Lot of broken ankles on this site, I'll add mine. Have done a lot in 57 years but for my 50th birthday I told the wife I wanted to jump out of an airplane, she bought me a certificate for an instructor assisted freefall at an airport in W. PA. I in turn bought a certificate for my son to jump with me, we went for the training but low ceilings that day precluded jumping. One thing led to another but it was months before we returned for refresher training and the jump. The jump was a freefall from 13,500 with an instructor holding on each side then after deploying the chute at 5,000 and continuing on your own(wired helmet for instruction from someone on the ground. Son made his jump first, limited amount of instructors available, from a PC-6 and all went well. My turn, they loaded me and two instructors plus a whole bunch of other jumpers that bailed out at ~5,000 ft, we continued to climb to 13,500 then the 3 of us step out of the perfectly good airplane. All went well, FF to 5,000 then continued by myself, floated down the 5,000 ft and made it safely on the ground and ended on my butt but didn't dump the chute and it pulled me along about 10 ft and I pivoted up and over a clump of grass but my right foot didn't pivot. I was changing into boots before the jump but the instructor said "leave your running shoes on and you will have more control", yeah right. My son came running up and said "great jump", I said "I think I have broken my ankle" he(an EMT) said "no, you would be in great pain" but checked and my foot moved about 2 inches left to right. Well anyway, I had no pain, put on air cast, son drove us 160 miles back home, went to local ER, they call Ortho in he said "well we will do surgery tomorrow morning" Still no pain, after surgery with 8 pins and a plate took about 6 of the pain killers then was good. Broke ankle Sat, surgery Sun and back to work Mon, then got a call to move to AK 3 weeks later. Couldn't drive to AK so we flew to Vancouver, cruised to Seward and then road the train to Anchorage and continued to Fairbanks on train.
Before this I was running about 30-40 miles a week, I started running in AK a few months after surgery, albeit slow and short runs. I have since had plate and pins removed and continue to run. I m anot back to pre-break distances but not really due to ankle. Now that I am retired I have been working back to 30-35 miles a week, the ankle is fine, the Dr said there was some ligament damage. The ankle is thicker than the good ankle even 7 years later but it probably has ~90 of the original range of motion and for the most part does not give any problems. Won't hesitate trying the AP Trail, at your age check to see if they will remove screws at some point in the future. Will also add that PT and balancing on one foot to strengthen ligaments/tendons/etc worked wonders.
She is usually a bit stiff in the morning and limps when she first gets up but is fine after a while.
