On Saturday there was a skills and strategy camp that most of the team went to, so we didn’t have practice. Instead of practice a few girls suggested skating on Friday in the morning and I jumped at the opportunity (I don’t work on Fridays). It was pretty cool outside (only about 77), and we skated 4 miles. We did two trails, one of them was 1 mile and I think is considered the “easy” trail. The second was a 3 mile trail and it was much harder than the first. There was a hill on the trail, and while it seemed like a tiny incline, climbing it on skates was pretty tough. I imagine if I was biking or running it would seem like nothing, but on skates it was kinda hellish.
I felt pretty great afterwards and I while I was much slower than the girls on the team (I kept up with them at the beginning, but ended up about 30ft or so behind them after the first quarter mile) I think I did well.
The next day was one where the rest of the team was going to meet up at Greenway, but it kinda went wonky. I thought we were meeting at 10am, but one girl said the team agreed on 9am (in the end, only she showed up at 9, I went at 10, and another girl said she skated a few miles sometime that morning). Still, I skated three miles alone (I did the easy route three times because I couldn’t remember which turns and forks went to the harder ones and I didn’t want to get lost), which maybe I shouldn’t have because…
I fell. I fell and it was scary. On Saturday I was alone and while I was getting to the trail starting point I fell. I turned the wrong way down a teeny hill and in an effort to stop, I turned towards the grass with the plan to knee fall down, but I hit something and my ankle turned. I heard a pop sound as I crashed to the ground and I felt all of my derby dreams slipping away.
If you’ve read as many fresh meat blogs as I have, you’ll know that so many girls end up with broken ankles. The ones that break their ankles are usually: large (check), not fit (check), clumsy (check), don't have a background in skating (check), and aren't as careful as they should be (CHECK!). The first thought I had was that my ankle was snapped and I would have to give it all up. It was awful. I reached down to my ankle and it moved fine. A tiny twinge of pain, but that was it. I could rotate it just fine, and when I stood up it was good. I skated three miles on my ankle without a single bit of pain, and I think it was a bit mistake.
When I got home from skating I noticed my ankle was just a bit puffed up so I iced it. Another few hours later and it was still kinda swollen and there was some pain in it. I wrapped it and decided not to go skating on Sunday morning to save it from agitation. I did go to the bout (and got to NSO!) yesterday, and I noticed that as long as I moved it around I didn't have any stiffness or pain. Today is different. The pain is dull feeling, but only if I move it around. The swelling is another story. My foot is so swollen right now I could feel the fluid moving around as I was walking around the house. I bought a compression sock type of thing because I don't want to use the bulky wrap and as soon as I post this I'm going to start elevating and icing. I'm also going to skip my normal Monday night skate.
The worst thing is that I'm afraid it isn't enough. Tomorrow is practice and I want to go more than anything. We're 6 weeks into fresh meat and with only another 6 weeks to go it's starting to get insanely important. I don't want to miss a practice and completely miss out three hours of skills that I need to know.
I feel so sick to my stomach just thinking about missing out on anything and wondering if my stupidity and lame fall will keep me away from this amazeballs sport. What if I've completely screwed myself over? I'm so scared, more scared than I would like to admit, and all I want in the world is to be able to strap on my skates tomorrow and give it my all.
Eeeek. Sounds to me like you might have sprained it. It takes a couple of weeks to heal those, usually. You might want to go get that checked out. I know you really want to practice, but if you skate on an injured ankle, you might do further damage to it, putting you off-skates even longer, and you might fall again and kill someone else's derby dreams.
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