Fracture Friday: Val Constien is back

Whenever a shelved runner returns from the depths of injury despair back to international relevance, the message-board pundits of Letsrun.com — one of the globe’s foremost distance-running websites — bestow their highest adulation by posting: “(name of athlete) is back, baby.”

The old Val Constien might have wandered into the cesspool of internet discussion forums to seek such affirmation. Not any more.

A torrid 2021 and 2022, spent riddled with injuries and illness — all while competing as an unsponsored Olympian — taught the Battle Mountain alumna to let go of the high-stakes expectations inherent to track and field and return to her running roots. That is to say, run for herself, for the sake of PR-chasing and to do both with pure joy.

---

---

The formula has worked.

Fresh off winning the USATF indoor championship 3000 meters in Albuquerque in February, she’s currently poised to contend for another global championship roster spot on the hardest Team USA there is to make. Winning races, though, is only half of her injury, recovery and redemption narrative.

---

---

Planting the seeds

Becoming acquainted with Constien’s cinderella story is a prerequisite to understanding her comeback. Unheralded in high school, her best individual finish at a state competition was fourth in the 2013 state cross-country meet. Maybe most telling — and remarkable — is the fact that her only individual school record on the Battle Mountain books is the triple jump. She never made it to Nike Cross Nationals, a scholastic resume item as obvious as a phone number for Division I hopefuls.

“I was kind of just a middle of the road, national runner,” she described. “And even in college — sure, I was an All-American a few times, but it’s not like I was winning a national championship.”

Her Husky days laid an important foundation, though. One which arguably is sustaining her career.

“There’s a lot of similarities between what (Battle Mountain coach Robert) Parish does and some of the top college coaches do,” said Constien, who follows her alma mater on Instagram and was sincerely impressed by the recent performances by Will Brunner, Porter Middaugh and Milaina Almonte at the Arcadia Invitational. Surprised? Not really.

“I feel like every couple of years, there’s a standout athlete that Parish is able to coach into pretty good form,” she said, adding her belief that the coach’s emphasis on strength training — enabling his athletes to complete his difficult workouts week-in and week-out, sans injury — is his secret sauce.

“Parish actually teaches you a lot of great injury prevention exercises and being strong is the best way to stay healthy,” she continued. “Also, the workouts he has athletes do … they’re really hard. He does a really good job of taking a college program and making it work for high school athletes in the Vail Valley.”

Planting those seeds — layer upon layer of consistent training, buoyed by strength work — at a young age was monumental to Constien’s ever-present and always developing introspective analysis. After struggling with injuries off and on throughout college, she finally experienced an extended period of good health in 2021. Months of capillary-expanding miles produced a breakout season of epic proportions.

Her steeplechase time dropped from 9:42.32 at the University of Colorado that April to a 9:35.73 at Mt. SAC in May, a 9:25.53 at Portland Track Festival shortly after, and then, the big one. A shocking third-place at the 2021 U.S. Olympic trials in Eugene, Oregon, in a time of 9:18.34.

To-date her favorite career-moment, Constien miraculously nudged her way onto a once-thought-to-be impregnable team alongside 2017 world champion Emma Coburn — who still has never lost a national steeplechase championship in the 10 iterations she’s raced — and American record-holder and 2017 world silver medalist (and eventual 2020 Olympic silver medalist) Courtney Frerichs. Not thinking Olympics was even a possibility in the build-up, Constien’s performance forced her to stretch her taper through the Tokyo Games. Running on physiological fumes, she navigated the rounds and semifinals and managed a 12-place finish in the final.

Riding an unprecedented wave of success, the then-25-year-old found her surfboard surrounded by sharks that fall as the pressure to prove it all wasn’t a fluke weighed heavily.

The injury, the recovery …the win

“I think the reason I got injured in 2022 was because I was really insecure about my performance,” Constien said.

“A lot of people were like, ‘oh the only reason she made the team was because other people weren’t there or didn’t run well,’ or ‘oh, this was just a flash in the pan, we’ll never really see her run fast again — this was it.'”

The pressure to perform is high enough for the No. 5 runner on a good high school team. Constien was coming off claiming a coveted international spot many figured she only grabbed through presumptive third-wheel Colleen Quigley’s absence. The fact her agent at the time was unable to secure a shoe contract only exasperated the situation.

“That added to the insecurity,” she said.

“There was a ton of pressure. A ton, ton of pressure. And honestly, I wasn’t mature enough probably during or after to really deal with it and that’s why I got injured.”

On April 17 of 2022, she was diagnosed with a stress reaction. The month off from training came at a bad time. The USATF outdoor championships — the meet used to determine the top-three runners who would represent the country at that summer’s IAAF World Championships, being hosted in the U.S. for the first time in history — was two months away.

Constien patiently progressed back into some semblance of fitness when another blow came: on June 10, she contracted COVID. After seven days of rough symptoms and minimal training, she boarded a plane for Eugene, where she placed eighth in the 3,000-meter final. It was far from a rock-bottom moment, but it belied her true abilities enough to elicit a groundbreaking epiphany.

“I’ve done a lot of growing since then, and just thinking about myself and how I fit into this whole crazy world,” Constien reflected. “It’s kind of dark, but I’ve realized that no one really cares and I don’t need to care that much either, like this is just supposed to be fun.”

“That was just a huge shift in my perspective,” she continued.

“And I kind of just let go and tried to have fun like I did as a kid again, and not be so hyper-focused on perfection every single day and super high mileage and all that stuff — and just being like, ‘OK, I’m just going to do what my body tells me to do.”

Whereas the old Val’s calculations yielded a ‘lost workouts equals lost fitness’ equation, now, taking a day or two of rest after noticing a weird foot pain is allowed. Still a volunteer coach at CU, her training environment under coaches Mark Wetmore and Heather Burroughs is almost identical to her days as a Buff.

Easy miles on Monday and Tuesday, with strides ending the latter to wake up the legs. Wednesday is a long interval session — 1-kilometer repeats or longer or perhaps a fartlek on the roads. After a recovery day on Thursday, the team targets race-specific paces in shorter spurts on the track on Friday. The weekend starts with an easy session on Saturday followed by a weekly Sunday long run at an honest clip. For Constien, that’s about 6:30-6:35 per mile pace for 15 miles.

She balances training with her full-time role as a quality assurance specialist at Stryd, a company that produces a wearable device that clips onto running shoes and communicates performance data to the user’s watch. She helps with social media, photo shoots and interviews and also tests the app herself.

“It’s really rewarding; I like it,” she said. The flexibility allows her to mold her training schedule around her Stryd commitments.

“I kind of like having something to do besides just running every day.”

Renewed, refreshed and balanced, Constien would roar around Whittni Morgan, dusting all challengers at the Albuquerque Convention Center on Friday, Feb. 17, to win her first national championship in a time of 8:48.29, a facility record. Considering the venue has housed many USATF championships, the latter fact shouldn’t be brushed off casually.

“I had a broken foot, broken calcaneus, torn plantar, COVID, long-haul COVID — so to be able to turn around and come here and really show everyone how fit and fast I am — it really meant a lot,” Constien said in the post-race interview.

Even though she’d made an Olympics and returned from injury to win a U.S. national title, Constien still found herself unsponsored. When asked — “explain this to me like I’m five” — how such a resume didn’t warrant financial support, she said some of it had to do with timing.

“The world of professional running has changed a ton, and it’s changed a ton in the last couple of years,” she said, adding that the tipping point was 2019 or 2020 — right when she broke through.

“At that point, it really didn’t matter how fast you were, it started to be more about how many other people care about what you’re doing.”

The old metrics — times, medals and global teams — were irrelevant without influencing power and social media followers.

“That shift was something that was super detrimental to me,” Constien said. “Sure, I made the Olympic team, but before I did, I had like a thousand followers on social media, something like that. Just a normal amount.”

Last year, she switched agencies, and within the first few months, negotiations with a brand began. On Thursday, she announced her deal with Nike.

“It’s really cool because it’s just confirmation that I’m not an imposter,” she posted on Instagram. “I deserve this kit.”

Real Redemption

Constien is well aware that injuries are commonplace for endurance athletes.

“Having to sit on the couch, cross train, watch your friends and competitors go race while you’re sitting in a dark room watching it on FloTrack is a bummer. It really sucks,” she said.

“And it feels like a part of your identity is missing, but the cool thing about most of these injuries, at least the ones I’ve had, is I’ve been able to recover from them.”

Such encouragement often falls on deaf ears to individuals in the seemingly endless, often depressingly hopeless meat grinder, but Constien is proof that persevering through injuries is the rough sandpaper sometimes needed to smooth out every runners’ unique essence. Plus, paying attention can prevent future ailments. The Boulder-based runner said the deadly sum of either over-training and under-fueling and “definitely under-strength training” are often her root causes.

“And I’m not saying you have to be hyper-obsessive about making sure that you’re doing everything perfect, but there’s definitely a point in the season where your intensity reaches the highest intensity ever and unless you’re taking kind of some extreme measures to mitigate that stress, you might get hurt,” she said. “And that’s basically what happened to me.”

She’s been “super careful,” this year, limiting her weekly mileage to 10-20 miles less than her international peers. While ‘Huskies’ is no longer emblazoned to her jersey, she’s also hearkened back to those prep days in the sense that strength training and “doing the little things in recovery,” are prioritized.

“This year, the biggest goal would just be to stay healthy for the whole year,” she said. “Staying healthy is the only way you get the opportunity to race, make teams, beat some fast people and hopefully travel the world.”

All those things could be on tap in the coming months. She’ll open her 2023 steeplechase campaign at either the Sound Running Meet on May 6 or the LA Grand Prix on May 27. In June, she hopes to travel to Europe for the first time and get into a Diamond League race or another competitive gold or silver-level event.

Unlike 2021, she won’t peak for the July 8 U.S. outdoor championship steeplechase final, instead planning for her sharpest fitness at the IAAF World Championships August 19-27 in Budapest. With Coburn and Frerichs still around, it won’t be easy. Add in newcomer Courtney Wayment — who posted a 9:09.91 in the Monaco Diamond League last year and is some pundit’s reasonable bet to win the whole thing — and making the team sounds about as impossible as it did in 2021. Constien is up for the challenge and to be frank, isn’t stressing too much about anything.

“I kind of have gold fish brain,” she laughed when asked about her source of her intrinsic motivation.

“I don’t really think about things too long, I just kind of go with the flow. If coach tells me to go for an 8-mile run, I go for an 8-mile run and I try not to think about it too hard.”

A satisfying time would be 9:08 or faster, but Constien isn’t about to limit her career trajectory.

“I don’t like to think that far in the future. I just want to take it one year at a time,” she said.

For Constien’s fracture Friday narrative, injury was a blessing in disguise, recovery a means to reset her perspective.

Redemption?

Real redemption wasn’t a first national title and it won’t look like another podium, global team or juicy contract. It’s basking in the sound of gravel underfoot on South Boulder Trail, her favorite running spot. It’s hopping over steeple barriers — and every other barrier — with a smile.

“(Running) makes me happy and I want to just keep following that vein of happiness.”

Alright, we’ll type it.

Val Constien is back, baby.