Ankle-versary

So, we've reached the one year anniversary of my ankle surgery.  I would consider my "ankle-versary" to be May 8th, since that's when I actually tore it, but since I didn't have the surgery until the 17th, which would be the real date of when the healing started, that's the day.

I can't promise that this will be my last post that mentions the Achilles tear, but I will promise that it will be the last one solely dedicated to it.  It's time to put things in perspective, put things in their place, and put things in the rear-view mirror.  I'm about 90% recovered, and I'm getting better every day.  I still notice the fact of the injury every time I have to make a quick movement, but I can walk without pain and have been able to run and do plyometric workouts without too much trouble.

There is, of course, the psychological effects to deal with.  My ankle is strong enough to do pretty much everything I'd want to do with it.  Since last fall, I've run six laps at three different regular Tough Mudder events, and another six laps at WTM.  I've finished various rounds of Insanity, Asylum and T25, and I've been able to run a long run while averaging sub-10 minute miles, so, I would assume that this means that the physical part of the recovery is pretty close to done, but learning to trust the ankle again isn't coming as quickly.  I still find myself being overly careful when getting down off of obstacles - most notably, Berlin Walls.  The drop is a bit scary because I'm not sure how my ankle will react to a sudden jolt. This might not be a bad thing, obviously.  Being cautious around obstacles is good practice.  I don't want to be careless and put myself in physical danger if it can be avoided.

I guess this is the big lesson that I would take away from this.  Although it's appropriate to be cautious, we have to make sure that caution doesn't control us to the detriment of being adventurous as well.  We should always be open to the possibility that the next step could hurt, but isn't it more important that we think about the journey that step can lead to as well?  If we paralyze ourselves thinking about all of the bad things that can happen, then we needlessly close ourselves off from a lot of possibilities to do amazing things.

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The Best Day since November 30th, 1988

Okay, maybe that's a little bit of an exaggeration, but in the immortal words of Ice Cube, "today was a good day", and since some rigorous Internet-based research found out that Ice Cube was rapping about November 30th, 1988 (or, January 20th, 1992, depending on which source you believe), I've decided that's the benchmark.  Either way, it can't be denied that today was a good day for me: I went for a walk!

So, that may not seem all that earth shattering, but it's a big day for me.  A little background before I explain why: today marks the 102nd day since my surgery.  That's 14 weeks and 4 days.  The first two weeks were spent sitting on my couch watching Netflix.  The next 10 weeks were spent doing physical therapy 3 times a week, with the high point being the ability to do 2-footed toe lifts. At no point during those 10 weeks could I walk without a limp.

For the last two+ weeks, I've been down to twice-a-week physical therapy, and I've begun treadmill walking and doing deep-knee TRX work.  Overall, I've been seeing steady progress, but it's been slow.  The limp still shows up if I'm tired or have been moving around a lot, but my physical therapist has started asking me to test it a little bit more. At the end of last week, I asked her if I could take a walk along the Osmanthus Trail, which is where I used to do most of my trail running.  It's a 2.5 mile loop through some beautiful swampland in Virginia Beach, and it had become a very comfortable place for me to run.  There's not much change in elevation, but the ground is uneven and root-covered.  The fact that it is 2.5 miles made it easy for me to calculate where I was, distance-wise, and it allowed me to test myself in terms of pace (I got down below 8-minute miles at my best).  When she said that would be okay as long as I was careful and stopped if my limp got really bad, I was super-excited to go out and test myself a bit.

My Day in Busch Gardens

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to do the walk this weekend because I went to Busch Gardens with my wife and kids.  Knowing that there would be a lot of walking, but at a relatively leisurely pace, I set my Runkeeper app to track my walking progress.  At the end of the day, it said that I'd walked 5.7 miles in just under 5 hours.  Of course, some of that mileage is when I was on rides, so I wasn't quite sure what to make of it.  It didn't seem too hard on my ankle, and it didn't seem too impressive to walk basically 1 mph, so I decided to go out to Osmanthus Trail this morning.  I figured I would take it easy and see what kind of pace I could keep up without limping.  I started out by walking the Bald Cyprus Trail, which is just as nice as Osmanthus, but shorter.  It does have a bit more elevation change, though.  The fact that it dead-ends into Osmanthus meant that I could walk it, and then either do Osmanthus or shortcut back to my car if I wasn't feeling up to it.

Based on the title of this post, you can probably tell how it went, but I'm going to describe it anyway.  It was fantastic.  Leaving my house this morning, my goal was to have a 20-minute per mile pace along Osmanthus.  I ended up walking 4.34 miles with a sub-17 minute mile pace.  The best part was that my ankle actually felt pretty good during the walk (it's tightening up a bit now), but I realized that I could easily work with those numbers and improve them.  I felt like I could actually run, if I wanted to (if my physical therapist is reading this, don't worry, I didn't), and I realized that walking a TM might not be out of the realm of possibility. The next Mudder that I'm scheduled for is Seattle on October 4th.  That gives me just over 5 weeks to get to the point where I can walk 12 miles or so.  I'm not necessarily going to worry about pace, but if I can get below 15 minutes per mile, then I would be ecstatic.

All of that is nice, and makes me feel good about my possibilities, but it's not really why today was such a great day.  That was actually the result of feeling like I am challenging myself again.  This isn't to say that PT isn't challenging, or that recovery has been smooth sailing, but there is a difference. The challenge created by doing two-footed toe lifts is tough, but the progress tends to be slow and the slowness of the improvements has made me pessimistic about my potential.  Today's challenge was tough but it also demonstrated that I could get back to normal activities.  Granted, I'm not running on treadmills like Kobe, but for the first time I can actually see myself taking part in Tough Mudders again - and not simply in a hypothetical, "someday in the future" kind of way.

I realized that challenging ourselves serves many different purposes.  It helps us understand our capabilities and potential.  It helps us try different things.  But, most importantly, it is the crucible through which we make ourselves successful.  I think that's why challenging ourselves feels good.  It's not always fun while it's happening, but it cannot be denied that a challenge, successfully met, changes us.  There's no doubt that there's a lesson in there for education...

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Hurt Versus Injured

This has, perhaps, been the most difficult post to write because it means that I've had to resign myself to being out of commission for a while.  First, the back story: last Wednesday I met with Danny and Brian to do an interval track workout that they have been doing for a while now. We jogged a bit, went through a series of 100 meter track exercises, some burpees, some standing box jumps (although these weren't really box jumps because we were jumping up onto a low wall), ran some more, did some stairs, and then went to another series of 100 meter track exercises.  There were various exercises on the track, and I won't bore anyone with what each 100 meter activity was, but each time around the track included a 100 meter sprint.  Our goal was to have run each track activity 8 times total.  All was going well, until the final sprint.  About half way through, I felt a pop and went down like a sack of wet oatmeal.  I'm pretty sure that I knew it was bad before I even hit the ground (which, luckily was wet so I didn't end up with any road rash from sliding and rolling to a stop).  To both Danny and Brian's credit, both of them stopped to see how I was rather than finish their sprint - and more importantly, neither of them raised the X on me (even though this would have been the ideal time to do it for a good laugh).

Doesn't look that bad, does it?

Anyone who has been involved with any kind of intense exercise will know the difference between being hurt and being injured.  Being hurt means you rub some dirt on it and keep going.  Maybe you have to rest for a little while.  Maybe you have to rest for a long while.  But the end result is that you're more or less whole and just have to either adjust to the pain or wait for the pain to go away.  Being injured, on the other hand, is something that puts you out of action for a while.  Perhaps it requires a cast.  Maybe it requires a surgery.  Maybe there's some physical therapy involved.  Well, it looks like all three of those things are on my To Do list.

I've got the diagnosis, and an MRI, and I've been told that I have either a complete or near complete tear of my left Achilles tendon along with a complete tear of my Talofibular ligament.  I see the orthopedic surgeon tomorrow, and will know more about the next steps after that appointment.  I'm steeling myself for the surgery that I expect to come sometime in the next week.

This is what I think of my MRI

Obviously, I'm disappointed.  The funny thing about it, though, is that the physical pain isn't all that bad.  It didn't even really hurt that much when it happened.  Trying to walk on it is a different story, but as long as I'm not trying to stand on my toes, then there isn't any physical pain.  I'm taking medicine to combat swelling, but I don't need it for pain relief. There is, however, the disappointment of missing events with my Mudder Brudders, and I'm not sure how I'll feel seeing them finish events without me, tell me stories of the crazy folks that they've met (on and off the course), and see them progress - all while I go through the inevitable physical therapy to rebuild my leg.  Don't get me wrong, I wish them both the best...I just wish I could be there to witness and be part of it.

I've never been injured like this before.  I had a knee surgery in 2008, but that was before I started getting in shape so it was mostly an inconvenience.  I got to spend some time in my bed strapped to a CPM machine, but otherwise I wasn't missing out on much.  This is different.  This injury will put me out of commission for the Virginia Beach Mudder at a minimum.  That fact alone is bad enough, but it gets worse because there's no set recovery time.  I've read that it can be as little as 4 months and as much as a year.  My goal is to recover in time to do the Seattle event at the beginning of October, follow that up with the Mid-Atlantic mudder at the end of October, and be ready for WTM in November.  That would put me at about the 6 month mark from the injury, and I may be being naive to think that it's possible, but at this point I have to have a goal to work towards.  Without that goal, I may just give up, eat Mudslide Ice Cream, and gain back the 40 lbs I've lost.

There's no lessons here for education or leadership - at least not yet.  I'm still processing the event, and although I'll doubtlessly learn lessons from the recovery, I'm just in the early stages of coming to terms with what has happened.  I won't lie...it's been emotional, but it's also not the worst thing that could ever happen to me.  Lots of people have it worse than I do, and this injury is something that I will recover from.  It may not be quickly, but eventually I'll be as good as I was before. If I don't recover in time for WTM 2013 then 2014 better watch out because I'll be pissed about missing out.

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