75 pounds

I went running last week for the first time since Christmas Eve.

I started physical therapy with Eric Magrum after a month in the boot. I thought I might be running, so I came with clothes and shoes. It was 13 degrees when I left the house though, so I was bundled up. Walking into the PT "playground," I was greeted by Eric and Jimmy Picard! That was somewhat of a surprise, since I'd heard he was going to start interning there, but hadn't thought about it in months. I gave them both the rundown of how the injury came about and Eric started mashing on my left ankle and foot. Then he prescribed a number of activities, like squats and calf-raises, to get my ankles moving. My left ankle as been pretty much immobile since December 31.

After doing a really bad job of those (no surprise) and talking to Jimmy-Jam for a while, I got my birthday wish of running on the Alter G treadmill. For those of you who don't know what this is, it is a treadmill that reduces the amount of weight that you're running with. Tim Young had told me it was like running with a giant wedgie, so I wore compression shorts thinking that would help. It did, for sure. This thing inflated and lifted my feet off of the ground, then dropped me back down and put me at 100% of my weight on the treadmill. We adjusted it to 50% body weight and my hips started to raise and my feet became a lot lighter.

I ran on this treadmill for 10 minutes. My speed was set at "5.0," whatever that means. It was not fast. The experience was very strange. I felt like I had to carry my arms really high and like I couldn't go anywhere. The latter is true because I was attached to the thing. My hips couldn't move horizontally, just vertically. But it was awesome to run again.

Afterwards I had to rush off to class, so I wasn't able to stretch. Fast forward 5 days. My ankle has been really sore. My left hip has felt like I've been in some sort of an accident. I haven't biked or swam because of time constraints, and I've been hobbling around a lot more in the boot than I feel like I have in the previous weeks. 

Back to physical therapy yesterday, Jimmy mashed less-hard on my ankle, and my entire calf was in knots. I'll have to take care of that. I haven't been foam rolling and stretching because I thought I needed to keep my foot in the boot all the time. I will fix that. But I got back on the treadmill for another 10 minutes, this time at speed 7.0. I actually felt like I was running! I even broke a sweat! It was so much fun! I wish I could afford to go to PT every single day to run on this thing.