This week has marked a watershed in my RevACLr rehab and, while I’m a little hesitant to celebrate prematurely – last time I got this far the rehab hit the skids, literally – I’m touching wood, crossing my fingers, saluting magpies and looking out for black cats quasi religiously to make sure there’s no more bad luck lurking around the corner to scupper my progress.
I’ve been rehabbing back in the gym for a couple of months now and have officially started treadmill running again. Woohoo! After starting with 10 minutes of run/walking, I’m now up to half an hour (one minute run, one minute walk) – the furthest I’ve been able to get since the revision surgery in March last year and, in reality, the furthest I’ve run since we confirmed the original ACL surgery had failed in December the previous year.
It is SO good to finally be able to get a decent cardio session in without having to sit on the blinkin’ static bike (and to see the calories figures rolling round more quickly than they do just walking or cycling – there's a four-finger kit kat right there in this photo. Hopefully the weight figures will start to fall just as quickly soon, okay forget the kit kat then...)
I’ve got three sessions in this week, with no significant ill effects, and I’m loving getting back into the groove. The challenge now is not to push too much too soon (Shall I start running in five minute blocks? Can I push the speed up a bit? Maybe I could start playing with the incline to make it more interesting…?)
The knee itself has responded pretty well to the increase in activity – just a few tracking grumbles I think – but I'm being reminded that it’s not only my knee that hasn’t been used properly for a long time but other muscles/tendons too. For example, my Achilles gets quite sore as the run/walk progresses so needs quite a bit of stretching and my lower back is having to get used to taking the impact again.
While it’s tempting to start playing games with the numbers and pushing on quickly, the last thing I want to do after the last couple of years is to get this far then have to stop for other injuries so it really is a case of slowly, slowly catchy monkey!
Away from the treadmill, I’m still doing daily quad sets, step ups, step downs and side steps and straight leg raises. We’ve swapped the squats for lunges as I really wasn’t getting on with them (they just felt wrong inside the joint, which meant I hated doing them) but it finally feels as though I’m into rehab pastures new.
On a side note, while it’s great to be able to source information via the internet and social media sites, one of the downsides of social media is the ability to see exactly what you were doing ‘on this day’ in previous years.
Tomorrow is the Worcester Half Marathon – a race I took part in a year after my first ACL surgery, in 2012. Last year Facebook kindly reminded me of that fact on the same day my knee had ballooned up following my first trip to the gym following my revision surgery:
That was my first real set back. If I’d known then what the following 12 months were to have in store, I’d probably have quit there and then but, whisper it quietly, the picture at the top of this post, from my third run/walk this week, suggests I’m finally making progress J