Ultra tour du Massif des 3 Pignons and sprained ankle

Awesome trail run in Forêt de Fontainebleau which ended prematurely with grade 2 ankle sprain.

With Ecotrail 45k looming in not-that-distant future (3 weeks!) I decided it was high time to up my trail game and abandon my usual Parc de Saint-Cloud runs in favor of Forêt de Fontainebleau and its as-mountainous-as-they-get-around-Paris trails.

The ultimate plan was to do the 35 bosses - Ultra tour du Massif des 3 Pignons route - or at least its shorter and easier version, 25 bosses, if the longer one with all its ups and downs proves to be too much for the first time.

The weather was perfect - sunny and warm (at least warm enough for running), not a single cloud on the sky.

Amazing forest - so much better than running through city parks - even if Parc de Saint-Cloud is somewhere in the middle between your standard city park and a real forest, especially its upper western part.

Shortly into the run I caught up with a group of 4 runners doing the 25 bosses route, at a speed very similar to mine, and we have been leapfrogging each other from then on - especially when getting lost, and then finding the route again (not very easy to follow when running).

However, what started as an amazing run (even if tough, as the route is quite technical), ended up prematurely with a nasty ankle sprain.

To make matters worse, it happened on completely untechnical, flat stretch of the route. Which really makes sense if you think about it - easy section means it's very easy to let your focus lapse, which is a very big no-no on the trail - absent-minded running is ok on roads, where the surface is almost always the same - not so much on trails though.

End of the run.

Previous carefree happy run changed now to a very slow 4 km-long hard slog back to the car (a huge thank you! to the group I was running with for stopping and offering their help with walking me down and back to the parking lot), bizarre drive back home (which turned out to be much easier than anticipated, and definitely much less painful than walking back to the car), and Uber to l'urgence (my local Hôpital Ambroise Paré, hello again!)

It's me again!

Having the radio done and getting visited by a doc I was officially diagnosed with une belle entorsion (or grade 2 sprain according to my, ehem, web-based self examination) with a small ligament tear, but nothing super serious apparently.

Radio results said:

Mise en évidence d'un petit arrachement millimétrique de la pointé de la malléole latéral associé un épaississement sévère des parties molles péri-malleolaires.
Par ailleurs structure osseuse de morphologie normale.
Respect des rapports articulaires. *

(I know, native French couldn't understand it either. He was not a doctor though.)

Pretty on the inside.

Bah. Got English crutches, stirrup ankle splint, almost 4 weeks of arrêt de travail, was told to come back for a check-up in 2 weeks, and was sent home.

Now, 2 days later, I'm still RICE-ing it, and slowly starting first easy steps of functional rehabilitation process.

It seems to be slowly getting better, but still not a pretty sight - still swollen, bruised and painful, especially after the exercises or very light weight bearing.

Fat and dressed in angry reds on the outside.

I've already accepted not being able to run in this year Ecotrail (seems rather impossible to get my ankle back to 100% within the next 2.5 weeks), not even mentioning next week's Course Verte Des 3 Pignons, which I was quite tempted by too... still hoping though to make it fully operational before Marathon de Paris mid-April. Fingers crossed!

Not so hopeful though about being able to do my initially planned under-3h45 time there...