Oh My Ankle

This is a blog about running…but I have not been doing much of that lately. Not because I don’t want too, but because of a little something called "what the crap happened to my ankle"?!? Yeah, I don’t know but it has been sore for about two weeks and quite swollen for about a week. After one of my group training runs (when we did Mona fartleks) it was kind of sore. So I iced it and took some ibuprofen. I rested a few days plus more icing and ibuprofen. It seemed better so I decided to go to my next training run the following Monday. We did 100 meter hill repeats. Fun! Really they actually were not too bad. I like the recovery part the most. But during the repeats I noticed the ankle pain returned. Again I iced and ibuprofen when I got home. The next day - ankle = super swollen! I willingly showed all my co-workers, the dental hygienist, everyone in my Pilates class my big swollen ankle. And they agreed it was definitely swollen. Don’t ask know why I needed everyone’s conformation. It just felt better.

So my next strategy was to go back to RICE. Rest, Ice, Compress, Elevate. And more ibuprofen. Elevate. That’s kind of hard to do when I sit at a desk all day. I did try the box under my desk trick, but it doesn’t elevate high enough and didn’t really help. Since I had to take a break from running for a few days, I still got other exercise in. I went to Body Pump, Pilates, and Spin class. I really missed spin class! This was my first class in over a month since bootcamp conflicted with the class schedule. My ankle seemed to do fine in all those classes but yet it was still sore and swollen. I decided to skip the Friday night training run session and give it a few more days. Surely by Memorial Day it will feel much better and I can make it to that training run.

It did get a little better over the weekend but not completely. Once again I had to skip Monday night’s training run (darn I missed more hill repeats). This story started to sound familiar…join a running group and get injured right after it starts (see here). Join a running group and get injured right after it starts (and see here). Wait did I say that already? Yes it has happened to me twice but last year’s running group (third times the charm) worked out great. Really I haven’t had any injury issues since I started back last summer besides normal aches and pains. Now it’s been over a week since my last run. Yes this is a blog about running. What about all my upcoming plans and races? I don’t have time for this ankle issue. Maybe if I just ignore it, it will go away. Sometimes that works with certain situations…or people. I looked it up online and there are at least 687 aliments I could have now and I probably shouldn’t move it at all for 6 more months.

Okay so while I can whine and complain and be all dramatic about a little ankle pain, I really shouldn’t. There are plenty of people out in the world with much bigger problems, health issues, injuries…the list can go on and make my little ankle problem microscopic. There are elite athletes out there with dreams of Olympic medals and sometimes even they get injured. As a runner, injures are going to happen. I’ve already had a few too many just trying to become a fraction of a runner (I’m still not sure if I’m one yet). Injuries to runners are the worst. It’s difficult to think you can’t (or shouldn’t) run for days, weeks, months. And it seems to take twice as long to get back to the level you were at before the injury.

Of course as I type this post, I hope to wake up tomorrow and magically my freak swollen ankle is all better. Like 100% better and I will celebrate by going out for a run. But that’s probably not going to happen (but maybe it will. Sometimes I can be overly optimistic). So I will continue to RICE. Maybe it will feel better in a few days; maybe a week…I’m not even going to think about longer than that, for now.