National-Finalist Runner Battling Back From Injury
Waynesburg University’s best women’s cross country runner, junior Julie Gerber, began the season with an injury.
Last year, Gerber made history for the university, becoming the first cross country runner to make a trip to nationals. With a highly anticipated junior year ahead of her, Gerber said she came into the season with injuries to work through.
Head coach Chris Hardie said the injury started seemingly as shin splints before progressing to other areas. Though at this point, Hardie said Gerber has gotten through the injury and is now focusing on regaining lost training.
“[Gerber’s] gotten through kind of the little set back she’s had,” said Hardie. “It was kind of an interesting injury, and it seemed like a domino effect. It started with some summer leg pain, which I think was leg shin splints for her, and it kind of developed to a little bit of calf pain and more or less she was favoring it, so it led to some ankle pain. It just kind of started to spiral.”
After entering the season with her injuries, Hardie said the decision was made to keep her involvement low for at least a week. Due to the delayed start to the season, Gerber said she still feels a little bit behind, despite her attempts to work on conditioning during her recovery period.
“I feel like I’m definitely behind a little bit just because I had to take 10 days off,” said Gerber. “I still cross trained during that time, so I was still doing things to stay in shape, but it wasn’t running, so I feel like it did put me behind a little bit. But hopefully within the next few weeks, I’ll be able to just make more improvement and get myself into better shape.”
Gerber said it has been hard to judge what shape she is currently in due to lack of running. Since rejoining the team from the injury, Gerber has only completed one invitational, on Sept. 17, in which she was paced with freshman Mary Beth Cunningham.
After the cross country team’s off week, the Jackets will run again at the Washington & Jefferson Invitational on Friday, Sept. 30, where Hardie said Gerber will run again. Hardie said the race will be more of a workout for Gerber.
“[Gerber] is great in pace, but if for some reason she slides off of a pace, there’s going to be at least a majority of the top six running with her to make sure she gets through the workout,” said Hardie. “The focus on Friday for her teammates is to protect her and get her through the race.”
Now that Gerber has returned to team practices, Hardie said she would have a different routine to help her regain lost training with the team. With the setback to the start of the season, Hardie said he is focusing on getting Gerber back to optimal condition in time for the Presidents’ Athletic Conference Championship on Oct. 29.
“I think it’s going to take her, looking at [the PAC Championship], a little bit over five weeks, and that is what we can expect from a runner her level to kind of get close to top shape,” said Hardie. “What’s nice about that is then there’s a two week break until regionals, and that’s really where she needs to kind of pull it out and help herself get to the national level again.”