Wilderness Running Company

It felt self-indulgent to complain about my little ankle mishap at any length, but I thought it would make an appropriate One Thing. After all, some weeks are marked by the sublime and others…are not. It’s just part of the game. Sometimes you eat the bar and all that.

But, after the photo alone elicited a few questions about what happened I decided I’d share the brief blow-by-blow, after all. Thank you for your sympathy!

The fact is, I’m not sure what exactly happened. One second I was moving well, the next there was a crunch and a profound and nearly immediate sense of dread about what just happened. After I took stock, I felt pretty confident there was nothing broken or completely torn. The biggest concern was that the injury was “high” ankle, above the joint. I know just enough about that variety of ankle injury to know that they can present a different set of challenges from the standard ankle sprain. In any case, I had about 1/3 of my run still in front of me and I knew the window was already closing to get that done before the swelling and stiffness began in earnest. The piper would be paid later in the day no matter what I did in the next half-hour. So I took off.

The one thing I can point to is that it happened on a tricky little section of slickrock, replete with odd little creases, cracks and lumps. The funny thing is, I almost never have trouble with this stuff. When I crash, it is almost always on merely moderately technical trail where my guard is lowered slightly and a sneaky rock or root gets the better of me. For the truly challenging stuff, I guess I slow down enough and focus enough to usually avoid trouble. I doubt I’m unique in this respect. But, on this run, I was in time trial mode, so I was pushing the tempo and taking risks.

So that’s the story of what has to be the worst ankle injury I’ve sustained while trail running. I’ve had mild-to-moderate sprains of course, but this one is more like what I experienced a few times playing competitive basketball in high school and college. Of course, as the pain and swelling subsides, the focus will change to rehabbing the ankle and doing my best (via cross-training) to limit the loss of running fitness. You know the drill. (And you may have noticed I already roll with roadie legs, so it’s no great hardship to switch up the mix.)

The moral victory is that, even with the wreck, I was only slower than my fastest recorded time by about 3 minutes.

Really, this seems to be the theme of my 2010. I’ve had significantly more setbacks this year than my average. Rather than having stretches of consistent routine interrupted by setbacks, it has sort of been the reverse. Some have been self-inflicted; others not exactly. But nothing has been catastrophic. And, for that, I am profoundly thankful.

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