hello there AT brethren,

I have now re-entered the lofty heights of the 2-Shoe world, and as a reward went out to buy myself some new shoes (naturally). Pity everyone in China has tiny feet, couldn’t find my size! Bloody hardship posting….

So the world of 2 Shoes is very different to that of Das Boot. I was a bit ginger at first, but you do find your stride pretty quickly. What I do notice is that now I am using a whole bunch of muscles in my foot and calf/shin that haven’t been used for some time (even in the boot), so they do get pretty sore by the end of the day. Here are my main observations:

  • I have, like, ZERO power in the bad leg. This has improved a tiny tiny bit since I started in 2 shoes, but you can tell it’s going to take forever to get my foot-mojo back.
  • my ankle swells up big time after exercise and walking around in a shoe a lot. I am guessing this is from under-use over the past 3 months.
  • I still have a pronounced limp. I seem to use my toes to try to compensate for the lack of strength in my calf, and the resultant overcompensation causes me to limp like Kevin Spacey in The Usual Suspects (ok not quite that bad).  Whatever that muscle is that runs down your shin next to your Shinbone - that’s the one that is sore at the end of the day.
  • I have a little lump that appears at the point where my AT meets my heel. My guess that the AT and the heel are partying on like crazy in there and just needed some extra room was pronounced INCORRECT by Willy the cool physio, who tells me it’s just extra strain on the connection as the AT is quite tight after surgical repair - boooring. It’s not there in the morning, only after I have been exercising or walking a lot do they seem to crack out the champagne.

I am doing my 2 legged calf-raises 3 x daily like a good lad and am seeing the physio once a week. Am guessing I’ll need to be right on top of the exercises in order to get the old leg working normally again, you can really notice when you slacken off the stretching that the AT gets super tight (like, in the morning when you get out of bed).

Hope everyone else is getting along ok.