Ryan Border’s Achilles Blog

Drug my helmet cam to the oval today for some interval training.

I’m not in this video… I’m the guy with the camera on my head

Since my last update, I found myself getting a little frustrated with the slow pace of my progress. My working theory has been that the best way to rehab my injury was simply to use it- skate, bike, ski, walk, etc.

I’ve been rethinking that a lot lately- and have decided that while it may be true in the long term, right now I need to re-focus on specific exercises and activities for Achilles rehab. So, I made some changes, the biggest being that I’m now spending 2 days a week, working solely on strength building for my Achilles and calf.

“PT day” at the gym

I’m taking my own advice, and approaching this like a bodybuilder: I’m working my calves hard, 2 times a week, being sure to give them sufficient time to rest and recover.

Muscle tone has improved a lot.

I’m making a gradual shift in my nutrition program too; rehab is more about muscle (re)building now. So, more traditional high protein, less Jello, weaning off the kelp, enzymes, and such. Basically, I’m consuming what I have left, but not restocking the tendon specific supplements. I am trying to decide if I think my normal (vegetarian BTW) diet may have had deficiencies contributing to my initial ATR injury. I might decide that I want to make a long term adjustment to maintain tendon health (Jello once a week or something)…

I still have some atrophy issues to resolve. Good view of my scar status here too

After my battle with insurance, PT is now wrapped up for me- I’m on my own from here on out. I’m OK with that, my sense being that I was getting diminishing returns anyway. Through my job, I can access 4 additional (on-site) PT sessions with a new therapist- I plan to take advantage of that in January, just to get a fresh perspective and maybe some new ideas.

Balance is improving

I’ve have reached one important (seems to me) milestone. Up until recently, whenever I’ve worked my injury, I’ve felt like the injury itself has always been the limitation. I’m not sure if my Achilles has just gotten stronger, or if my calf has continued to get weaker, but that’s not always true now: If I’m careful, and doing fairly high reps, I can actually work my calf hard enough that the calf itself fatigues/fails. Usually, it just hurts so bad (up high, away from the injury, a good weightlifting “burn”) that I have to quit

Lastly, I’ll mention that I’ve been working through another physical impediment during the last couple weeks. I crashed hard on the skis… for a while I thought I might have broken ribs. Turns out, I dislocated one, but I spent 10 days struggling with that before finally getting it popped back into place. My inability to breathe, all around hurting, and just generally being miserable surely contributed to my frustration. On the plus side, the down time gave me time to re-assess my plan/progress, and so perhaps it will end up being a good thing- getting me back on a more productive path.

The last few weeks rolled by pretty fast- so I’ll keep this update short.

I got out on my road-bike last weekend. It’s another activity I really had no hope of doing again in 2011. Took it up a rolling climb, which (because the road bike doesn’t have a granny gear) required me to intermittently stand up on the pedals. I could do it, but had to carry more weight on my arms than normal, and be careful pedaling. My road cleats are mounted so that the pedal spindle is actually a tiny bit forward on the ball of my foot - so this was a real workout for the Achilles.

My road pedal and cleat, mounted on my spin bike. The relatively forward location of the pedal spindle increases the load on the Achilles. I’ve been spinning with these shoes/pedals since the 3.5 week mark.

I’ve been skating more and more, and have gotten back to training with some of my regular crew. I’m really happy to be doing this again, but sometimes get frustrated/depressed with how much power and speed I’ve got to rebuild. The consensus from the other skaters is that I’m just sitting too high, which is shortening my push, and robbing me of power. So, I really need to work on that dorsi-flexion.

That’s me, #4 in the paceline. Note how much higher my hips are than the guy in front of me.

I’ll try not to bore you guys with too many speedskating details… we always race counter-clockwise, left turns. The transition from the straightaway into the corner is called the pivot step, and requires a very strong push off the right (my injured) leg. I really seem to be struggling with the pivot, and corners in general. In the past, I’ve done some short-track skating, which - although I’m quite bad at it - has been useful to find/expose/fix problems with my corners. Up until now, I haven’t gone back to the short track post injury- the corner angles and forces are more severe, and the chances of (me) falling are a lot higher. But, this week, I went and gave it a try, and managed to do OK. As expected, it does load my ankle up higher in the (much) tighter corners- but I think it will be good for me again.

I think I ski’d 4 times in the last two weeks. Here is another ski video from 12/4/2011 (14wks).

That’s me in my yellow & blue coat again. The crash at 0:57 hurt: just about everything except my Achilles
The ski season has been dry/thin here so far, so I haven’t ventured into any of the real big/steep terrain yet. All indications are that I should be able to ski just about anything/anywhere this year. So far, I can even ski bumps OK. 14 weeks ago, that was certainly not expected.

Let’s leave it at that- happy healing everybody.