Fast-Women.com Interview with Julia Stamps

Interview wth Julia Stamps
by Scott Douglas

Julia Stamps running at the 2006 USA Cross Country Championships in New York.
Photo by: Alison Wade
New York Road Runners

Julia Stamps, 27, should be among the top local finishers in Sunday’s NYC Half-Marathon Presented by Nike. Stamps first came to notice as a high school star in Santa Rosa, California, where she was the state cross country champion three times, won the Footlocker cross country nationals meet as a sophomore, and had the dubious pleasure of being shadowed for a day during her sophomore year by this interviewer for the purpose of a Running Times cover profile.

Although Stamps was Stanford’s leading freshman during her first year there and earned six All-American titles, she never was as dominant in college as she had been in high school. She was injured frequently, and then had to stop running for the rest of her college career after breaking her left leg in a skateboarding accident.

After college, Stamps moved to New York City to work for the financial firm Morgan Stanley. As she recounts below, she gradually resumed running when her leg healed, and went on to qualify for the 2004 Olympic Marathon Trials with a 2:46:17 personal best at the 2003 LaSalle Bank Chicago Marathon.

Stamps, who briefly left the financial world to work for Fila, is a research analyst for Infiniti Capital. In July, she won the San Francisco Marathon in 2:54:55. We spoke an hour after she had returned from a two-week business trip to Europe

Fast-Women.com: With all that you’ve been doing lately, how’s it looking for the half marathon on Sunday?
Julia Stamps: As you know, I wound up running the San Francisco Marathon. It was really a last-minute decision. It didn’t take a whole lot out of me. I took a week off to let everything heal up. The bigger thing is that the last two weeks have been really bad with traveling—it can get really interesting when you’re trying to fit in meetings with the CEO and cram in a 10-miler in the morning, especially when you’ve been out entertaining in the evening. A lot of the days were 8:00 a.m. to midnight. But I was able to do it, and I’m feeling pretty good. I had a hamstring tear that nagged me for eons. I’ve been able to get over it and do a lot of base training—the San Francisco Marathon was basically off of 10 miles every morning. In a half marathon, you can’t get away with just that sort of base training like you can in a marathon, so it will be interesting on Sunday.

FW: Where in Italy were you?
JS: We were over in the Lake Orta district, about 45 minutes from Milan, for an investment committee meeting. All the portfolio managers and analysts meet and go through different funds. It’s a global firm—after a week in Italy, the next week I was in London working with one of the portfolio managers there. It’s crazy, but I absolutely love my job. I was with Fila there briefly, and I really believe in what Fila is doing, but this opportunity came up, and they made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. It’s a great opportunity for my career—maybe not for my running career, but I still absolutely love running, and there’s still too much of the competitor in me not to want to do it at a good level.

FW: Do you find that you’re channeling your competitive instincts into your work?
JS: Yeah, I have channeled a lot of that into my work—I see it showing up in my work more and more. But in running, I still have that absolute desire to do the best I can in my current situation. Running has been with me longer than my current career path. There’s nothing as amazing as going for a great run in a natural setting—even here in New York City—or going for a run with friends or the great feeling you get after a great run.

I still have the desire to compete and run well in the situation I’m in. And now that I’m married, there’s that much more to try to balance—I only have so much energy. But I’m having fun with it all.

FW: So in your current situation, what’s a typical week for you in terms of mileage?
JS: Consistently about 60 a week. It’s pretty typical for me to run 10 miles before work, but there seems to always be a day off in there because I don’t have the time to do it or I’m just exhausted. That’s the great thing about being your own coach—after running for so many years, you have a better understanding of what your body can do in combination with your workload and everything else.

FW: How good do you think you can be with this sort of training?
JS: I would love to get another qualifier for the [Olympic Marathon] Trials. If I can run under 2:45, I would be happy. I think that’s very realistic for me. I think I’ll try to do that next spring in London. That will give me enough time to get in shape; it’s a good course, and it looks like I have to be in London that week for work anyway.

FW: When you’re home, what’s your typical schedule like?
JS: I wake up at 5:20, I’m out the door to run at 5:30, and I’m at the office by 8:00. I usually work until 7:30 or 8:00, depending on the day. Sometimes there are events to go to at night. I’m usually in bed between 11:30 and midnight.

FW: Do you have people to run with?
JS: Yes, we have quite a large group. You’ve probably heard of some of them—Lesley Higgins, who went to the University of Colorado; Natalie Florence, who also went to Colorado. We’re able to motivate each other to get up and get out there in the morning.

FW: When you do hard workouts, do you do those in the morning, too?
JS: Everything is in the morning—if it doesn’t happen then, it’ll never get done. I never know what my evenings are going to be like. Generally, when I do workouts, I do them independent of the group, because we’re all different types of runners. Like Lesley Higgins, she’s more of a miler, so I’ll do a workout with her only if I want to get killed on a bunch of 400s.

FW: How long was it between your accident in college and when you resumed running? And then how long between resuming running and what you consider being able to train?
JS: I had my accident in March of 2001, and I ended running my first marathon in November 2002. But from my accident in March of ’01, I basically had a year off. I couldn’t even walk off of crutches. Once I started walking, it came back quickly. I started jogging 5, then 10 minutes on grass. By the end of that July, in 2002, I was up to 30 minutes of running, and then it picked up really quickly, and I decided to run the New York Marathon. My goal was to break 3:00, and I ran about 2:56. I wanted to be sure my leg was fine, and it was.

So then I thought, “This is fantastic—I can run more.” I never thought about getting back on the track—I didn’t think my leg could handle it, being up on my toes for real hard speedwork. But I still wanted to be competitive, and I was able to train for road races while pursuing my career. I did the marathon, and I absolutely loved it. And I really enjoyed the training. So I loved the race and I liked the training, and so it was a pretty simple decision about what to do. To me, the whole thing since returning to running has been a total blast.

FW: Does running feel different since you came back?
JS: I can honestly say that I love it more now than I have in my entire life. Running in college was interesting. I’m not saying I was burnt out by the time I got there, but I don’t think in high school I was enjoying life to its fullest. In college, I saw that there were so many more things to experience than running around a track, and I got a bit distracted, which is good for you as a person, but bad for your running. I needed a break. I was tired of the injuries, tired of thinking, “I can’t go to the training room and do rehab for a stress fracture again—what I love to do is to run, not to spend my time in a pool getting over an injury.” I was just so tired of it.

And then I had my accident. For me, it was one of those unfortunate blessings in disguise. I had never thought of doing anything but running—I was going to finish college and keep running, but in that split second, I had to reevaluate, because now that plan wasn’t going to happen. I was forced to take a break and choose another path.

Now with my running, I’m doing something different. I love it more now because I thought I wouldn’t ever be able to run again. So I feel so blessed to go out there and not feel any pain. I have a newfound appreciation for it. That first day back, when I went out for a run after a year and couple months off, even on this short, slow little run, I vividly remember the wind going by my hair, and the little beads of sweat on my face, and thinking, “This is amazing.” I felt like my senses had been reawakened.

Editor's Update: Julia Stamps finished the NYC Half-Marathon Presented by NIKE in fourteenth place with a time of 1:22.36.

Interview conducted on August 20, 2006, and posted on August 22, 2006.

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