Catching Up With ...
        Father-son soccer duo Mark and Jeffrey Collings (June 17)
        Track record holder and longtime SPU leader John Glancy (June 24)


By MARK MOSCHETTI
Seattle Pacific Sports Information
 
BOULDER, Colo. – During her days at Seattle Pacific, Jessica Pixler ran through painful back and femur injuries.
 
After relocating to Colorado, she ran through an injured ankle.
 
She even ran through a broken foot in the last mile of an NCAA championship race.
 
But despite all that determination to keep going, it was hard not to notice the stop sign that seemed to be front of her highly successful career.
 
Yeah, well …
 
Pixler ran through that, too.
 
 "I definitely almost quit quite a few times," she said. "When it came down to that, I never felt I had fully reached my potential in running.
 
"I felt like I had unfinished business."
 
PIxler – now Jessica Tebo – ultimately did stop.  
Nowadays, it's all green lights – and absolutely no speed limits – as the talented 28-year-old goes about trying to finish some of that business. The next exit on her long journey is for Historic Hayward Field in Eugene, Ore., where she will run in the 5,000 meters at the United States Olympic Team Track & Field Trials.
 
The preliminary heats are on Thursday, July 7 at 4:20 p.m. From there, 16 will advance to the finals, set for 4:28 p.m. on Sunday the 10th. (Click on this link for Tracktown USA's fan information page.)

The top three placers in the finals earn tickets to the Rio Games in August.
 
"I'm just excited for the opportunity to race at the Trials," Tebo said. "I've struggled a lot with injuries the past four or five years. It has been hard for me to sometimes make it to the starting line of a race.
 
"The fact that it looks like I am going to be there and be healthy and fit, that's a huge blessing."
 
FROM SEA LEVEL TO ROCKY MOUNTAIN HIGH
The success Tebo enjoyed while at Seattle Pacific from 2006-10 made her the most highly decorated athlete in school history. Her final haul included 12 NCAA Division II championships: three in cross country, six in indoor track, and three in outdoor track. She also won 19 Great Northwest Athletic Conference crowns: four cross, nine indoor, six outdoor.

 

Her athletic abilities, combined with her classroom smarts (a 3.93 grade-point average in earning her undergrad English degree), also led to numerous major honors that reflected both areas: an NCAA postgraduate scholarship, the prestigious NCAA Walter Byers Postgraduate Scholarship, four consecutive SPU Athlete of the Year awards, along with the GNAC Female Athlete and Female Scholar-Athlete of the Year awards as a senior in 2010.
 
"She has been given a lot of talent, which she has used wisely," former Falcons coaching legend Doris Heritage said. "When you use the talent you've been given by God, you can become a good example for others, and a good role model.
 
"She has many talents – running is just one of them," Heritage added.
 
Because of the back and femur injuries, Tebo was not able to compete in outdoor track as a sophomore in 2008. She took that remaining year of eligibility – and those two post-grad scholarships – to Colorado to work on her master's degree in curriculum and instruction for grades K-12, and to run for the Buffs.

 

It was there where she re-injured her ankle. (The first time it happened was while doing both soccer and cross country at SPU as a freshman in 2006.) This time, it required major surgery, and limited her to just three meets in 2011.

Tebo was granted another year of eligibility, and did some big things with it. Not the least of those was a time of 15:19.43 in the 5K in the Payton Jordan Cardinal Invitational at Stanford, a mark which led the NCAA, ranked No. 2 in Colorado history and qualified her for the 2012 Olympic Trials.
 
She concluded her college career with an All-American third-place 5,000 finish at the NCAA Division I meet – running the last mile after suffering a broken foot in mid-race.
 
But while many might have ended their careers at that point, Tebo wasn't ready for that.
 
"I think something you don't realize coming out of college is that post-collegiate running is a long haul," she said. "There's going to be a lot of ups and downs."
 
THEY STILL BELIEVED IN HER
It might not have seemed like it at the time, but it during one of those "downs" when Tebo actually got started on the way back up. In 2011, she had a near-complete reconstruction on her ankle.
 
"With my ankle not being at 100 percent, I think that caused a lot of the other issues I had to deal with," she said. "It has taken up to this year for my ankle to feel normal again."
 
One thing Tebo didn't have to deal with was lack of support. She had plenty of people in her corner, especially Colorado coaches Mark Wetmore and Heather Burroughs, and even former Seattle Pacific coaches Erika Daligcon and Heritage.
 
"After some of the rough, injured seasons I've had, I don't know how many coaches would want to work with an athlete," she said. "I was lucky to have people who still wanted to work with me and help me. And Doris and Erika continued to provide emotional support."
 
As Burroughs sees it, any coach anywhere would want to get behind someone such as Tebo.
 
"What has impressed us is how well she can run after six months (off from) training," she said. "It hasn't been a perfect four years, but she is getting in very good shape right now. That certainly speaks to her talent and her resiliency – because she certainly has other options in life."
 
In fact, what Burroughs calls being in "very good shape," Tebo calls something even more than that.
 
"I'm probably in the best shape of my life right now," she said. "I'm running workouts faster than I have in a very long time – maybe faster than I have, period. We're just starting to back off (of training). I really trust my coaches when it comes to tapering – they're very smart about that."
 
TOOK AWHILE – BUT SHE'S FINALLY THERE
When the broken foot from the NCAA finals kept away from the 2012 Trials in Eugene, Tebo couldn't even bring herself to watch on TV.
 
Once again, though, it was only a delay – not a reason to stop. And this time, in addition all of the support from Colorado coaches Wetmore and Burroughs, she had someone else at her side: husband Matt Tebo, himself an All-American 5K runner, whom she met after transferring to the school in 2010.

 

"Matt has been really good about teaching me to respect the limits of my body a little bit more," she said. "He has been really good with helping me to be more smart and respecting the work that I've put into this – and respecting the need to back off at times."
 
Tebo secured a 2016 Trials spot on May 20 at the Hoka One Middle Distance Classic in Los Angeles. She clocked 15 minutes, 21.88 seconds to finish second in the 5K and get under the 'A' standard time of 15:24.00.
 
As she heads off to Eugene, that time has Tebo 52nd on the world list and 13th among the 23 Americans who are slated to run next Thursday. The top three U.S. times currently belong to Molly Huddle (14:48.14), Emily Infeld (15:00.91) and Abby D'Agostino (15:03.85).
 
Tebo is keeping the pressure dialed down as low as possible.
 
"I know where I'm at fitness-wise, my coaches know where I'm at fitness-wise. I'm heading into the race with that knowledge," she said. "I want to race in a smart way – place as high as possible, race as fast as possible, and be really smart about doing it."

 

Daligcon, SPU's head cross country coach from 2007-12, says that kind of approach is one of Tebo's strong suits.

"Running is an important part of her life – but it's a part," Daligcon said. "I think that has helped her keep her perspective and get her this far."
 
Added Colorado's Burroughs, "She has stayed healthy as the season has progressed, so I'm hoping she can run beyond what she has done before."
 
Where to from here? Tebo still wants to teach, though she isn't sure at what level. Of course, she'll keep running, too. She'll decide after the Trials to what extent.
 
"Matt and I are keeping open minds," she said. "We've put in a ton into this just to make it to the Trials. I've really scrapped to make it here and fought pretty hard. We'll kind of see how things go. I always tell people that Matt and I tend to fly by the seat of our pants a little bit – that kind of works for us.
 
"We just try to enjoy the process and enjoy the journey."
 
Even if that journey sometimes means running through an injury …
 
… or running through a stop sign.