Two and a half years ago, San Diego State senior heptathlete Jenna Fee Feyerabend was running and tripped over a large nail left in the grass by maintenance workers, severely spraining her ankle.
To keep training and competing, Fee Feyerabend began compensating on her right side. The adjustment eventually led to a stress reaction in her spine, triggering a chain of injuries that lingered over multiple seasons on the track.
“It was horrible, because the only reason I moved to the U.S. was to continue running track
while earning a degree,” Fee Feyerabend, a native of Groß-Gerau, Germany, said. “Fifty percent of my identity and purpose was suddenly stripped away. There was also the sadness and everything leading up to the accident that I try to remind myself I couldn’t have done anything different about. It was an accident, but it was definitely hard for me.”
Fee Feyerabend capped her comeback in May by winning her third Mountain West heptathlon title and setting a meet record with 5,905 points.
Heading into next week’s NCAA Outdoor Championships in Eugene, Oregon, Aztec track and field head coach Sheila Burrell was blunt when reflecting on Fee Feyerabend’s early years in the program.
“There was some crying,” Burrell said. “It wasn’t easy. It wasn’t always pleasant. There was
pushback: ‘This is what you’ve got to do. This is what I want you to do.’”
Burrell pointed to a cultural divide, noting that Fee Feyerabend arrived in San Diego with an approach to track and field shaped by European sensibilities.
“Europeans approach sport a little bit differently than Americans do,” Burrell said. “Being able to acknowledge that and bring her into my way of thinking, while also respecting her
perspective, has been part of the process. In the United States, in Division I track and field, you compete whether you feel good or not. It’s a very intense, cutthroat environment. Europeans tend to be more technical and more selective about when they compete. Here, we have so many good athletes that it’s more like, ‘just go run.’”
Fee Feyerabend said the demands of the seven-event heptathlon have shaped how she thinks about performance and resilience. She described mental strength as partly innate, but it’s also an aspect of her training that she approaches with the same seriousness as her physical preparation.
“The heptathlon is one of the craziest events that there is in the track and field world,” she said, “because it consists of seven different events that are completely different from each other.”
“I have a mental coach and I work with a psychologist,” she said. “That takes the awareness
that mental strength has to be built and taken seriously, just like physical strength. Sometimes it’s hard, but I’m building that experience. When I show up every day, I can get better. If I don’t show up, I don’t give myself that chance.”
A two-time NCAA All-American, Fee Feyerabend holds school records in both the indoor
pentathlon and outdoor heptathlon. Her best events are the high jump and javelin.
“They’re the most aesthetic,” she said. “At the same time, they just seem the most natural to me.”
At the NCAA Championships starting Wednesday, Fee Feyerabend will line up against the top heptathletes in the country, but she said her focus remains on competing against herself.
“I never try to go against another person, because that seems a little uncontrollable,” she said. “You never know what someone else is going to do. What if they have a bad day? Then you can’t really go against them anymore.
“So I think it’s just you against you. I like to say it’s me with me. It’s about being in my own bubble and taking that experience in.”
Fee Feyerabend will return in the fall as a graduate student for one final indoor season.
