songs of experience

Dear faithful readers,

Please forgive my long-time absence from the blog-waves. I have been intensly involved in a (heretofore) top-secret running project in Chapel Hill/Carrboro. For years (and years) I have been trying to create an elite training group in this area. Once, I even started what I called The Community Track Club where each of us - individuals - coached ourselves but met once a week over dinner to share training tips, to talk about goals, to be accountable to someone else. This club didn’t last long because, it seems, people like an actual coach telling them what to do. I have been unwilling to take on this coach/boss role in my community because of the time-commitment involved and because I couldn’t afford to work for free.

SO, when our local Fleet Feet owner approached me with a proposal to pay me to coach a group of “elite” (or elite hopefuls) over the next two years, I hit the ground running. Could this really be happening, finally?! Will it be like the movies ["If you build it, they will come."]?

Yes. Maybe. I hope so. Fleet Feet Carrboro has partnered with my lifelong sponsor, New Balance Athletic Shoes, Inc., to help support a distance running team of 7 women and 7 men (with USATF Elite club status) in Carrboro, NC. We will be called The Carrboro Athletics Club, the CAC.

Soon, we will have a team blog with weekly posts from our athletes so friends, famlies, and fans can chart their progress from now until the 2008 Olympic Trials. I will be sure to post the link to our track club website!

Thank you, New Balance and Fleet Feet Carrboro, for believing in me.

I do hope to get back to regular SoE posting as soon as all the dust settles … if it ever does.