High Ankle Sprain

On 11/1/08, I rolled my left ankle coming down the stairs at Williams Brice. There was a double step following a series of single steps and I misjudged the distance and landing on the left foot and rolled the ankle outward. I felt a "pop" at the time and remember thinking "oh no, this could be bad. I've been keeping up with my running so well for awhile now and this is going to really set me back."

I was a little surpised as I walked on it right away that there wasn't that much tenderness, even though I still had that sick feeling that I had done something really wrong. I sort of limped around the rest of the game and came home afterwards and went to bed.

The next morning, the ankle had swollen up to the point there was no "definition" to the outer ankle at all and it was pretty stiff and sore. I could still walk fine though.

Using the "ICE" method, I elevated it a lot that day and applied ice (actually a frozen bag of lima beans) whenever possible.

Strangely, my walking was fine with only a small amount of tenderness. Only when I tried to roll the ankle out (as it was injured) did I encounter a LOT of pain.

I ran for the first time 8 days later on 1/9/08, 5 miles really easy-going in about 44 minutes (8.79 pace). Didn't really feel much pain at all while running, just a little stiffness in the shin and front of the ankle because I was probably favoring it. Still, I was encouraged that I could still run.

I ran fairly regularly from that point on...going 2-3 times a week at 4-7 miles each time. Pace seemed to be largely unaffected (8-8.75 min miles)/

I was discouraged that the ankle was still giving me soreness and pain when I attempted to roll it out though, and this endured until right around 2 months post injury. At that point, I saw great improvement for some reason that I can only attribute to my physical therapy that I performed whenever possible. Below is what I did:

Physical Therapy:
Heel lifts - I was doing these already for an injury to this same ankle (on the inside though). These strengthen the tendons but only really work the back (achilles and calf). I d0 20-25 of these at a time. Serves as a good warm up prior to running too.
Stretching - Ankle rolls, achilles stretch, pushing the ankle out/down to the point of mild pain. I started seeing big improvement in my flexibility at the 2 month part.
Ankle "pulls" - Using an elasto-band, position it such that you pull the front part of the ankle towards you and/or to the left/right. These are hard to pull off because it's difficult to anchor the esto-band away from your body, so I didn't do as many of these as I'd like.
Plain old running/walking - I'm pretty convinced that my regular running schedule helped with the healing too, by strengthening the overall ankle area.

It's still not 100%, but I'm okay with where I am now as it's not impeding me from doing anything active-related.