(2/2) I love running. I understand running. And I see you most clearly through running - by the way your head tilts when you’ve recommitted mid-interval, by the snag in your stride when you’ve got nothing left, and by your choking frustration when it’s just not working and you don’t understand why. By this common thread the barriers between us are eliminated. By letting me coach you, you've helped me understand how to love and understand and see you with the same intensity that I’ve loved putting one foot in front of the other. . I left my elite career thinking I had led a pretty special life. Who, after all, is more necessarily self-obsessed than the professional athlete? But by the privilege of being allowed into your lives, over time I’ve grown tired of listening to myself talk and increasingly interested in what you have to say. You have so much to say. . After thousands of conversations on low brick walls, sidewalks, front stoops and the floors of every Nike store in the city, I know what I want. After three emotional, exhausting, gratifying, weathering years, I know it largely because of my time spent with you. If I have crouched next to you to talk about anything – your shins or your PR or your frustrations or the quiet good you’re doing in your crew – then I am so thankful to you. . As though I were 15 years old again, waking up before the family to get in my morning miles, I know what I am made for. This time i know it not by the circumference of my ankles, but rather by a tug somewhere behind my ribs when I’m allowed to look at you in a hard moment. I want to tell the stories that get me smiling on the subway home from practice, and the kind that won’t let me sleep because they’re too unfair, and the kind that let me see you so completely that I can barely tell where you stop and I begin. . In August, I’ll head to the University of Iowa to study Creative Writing. Three years after that, I’ll be back here to tell these stories in the way they deserve to be told. . Through July I’ll be in and out, hosting runs here and there. I’ll reach out when I do. Thanks again, Athletes. I cried while typing this. I owe you guys a lot.