There is almost no tightness in her small, slender frame as she paces around the track.

Her stride looks as fluid as ever and shows only the slightest hesitation as she approaches the top end of her break-neck pace.

Everything may look right as she glides down the track, but Lisa Koll isn’t ready.

“I don’t feel totally normal yet,” Koll said. “Running isn’t completely comfortable yet, but I think a lot of that is just in my head.”

Koll — a junior from Fort Dodge and the defending national champion in the 10,000-meter run — has been kept out of competition since the ISU Open in January due to a lingering lower-back injury.

She has been rehabbing the injury since mid-February, but for much of that time the injury has kept her from even training every day, greatly slowing the comeback process.

Now, however, she is close to 100 percent healthy and is trying to get back in to race shape.

“I’m never, ever going to say again that I’m injury-free because I’d need to knock on some wood if I did that,” Koll joked. “But now my injury is not hindering my training at all.”

The training Koll speaks of is as intense as ever.

She has returned to running 70 miles per week, but is having only two intense workouts each week.

With each workout that she manages to get through healthy, Koll gets a little more comfortable running at competition speed.

“I have a good base, and even fitness-wise I even feel comfortable going out and doing long-tempo runs,” Koll said. “The only thing I need to get back right now is speed and getting comfortable with running fast again.”

Koll emphasized she did not want to rush back into competition, and made sure to say she would not risk the big picture for a comeback too early in the season.

There is one meet in the middle of the season, however, that could be too tantalizing to pass up for a competitor like her.

On April 22-25 in Des Moines, the Drake Relays will come calling to the nation’s elite, and both Koll and her coach have that weekend circled on their calendars marking the ideal time for her to begin her outdoor campaign.

“I would like her to be back that weekend, whether it be at Drake or somewhere else,” coach Corey Ihmels said.

Ihmels — who was hired on as the head track and field coach two seasons ago — has been working with Koll since her freshman year in cross country, and been working with her on the track for the last two seasons.

“We’re just going to see how things progress, but I think she’ll be ready to go by that time,” Ihmels said.

There are just under three weeks of preparation between now and the Relays, if Koll does decide to begin her 10k title defense on the famed blue surface at Drake.

But, Koll isn’t concerned as much with the pageantry of the mega-meet so much as she is concerned with her overall preparation for the outdoor season, namely the end-of-season championships.

She said earlier in the week she would definitely be back in time for the Big 12 Outdoor Championships in mid-May, but seemed confident that she would be able to return much earlier than that.

Ihmels also had a great deal of confidence in his star runner and her preparations for the road ahead.

“The good thing about Lisa is, she’s not going to need a lot of races,” Ihmels said.

“She’s working as hard as I’ve ever seen her, so in that respect I think she’s going to be pretty tough to beat.” Koll’s focus right now, though, is to continually push herself farther and harder every day, so she can get into shape more quickly and efficiently.

That push constantly puts her patience at odds.

She knows she cannot work too quickly, or risk everything she has worked so hard for thus far. “Sometimes I think ‘Oh, what’s wrong? Is that a bad pain? Is that okay?’” Koll said. “But, like I said, I’d rather be healthy and feeling good at the end of June than rushing back into things too early now.”