October 5, 2024
You may think we’re a couple of jackasses for running a 5K in Idaho in October. But it’s not our fault. That was the name of the race.
Saturday, October 5, saw us running the Jackass 5K in Kellogg, Idaho. Put on by the Silver Valley Chamber of Commerce, this race had two out of the ordinary features: it had a point-to-point course, and it had a rolling start.
We’ve run races where the finish line was in a different spot than the starting line, but it was still in the vicinity of the starting line in those races. This was the first true point-to-point 5K of our trip. The race finished three miles away from where it started.
The first 2.5 miles were a straight shot along the paved Trail of the Coeur d’Alenes, which paralleled the Coeur d’Alene River and Interstate 90. The last half mile made five turns through the streets of Kellogg. The first 2.5 miles were on a slight downhill pitch, which made the running seem easy. The last half mile was on a serious uphill, which was an unpleasant shock to the system after the fast-flying gravity assist of the first 2.5 miles. The first 2.5 miles made you feel like you could run all day. The last half mile made you want the running to stop.
The rolling start was a first for us. Rather than having a mass start, where everyone began running at “Go”, runners were shuttled to the starting line and told they could start anytime between 11:00 and 11:30. (The chip timing system recorded when each runner crossed the start line and finish line, ensuring accurate times for each runner regardless of when they started.)
The reason for the rolling start was presumably to keep the running/biking path from getting bottlenecked, and to help prevent the 5K runners from creating an obstacle for the half marathon runners, who were already on the path and overlapping with the 5k runners.
The rolling start made the run feel like a time trial – just you against the course and the clock. It also made it so you didn’t know where you stood place-wise during the race or at the finish line. But the results eventually came in. And when they did, we learned how we did.
Julie was 14th overall out of 180 finishers. She finished 2nd of 31 in her age group, and was the 4th of 133 female finishers.
Ryan… Well, whaddya know. Ryan finished 1st overall. What a Jackass.
Detailed Race Report for Running Nerds
Ryan came into this race with an instinct. There’s no other way to put it. He just felt something. Julie noticed it before the race started. We had been taking it easy in terms of running since our last race, which was now two weeks ago. Neither of us had worked too hard in the Alaska race. And between there and here we had been on the cruise for a week and barely got in a couple of runs. But Ryan was behaving before this race like it really meant something. He wasn’t over the top about it. It was a lot of little things that Julie noticed. He just had this instinct and he was stepping up to it.
Julie did not have that instinct. That would come back to bite her. Big time.
When the race shuttle dropped us off at the starting line, where a small party was in progress, Ryan immediately got to warming up. Because it was essentially a time trial race, where you are running against yourself and the clock, he wanted to really work up his focus and get locked in. And because it was a rolling start, he felt no urgency to get started, thinking he could use the extra time for a little more warming up. He also wanted to give the crowd some time to thin out so he would have more room to run on the running path. That plan worked for the most part, but he still had to do a little crowd navigating along the way.
Because this was a rolling start, people were not necessarily lining up according to their speed. So even though the crowd thinned out a bit by the time Ryan started, it wasn’t too long until he caught up to the masses and had to bob and weave through the runners filling up the multi-use paved pathway.
The path was not clogged, per se, but it was uncanny how many times people would move out in front of him just as he came upon them to pass, or be arranged in just such a way as to make it difficult to get through the crowd.
The fact that the course was straight and had a slight downhill grade for the first 2.5 miles gave Ryan that enjoyable feeling of going fast. He was feeling good for those first 2.5 miles. Then he turned and went up the hill for the last half mile. After feeling great in the first 2.5 miles, navigating the hills with the unseen end in the last half mile made him ready for the race to be over. He was definitely feeling it in that last half mile, and the uphill slowed his mile pace by a good 20-30 seconds.
Julie had started at the beginning of the rolling start, maybe six or so minutes before Ryan. He didn’t run fast enough to pass her before the finish line, but he caught up to her enough to see her cross the finish line a hundred or so yards ahead of him.
Ryan clocked in at a 22:25 on a course that measured a legitimate 5K by our watches, making it his fastest race on the trip with an average pace of 7:13. His first mile was a
7:22, followed by a 7:07, and then a very respectable 7:14 for a third mile that included the brutal half mile uphill at the end. He kicked it in at a 6:23 pace for the last 0.12 miles.
Julie, on the other hand, came into the race with no instincts and feeling as casual as can be. She was rested and feeling pretty easy-going on the trail, running the first mile at an easy 8:57 with a 137 heart rate. Because it was a rolling start, she had no sense of the what the field was. So when she started to heat up near the beginning of mile two, she figured, hey, this one is just a jog, so she stopped to take her extra layer off to enjoy a cooler finish. This added 30 to 40 seconds onto an otherwise casual run time. While doing so, she accidentally stopped her watch, splitting her race record up into two. She clocked the next measured mile at an 8:47, feeling strong and relaxed and just enjoying the beautiful scenery. That is, of course, until all of her focus was needed to get up that half mile hill at the end. She finished at a respectable 9:02 pace, which included the steep hill, thanks to stopping to walk a few times to catch her breath going up the hill.
She crossed the finish line with her usual sprint. This time it was easy, since the last few hundred yards of the race were a forgiving downhill across the threshold of the finish line.
When standing in line after the race for the on-site screen-printed t-shirts, we were discussing our races. This particular race was only giving medals to the top three finishers for male and female. We were discussing when to leave and Julie suggested we leave anytime. She asked Ryan his race time. A great race time for him, but with such a big field, she figured there had to be plenty of sub 20-minute finishers.
“You won’t place in the overall. And they don’t have age group medals,” Julie said, not meaning to sound discouraging, just thinking that was the likely situation.
Ryan had more faith in himself, his instincts just as strong now as they had been the whole day.
They read through the overall male winners. Number 3 wasn’t Ryan. Number 2 wasn’t Ryan. Julie was thinking, okay, let’s go now.
But WAIT! The number one Jackass in Kellogg, Idaho, was RYAN GALLIVAN!
What?! Julie thought, overwhelming with pride and shame at the same time. So proud of her Jackass husband and so ashamed of her actual jackass behavior of not having faith in her guy!
Well, Julie got her just desserts later over lunch when Ryan was reading through the race results and noticed that she missed 3rd place overall for females by 5.4 seconds and 2nd place overall female by 8.2 seconds. This was well within the 20-30 seconds her casual mid-race stop to take off her extra layer, a stop she made because she had zero instincts of where she stood and figured she’d easily be in the middle of such a big pack. Not not only that, the #1 overall female time was a time she could have easily beaten if she’d decided to actually run this one with a time that she beats anytime she runs a race like a race. Well, woulda, shoulda, coulda. Ryan and Julie both got to end the day feeling like Jackasses, just two different kinds.
No matter what kind of Jackass we each were, we both left with smiles on our faces after a fun run on a beautiful sunny day, and with a solid metal jackass medal around our necks. For those still counting, that’s Ryan 14 – Julie 8.
R and J in the USA 
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