Dealing with ankle injury // Update & diagnosis

After bit more than a week I finally got checked out and got answers to my questions about this injury. Visited a very experienced and knowledgeable physio in Goatstown last night who got me the following diagnosis:

I have second degree ankle ligament injury (on the inside of my ankle) that isn't too serious but needs a good bit of a rest and a couple of deep tissue and ultrasound treatment sessions in the next few weeks.

So, this is not that bad after all, but the source of the problem is a bit more problematic. It turns out since I was born my right leg is 6 mm longer than my left one and because of that my left leg needs to compensate all the time. It doesn't cause trouble on the bike luckily but when I'm running it is a different ball game alltogether. Every time my left foot hits the ground the impact is a bit more than on the right one and with the tighter muscles and a sligthly restricted left ankle movement together it's causing me damage. Basicly it wasn't one big trauma, it was the repeated impact over time that caused this injury. Now, we can't do too much about this but avoiding running as part of my training routine because as I increase the distance or the time that I run it increases the chance of this type of injury in the future. And since I'm a cyclist I can sacrifice running in order to stay healthy and injury free. 

So, at this point I've been adised not to run for 4-6 weeks and not to ride off-road for 4 weeks (because of the impact that my ankles get while I'm out of the saddle). I can ride on the road after about 2 more weeks but of course I need to stay nice & easy on it. 

About the therapy that I need to do: I need to visit the physio 2-3 times more to get that untrasound and deep tissue treatment in order to get the ligaments healed up nicely. And in the future stretching needs be extremely important part of my life.

Well, I'm not gonna lie about this: I'm pissed off a bit of course...it's never good to pick up this kind of stuff. But I do what I need to do to get rid of this and to make sure I won't happen in the future. Will drop running pretty much all together and will find another alternative training besides the bike. But until then I need to have a couple of weeks "sports free" time...not gonna be easy I can tell you now...