Hey Runners Connect fans welcome to the Run to the Top Team Runners Connect update. My name is Michael Hammond. For those of you who don't know me,

I've been working at Runners Connect for about four years now. In my own running career,

I was more of a middle distance runner. I ran under four minutes in the mile and I started

coaching actually back when I was in college. I was a college athlete at Virginia

Tech and I worked at the local running shoe store.

Sometimes people would be in there being fitted for shoes and next thing you know

we're getting in a conversation about their training, about their goals, about their next race.

Next thing you knew I was writing them training plans. I just started writing them

training plans. I'd email back and forth. So that's really where I got my start in

terms of coaching. And from there it just kind of grew. Next thing you knew I was

with Jeff here at Runners Connect,

working with really thousands of athletes each year and I've had a ton of fun with it. I'm

super excited to be bringing you guys these weekly updates. Now this isn't just going to be a rehash of like our

race results. We already have a post each week that goes out that does like our

race results, personal best that we did. I do want to highlight those and I've got a really

special story for you coming up in this episode where we're going to talk about a

truly amazing story about one of our athletes who persevered through something

amazing.

Can't wait to share that with you.

But really, it's just going to be all the goings on

of Runas Connect and what you can get involved in moving forward.

So one quick recap piece. We had a couple weeks ago we had our Runners Connect winter

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