My leg doesn’t work right.

Today marks 8 months since my injury, so we’re not quite 8 months post-op but close enough.

It’s been a strange couple of months. For a while I felt behind and got discouraged because I wasn’t comfortable running at the 6 or 7 month marks. I’m not sure why that bothered me so much given how recovery timelines can differ. I guess I thought the random nagging stiffness and pain would let up…and it didn’t. There’s still never a day where I forget about the entire thing and move around normally. That can wear me down sometimes.

About a month ago I had to remind myself that I’m still doing more each week and there’s plenty to be positive about. I can ride my bike, for example, with almost zero issues. That’s probably the activity that feels closest to pre-injury normalcy. So I can ride around with my son in his bike seat and I get 30-60 minutes of exercise 3-4 days a week.

I tried to have a month of positivity based on those rides and doing more in-home exercises like calf raises, single-leg balance games, and stretching, and wouldn’t you know it: my ankle area started feeling better. I don’t know why it never sinks in, but I feel best when I’m sticking with a regular routine of exercise and stretching. If I take two or three days off everything gets tight and sore again.

Over the past 3 weeks I’ve added in some basketball shootarounds at the court next to my son’s favorite playground. I call it working on my Old Man Game, because I move just like the old guys I used to play against when I was young and had not a care in the world. Injuries? What are those?! Shooting, especially actively getting my legs into a shot, along with chasing missed shots turns into a light workout where I can try some semi-explosive movements without going too far.

Today I fired up my Couch to 5K app and went for my first official run. Well, walking/running intervals based on the first week of the C25K program. It felt weird, like I’m running with someone else’s foot attached where mine used to be, but I think I can continue on the plan and gradually increasing the running intervals each week.

So it’s been another one of those up-down-up cycles. Like I wrote earlier, it can wear me down, but I’m glad to be on the upswing again. If I have any advice to offer right now, it’s to work hard at sticking with your exercises. It’s easy to let them slide when you start feeling better and getting back into other daily routines, but there’s still a huge benefit to putting in specific rehab work (as boring as it may be).