Hey kitty kitty, Come On Out of that Bag

Ok, since all I did was easy runs this week, I won't bore anyone with a week's worth of "6 miles easy, felt crappy" comments. Summary: 46 miles of not feeling great because I took an entire week off.

However, this weekend was a pretty important weekend for me. On Friday, I traveled to Boston- specifically, to a house on Ashford St just down the road from the BU indoor track. I signed a one-year lease on a room there and spent the rest of the weekend hanging out with Eric Ashe, Ken Halthom, and James Weider-- my future teammates. I have decided to transfer to Boston University for the fall and will be running for the Terriers. I've kept my plans off the blog on purpose, because until everything was final, I didn't want to make a fuss. It's been an extremely difficult last six months as I weighed my options and decided where I would be attending school in the fall. The success I had in the winter made it especially difficult and the troubles I had in the spring made the fact that it would be my final season running for Keene even more bittersweet, since I would not be going out with a bang.

While my reasons for leaving Keene are many, complicated, and ultimately the right ones, I don't really want to go into them here. However, I can unequivocally state what the reason for leaving was not.

I did not leave Keene because of Peter Thomas. Aside from getting along with him great over the last two years, Pete is a great coach and, more significantly, a great man. He gets the most out of his athletes and I still believe that if he was had half the budget of a Vin Lananna or a Jason Dunn, he would be an extremely competitive college coach. I realize that the timing of my departure from Keene suggests otherwise, but my decision to leave Keene was weighed well before all of the troubles of my spring season. Pete did not make me low-iron, Pete did not hurt my hamstring or hip; my troubles this past season were unrelated to coaching. Yes, the difficulties I had this spring a strain on us- as they would any coach/athlete pairing. But I want to make it absolutely, positively clear that I did not choose to leave Keene because of dissatisfaction with the coaching. Anyone looking for good coaching and a competitive experience at the DIII level should consider Keene- just because it was ultimately not a good fit for me doesn't mean anything.

That being said, I am really looking forward to working with my new teammates in the fall. I've begun what will hopefully be the longest base-period of my life, and by the end of it I hope to have accumulated 10 weeks over 80 miles and 5 weeks over 100. The upcoming hiatus from racing will be the longest break I have taken from racing since I had pneumonia in my senior year of high school. This new school, new city, new coach, and new team means I am getting a completely fresh start with running. It's exciting and a little frightening at the same time.

So, I guess this is my farewell blog to Keene, to Division III, and to the last two years. What is there to say? So long, it's been real-- best of luck to everyone.

Have a nice week, everyone.

-Craig

PS: I think I'm moving my log to logarun.com. I'll still post training here regularly, but I might leave the specifics to logarun and include a summary+analysis on the blog itself. I have no plans to discontinue the blog, however. Consider this an expansion :)