Sprained Ankle

I went out for a 10 mile run on Sunday, only to have it cut short by a misstep at 3.5 miles (22:30). I don't know how it happened, I've run hundreds of miles around this lake. I was at the far end, taking a left turn, a couple other runners coming toward me, I guess that forced me into a tight squeeze. I'm cruising nicely at a 6:30 pace, then bam, it's like I hit a wall, I hear myself letting out a primitive unceremonious grunt.

I feel my left ankle disappear from existence and I buckle, falling, rolling, onto the grass writhing in pain. I'm flashing on my Thanksgiving 2003 Turkey Trot where I severely sprained the same left ankle, and like an idiot, ego, continued running, up on the toes, and ended up with a much worse injury and a full four month running hiatus. After a minute or so, the pain precipitously subsides, nice! And I almost feel like I can get up and run, and I try, and could, but alas, I am no longer a complete idiot, I have learned, stop, you're done. I got to a phone and called my wife for a ride home.

This sucks, but oh well, okay, it is, I think, not as bad as it could have been. Certainly not as bad as 2003, I'm RICE-ing like crazy. Actually I don't do the compression component - is that really useful, beyond the initial injury? I'm icing like a madman, ibuprofen, rest. I'm able to walk, stand, balance, hop even. It's the kind of mild sprain I experienced in September on the Thompson Island 4K in which I think I could actually run, if I were very very careful to land just right. I figure/hope I'm out for 1-2 weeks, then back carefully with an ACE bandage. This just makes me more thankful for any running ability, and increases my incentive to get well and to get back at it.

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I am a strong advocate for free thought on all subjects, yet it appears to me (whether rightly or wrongly) that direct arguments against christianity & theism produce hardly any effect on the public; & freedom of thought is best promoted by the gradual illumination of men's minds, which follow[s] from the advance of science. It has, therefore, been always my object to avoid writing on religion, & I have confined myself to science. I may, however, have been unduly biassed by the pain which it would give some members of my family, if I aided in any way direct attacks on religion — Charles Darwin