Jamming my foot/ankle

<[email hidden]> wrote in message

Quoted message said:

I've been tweaking my ankle (esp on trails with leaves) by unexpectedly
coming down on a root or rock and having my foot jammed upward. My
ankle does not roll to the side, but it does feel like a sprain. It
hurts bad enough that I roll around on the ground for a few seconds.
Fortunately, the pain subsides quickly - I can walk it off and resume
running within a couple of minutes.

For me, it only happens on my left foot (probably because I did it once
and now that ankle is weaker). Also, it generally only happens on a
mild upslopes. I can prevent it by running on the ball of my foot, but
this gets tiring. In fact, if I'm somewhat tired, I'll notice that I'm
toe-striking with my left foot and heel-striking with my right foot. I
suspect this is not a good thing to do.

I've looked around, but I've been unable to find any information about
this type of injury. The only ankle sprains I've seen discussed are
ones where the ankle rolls to the side. Anyone else experience this or
know something about it? Would a certain type of shoe help prevent it?
How about an exercise I can do that will strengthen that area to help
prevent it?

Perhaps you need orthotics. It sounds like you have a
stride that could benefit from some corrective measures.

cheers,
--
David Hirsh, director
www.urbanburn.com - half marathon, full throttle!
www.absolutelyaccurate.com - Hamilton's summer series!

Quoted message said:

I've been tweaking my ankle (esp on trails with leaves) by unexpectedly
coming down on a root or rock and having my foot jammed upward. My
ankle does not roll to the side, but it does feel like a sprain.

....snip...

Quoted message said:

For me, it only happens on my left foot (probably because I did it once
and now that ankle is weaker). Also, it generally only happens on a
mild upslopes. I can prevent it by running on the ball of my foot, but
this gets tiring.

....snip...

Quoted message said:

Anyone else experience this or
know something about it?

I recognise all this, unfortunately. It's my right ankle and although the
pain doesn't stop me running when it happens, it causes a reflex
relaxation of the whole leg, like a kind of mega-limp, and it can almost
buckle up completely if I'm running at speed in terrain (cross countries
for example).

I did go to see a podo-whatsit who specialises in sports and he made me
some custom orthotics, which were for use during training runs only. It
seems my right ankle is too "slack" (hyperlax in french, dunno what it is
in english) and that allows ligaments to be painfully compressed in
certain circumstances. I over-pronate rather a lot too so that didn't
help.

The orthotics worked well and I had no more problems for a couple of years
and so forgot about it, as you do. Forgot, until of course I hit
badly-aligned paving stone, which set the whole thing off again.

Doing my hill session on Monday reminded my to be very very careful with
foot placement and to run on the balls of my feet to avoid nasty twinges
every few strides.

I expect I really should go get some more orthotics done.

Quoted message said:

I've been tweaking my ankle (esp on trails with leaves) by unexpectedly
coming down on a root or rock and having my foot jammed upward. My
ankle does not roll to the side, but it does feel like a sprain. It
hurts bad enough that I roll around on the ground for a few seconds.
Fortunately, the pain subsides quickly - I can walk it off and resume
running within a couple of minutes.

For me, it only happens on my left foot (probably because I did it once
and now that ankle is weaker). Also, it generally only happens on a
mild upslopes. I can prevent it by running on the ball of my foot, but
this gets tiring.

Try more mid-foot landing - anything but landing on heel. I used to do
that when I was really new to trails and wasn't very good endurance wise
on mid-foot yet. Foot/ankle strengthening, agility, proprioception
drills, etc. work wonders.

On my trails, where I do have roots, I can usually step between them on
forefoot, although I'm sure there's trails somewhere where the roots are
dense enough that wouldn't work. But landing heel first or with arch
across a root is not good.

I can't help you on fixing anything since it only bothered me for a few
steps - it was mostly the crunching shock of it.

Dot

--
"So many people get stuck in the routine of life that their dreams waste
away. This is about living the dream." - Cave Dog