Kelly Jaske

In January 2009 Portland runner Kelly Jaske burst onto the national running scene by placing 2nd in the USATF half marathon championships in Houston Texas.

She beat the likes of Colleen De Reuck and Amy Rudolph in the race and captured the attention of many fans of the sport.

She was primed to hit the big time with a top coach in Brad Hudson. Many people assumed that bigger and better things were in her future.

Kelly Jaske, Falmouth 2009
Photo courtesy of PhotoRun.Net

And while she has had some very solid races since then, she hasn’t fulfilled some people’s expectations. I recently had the chance to talk her and I’d like to tell you her story.

Kelly was born in Maryland in and lived for a while in upstate New York. But most of her formative years were spent in Virginia. She graduated from UVA with a degree in Philosophy in 1999. Charlottesville is a delightful college town but I’m guessing that Kelly didn’t have too much time for typical college life. She’s always been a hard worker and her efforts paid off with a spot in Harvard Law School.

She also started to do a little jogging in college. She ran the Marine Corp marathon at age 20 in 1997. Her time was a respectable 3:39. But running was only a small part of her busy life at the time.

Kelly graduated from law school in 2002 and made Harvard Law Review which is a very formidable accomplishment. She moved to DC to continue her legal career. She also continued running and by 2003 her marathon time had come down to 3:16. But serious running was not in the cards at this time.

It wasn’t until she moved to Portland in 2007 that running became a bigger priority for her. With harder training, her times began to drop. She also joined Team Red Lizard, the same running club that I belong to.

She ran a 1:21 half marathon in January 2008 and then placed 16th in the Boston marathon in April, running 2:48. I remember how modest she was about this accomplishment, saying that the top Americans had just run the trials and thus 16th was no big deal.

But we knew that Kelly was on her way. I remember that the woman who had been the top marathoner in the club said that she would never beat Kelly again. On July 4th, Kelly ran a 1:14 half marathon at a local Portland race. She was now one of the fastest women in the country. However, she was still unknown outside of Portland.

Her plan was to run the Chicago marathon that fall, but injury forced her to take a step back. However, she returned with a vengeance later in the fall and set her sights on the half marathon in Houston. She was training with a group of local male runners and was holding her own in their company. She also caught the attention of Brad Hudson when she easily beat all the men in a local race in Eugene.

I remember how jazzed all of us in the club were prior to Houston. Kelly was going to kick some serious butt and we were the only ones who knew it. During the race telecast, the commentator kept calling her mystery girl or tall girl. The race eventually came down to 3 Olympians and Kelly. She finished second to Magdalena Lewy Boulet and ran 1:12:06. The press descended upon her like locusts.

She was the next big thing in women’s running and some very large expectations were placed on her. However, no one knew that she had suffered a stress fracture a mile from the race finish. She needed to take two months off of running and then start up again. Running had become such a big part of her life that she hated not being able to do it.

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She got back into the groove later in the spring and ran well at The New York Mini, Peachtree in Atlanta, the Utica Boilermaker, the Bix 7 miler, and Falmouth. But none of her races could top her performance at Houston. And then another injury ended her racing year.

She split from Brad Hudson and returned to training with the local guys when she got healthy again. Although she wasn’t in top shape by January, she returned to Houston and hung with the leaders for much of the race before finishing 8th in 1:13:03. She had a fine spring of racing with perhaps her best showing coming in the Cherry Blossom 10 mile race in Washington DC where she was fifth overall and first American in 54:40.

Kelly says that she enjoys being able travel to races around the country and that she has gone to places that she might never have seen otherwise. However, she’s not caught up in the elite runner life style. She works in Portland as a criminal defense lawyer. She describes the work as fast paced and quite exciting.

She runs first thing in the morning and then again at lunch or in the evening after work. She says sometimes wishes she could take a nap after workouts instead of putting a suit back on and trying to make her hair look non-sweaty. But other than that, it’s really no big deal to work and run. And she doesn’t feel that she is at a disadvantage racing against full time runners.

She’s also able to have fun with running. Despite never having finished a whole beer in her life, she ran a beer mile recently in a Portland park. As you may know, the event consists of chugging a beer, running a quarter mile and then repeating the process three more times. For this race, a quarter mile loop was set out on the park’s grassy interior.

I got to witness the occasion. She started strong, but had a lot of trouble with the beer part of the event. By the last lap, she could hardly find the finish line and she fell in a drunken heap on the grass at the end of the race.

I thought she was going to pass out, but she actually rallied and joined us all at the pub after the race. She drank plenty of water at the pub and surprisingly she felt not too badly the next day. But she says she has now consumed enough alcohol for a lifetime.

When she is not running, working or getting drunk in public parks, she enjoys reading, theater, and hiking. She has a very full life and running is only one component of that life. She likes to work hard and running is obviously a good fit for her personality.

She recently spent a day up on Mount Hood cheering on local runners as they ran in a very low key mountain scramble race. She also has worked as a timer at some of the cross country races our club puts on. She is not one to put on airs, despite her celebrity.

I asked her if she felt any disappointment because she might not have lived up to other people’s expectations of her after her breakthrough performance. She shrugged and said that she does the best she can.

I’m fairly certain that if she can once again get an injury free year, she will match or exceed her one big race. But I also suspect that she will be just fine if it never happens.

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