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About 511Endurance
Why 511Endurance? |
Why Coach? |
My Training |
My Goals |
Race History
Why 511Endurance?
511 was my number in my first Ironman out in Lake Placid, New York. It was a day that I will never ever forget. I learned a lot of things about myself in the months of training that led up to that day and I learned even more on the day of the race. That coupled with the fact that you need to have a unique name to get a domain these days and everything to do with endurance had been taken so I did what most people do with their email accounts and added a number to the word that I felt like was the focus of the site.
Why Coach?
Ask anyone who knows me and they will tell you that it is in my blood. I love to analyze and improve. I love making complex concepts simple to understand. I love listening to other peoples thoughts on training and trying new things out but the thing I love the most is watching someone get it. What is it? That is really up to you but it can be as simple as feeling a good cadence on the bike for the first time and it can be as big is that moment of self realization that happens after you achieve your goal. You have had it at some point in your life I’m sure. Endurance racing provides the opportunity to have so many of those moments. Running endurance events makes you take a good hard look at yourself and what you are made of. I think it is a Powerbar add that says something like “Your looking ahead the whole time when your really looking deep inside yourself.” Such a true statement. When you work hard for that long, you tend to wear yourself down to the point where you only have a little bit left. This is the time when you find out who you really are. To me, this is a great moment of clarity.
I have been studying and reading about training, nutrition and the like for years and I love to pass on what I find. I have already been coaching, mostly friends and colleagues for a while, I was just not certified and had no website so I decided to make it official. I am not in it as a primary source of income at all. I just like to make enough to cover ever increasing race fees and gear costs.
My training
I train early in the AM most days and on double days I train at lunch as well. I do most of my long sessions on the weekend but I also mix it up a little bit to avoid too much repetition. I usually average about 12-17 hours a week during the summer. Right now I am training with a half iron distance focus. I would love to focus on the IM distance but there are a couple of reasons that I want to remain in the half iron area.
With a four month old and a two year old, being out on the bike for 5 plus hours is not easy to do that often unless you want to become single.
My goal as stated below is to qualify for Kona and I want to first work on getting my times in the ˝ down in the 4:30 range before I get in to the ring with the contenders. This may take a couple of years but then again, it is a big goal that is going to take time and you don’t just drop 38 minutes off your PR in one season.
My Goals
Kona. That is the long term goal. I enter the lottery but I want to qualify for it. If I get a lottery slot I will still try to qualify even if it takes years. It is the holy grail of triathlon and I want to be part of it. Short term goal for the 2005 season is to crack 4:45. My PR right now is 5:08 from my last race and I had a great race season this year so I am building from that.
Short Version of my bio
My name is Jeff MacLellan and I live in North Reading, Mass with my very understanding wife Kirsten, two children, Annie and Lindsay and my ever faithful yellow lab Hobbes. I got hooked on endurance racing on a bet after my first sprint triathlon and a few beers with friends when someone said, “Hey, we should run the Boston Marathon.” We did and the addiction began. I went to the University of Vermont where I played soccer and skied a whole lot. I majored in French and Secondary Education. After college I moved out west to Park City, Utah to be a ski bum for a couple years. I came back east for a teaching job for a year and ended up meeting my wife that summer after school ended. I loved to teach but could not handle making that little money so I left teaching and joined the high tech world and have been there ever since. I now manage a team of people at a software company just outside of Boston.
Racing history
I ran my first sprint triathlon in the summer of ’98. A great little mom and pop race up in Wolfeboro, NH. After the race we went over to a friends house on the lake where those fateful words were muttered. I ran Boston in 1999 and had a great time but a rough time for sure. Went out too hard and struggled from Boston College on in. I tried to run a race that I was not capable of running. That was the first of my many hard learned. The next year on a similar “Hey we should do a half iron distance race” I took on the Timberman in Gilford NH with a couple of friends. I had no concept of training other than that I should train a couple of nights a week and make the trains longer and longer. I had a pretty good race all things considered. I finished in under 6 hours which is was even better than my goal of just finishing.
I bought Joe Friel’s book on training that winter and set out to actually create a training plan. It was a real eye opener to find out all of the theories on training and how periodization worked. I had an ok race season the next year still only doing the Timberman but when I got done this time I decided that it was time to take on the whole Ironman so I signed up for Placid. Everybody who has ever raced a half iron before starts to think about the whole one as soon as they get to the finish line. You want to know what it is like. I think I chose the worst winter on record to start training in. I barely got outside on the bike until May due to the amount of snow on the ground. I spent hours on my rollers, six and a half to be exact on more than one occasion. People think you are nuts to do an IM. They think your really nuts to do six plus hours on rollers but I had no intention of getting to the start line unprepared. With each week of training a new first. First century ride, first two mile swim. I loved it. I loved it so much that I over-trained. Not to the point that I bonked but I knew that I was doing too much work and not enough recovery. I also did not have a solid nutrition program in place. I spent the majority of the bike and half of the run with a stomach that was just not happy. Finally took some chicken broth at mile 18 and settled it down enough to get back on track and finish the race. I was happy just to get to the finish line after the stomach problems. Not 24 hours after the race I was already thinking about what I could have done better, what I did wrong and how to improve.
Click here for a slightly more detailed review of my races. It is a Word doc so you will need Microsoft Word to view it.
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