Colleen Quigley is chasing her second trip to the Olympics, a chase that almost ended long ago. She sets high standards as a runner. Those standards almost ended her career at its beginning.

As a 10-year-old, she ran 2:52 in the half mile at a grade school meet in St. Louis. That time would win most grade school meets, but not this one. Colleen finished second.

Soon, she announced her retirement from running. Remember, she was 10.

This announcement was big news in the Quigley family. Her brother, Dan, was a superb runner who earned a scholarship to Missouri. Her father, Gaylerd, is a highly successful high school track coach who carefully, but never intrusively, trained his daughter.

Was dad surprised by the retirement?

“Yes, yes,” Gaylerd said with a laugh from St. Louis. “But she always hated to lose.”

On Thursday afternoon, Colleen took care to clean a glass-top table at her rented home in Woodland Park before sitting down to discuss a running career that is soaring. She finished eighth at the 2016 Rio Olympics in the excruciatingly tough steeplechase, which consists of 3,000 meters, 28 hurdles and water jumps. It’s a weird and wonderful competition to watch, if not run.

Since early January, Colleen has trained in the Colorado Springs area and spends most mornings running with her teammates along the Santa Fe Trail. If you see a collection of youthful runners sprinting the trail, it’s probably this collection of Olympic hopefuls.

“I was resistant to becoming a runner,” she said in a big room with a view of Pikes Peak. “I didn’t dream of competing in the Olympics. I didn’t really have a good concept of what the Olympics were.

“Every Olympian’s story is different, and mine is not one of me dreaming of it ever since I was a little girl.”

As an eighth-grader, she returned to running. Gaylerd welcomed her change of heart, even though he never pushed the return. She grew into a dominating high school runner, winning the 1,600 and 3,200 state titles as a senior.

But, again, her running career was in peril.

From the age of 13, Colleen worked as a model. After high school graduation, she faced a life-defining choice: Move to New York to tackle modeling full time or take a college scholarship and pursue running?

Gaylerd, by phone, sighed the concerned sigh of a father.

“I was trying not to really influence her too much, but my thought was this is a great chance to get a college education,” he said. “I knew it was going to be difficult to ever come back to running. And that world of modeling, I feared bad things. We were really careful with her.”

When Colleen traveled to New York to work as a teen, Gaylerd said, one of her parents always joined her.

Running prevailed, again. Colleen picked Florida State and quickly realized she chose correctly. She remembers vividly a moment from early in her freshman year. She was sitting in her dorm room, overwhelmed by her satisfaction.

“Damn,” she said to herself, “I could have really messed this up. I came close to not coming. Thank God I did.”

Later in her freshman year, coach Karen Harvey intently watched Colleen at practice. Harvey saw a promising distance runner, but she saw an even more promising steeplechase athlete.

Competing in the steeplechase requires endurance and strength and improvisational skills. Colleen had spent much of her life as a dancer and soccer forward. She had not only been taking lefts on the track.

She quickly showed Harvey was right. Colleen finished 5th in the NCAA steeplechase as a freshman and triumphed as a senior.

Competing in Rio cemented Colleen’s resolve to keep running. After graduation, she dedicated a year of her life to the Olympics. After Rio, she dedicated the next decade of her life to the steeplechase. She’s probable to compete in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. Medaling is another story. She estimates a runner will need to flirt with nine minutes flat to earn a medal. Her best time is 9:10.27.

“I don’t want this to stop now,” she said. “I guess what changed was going to Rio and experiencing the whole thing and just having my eyes opened to the possibilities. … I didn’t see this for myself, but now that I’m here I can’t imagine making any other choice. This is an amazing thing.”

Gaylerd traveled to Rio to watch Colleen in the steeplechase final. It was, he said, “really surreal” to see his daughter competing on the world’s ultimate athletic stage.

After the race, he hugged the young woman who quit running at 10.

“I’m so proud of you,” he said. “You ran your heart out.”