Mt. Spokane senior runner Klier chooses path of success

Jessica Klier is making a name for herself in the running world.

Now a senior at Mt. Spokane, Klier is a best friend to and running partner of Megan O’Reilly. She saw firsthand what it took to be an elite-caliber runner – the dedication to proper nutrition and rest combined with hard work and year-round training that O’Reilly turned into a lifestyle.

“It means making some choices,” Klier said. “Sure, there are some late movies I’d love to go see with my friends. I’d love to go out for pizza or whatever. But you have to be committed to eating right and getting enough sleep if you’re going to go to the next level.”

The dedication is paying off.

With the Greater Spokane League on a bye week, Mt. Spokane’s attention turned south to two of the biggest cross country meets on the West Coast.

Klier and sophomore Coutney Zalud led Mt. Spokane to a 12th-place finish at last weekend’s Stanford Invitational cross country meet in California and will do the same Saturday at Gresham, Ore., in the Jim Danner Invitational.

Klier wasn’t happy with her performance on the Stanford University course, despite running her fastest opening mile. The senior ran 19 minutes, 37 seconds to finish 62nd. Zalud was 15th at 18:34.

“I think that was the problem,” Klier said. “I went out too fast. You can get carried along by fast pack a little bit and I think that’s what happened. I didn’t realize until later that my first mile was that fast.

“But Courtney ran a great race and did really well. I’m proud of our 12th-place finish.”

Klier plans to learn from last week’s start to improve at Gresham Saturday.

“I have some really high expectations,” she said. “I just want to get better each time out.”

With O’Reilly running at the University of Montana, Klier and her teammates were determined to make the 2006-2007 team better than a year ago, and the invitation to run at the Jim Danner Invitational is a good measure of their success in doing so.

“Last year Megan always won, so we started off every meet with one point,” coach Sean Linder said. “We don’t have that this year, but we’re actually scoring better. The distance between our No. 1 and No. 2 runner is much narrower than it was last year. Where last year Megan would finish first in a big meet and Jessica would be 30th, this year Jessica and Courtney are up there with the leaders.”

College coaches are taking notice.

“I’ve been talking to some college coaches about running for their program next year,” Klier said. “It was so cool to get my first letter and realize, hey, I’m getting recruited.”