I’m now just past the 20 week point, the 18th of June will mark exactly 5 months post-op. Big news: I played a beach volleyball tournament this past weekend! I’m so excited about this! My partner and I originally set our goals for this tournament to be strictly for fun and to expect to lose every game, but we actually came 7th out of 16 which we decided was not too shabby for my first time back! I even think it’s possible we could have done better as we had several really close matches that ended in losses.

My main concern was that I might not be able to make it throught the 10 hour day, but I did! I didn’t do much jumping at all (maybe only 2 or 3 jumps the entire day) but I was running and sprinting around just fine all day. I had no close calls or scares which was another thing I was worried about. My legs are still somewhat sore 3 days later though, I guess because I haven’t worked them that hard in a long time. The achilles was extremely stiff the next day.

The mental aspect that comes with this injury takes a lot of work to get around. The other day my PT asked me to jump over a cone (very similar to how I originally injured myself…) and I couldn’t get my head around it. I stared at it for a while until he took it away. I felt pathetic but terrified. I just freaking brain fart every time and my head can’t make my foot work.