The success of most distance runners is a result of the time and miles that they accrue in training. They build their base of training to have the necessary endurance to maintain their pace for an entire race.
 
This summer, Cal seniors Kai Benedict and Paul Zeiss traveled across the country to Washington D.C. to build up those miles and create a base for their post-collegiate lives.  
 
Zeiss worked for Representative Doris Matsui of California's sixth district, which encompasses most of Sacramento. He was able to form a connection with a fellow Golden Bear in Matsui and was hired as a summer intern. He had a front-row seat to see Capitol Hill.
 

"It added another dimension to who I am as a person," Zeiss said. "Competing as a D1 athlete is such a privilege, but it's easy to make that an all-encompassing identity. To get a glimpse of post-grad life was exciting. It didn't make me less passionate about running, but it's not all I have to offer to the world. It opened up a new dimension to opportunities I might have."
 
Zeiss worked on numerous projects, such as doing research for tech and telecom bills or working with commerce legislative assistants on NAFTA renegotiations. He also looked over amendments for a 2018 Department of Defense appropriations bill and went to numerous Energy and Commerce Committee meetings.

He spent hours doing something that was familiar: building a base.
 
In this case, the base was knowledge, as he spent hours poring over bills or going to different events. He did anything he could to collect more information. While Zeiss is a Democrat, he went to the Ronald Reagan Forum sponsored by the Young Americans for Freedom. He was one of two non-Republicans in the room, but  had an opportunity to walk across the aisle and see how the other side thinks.
 
While Zeiss was in southeast Washington D.C. on Capitol Hill, Benedict was living in the northwest part of the city working for the National Institute of Health, which is located in Bethesda, Maryland.
 
Kai was an intern studying EPO (Erythropoietin) with Cal grad Dr. Constance Tom Noguchi. EPO is used a lot in doping because it stimulates red blood cell formation. Kai was working on knocking out myoglobin and understanding how that affects the body by using a mouse model. His team sought to figure out how Myoglobin can influence other oxygen carrying pathways. 
 
In order to understand the effects, the Reno, Nevada native did a lot of research. He focused on building background information so that he could make accurate observations and informed hypotheses as to why the mice were affected in a certain way. The goal was then to do more studies to determine the validity of their hypothesis.
 
"I think being a student-athlete gave me a leg up in the study itself," Kai said. "Coming from a background with physiological knowledge, I think I was able to talk about it from a different perspective. Not from a clinical perspective of how can we help patients, but from a performance perspective of how can this make us better in our highest capacity."

 

Working to get to their highest capacity is something that both Kai and Paul were attempting to do this summer, not only for their careers but for their final year at Cal.
 
In addition to two internships that challenged them mentally and physically, they were both still running upwards of 75 miles per week. While they lived on opposite sides of the city and couldn't meet up every day to run, they often made time on the weekends for long runs.
 
Most of the time, that meant 18-mile runs across the city. Running in the sweltering humidity of Washington D.C. wasn't easy, so they often talked to take their minds off it.
 
"It was good to have a teammate there and to be able to reflect on our goals and what we wanted from this season, away from Berkeley, away from school," Paul said.
 
The duo also lived together for their first two years at Cal, meaning they spent hours remembering their time together and reflecting on how far they've come in the past couple years.
 
"How do I compare now to my expectation coming in as a freshman?" Kai wondered, "There's so much opportunity here. How can you make the most of the opportunities that you have outside of running while still maintaining a focus on running. I'm getting a great education and I have so many opportunities."
 
For Kai, that has meant volunteering with the sports nutrition department in athletics and working as a lab technician, that is when he's not going to class or running.
 
As seniors on the team, both Kai and Paul have taken on a leadership role this year. It is needed, because the 45-person cross country skews young, there are 18 true freshman including nine on the men's side.
 
"Having so many freshman has forced them into a leadership role," cross country head coach Shayla Houlihan said. "I think it's forced them to take a look back at themselves and to see the things that they needed to improve on to become better leaders. I think that's going to help them down the line in whatever they decide to go into."
 
"We spent a lot of time talking about what we wanted the team to be like, especially with so many new faces coming in," Kai continued. "The biggest conclusion we came to was that it's our job to lift people up and to try to be as supportive as we can. We want to have a good year, but having so many young kids, we want to make sure that they have the capacity to perform well and exceed expectations in the years to come as well."
 
That was always part of the plan, trying to build the cross country team into more than just a team, into a supportive family.
 
"When I was a freshman, I didn't know what I was doing, but there was some upperclassmen like John Lawson and Leland Later who were very intentional toward freshman," Paul said. "They invited them over to dinner. So this year, I invited Collin FitzGerald and Colby Corcoran over to dinner a couple weeks ago. I wanted to get them away from their dorms and to try to make them feel like as much a part of the Cal cross country family as possible."
 
By incorporating the freshman into the team so quickly, Paul and Kai were just continuing what they were doing all summer, building the base. For their training. For the continued success of the team.  For the rest of their lives.