Jackson Community College Men's Cross Country

Beagle, an experienced athlete and runner in the Jackson area, recently named Head Coach of both men and women's cross country programs.  Recently Jeff served as the assistant coach during the Fall 2013 season. Beagle recently was head coach for cross country at East Jackson High School, and has been a fitness instructor at JC. He is an instructor and personal trainer at the Jackson YMCA, participates in several local running events and is currently training for what will be his 10th Ironman Triathlon (2.4-mile swim, 112-mile bike and 26.2-mile run). He looks forward to putting together a plan and strategy with runners for the season and see how it all comes together. Its always exciting to lay out a plan and start to implement it, and then see what comes. Some of the runners will flourish, some wont, there may be injuries and so on. Its exciting to start planning, then at the end of the year youve got your goal with nationals and can we get there, can we do this With a stepdaughter who is a Hanover-Horton High runner, recruiting for the JC team should come naturally, Beagle said. Im at the meets already, and from my experience I do know a lot of people at different schools. Now I just get to talk to more people! Beagle began running in the early 1980s after high school, where hed played football and baseball. He did a few races in the early 80s, then set his goal to do the Ultimate Runner series at then JCC, which consisted of a 10K run in the morning, then a 400-meter and 100-meter run on the track, and a marathon in the afternoon. While training for that, he signed up to do a marathon in Port Huron but dropped out because of injury. However, he picked up a Tri-Athlete magazine at the event expo, which talked about triathlons, and from then on, he was hooked. His 10th Ironman is slated for Aug. 25.