Her professional career got off to a shaky start. In her first race in an Adidas uniform during the 3,000 meter steeplechase finals at the USATF Championships in June 2015, O’Connor slipped and fell on the final water pit jump and would go on to finish fourth, just short of the top-three finish needed to go to the World Championships.

After that, O’Connor told herself everything was going to be OK and looked forward to what was left of her season. However, a few days before she set out to do some races in Europe, O’Connor noticed a throbbing pain in her left foot.

“I couldn’t get a quarter mile down the road without wanting to cry because it hurt so much,” O’Connor said. “I’d never had a serious injury, so I didn’t know how to identify the difference between tight muscles and just fatigue and then actual broken bone. … And so I just tried to convince myself it was just tight muscles. ... And I went out to Europe and I did one race in Monaco and I remember getting onto the starting line in Monaco. I looked at the USATF athletic trainers that they had available out there and I said, ‘Well, either this is going to go really well or I’m going to break my foot.’”

For O’Connor, the race went well. She still ran the Olympic qualifying standard. But following the race, O'Connor said she could hardly walk. After such a long time training at her peak, a part of O’Connor’s body had finally broken down. It was time to take some time off.

From July through the better part of October, O’Connor said she did almost no running to recover from the stress fracture in her left foot.

“August … mostly I was taking time down and eating donuts and stuff, which is important for your mental game, I guess,” she said.

From November through January, O’Connor said she slowly got back into the shape she was in the previous year and even returned to a little bit of racing this winter.

Recovering from such an injury was tough, she said, but also something she learned a great deal from.

“I’ve learned how to manage hardship and manage things that don’t go perfectly and it’s been a test of my character and my resilience ... I had to kind of go back and rely on the people I’ve needed from day one, like my family and my closest friends and my coaches,” O’Connor said. “It took me back down to ground zero, I guess, which is a really good place to be when you’re starting back off on a new foot.”

And with her nearly every step of the way has been the same support system she had in college. O’Connor is continuing to train in East Lansing, where she said she’s never felt like an outsider.

“If I walk in there and do need anything, they will help me no matter what,” O’Connor said. “I think that’s pretty rare. I feel like a lot of people graduate and then the coaches are like ‘OK, get out of here. Go take care of yourself.’ But that hasn’t been the case. Everybody’s been really helpful and that just speaks to Michigan State. I think that’s the culture. Once you’re a Spartan and you’re around that family, you don’t really get to get away. They take care of you.”

MSU Director of Track and Field and Cross Country Walt Drenth still serves as O’Connor’s coach, and in addition to this, her roommate in her two-bedroom apartment is her younger brother Andrew O'Connor, a redshirt-freshman on MSU’s track and field team.

A typical week for O’Connor consists of running about 80 miles a week, doing two weight sets per week, in addition to meeting with a personal trainer every Monday. And the time in between, she said, is mostly reserved for recovery.

Currently, O’Connor has just wrapped up a month of altitude training in Colorado. From there, she moves into her outdoor track season, with the focus on the Olympic Trials in July, where she hopes to qualify for the 2016 Olympics in Rio.

O'Connor said she feels like she's in great shape right now, but also that she’s just happy to be along for the ride.

“My passion for this sport and my commitment to being the best runner I can be has definitely kind of landed more on my shoulders than ever before,” O’Connor said. “But I’m ready for that, because I am a professional now and it’s my job, but it’s also my passion so it’s working out really well and sometimes I pinch myself a little bit because it is an amazing, amazing job. But I know that it’s not going to last forever, obviously. … I’m just enjoying it while I can.”