I sprained my ankle, ouch ouch ouch.

I sprained my ankle at gymnastics training tonight, I was really angry with myself as it happened like 20 minutes into the training! I was like, great, so I am going to sit here with a pack of ice on my swollen ankle for the rest of the evening - couldn't I have at least twisted my ankle at the end of the session rather than the beginning? How did it happen? I wasn't even doing anything that difficult, I was doing a skill that I have been doing since I was a about 19 - a front handspring, front layout with full twist. I had put an extra landing mat to protect my ankle - but I had taken off awkwardly after the front handspring and so I veered to the left and landed with half my left foot on the mat and half off the mat - I rolled that ankle over and felt a sharp pain. How ironic. The very mat I had put down to protect my ankle caused my injury. I was gonna get a lot of sympathy from my gymnasts, then another gymnast went to break her arm and it was like, okay broken arm trumps sprained ankle. She wins, she gets the sympathy.

For those of you who are not gymnasts, let me try to explain this... imagine this - you're walking down a spiral staircase and you almost miss a step. You put only the right half a foot on the step but all your weight down on that foot - this would not only cause you to lose your balance but bend your ankle joint at an ankle that would sprain it (if not break it). Now imagine if you had jumped from a height and hit that step at great speed with only half your foot on the step. Yeah, that's what happened to my ankle tonight. I currently have a frozen chicken breast wrapped around my ankle with a bandage, with my foot on the table - rest, ice, compression, elevation. They say a picture is worth a thousand words - so here's 3 photos of my swollen ankle.