Anita Ortiz A YEAR OF ADVERSITY
FROM ONE END OF THE PANDEMIC to the other, Anita Ortiz has had a lot of highs and lows as a runner.
On February 13, 2021, she was released by her doctor who gave her the OK to begin running again. This good news served as an optimistic bookend to a seemingly cursed succession of traumatic injuries that had been piling up since 2020. Ortiz’s return to running followed a severe leg injury she suffered this past winter. She slipped on some ice while walking her dog near her home in Eagle, Colorado.
It was exactly one year earlier, on February 13, 2020, when Ortiz tripped during a race and shattered her kneecap. She spent the next 14 weeks in a straight leg brace. Almost immediately after she was out of
