Life and leg update : 9 weeks post injury

 It's been 9 weeks since Tough Mudder, since I broke my ankle, since I started the most challenging uphill battle since I began this fitness thing.
And don't get me wrong, I really love the uphill stuff. It makes me stronger. I just really hated this one, because it made me physically weaker and set me back months.

Let's talk first about where I'm at with this leg, shall we? I'm out of the moonboot and walking (relatively) normally and pain-free in normal shoes. Apart from a little localized swelling, the ankle itself looks normal and is back to a pretty normal aesthetic. Internally, the bone is fusing itself back to where it needs to be. It's an avulsion fracture, so I actually tore off the chunk of bone that's attached to the ligament. To make it heal, well, that's a game of hoping it attaches in the right spot and that the bone grows well enough to cover the weak spot. In terms of timeline for a complete heal on it...it could be 12-18 months.


In the meantime, I'm still doing physio every 2 weeks. We are trying to strengthen the ligaments that I sprained in the fall, and build up the muscle that I lost in the moonboot. At last measure (2 weeks ago), muscle mass in my right leg was 30% less than my left. That's actually quite good, according to my physiotherapist.

It aches if I stand on it for a long time. It aches badly if I push too far when I go walking. It's the way that I know how to progress with my training. I'm not cleared for running yet, but my walks are up to 2.7km, with some pain afterwards, but not into the next day (which is how the physio said I'd know that I had done too much.)
At the moment, it's just a bit of a pain that I can't do really simple things. For example, some kids were running around in the shopping center (where the parents were, I have no idea), and one of them almost ran straight into me. A quick sideways movement was just out of the question (and really painful when I tried). Another example is crossing the road. I needed to jog the last few steps yesterday, as there was a car coming (too fast), and it was painful to run on it.

Baby steps. Literally.

The service track at Birdrock beach

In terms of training goals, I have a few for the coming year. Within a month, I want to do Birdrock again. It's my most difficult, and favourite, training ground. There's a set of steps, and a service track. We walk a round trip of 6.5km, with this thing right in the middle. The gradient on the track is 45.7% and it's an amazing feeling to get to the top. People run it. I'd love to be able to do that.
I also would like to do a half marathon and a full marathon, just walking. I'm definitely training towards that, and expect to achieve both in 2014. I may even modify the Birdrock walk and do it 3 times with some extra distance on it for my half marathon. I did it twice in a training session a couple of months ago, and it wasn't so bad.

We have a couple of things planned as a group in 2014. We are doing the Neon Run in February, and probably a relay for life later in the year. I'm sure there will be other things that we can get involved in.

I've volunteered to work at Tough Mudder in March. I won't be running the track again, but I really loved the atmosphere there, and wanted to get involved. Also, my brother has his own goals, which involve the Mudder, and I really want to be there to support him.

Other than the leg, life is going really well. The boys are happy and healthy, and I'm getting over a throat infection. We're doing lots of odd jobs and improvements around the house in preparation for my boyfriend's visit in February. I really can't wait for that. We've been apart for 2 months, and we have 3 more to wait, but at least the end is in sight now.