When Emma Coburn lined up for the steeplechase at the LA Track Fest on the evening of May 23, it had been more than two years since she had raced her signature event — and even longer since she had finished one healthy. Coburn, 35, did not run any steeples in 2025 due to a nagging hamstring injury, and in her lone steeple of 2024, she broke her ankle landing in the water jump at the Shanghai Diamond League. That injury caused Coburn to miss the 2024 Olympic Trials, costing her the chance to make a fourth Olympic team and ending a streak of seven straight Olympic/Worlds appearances.
Even Coburn’s last steeplechase finish, in the prelims of the 2023 World Championships in Budapest, ended in pain as she wound up tearing her hamstring. So it was a big deal to see the greatest female steepler in US history finally healthy and on a start line again last month. Coburn led the early laps of the race in LA and finish 3rd in 9:23.87 (#6 in the US this year), a time that would have been faster had she not fallen on the final water jump.
Plenty has changed during Coburn’s two-year absence from the steeple. In October 2024, she and her husband/coach Joe B0osshard became parents when their daughter, Betty, was born via surrogate. Recently, Coburn picked up a new training partner, 23-year-old US Olympian Parker Valby, who has been coached by Bosshard since January. And at the global level, the women’s steeple has only gotten faster, with five of the six sub-8:50 times in history having been run in the last two years.
Last week, LetsRun.com caught up with Coburn over the phone to discuss her comeback, training with Valby, life as a mom, and what motivated Coburn to return for a 13th season as a professional athlete.
LRC: This was your first race of any kind in 15 months. And in your last two steeples, you tore your hamstring at Worlds in Budapest and then broke your ankle in Shanghai. So what were the feelings as you were on the start line for this race in LA?
EC: It had been a while, obviously. And I think that probably people were maybe more nervous for me than I was. Joe had just really put in a lot of work at preparing my hamstring to be able to handle this. My ankle, honestly, has been fine ever since probably a month after I broke it. So that’s been fine. It’s the hamstring from the 2023 tear that’s been problematic and that took me out of racing last season as well.
So we, just behind the scenes, have been really working on that. Really diligent in the weight room and rehab, doing a lot of pretend water jumps in our gym, doing real water jumps. And so from that perspective, I didn’t feel nervous or apprehensive of the race from that health component because I just knew we were pretty rock-solid on that front.
And then just the regular pre-race butterflies, but I felt excited and confident. And overall, I think it was a good day.
Embed from Getty Images
Did you hurdle at all in 2024 and 2025?
So 2024 I was doing some hurdling at the end of the summer. I was trying to get into some late-season steeples, just by the time I was healthy enough with my ankle and confident enough in my fitness to inquire about some of those races, the fields were full, so it didn’t work out.
And then 2025, yeah, I did a lot of hurdling and water jump practice. And my hamstring started acting up on me again. I was signed up for a couple Diamond Leagues but had to pull out because my hamstring started being problematic. I never got imaging, but I was definitely injured to some extent.
And so this year, the very first water jump I did was in Gainesville when I was training there with Parker for a month in March, and I used the UF track. I was certainly a little nervous the first time I did a real water jump, but my body’s been feeling good and feeling healthy. I wasn’t nervous from the injury perspective this year, even though of course that would be a natural feeling given my history.
In the race, you led a number of early laps. You end up 3rd in 9:23, and that includes a fall on the final water jump. How did you feel about the race as a whole?
The goal was to start fast. Obviously, if we had just set out at maybe 9:20 splits early on, we could have maybe finished a little stronger. But the goal was to run hard. We had pace lights, but we didn’t have a pacer, so the plan was for me to lead the first three laps and try and be ahead of the pace lights. And I felt great. And then the plan was for [training partner] Gabbi [Jennings] to take the next couple laps. Eventually, Elise Thorner took the lead, and she had a great day.
Overall, I’m happy with the race. My last 200 was pretty poor, and I think that cost me my goal of running sub-9:20. Obviously taking a tumble on the last water jump just kills all your momentum. But I think I didn’t need a glorious last 200 split to be able to break 9:20. I just needed to not mess up.
Unfortunately, it’s just been three years since I’ve had a tired last water jump, my seventh water jump of the day. Just unfamiliar with that feeling and just need to be a bit stronger and better on that next time. But it was good overall.
You’re 35 and you’ve accomplished almost everything there is to do in this sport. What is still driving you at this point in your career?
A little bit of the fact that 2023 ended with tearing my hamstring. I had injured it initially before USAs and was dealing with that all summer, and then really injured it during the race at Worlds. And so 2023, just feeling like I didn’t get what I wanted out of it. And of course 2024, breaking my ankle in the first race of the season and then last year not getting a chance to really compete.
I just feel like even though, yes, I’m 35, I haven’t really run a big, full track season since I was 32. So I just feel like I’m not done yet. And as long as Joe and I can keep my body strong and healthy and moving well, then I feel like there’s room for me to improve and room for me to still be one of the best in the country at this event.
The standards for the 2027 World Championships just came out, and the auto standard in the women’s steeple is 9:06.50, which is a time only four Americans have ever hit. What do you think about that and World Athletics’ attempts to put more emphasis on these world rankings?
Frankly in the US, to make the team, you have to be capable of running 9:06. We’ve had a lot of American girls run those sub-9:10 performances. I think a lot of us are always knocking at the door of that standard anyway if we’re trying to make a team. So for us, that’s certainly a fast time, but I don’t think it is going to dramatically change who is making the US team.
I’m sure there are other event areas and other athletes and other countries that this is dramatically affecting, but for the women’s steeple, I feel like you have to be pretty close to that anyway to make the team. And my observation is even if you’re a 9:08 girl and you get top-3, you’re most likely going to have enough performances that you’re going to be fine on rankings anyway.
It didn’t stress me out. I saw those times, and I was like, ‘Oh wow, that’s fast, that’s faster than it’s been.’ But I didn’t think it was unfair or crazy or anything like that.
Coburn with Courtney Frerichs and Val Constien in 2021 after making her third Olympic team (Adam Eberhardt for TrackTown USA)
The women’s steeple as an event, globally, has really progressed significantly over the last few years. This year alone, we’ve already got five women under 9:00; we’ve got three at 8:51 or faster. Do you think it’s possible for you to get back to the level where you are contending for medals again?
The interesting thing is, now that there is such density of the sub-9:00 women, it definitely makes those global championships look a little bit different. But anything is possible. Again, to be one of the best in the US, you have to be sub-9:05, you have to be in 9:00 shape. And I know a lot of us Americans have felt that we’ve been close to that [American record] area (Courtney Frerichs‘ 8:57.77), fitness-wise. And if you’re a 9:00 person at a global championship, anything can happen.
Specifically for me, there’s a lot of my training that feels the best it’s ever been. And of course you have to add the age element, knowing that not everything is going to look the same as it used to. But I’m not counting myself out for anything. I think if I train smart and I can stay healthy, then anything is possible in terms of what my goals are. But yeah, it’s definitely fast up front these days.
You’ve got a relatively new training partner in Parker Valby, who also ran a great race in LA on Saturday. How did that relationship begin?
We’ve been friends from afar for a while. And then when she had an injury last year, we were both hurt last summer and cross-training and commiserating over that – misery loves company. She ended up coming out to Colorado for the month of August, just because we were both not competing and we were both, really, just starting running again. And she was starting training and workouts and everything.
We spent a month together in Crested Butte, and our friendship grew from there. I feel like when you live with someone for a month, you pretty much realize if you click or not. And we clicked. We have a ton of similarities, and she is such a great friend, a really good person. Takes great care of Betty, she’s a great roommate, and obviously just an incredible competitor. She’s really easy to be around, and I just have been really lucky to be around her and get to train with her.
Last summer is when we were spending more time together, but Joe didn’t start coaching her until 2026.
Embed from Getty Images
And how does that arrangement work? It looked like in addition to her coming to Colorado, you also spent some time in Florida this year as well.
Joe wanted me to get a little sea level and humidity training in, and I was on board. We went to Florida for a month, and it was great. Gainesville’s a really good running town for a distance runner. I was pleasantly surprised. I’m glad we left when we did because it was starting to get so humid and hot for me, little mountain girl.
But it’s a great place to train, really enjoyed it. It was great, and then we came back to Colorado and are just continuing on.
Do you feel like a mentor to her? And do you enjoy that role?
I’m not going to put myself in that category. But we’re definitely very close friends, and she’s someone who I care a lot about. And I think you could see that with how happy I was with her 5k in LA. Just really proud seeing the work that she puts in and the patience and dedication. And I feel that proud of Gabbi when Gabbi performs well, or any Team Boss teammate over the years.
But yeah, we’re really close friends and I love training with her and being around her. And if I can guide her in any way, that’s great, but she’s a smart girl and she knows how to work hard. I certainly don’t have to teach her how to work or how to be disciplined or how to be dedicated. She’s excellent in those areas.
This is your first real full season getting to run as a mom. You and Joe became parents via surrogacy in the fall of 2024, last year you were mostly injured. How does life look different from a training and racing perspective now that you’re a mom?
I’m really lucky that Joe is my coach, because he’s very involved with taking care of Betty. A lot of the difficult sides of parenting that would make training hard – kids getting sick, kids not sleeping, that kind of stuff – Joe pretty much takes the brunt of that type of hard stuff. So I’m lucky there.
There’s definitely been a couple times that you get a bad night’s sleep or your baby throws up on you and you hope you don’t get sick. There’s things like that that only other parents can understand. But in general, it’s just been so wonderful. She’s so fun. I have my training and then coming home and getting to see her and spend time with her and take her to the park, all of that just makes the day so happy and fulfilled and so much bigger than myself and what my run was and what my workout was. Seeing her grow and thrive, it puts everything into perspective of what’s really important and what’s not.
I’m still incredibly focused and dedicated to my job and running fast, and I want to provide for her and make her proud, so it adds more importance to the running element in those ways. But it also adds more importance to, just, life. You just have a different perspective.
That’s really wonderful to hear. Last question: what does your race schedule look like for the rest of the season? When will we see you next, and will you be running USAs?
I will be running USAs, and I will be at the USATF LA Grand Prix on June 14 for another steeple. I’m excited and hopefully can just chip away a little bit of time, work on a couple things that I failed to succeed on in the previous race. A couple more weeks and I’ll be back at it for the steeple.
PakarPBN
A Private Blog Network (PBN) is a collection of websites that are controlled by a single individual or organization and used primarily to build backlinks to a “money site” in order to influence its ranking in search engines such as Google. The core idea behind a PBN is based on the importance of backlinks in Google’s ranking algorithm. Since Google views backlinks as signals of authority and trust, some website owners attempt to artificially create these signals through a controlled network of sites.
In a typical PBN setup, the owner acquires expired or aged domains that already have existing authority, backlinks, and history. These domains are rebuilt with new content and hosted separately, often using different IP addresses, hosting providers, themes, and ownership details to make them appear unrelated. Within the content published on these sites, links are strategically placed that point to the main website the owner wants to rank higher. By doing this, the owner attempts to pass link equity (also known as “link juice”) from the PBN sites to the target website.
The purpose of a PBN is to give the impression that the target website is naturally earning links from multiple independent sources. If done effectively, this can temporarily improve keyword rankings, increase organic visibility, and drive more traffic from search results.
