Injured runner going into college not improving

It’s her problem, and not yours. If she is suffering from frequent injuries, it might be a good decision for her to discontinue competitive running.

the headline is misleading, this isn't "not improving," this is "barely can stay healthy."

i was a hurdler/sprinter who tried XC a couple years. running all the mileage made me anemic and sick, times went backwards. i never had a problem running <800 in TF. result, while i did some road running after, i went back to strictly TF and sprints/hurdles. never another physical problem of that type. ever.

college only tends to get worse with the demands. if she went D1, she might be boxed in by the elite nature of the situation. if they recruited distance fodder they will want their distance fodder.

however, if she went something like D3, just say, i want to run 400/800/400H now. those events will have some value for fitness and endurance, but not the training mileage to have repetitive stress injuries in the same way. or do jumps or javelin. and at D3 they probably won't tell you no, they will just have to reconfigure things and sort out how you fit in the sprints and relays pictures.

it's still running. it's still competitive running. it's better than repeating the choice your body clearly doesn't like, or quitting.

800 should be fairly obvious as mid-distance but some schools gets put with distance and you're back in the distance workouts breaking her down.

but 400H at the D3 women's level, a time in the mid 60s might win you conference some places, and 70-75 might make the final. basically your 400 time + 5 seconds or so to jump the hurdles. and while there is some advantage -- and better nationals chances -- to being naturally fast, at 400H it would suffice to be merely quick, athletic enough to get over the obstacles, and then the distance runner endurance gets you home the last 100 or so when many start imploding. i've seen schools use distance runners or even particularly steeple folks as 400H when they don't have many natural hurdlers.

Specific tips? No. You'd need to know a lot more about what she's doing and how. Was upping her mileage the problem? Maybe. How much did she up it? How quickly did she up it? How hard does she run? An obvious idea from reading your post is if she struggled because she came back from an injury too quickly she should return a lot more slowly from subsequent injuries. It reads like her injuries tend to be with bones. Has she been checked for bone defects, calcium deficiencies, etc.?

If you want a really general off the tip of my head tip I'd say it seems like she can stay healthy at around 25 miles a week and she's managed some decent but not overwhelming performances at that level. Maybe she should just stay there. She's a 1500/5,000 type. People have run decently on that kind of volume. There was a guy at Oregon in the old days who got under 4:00 for the mile on that volume. She'll do better on 25 (maybe she can sniff 30) a week year round than by doing a lot more mileage for a few weeks and then not being able to do anything for weeks.