Whelp, that happened

Yesterday I decided to finally play pickup basketball with some of my coworkers. They had been begging me for more than a year to come play. Since I’m not training for anything right now, I decided it was a great time to go.

I hadn’t played for two years, and it was pretty ugly at first. I couldn’t make any shots, I made some bad passes, and in general flailed around. I was finally starting to settle in and play better in the second game when reality hit me in the face. Okay, gravity, momentum, and terrible timing actually slammed into my ankle.

I went up for an open layup, and as I came down, I landed on another player’s foot. I tried to save it, but I felt a stomach-turning wet pop as my ankle took the brunt of my weight and collapsed underneath me. The pain was excruciating. I went from thinking that I would sit out for a minute to writhing in pain in a matter of seconds. The kind of can’t-get-enough-oxygen don’t-really-know-where-I-am pain.

While sitting on the bench holding my massively swollen (and rapidly getting larger) ankle, I blathered on to my poor coworker about how I couldn’t be hurt and this couldn’t be happening because I am in great running shape right now, the best ever, and I have a race coming up in February and I can’t run with a hurt ankle which means I’m going to lose all of that and possibly not even be able to do the race and MY WORLD IS OVER!

You know, just a casual chat. No dramatics.

While waiting for x-rays I realized it doesn’t matter. Of course I’m sad and I’m frustrated and this isn’t what I wanted. But that doesn’t mean I have to give up on everything. I had limiting tendonitis for the better part of year, and look at how this year turned out. I got through two training cycles without any problems. I got faster. I had fun. I felt great.

And I’ll do it again.