Regrets. I suppose it’s part of being human.
I’ve analyzed to death the sequence of events that led to this double ligament tear. The initial double hit on the ankle in mid June was bad, but I’ve done much worse at Watchung and elsewhere and was fine afterwards, so based on experience (and the weeks after), I didn’t have any reason to suspect that something bad had happened, or would happen.
I recall easing off in the week or two after the ankle hit. I did run a lot miles in a week in early July. While a mistake to jump mileage so abruptly, I came through that week with no apparent issues. (But I probably set the stage for the ligament failure due to overuse; although I had dropped mileage to rest up, it was too late).
The leg discomfort from the ankle hit twinged a tiny bit here and there, but was fading away, as expected. I eased off after that big week, and did very light weeks in the weeks leading to the date of the tear (or, at least the pain from it hit an alert level).
I was a mile into a mundane run, slow, and snap it went. I could walk, but could not push off the toes anymore. And the rolling motion from heel to toe would cause a collapse as the weight moved forward. What threw me off … no swelling, nothing. Everything seemed normal in appearance, save the ice pick of pain in the center of the front of the ankle.
In hindsight, there really wasn’t any single event that is a smoking gun that I can see so far leading to the injury. If I had shut down or gone to a doctor on every single ankle hit in a trail run, I’d be at the doctors every couple weeks. I did a mistake in the jump to a high mileage week, but compensated by easing way off.
The one mistake was not getting my butt into the doctor when the tear actually occurred, as the pain level was very high. But at that point, the injury was there, so while I could have responded sooner, I doubt the extent of damage was much different. Not going didn’t cause the injury, just delayed the inevitable as I hoped it would heal. I did subject myself to extreme risk of more injury, so I am lucky.
So, while something unfortunate happened, I decided I have to stop beating myself up because I did what most of us would do. Keep going until it got so bad that it demanded attention.
Rolf Arands, Runner 