Erika Adler ended her freshman season with the UCLA cross-country team lying on a table, as a medic sewed stitches across a gash in her leg.
Adler felt a runner’s spike stab her skin when the starting gun fired at the NCAA West Regionals last year, but during the race she hardly noticed the pain from that incident. A throbbing in her bone, however, gripped her attention. She later learned it was a third-degree stress reaction.
She had run with the injury since before the Pac-12 championships, and entered regionals longing to fulfill her seasonlong role as UCLA’s top runner.