Colleen Quigley on Becoming a Lululemon Ambassador and How She's Grown Since Her First Olympics

Colleen Quigley.Photo: Lululemon

The track and field athlete, who competes in the 3,000-meter steeplechase, is joining Lululemon as an ambassador, PEOPLE can confirm.

“I think this whole transition with sponsors came at just the perfect time,” Quigley, 28, tells PEOPLE. “It came at a time in my life where I was just ready for that change. And Lululemon is all about who I am as a person, not just who I am as a runner. But what I care about outside of the track, and that has become, in the past few years, much more important to me than I ever kind of imagined.”

Quigley — who is gearing up for the Olympic trials in June, hoping to secure a spot on Team USA for the second time — tells PEOPLE that she’s met a few of the brand’s other ambassadors, and was impressed with the diversity of the group.

“Diverse, not only in skin color, but background, and sport, and what they do outside of their sport,” she says. “You even have para-athletes, and it’s just really cool to see how all those people come together and kind of can find common ground, and how Lululemon champions all those different kinds of athletes and celebrates what they do and how they touch their different communities.”

Colleen Quigley.Lululemon

It’s especially a good fit as Quigley says she’s begun to see herself as more than a runner in recent years — embracing that she wears other hats like chef, activist, and leader, as well.

Part of that has come through general growth for Quigley, as well as changes to her as an athlete that have happened since she competed at the Rio Olympics in 2016.

“I feel like I was so naive to what being a professional athlete was going to be like, or how long I would do it,” she reflects back, now. “When I graduated from college, I think I thought, ‘Oh, I’ll do this for a year. If I make the Olympic team great, I can be an Olympian and check the box, and move on. And if I don’t, well, then I just wasted one year of my life training and trying. And so then I can just let it go and move on.’ "

Continues the Olympian, “But either way, I didn’t expect to be training for Tokyo 2020, or even be talking about Paris 2024. So I think my career goals and just what I even envisioned, or allowed myself to imagine for myself as a runner, as a professional runner, has changed so much. And now this is my whole life.”

She admits that she “never knew what was possible” in her younger years. And now that she does? “I keep opening my eyes to bigger and bigger goals, and keep imagining more and more for myself.”

To learn more about all the Olympic and Paralympic hopefuls, visitTeamUSA.org. Watch the Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics this summer on NBC.

source: people.com