They are big. They think big.

I have a few friends there and they love it.

http://www.google.com/...?page=why-ca-mv.html

Mountain View is a nice area. Middle to upper class. Lots of riding around.

http://maps.google.com/...3,0.753422&hl=en
In that map, Mountain View is dead center. To the left are lots of trails and hills.

There is a very active tri club in nearby San Jose too.

Hi Francois. I lived out in the bay area for about 8 years. Lived in Mountain View for a good portion of it. I can't speak to Google, but I can speak to training in Mountain View.

Cycling - There are a lot of great places to cycle throughout the Peninsula, and they're easily accessible from Mountain View. A lot of good climbs - up Pagemill Road over the Santa Cruz Mountains to the beach and back is about 65 miles or so and a total of about 4000 feet of climbing there and back (my numbers aren't exact - just rough memories). You can ride all the way up to San Francisco on Canada Rd. (don't know how to put the tilde over the "n" on this keyboard) and north of it into Marin across the Golden Gate Bridge. That road is a great road to cycle on. Not much traffic, bike lanes, and lots of other cyclists.

Swimming-wise, there are a bunch of good masters programs around. In Mountain View there is a park on California Avenue I think - Eagle something or other? - but they have a good pool that some people in MV train in. Personally, I prefer training at Stanford University. They have a masters program that swims at noon (maybe in the morning too) and the pool is a gorgeous Olympic size facility. You can make it to Stanford from Google in about 20 minutes. There's also a good masters program in Menlo Park which is a little further north, but Team Sheeper trains with them and they're a great team too.

Running - lots of good trails and places to run. A lot of tracks around. Some great trails if you head out to Portola Valley, about a 25 minute drive from MV. There is also the Shoreline Trail system (I think that's what it's called) which I used to run on. It's right in Mountain View, and goes by the Google headquarters if I remember right. There's a one mile trail right across the street from the Stanford Stadium that's great for mile repeats.

There are also some good tri clubs down in that area. The three that come to mind are Silicon Valley Tri Club, Tribe, and Team Sheeper. SVTC is a bit bigger from my understanding with a pretty broad range of levels. Tribe always seemed to me like they were mostly high-level veterans, but I could be wrong (I wasn't a member of either). Team Sheeper has some hardcore, really good triathletes. They always struck me as the best of the clubs as far as performance goes.

Hope that helps. If you have any other questions, I'd be happy to help.

That sounds pretty cool...

$$$$$$$$$$$$...be ready for sticker shock and traffic, my friend. OTOH, the Bay Area is one of the best places to live in the US, IMO.

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Shawn
TORRE Consulting Services, LLC
http://www.TORREcs.com

I lived in marin county for four years, that area has some kick ass riding. you will surely get your climbing legs in that area........

Names around here are deceptive. Mountain View is named that because one can see mountains all around you, but you are actually in one of the few flat spots around. :) It's like Redwood City, named that because that's where they took all the old growth redwoods when they chopped them down and shipped them out, not because there are any redwood trees there. If you can afford to live in the area, the riding is great. Marin is sixty minutes away during a non prime time driving period, otherwise it can take two to three hours depending upon direction - Los Angeles and Boston were the only two other places that I have been that I felt had worse automobile traffic congestion. An entry level one bedroom condo in a quite frankly mediocre neighborhood is around 500,000 in Mountain View.

Mountain View is a suburb... left there 15 years ago and never really looked back.. but you have TONS TONS of reat bike riding in the area...

I have several friends that work there and they love it, the atmosphere adn community is supposed to be great...

Lots of great bike shops, great weather, and lots of opporutnities for people with your background.

I currently live in Mountain View (don't work for google unfortunately though).

As others have stated, there is plenty of riding around here. Although you can ride from MV proper, most of the more enjoyable rides start a few (like 5-10) minutes away by car. MV itself is pretty flat, but there are lots of hills within 10 miles. A good place to check out rides in the area is
http://www.chainreaction.com/ which is a local bike shop website that has a fair amount of information about rides (scroll down to the bottom of the page and there's a dropdown list of rides).

The Silicon Valley Tri Club (of which i am a member) has a list of rides at http://www.svtriclub.org/routes.htm.

There are lots of clubs as well. The aforementioned SVTC (http://www.svtriclub.org) is a good club (note, i'm certainly biased about this since i'm a member and i like it). SVTC is a club that offers a bunch to all levels. The TRIbe Triathlon club (http://www.tribetriathlon.com) is another club in the area that is pretty popular. I usually think that they are a bit more 'hard core', but that may or may not be really true. I do know however, that they don't have as much for beginners as SVTC.

There are a couple of other groups such as Kain Performance (http://www.kainperformance.com/) and Team Sheeper (http://www.teamsheeper.com/) as well.

As for running, the Shoreline Park/Stevens Creek Trail is part of a set of trails that runs around the SF bay. It's quite nice although it runs near a set of salt evaporators and can be kinda smelly at times. Another spot that people use a lot for running is Rancho San Antonio (http://www.openspace.org/preserves/pr_rancho_san_antonio.asp)
which is about 5-10 minutes drive (you can ride there as well from MV).

There's a few good swim programs and a bunch of places within 30-60 minutes for open water swims.

Lastly, I >LOVE< living in the bay area when thinking about training. The weather isn't perfect all year round, but it's damn near close (i'm from NY and MI). It gets a bit rainy in the late fall and winter, but the temp never gets so low that you really >need< to forego riding. (OK, ok, i have indeed skipped a couple of rides because it was cold. But it was like 35-38 degrees out, and when push comes to shove, you can still ride in that kind of weather).

If you have any other questions about specifics for rides/runs/swims or whatever, just let me know.

Good Luck!

...alex...

(edited to remove [url][/url] lines since i can't seem to make them actually work)

I live in Menlo Park which is just a few minutes from Mountain View. It's easy to train year round here.

The peninsula is a great area to live and train. In addition to the groups mentioned by the other posters there are a lot of individuals in loosely organized workouts. Numerous pros live in the area include Becky Gibbs Lavelle, Linda Gallo, Andy Kelsey, Alexis Waddel and others. Miles Stewart has spent the winter here the past couple of years and Cam Widdoff has been known to stop in for a week or so before heading to IM Hawaii in the past.

One of the other coaches who hasn't been mentioned yet is Muddy Waters who coaches both age groupers and pros and has a couple group workouts each week.

Stanford Masters runs workouts in the morning, noon, and evenings (http://masters.stanford.edu). Stanford has two 50 meter pools and is one of the largest aquatic centers in the country. Santa Clara Swim Center is another good place to swim and might be a little closer to Mtn. View.

There are a ton of places to ride. Most of it involves at least rolling hills if not real hills. Lots of pro cyclists live in the area too. Guys like Eric Wohlberg, the Webcor team, former Postie Dylan Casey and others show up for some of the group rides of which there is one almost every day of the week.

Lots of running on the road and on trails too. Some ITU people train with the Nike Farm Team on occasion too.

Send me a PM if you want more details or specific information. I know some people who work for Google and have been there a while.

-Darrell

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-Darrell