Rolled Ankles & How to Treat Them

Dealing with the most minor and annoying of injuries.

An innocent-seeming driveway.

When I think about my history of rolled ankles, I am almost always up a mountain, down a country road, or on the far side of a lake. Turned ankles never seem to happen anywhere except the most inconvenient of places. Which is fitting, I guess, as they are the most inconvenient of injuries. “Inconvenient” because they are frequently serious enough to keep you from running for a few days or even weeks, but not bad enough to warrant professional treatment. They are painful, but they won’t keep you from doing anything else except running. And in these attributes, they are possibly the worst of all injuries; what could be more annoying than being in enough pain and having enough tissue inflammation to have to skip your run, but still being ambulatory enough to empty the dishwasher and clean the litter box? 

I was reminded of all this on a recent trip to the western Massachusetts. As I drove towards my friend’s house where we were to spend the weekend, I imagined myself running under the canopy of old, spreading trees, feeling the springiness of the dirt road beneath my feet, and smelling nothing but the layered odor of growth, decay, and the omnipresent threat of summer rain. 

My first run of our three day stay was beautiful! The road absorbed my footsteps, rendering me silent as I ran, awash in greenery spreading in every direction. I ran from my friend’s house back up to the “highway”, which is just a two lane road; its only “high” being that it is paved. About three miles total, I returned to the house drenched in sweat, exhaltant, and utterly happy. Two more runs (three if I did a double one day!) to go in this verdant, bucolic landscape. 

The next day I almost skipped down the long driveway. My plan was to go up to the fork in the road where I had turned right the day before and to simply turn left. My friends told me that the road continued on and on until it hit another “highway”, where I could turn around. It was a good enough plan. 

I leaned to my left out of the driveway, looking down to navigate the slightly shifting, sinking turf at the edges of the roadway. I saw a place to step, stepped, and watched my ankle roll right over. I collapsed immediately, as I had trained myself to do, repeating “fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck” over and over again as I rolled on the ground and tried to assess the pain. 

A view from where I fell.

I could not believe I had rolled my ankle! And so stupidly, too: on a pile of dirt I thought was more solid! I repeated my very unimaginative curse word until the pain diminished enough to attempt to stand. I could. The ankle was hot and throbbing, but I could hobble. I was not up a mountain, though I was down a country road. I could have just turned and gone back up the long driveway, but I was annoyed. Very annoyed. 

I walked up and down the rolling hills. I tried to run a bit. My ankle was too badly damaged. Through walking, I was able to keep the swelling down. But by the time I turned around and made it back to the house, I had to accept that my looked-forward-to runs over the next two days wouldn’t happen. I spent the evening with an ice pack on my ankle, and hauled my Rules of Turned Ankle Management™️ (j/k) from my memory.  

It’s tough to find rules for dealing with minor injuries like turned ankles. As a culture, we tend to either try to ignore them, which is a terrible idea, or completely rest until recovery, which is also terrible. The trick is that you really have to figure out your level of injury and treat that. For the inconvenient rolled ankles in your futures, here are my rules for treatment, so that you can shorten your time away from running:

1. When the injury occurs, stop immediately. 

2. Assess your pain. Can you move the joint? Can you move the joints around the joint? 

3. Can you put any weight on it? If yes, start moving. You don't want the joint to stiffen up, because that will lengthen your recovery time. 

4. If you can’t run on it that day, accept it. Ice the injury aggressively and take anti-inflammatories. 

5. Test the injury site every day to see where recovery is. Don’t force yourself to run if it’s too painful, but don’t give up running or trying all together. 

6. Most importantly: cross train while injured. Just because you’ve got minor inflammation doesn’t mean that you need to give up for a few days or weeks. Take the time to strengthen your surrounding and supporting muscles. It’ll help you keep fit and to avoid injury in the future. 

Those are my rules and process. If you have any, please let me know in the comments! Ask any questions you may have as well and for today, remember: go run.