Achilles Rupture Recovery

Actually managed to wake up shortly after 5am this Saturday; was up shortly thereafter … but didn’t get out until nearly 6am – beginner mistake: not preparing everything the day before 🤦‍♂️. Still, all-in-all it went pretty well – I did lighten the load from 16kg (35lbs) down to 9kg (20lbs); plus I’ve lost a bit of weight since the last time I tried 4 rounds, so it’s not quite apples-with-apples.

And nevertheless: my pulse was under 60 as I stood next to the VW bus in the car park; it didn’t get close to 150 at any point – maxed out at 143 on the last steep ascent; held cadence nicely the whole time – yes it goes up and down, but that’s largely due to the fact that I’m walking in time to music on a slightly varied approx. 120-124 BPM playlist.

Saturday afternoon/evening and Sunday morning saw the strange but in the meantime recognisable as DOMS feeling in the top of my soleus; first thing Sunday the tendon was a little stiffer than normal … buuut the mini morning routine (10 ankle dances, 10 weighted seated calf raises, 10 DLRs with a tennis ball and finishing with 1 min of plantarflexion sitting plus 1 min calf stretch off a step and all was golden. And that despite me hitting well over 30k steps in a single day on Saturday 💪 🤩 🕺!

So, off we go with an easy volume run on Mon/Tue – this week it got shoved to Tue because I (yet again) went to bed too late on Sunday evening 🙄. But come Tuesday, I managed to get up at 5:30am, get in a few mobility exercises then get out to the local woods to do a ‘zone 1’ run – 6km @ 7:25/km. Easy peasy. Very light occasional heel pains (more discomfort than actual pain, max 1/10), but mostly felt actually normal; felt like I could have just kept running. But I’ve promised myself that I won’t budge from my plan.

No negative side effects the next day, so looks like this was fine; next week, if all goes well, I’ll up it to 7km.

Then to Thursday’s ‘Speedy Strides’ run – kind of a 5k run with intervals, starting short and not full effort. Started too late in the day – Fini the dog stayed overnight, I had to take her out first before taking my son to school; this meant it was 9am before I was outside, and it was already up to nearly 30°C (85°F). So no high performance … but then that’s not really my purpose here at the mo – yes, I’m looking forward, in the meantime, to getting a sub-25min 5k, but I’ll need to lose some more weight and improve my condition before that happens.

Nevertheless, as always, it was good to get some ‘speed work’ in, even if it’s still slow and heavy:

THIS run I felt the next day – same place as always, tenderness when I start going into dorsiflexion rather than constant pain. Was almost completely gone by the end of Friday, so I didn’t put off the weekend training hike.

Didn’t get on my bike a single time this week, for a variety of reasons.

Tuesday bouldering was more of a social event – just two of us chewing over this and that; S then went on to crack a 7er she’s been working on for about 4-5 weeks with her first attempt of the day 💪!

Once she’d left, I moved over to the climbing hall and, after a single warm-up route, hit the first crux of an VIII- (5.11b) route I started projecting. There are two of these cruxes which have been evading me since minimum a month … but, probably with the help of my gradually reducing weight (now down from 70kg to under 68kg), I finally cracked the first one.

On Sunday I finally managed to complete the lady’s Final Boulder Nr. 1, still left over from the Boulder Cup – here it was similar to my climbing project: there was a crux move where I kept on swinging out a bit too much, meaning I couldn’t stick a relatively dynamic move; every other move I could do. So, still relatively fresh, I practised this move several times, finally managed it multiple times in a row, then put all the moves together and hey, presto – boulder topped!

In the same session I went on to complete another three 6er routes; had a few tumbles as well with not a squeak from my injury. Really feeling like it’s getting close to me being back where I was pre-injury 🤞 🙏 .

An additional highlight was the return of the paddling pool 😁 – nothing like a cold beer after some hard climbing … having a pool to stick your feet in while you sup is the icing on the cake 😎. And even better: I was joined by S, K & L, all of whom seemed to discover for the first time how amazingly delightful it is to dabble your toes in some (not even cold) water. Particularly as we’ve been experiencing a real heatwave this week.

We must have sat there for an hour at least, talking about anything and everything. A really nice end to a great week – shame that J was missing and that my partner B doesn’t share in this.