The star track athlete was back in Forbes last week on her summer break visiting family as it’s an off-year for the biennial world championships in her discipline.

Between catching up with family – and doing a few casual 19km runs around the area - Jess gave us a bit of an update on how things are going.

She reckons life in Florida, where she is studying at University of Floria in Gainsville, is awesome.

“I’m loving it,” she said.

Jess has just finished the track season with her college sweeping both the men’s and women’s championships for the first time – it’s the first time in nearly 10 years any college has taken out both titles.

In the college system, each athlete’s results go to their team points total – and it’s the team that wins.

Jess herself says her training and running has stepped up to a whole new level, maybe “1000 new levels” she laughs, in the past two years. 

As a College student on a track scholarship, she is treated as an elite athlete while studying the equivalent of PDHPE teaching in Australia.

It’s resulting in some big changes for her.

“I have a new coach and he says I’m a 10km runner, so he has moved me up to 10km,” Jess said. 

Jess predominantly competed in 3km to 5km runs in Australia and when she relocated to the States – the 10km event is quite different and athletes typically don’t peak in performance until their late 20s.

“The quality of runners is probably the same as the top end of competitors here, but the numbers are huge,” Jess said.

In some races, Jess is one of 500 at the starting line. 

“In one race, 50 girls finished within 10 seconds,” she said.

That was one of the reasons Jess wanted to go to the States, while competing in Australia she quite often trained in isolation and was keen for more competitors to push her. 

Jess, who who started her studies in Canberra after completing high school in Forbes, has three years left to train and study.

She was given a scholarship for a four-year degree, but spent one year sidelined with injury.

It’s been a long journey, but she’s now got a comprehensive program of prehabilitation to manage that throughout her running career.