Optimism

The other day I told someone that there was nothing like the feeling of running for the first time after an injury without having any pain. I'm not quite there, but yesterday's run was darn close, and for that I'm exceedingly grateful.

This past week has been fairly awesome overall. I don't think there's anyone actually reading this thing as yet, so I feel comfortable spilling the beans: I found out Thursday that I'm getting an offer for an internal posting that I applied to a while back! It's not official yet, because my old/current boss and my new/future boss need to negotiate a transition plan, but I spoke with the recruiter/HR rep and they are going to send me the offer letter as soon as the details are in place.

It's funny, because I only found out about this posting after applying to another one that I felt was too good to not take a shot at even though I'm not terribly unhappy where I am right now (though things have actually deteriorated a little since I applied, so... good timing?). The HR rep contacted me about my application to share some more info and I found out right away that the supervisor for that position was someone who I knew didn't like me/my department much so right away I was pretty sure I wasn't even going to be considered (spoilers: I was right, they didn't even interview me). She mentioned that there was another post going up that she thought I might be a good fit for, and sent me the job description and asked me to let her know, and she would send the actual posting when it was up.

I wasn't super sure that I was interested but I could see why she thought it might be a good match and was definitely willing to hear a little more, so once the post was live I did a little tweaking of ye old cover letter, added my recently-spiffed up resume, and sent it on its way. Not too long after that they asked me to send a writing sample (the new job involves a fair amount of writing), which I also completed, and about a week after that they contacted me to schedule a couple of interviews! All over the phone, since they're based in another office that's a few states away (it's a big company).

The first one was with the actual hiring manager and went really well. I'd had time to prep and research, take lots of notes, and write some good questions down to talk about. It ended up being more of a chat than an interview as we seemed to be on the same wavelength in general, though we did have some of the obligatory behavioral (tell me about a time when...) questions that I think everyone feels like they struggle with. In this case it went pretty well and I felt good, though knowing I had a second interview a few days later, I did hold back some of my more cheesy questions that didn't quite feel like they jived with the tone of our conversation.

The second interview I was a little more nervous about because the person I was meeting with was more adjacent to the role but also more senior, and a bit of a superstar in their area (won a company vision and values award last year). I'd unwisely stayed up late the night before finishing out a D&D session and had just hit that rough point after messing up my knee and wasn't sleeping well, so by the time the interview rolled around I was pretty exhausted. I squeezed in a catnap at lunch (yay working from home) and felt a little better, but overall didn't feel like the interview went as well as the first.

We went right into the behavioral questions, but not before telling me that they'd just interviewed another internal candidate who didn't do a very good job answering them (not in those exact words, but fairly blunt about it nonetheless). Yikes. I ran out of prepared examples because there were so many questions, and so wasn't feeling too confident about some of what I managed to talk about. I did manage to pull out an excellent question back to the interviewer, thanks to Alison at askamanager.org, and I was glad I saved it for this interview, because it fit this conversation much better and managed to put me in a good light to boot!

That was the most positive thing I took away, though, and so when I didn't hear anything for another week (despite following up with the HR rep who said she'd let me know as soon as she knew anything) I decided it was time to stop worrying about it and move on. My company moves relatively quickly once they make a decision, in my experience, so I figured that I'd bombed the second interview and that was that. But surprise! Late last week they finally contacted me and gave me the good news.

So that was a very off-topic ramble about why I'm feeling more optimistic, looking forward to the change of mental scenery and likely even a few visits to the other office where my new boss works for some onboarding/training. I always enjoy running in new places and I'm almost certain to try to get in a few runs while I'm there!

In more on-topic news, the other optimistic thing is that yesterday I ran for a new distance PR of 12.1 miles! I'm calling this my longest long run for this cycle, even though Higdon would have had me running 11 yesterday and 12 not until next weekend, with only a week to taper. Since I've put my knee through the wringer this cycle, and it's just now feeling okay (no pain after running OR this morning though I did have to run incredibly slowly to make it happen) and I don't want to jeopardize that by not giving it plenty of time to get completely recovered for what I'm going to be doing exactly two weeks from the time that I'm writing this. It's also supposed to be sunny and about 90 degrees next Saturday, whereas yesterday it was about 55 and cloudy and essentially perfect for a long run.

This week I may or may not be traveling for work, as it's related to the job I'll be leaving soon and they may not want to pay for a hotel for a couple nights all things considered. Oldboss was out on Friday so I didn't get a chance to confirm how I should proceed. Either way I'll be keeping the runs short and easy during the week - it's supposed to start warming up on Wednesday/Thursday anyway - and maybe run up to 8 next weekend if I get out early enough and it's not completely awful out there. And before I know it... it'll be race weekend! Getting super excited!