(Apr 20th-26th: <10 mins read)
TL;DR:
– Pushed the treadmill up to 15%
– Weight-shifted SLRs up to 5 sets
– First mini bike ride in 6 months
– A mini-hike / box jumps in the woods
Milestones (click to collapse)
| WK27 | Milestone / Significant Event |
|---|---|
| D-1 | |
| D-2 | |
| D-3 | (this is 185 days / 26w 3d post-injury) |
| D-4 | Treadmill preparation for hiking: – 1km @ 5.6kph / 3.5mph @ 15% – 500m @ 3pkh / 1.9mph @ 15% |
| D-5 | 🧗♂️ Bootless climbing: – flashed a VII / 5.10c |
| D-6 | Out & about on my bike for the 1st time |
| D-7 | First (mini-)hike: – 6km (3.5miles) / 200 metres of ascent 27 weeks / approx 8k steps per day |
< Note: For a complete list of milestones click <here>.
Real-world exercise (& movement)
< Note: For my full physio program click <here>.
Walking
After physio on Thursday, I hit the treadmill and whacked it up to 15% – looking to see if this causes a problem before I head out for a ‘proper’ uphill walk on the local 900m ‘mountain’.
1km later, at 5.6kph, I was feeling it a bit, but not too bad; figured this was a good a time as any to turn around and try backwards walking … started off slow, wound it up to 3kph without any problems.
All went well, and no negative effects the next day … so decided it was time to try a first mini-hike on the local ‘mountain’, the “Taubenberg” – all 915m of it … and that’s at a relative start point of just over 700m at its base 😅.
I’d actually only intended to do one 3km/100m of ascent round … but I put down my water bottle near the top to take a short vid of me doing a ‘box jump’ in the woods; I then forgot to pick it up and thus was more or less ‘forced’ to go back up again. But also here, all was good – no pain, no stiffness, no soreness, nothing!
Cycling / Elliptical
Thursday saw me stopping by at my local insurance agent to get the new number plates for my s-pedalecs: in Germany, for bikes over 250W and/or those that can do more than 25kph, you need a driving license, and a number plate/insurance. What’s a bit weird is that the insurance and number plate are intrinsically coupled; you pay for a year’s insurance and get a number plate which automatically loses its validity at the end of February of next year.
There are three different colours of number plates which get cycled – the theory is that someone who is cycling with an out-of-date number plate (i.e. no valid insurance) is easier to spot … of course, if it’s 3 years old, the colour is ‘back in trend’ and people won’t be able to see from a distance (although each number plate also has the year of validity imprinted in small text at the bottom.
Chris had confirmed I was (more than) ready to get back on my bike … although I shouldn’t overdo it – I said I’d keep the fast downhill trails for later 😜.
Saturday saw me then doing a sedate 10km or so in and around town; Sunday I finally got back to cycling to my afternoon bouldering / climbing session … virtually flat, a lot of it nice wide empty cycle path plus one stretch in the ‘cellar’ of a motorway bridge which is super flat, smooth concrete: it’s a place where I love to do a 0-however_fast_I_can attempt … which is what I did. All good!
(Note: see here for benefits of low load cycling for Achilles rehab)
Climbing
No bouldering on Tuesday, for the second week running, this time due to visitors at work (more under ‘Mental Health’).
For that, after the visitors were gone, I stopped off at the climbing Gym on Friday afternoon and had a good session … I’m still holding back on the bouldering: low risk 1-4 routes where I ‘know’ I’m not going to slip, no jumping down, etc.; on the climbing wall with the automatic belay, it feels almost normal – also here, not doing any dynamic moves, (of course!), no full pressure dorsiflexion (of course!), but other than that, it feels normal.
Mental Health (& daily happenings)
Visitors at work / my new job
Monday to Friday this week saw a bunch of visitors: my French manager, plus other colleagues from France, USA, Ireland and our other location in Germany. This carried on the ‘theme’ of last week of an up-ended routine which wrought havoc on my exercises: business dinners on Tuesday and Wednesday led to late nights, early starts due to driving my 15yr old to school (heard this week that the affected train stretch is not opening end of April as planned, but end of June … which probably means, July or August 🙄). So, no bouldering on Tuesday either, unfortunately, for the second week running. Hate that. Particularly as one of the visits was an ISO certification pre-audit visit from external colleagues. ISO(want to cry 😅) – read that out loud 😜 🤪.
One of the largest topics for me was the re-structuring at work, the ‘dissolving’ of the last remnants of my team I had looked after since end of 2015. My French manager, still disgruntled at how I’d approached the topic from the beginning (him being the last to know), kinda did his best to cover it up wrt me at least, with smiles … but he said to others in my team that it was ‘simply not done like that’ (or something similar). Have to say: don’t care … if I had to do it again, I’d do it the same way. I’m just not a big-company-bitch like some people … my team and the others directly around me matter more than some HR or similar big-company-bullshit hierarchy nonsense.
Whilst we (my French manager, local colleague at my hierarchical level and I) all more-or-less ended up on the same page regarding my team, the details of my new role are still not clearly defined. Theoretically, if I’m moved out from under my French manager (I hope so), it really has nothing to do with either him or my local colleague. The problem is, my French manager’s manager (the American climber) has so many things to do, so many direct reports and wants to take his time to make a smooth transition (which I feel is right), that he hasn’t defined anything in writing yet; coupled with that, the other two want to get things ‘officially’ transitioning next week already … which, if my role is not fixed, feels like ‘leaving me hanging out to dry’ … at least a little bit, anyway … 🤷.
Anyway, will drop the American manager, ‘The Climber’, an email in the next few days and hope that we can find a reasonable grouped transitional phase soon-ish 🤞.
Achilles Rupture Recovery 