Writhering on the Ground

During the Whiskey Row half marathon John stepped on the edge of a cone base and turned his ankle. I heard him yell out and turned to see him laying on the ground. Right away I turned and gave him a hand to help him up.  After a few tentative, very hobbled steps he said it wasn't too bad and for me to go ahead.

I tell you the real scoop because now it's turned into a fictitious fable of how I lgave him the evil eye and abandoned him writhering on the asphalt in pain and I just kept running after while he had to walk 2.5 miles uphill to the finish line. And me being the mean girlfriend that I am, forced him to hobble around the grocery store on his injured, bruised ankle. Poor, Poor Baby!

Keep in mind that shortly after it happened he said there are two scenarios to rolling an ankle.  One, being oh crap, this sucks and I rolled my ankle but it's not too bad.  Two, oh crap that crack sounded really bad and now I'm screwed and have crossed the line to it's not ok.  John was on the side of it's not too bad and once it warms up its sore but not too bad.  He also uses the term rolled ankle where if it were me I would be crying sprained ankle (which I did once and was on crutches and it truly sucked)

When I sprained my ankle and posted about it here and told the story here I mentioned I bought an ebook about rehabbing a sprained ankle. If you'd like a copy, send me an email at cheinle at cox dot net. Here's is a summary of the book:

1. After spraining the ankle ice if you can't walk on it ice for 36-48 hours after. If you can walk on it, you can ice immediately after and then go to the next step.
2. Alternate a minute of hot water and a minute of cold water for 10 minutes.
3. Massage the foot
4. Stretching exercises with the ankle without causing pain (discomfort yes, pain no)

The book goes into more detail and it is supported with references. Does it work? I was expecting a miracle being able to run the next day but it took me weeks to get back to it.  Did it help? Possibly. At least I felt like I was doing something productive (in addition to my wallowing in my misery of not running).

I do feel bad that John sprained his ankle but am glad that it isn't too terrible and that once it warms up he only has a mild limp.