could write a training plan
and be a mom and work, so having a coach that I can really
trust who's invested in me and who I can just fully trust
the process with is important.
JEREMY STERN: What are qualities that you
look for in your coach?
SHALUINN FULLOVE: It's funny.
So I was friends with friend with-- Michael McKeeman
is my coach.
I was friends with him from another training partner
of mine, and I literally was wishing him happy birthday
on Facebook on his wall, and then realized
that he was also coaching.
And I just said, will you coach me?
And he was like, sure.
But he has amazing experience.
He actually was Deena Kastor's training partner
for many years up in Mammoth.
She's an American record holder, so we spent a ton of time
learning from some of the best marathon coaches in the US.
So someone who just has a ton of experience,
someone who understands me as a whole person, not just
an athlete.
I think sometimes it's easy for coaches
to just think about you as an athlete,
but he respects that I work full time,
that I have parental duties, but he doesn't let me back down
from trying to go for these really big audacious goals.
So he doesn't pull back my workouts just because I work
and be a mom, which is great.
JEREMY STERN: What's your favorite workout?
SHALUINN FULLOVE: I love porters,
which I don't have to do very much when
I'm doing marathon training.
But the best workout leading into the marathon,
we build up to a 12-mile tempo run, where
the first 400 of every mile is at about 10K pace,
and the last 1,200 is at marathon pace.
And what's awesome about that is it breaks it up,
so you kind of start to think about, oh,
I'm just doing 400s with a 1,200-meter recovery,
but you end up running 12 miles.
I think I did this two weeks before the race,
and I did 12 miles at 6:05 pace in practice,
which we did it at Google with Matt Cook, who's
a fellow Googler.
And when you nail that workout, you feel really good.
I emailed my coaches.
I can't believe I just did that workout.
You know you're ready to race.
JEREMY STERN: Before I open the floor up
for questions from the audience, let
me ask you some fun questions.
SHALUINN FULLOVE: OK.
JEREMY STERN: So we talked a little bit about diet.
Sounds kind of flexible, but did you ever
cheat on your diet in the lead-up to this big race?
SHALUINN FULLOVE: I think around Thanksgiving and my birthday,
I think we went up to Napa to celebrate,
and I think maybe I had a little more wine
than I normally would.
You've got to stay hydrated, so I
try not to drink too much wine while I'm building up.
But I'm a big believer in treating yourself,
so after big workouts-- like every weekend,
I go to the same restaurant and get a big stack of pancakes
and butter and syrup and all that stuff.
But yeah, I don't cheat too much.
JEREMY STERN: So what's your favorite food
after finishing the race?
Where are you going to go after this race?
SHALUINN FULLOVE: That's a popular question.
So one of my favorite restaurants in LA
is Rustic Canyon, and they have--
or they at least used to have a great burger.
It's not on the menu.
If you ask for it, they have it, and it's delicious.
And I booked that reservation like the day after I qualified,
so we're going to Rustic Canyon on Saturday night.
JEREMY STERN: Tell us about your funniest race or training
experience, if there can be a funny race or training
experience in a marathon.
SHALUINN FULLOVE: I don't know it's funny,
but in 2008-- I mentioned this a little bit earlier-- in Boston
at the trials, I was running basically
just a couple meters ahead of Joanie Samuelson the whole way.
And I thought, oh, maybe-- I don't know what I was thinking.
Of course, she's going to just be as strong as nails
and be there the whole time.
But she just kept being there, and it came down
to like the last 400 meters, and we're on Boylston,
and the crowd is going crazy.
There's a giant screen on the road, and I look up,
and I can see her like behind me,
and she is just crushing like the last 200 meters.
I had to run a 38-second last 200 meters just to not
get caught by Joanie, who I think broke the 50-year-old age
group record that day.
So I remember just running for my life trying
to not-- in my mind, I'm like, I'm
going to be a gold medalist in the marathon.
But obviously, that was not real.
That really did happen.
I have awesome photos from the Jumbotron on Boylston of that.
JEREMY STERN: That's pretty cool.
So let me turn it over to the audience.
Anybody have any questions for Shal?
Please join us at the microphone.
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] do a race, what do you do?
What's your schedule like, and long
does it take to recover and everything?
SHALUINN FULLOVE: I usually take about a month
where I'm doing just almost nothing
of very unstructured work.
I usually like to go to Hawaii right after marathons.
I don't like to run in Hawaii, so I like to go like the week
afterwards, and we just kind of veg out.
So we actually did that after CIM this year.
We went for a week and just hung out on the beach.
And then the next three weeks is just very unstructured,
staying loose.
And then it's a very gradual buildup again.
We don't hit it very hard probably for another few weeks.
This time was a little bit different and for '08 too,
because I had seven weeks between '08 and the trials,
and this time I had 10.
So we didn't have as much downtime as we wanted to.
AUDIENCE: So you mentioned that some of the Olympics trials
seemed to take place the day before one
of the large marathons, so is there some reason why they've
been avoiding the crowds that just
don't do the trials on the regular course?
SHALUINN FULLOVE: I think that it's just
more spectator-friendly to have the loops.
There may be a rule, some kind of international standard rule
that they do it that way for some reason.
But I think having it the day before a big race like Boston
or LA, it helps bring a lot of the fanbase out. [INAUDIBLE]
get huge support.
I suppose they could, but those races are quite large.
We're talking like 30,000 to 50,000 people,
and there's only going to be 200 people in this race.
So it's nice that they kind of create it
as a special kind of celebration for people
going for the Olympic team.
AUDIENCE: Hi.
Do you have a story of how your training
or how running the marathons has helped
you develop professionally?
SHALUINN FULLOVE: Sure.
Let me think about that for a second.
I think a lot of the qualities that you
develop as an athlete, especially
being an athlete your whole life,
are things that transfer well into other parts of your life.
So even before I was a working professional
being a student athlete, your dedication, your ability
to stay focused on the goal, even when things aren't going
perfectly, or you're in that midspot where
it's kind of grindy, and it's not always the most fun.
I think also being an athlete, every time you race,
there's an opportunity to win, but there's also
an opportunity to lose.
And how do you deal with failure and learn from that
and get up again and go?
And so I think with Google, we push really hard.
We want to fail fast, learn, iterate,
and I think being an athlete, that transfers over.
That's very relatable to me.
It wasn't something that was new to me when I came to Google.
I'd been doing that since I was five years old.
So I think those elements of being
an athlete transfer really well into your professional life.
JEREMY STERN: Please.
AUDIENCE: Thanks.
More than one question.
Do you have a favorite marathon course?
SHALUINN FULLOVE: I think I've run six marathons.
I haven't run that many.
I guess I've run Cal International the most,
and it's been the most friendly to me,
so I think that's probably my favorite right now.
It's close to my house, and it's fast,
and they do a great job organizing it.
But I haven't run that many, so I run it the most,
so I guess I would go with Cal International.
But anyway, if you're thinking about doing a marathon,
it's a fantastic marathon.
They do a great job.
It's small, well-organized, and it's fast.
AUDIENCE: Do you have any advice for people who have never
done any exercise in their life but started
doing some running in their 30s or 40s for the first time?
SHALUINN FULLOVE: Yeah, absolutely.
I would recommend getting together with a group.
It doesn't have to be someone who has a dedicated coach
or anything, but there are so many good running communities
to just motivate you and help you and help
you to learn so that you can kind of go at your own pace
and have fun with it.
I think if it's not fun, you won't stick with it.
And the pain part isn't so much fun all the time,
but it is often the most rewarding,
so you'll have a team around you to help you get through that
and push.
So I would recommend trying to find a local community group
or even just weekly runs at shoe stores
often are very helpful ways to get started.
Hi, Herb.
AUDIENCE: Did you race any other distances
competitively, and then what made
you transition to start doing the marathon piece side of it?
SHALUINN FULLOVE: Yeah, I started
running middle distance.
JEREMY STERN: What is middle distance?
SHALUINN FULLOVE: A middle distance
is-- so when I was in college, it was the 1,500 and 3K.
That was before they had the 3K steeple for women.
So now they have a 3K steeple, and then there's the 1,500,
and the 5K is typically middle distance.
I think I always really wanted to be a miler.
A mile is such a great distance.
But I think when I ran my first marathon,
I just wanted to tackle something
that I hadn't done before, so there was no precedent,
no comparison point.
The marathon seemed big.
If you can do that, you feel like even
if it wasn't like an awesome time, you ran a full marathon,
so that's great.
I think if you watch a lot of the people who
are racing on Saturday, eventually,
everyone arrives at the marathon.
Eventually, they just keep moving up in distance.
If you're a 400-meter runner in high school,
you're going to run the eight and 15 in college,
and after college, you're going to run the five and 10.
So in some ways, you kind of always end up in the marathon,
but for me, it was just more of like, can I really do this?
My training for the first marathon
was definitely more middle distance training.
I thought three by a mile was like the big workout.
So I survived that marathon, but I learned that that really
wasn't marathon raining.
JEREMY STERN: When you were-- what's your fastest mile time
ever when you were doing--
SHALUINN FULLOVE: I think I run the equivalent of like 4:52,
which isn't-- for a miler is not amazing, but for me,
it was the best I could do.
Maybe that was also a reason why I decided
to go back to the marathon.
I realized the mile really wasn't working out for me.
It really wasn't.
It didn't have that turnover.
As much as I loved the work training for it,
it really wasn't working out.
JEREMY STERN: So I remember us talking
about this in terms of motivation, getting ready,
and you said to me once that there's
nothing like putting a race on a calendar
to get you motivated to train.
So when you decided to go for it in 2016,
what were the key dates for your thinking?
SHALUINN FULLOVE: So I had an injury in April and May.
I actually had a torn hamstring, which
is one of the worst runner injuries you could probably
ask for.
So we had that as a starting point.
I actually had PRP to help that repair,
and so we knew that that was going
to be eight to 12 weeks until I could start training again,
and then we needed X amount of time for buildup,
so we're looking at a fall marathon.
So there were maybe three marathons that we looked at.
We thought about Chicago, which was kind of early, maybe
Philadelphia, which is really close to CIM,
and we just thought, give us a little bit
of extra time in case we missed a couple weeks of training.
And CIM is so close to my house, so it was actually
pretty straightforward to try to figure out,
because we had some pretty locked
in time frames based on the injury
that we had to work with.
AUDIENCE: Question.
Thanks for the celebration in Hawaii and Rustic Canyon.
But what are some of the rituals that you
go through the morning of?
It's game day or right in the moments
before you start, what are some of the things
that you need to do to get you in that mindset?
SHALUINN FULLOVE: This time around,
I spent a lot of time journaling.
I record a lot of my training on Strava online,
which is great for visual.
But I've been spending a lot of time in my Believe journal,
where I write down a lot of the qualitative aspects
and write letters to myself.
And I was really nervous going into CIM,
because I have a couple page letter,
where I was just like talking to myself,
telling myself to believe.
I spent a lot of time going back and looking at the workouts
that I've done to just remember all the work that you've done
and that you've actually prepared for this moment
and you're ready.
Other than that, there's a lot of carbo loading,
especially as you get closer to three days out,
which is fun, so I try to like constantly
be eating carbs to the point where you get to race day,
and you're like, I don't want any more carbs.
I don't want anything that looks like a carb or tastes
chewy or anything.
But the journaling and the reflection and that piece
is a really important part.
That's just the mental game.
There's nothing else to do physically.
You can only do harm at that point.
JEREMY STERN: So on race day, Saturday, you wake up.
What time is the race by the way?
SHALUINN FULLOVE: The women's race I think is at 10:22.
It's a little bit later than you would normally
have for a marathon, and you guys
are having some hot weather right now.
I think the men go at 10:00 and the women go at 10:22,
so at least I get to sleep in and like wake up
at a decent hour and have some breakfast and digestion and all
that.
JEREMY STERN: Please.
Any other questions for Shal?
AUDIENCE: I have a question.
Since your mom is here, I want to know
that you run really fast.
I cannot even think about running one mile at four
minutes.
I want to know, where do you think this is coming from?
Genes or this is coming from-- your mom run marathons too?
SHALUINN FULLOVE: I come from a very athletic family,
but almost everyone in my family were basketball players.
Both my parents played basketball in college.
My brother was a very successful basketball player at UCSD.
I think my mom started to run track in college a little bit.
She ran a bunch after when I was growing up,
which was hugely influential.
I actually thought a long jump pit
was a sandbox for the kids whose parents were running
on the track. [INAUDIBLE], and I went to the track,
and I would just go sit in the long jump pit and play.
So certainly, I think genetics for sure, definitely.
AUDIENCE: So besides marathons, do
you run other professional sports like, as you said,
middle distance, 5K, 10K?
SHALUINN FULLOVE: The last couple years
I've been focused on the marathon,
but I'm looking forward to running
some personal bests and some shorter distances
like the 5K and the 10K.
I've dabbled in track a little bit,
but all the track races right now are college,
and I just feel like an old lady out there with those college
athletes.
So I don't know.
I'm going to probably stick to the roads.
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE].
SHALUINN FULLOVE: Oh, before?
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]?
So I'm saying when you were in college, high school,
did you run other professional sports like [INAUDIBLE]?
SHALUINN FULLOVE: I did grow up playing different sports.
I dabbled in soccer a little bit.
That didn't last super long.
I played basketball in high school for a couple of years.
I swam my age group when I was really little,
kind of before high school.
But I've done running most consistently.
I put on my first uniform when I was five or six years old.
JEREMY STERN: Suzanna.
AUDIENCE: I have a longstanding prejudice.
Whenever I hear a marathoner, I think that person is crazy.
So far, you have gone quite a ways to dispel that notion,
but I'm still a little bit suspicious.
Can you please explain it to me?
How are you not crazy/
SHALUINN FULLOVE: I never said I wasn't crazy.
I actually just had this conversation with somebody
in the last couple weeks.
My crazy comes out the closer we get to the face.
You can talk to my husband maybe after the talk.
See how crazy I get.
It took me about a zillion hours to pack last night,
to think about all the things we had to do.
So yeah, I mean there definitely is
a bandwidth of crazy probably amongst all of us runners.
But I don't know.
There's a little crazy.
There's a little crazy to go out there and try to do this,
and to put yourself through so much pain.
But I've been in this sport a really long time.
I'm very fortunate for that, and I
think you learn to enjoy the ups and downs,
and you really do focus on the long.
I want to be running well beyond Saturday.
I want to be running when I'm much older.
I want to set a good example for the athletes that I coach.
So you think about all those things, and my daughter,
she's going to be out there.
I want to set a good example for that.
So that helps make sure that you kind of check yourself
on how you're approaching things,
and I also have a great group around me--
coaches and doctors and teammates, who
I can use as a sounding board.
AUDIENCE: Yeah, so you said that when
you ran your first marathon that it maybe
didn't go quite as well as you had hoped,
and at least my experience when you
start getting into different sports
or into a different aspect of that sport
is you meet people who are much better.
And so how did you go from like, oh, I did this,
and I didn't quite do as well as I
wanted to really being at the elite level
that you're at right now?
SHALUINN FULLOVE: I've been lucky to-- some of my teammates
now, we've been teammates since we were-- gosh,
almost 20 years.
And I've been lucky to be [INAUDIBLE] a long time.
So I think any time you try a new distance,
you're going to open yourself up to a lot of learning.
We'll call it learning.
But I think you learn from that, and then
you meet people like you said, and you talk to them,
and you try to learn about that new distance or that new part
of the sport that you're trying to get after.
But I've been really lucky to be in the sport
with some of the best for a very long time.
Like my time at Stanford, I'm just
so honored to be included in that list of alumni.
AUDIENCE: You've spent a lot of time preparing
for the marathon, and this time around, the weather
isn't the most optimal, shall we say,
for running a marathon, or some time or another,
maybe you're not feeling well.
How do you adjust your expectations
after months of training for an exceptional goal,
and then maybe everything isn't as conducive as you
might want it to be otherwise?
SHALUINN FULLOVE: The weather is always
a factor in the marathon, and it's always something
we have zero control on.
So we try not to think too much about it,
and then we just try to deal with the circumstances that
were given.
This time around for Saturday for me,
it's been a bit of an unconventional buildup,
because we've had a short buildup.
It's only been 10 weeks since my last marathon.
I've had a small injury that's come up the last three
weeks that we've had to really change the training around
to accommodate.
And then we have this big wrinkle
that it's going to be in the 80s on Saturday.
So we've done a lot of recalibrating,
and at some point, you can have a game plan.
You can have your A, B, and C goals, but in the day
you get out there, you have to trust yourself.
That was the advice my coach gave me.
We were just talking yesterday about why we
do a lot of unstructured runs.
You have to know how your body feels and trusts,
and you know what you can do, and just
to run within yourself.
AUDIENCE: How have you felt in all this preparation,
and how far has it taken you away
from your normal routine with your family?
SHALUINN FULLOVE: There 's definitely been moments.
I've been really lucky to be able to do a lot of racing
close to home and to have such great, great, great training
grounds really close to my house,
and some of the best doctors and physios
are in our neighborhood, so that's been awesome.
Google actually has been really supportive,
so the last couple summers, we've
actually been able to go to the Boulder office
for an extended stay and work a little bit from the Boulder
office and train at altitude.
So I've been really fortunate to be able to take my family.
Elise is not quite school age yet,
so we're able to spend a lot of time not having to work
around a school schedule.
So that's been fantastic.
I did have this injury come up a little bit in the last three
weeks, so I've had to do a little bit more travel
to go see some specialists about that.
And luckily, they've just been extremely supportive,
and we just try to make it as efficient as possible
to go down there and do the work and come back.
Work's been extremely accommodating as well.
JEREMY STERN: One of the things you
learn both in work and athletics is envisioning an outcome.
What do you envision on Saturday at the finish line?
Are you thinking about it?
SHALUINN FULLOVE: I am thinking about it.
I feel a little bit like I need to crystallize
that over the next 72 hours definitely, maybe 48 hours.
It's been an unconventional buildup.
This injury's been a little bit of a wrinkle.
The heat's going to be a factor.
I think ultimately, where I'll land
is I'm going to try not to overthink it.
I'm going to get out there and run really smart,
and not forget to enjoy it, because this
is quite a moment that won't come again until-- maybe never
again, but it's not going to come
before four years from now.
So I need to spend some time in my journal
and around my teammates, who all get into town tomorrow,
and that'll probably help me start to think about it
and feel good about it.
JEREMY STERN: Well, Shal, on behalf of everyone at Google,
we wish you the best of luck in this race.
It's an extraordinary opportunity on the road to Rio,
and thank you so much for joining us on Talks at Google,
and wishing you the best of luck.
So thank you so much.
SHALUINN FULLOVE: Thank you.
JEREMY STERN: Very exciting.
[APPLAUSE]