It has already been 3 weeks since I last made an entry here. I won’t lie: with the progress in my recovery, I’m thinking less and less about the injury and treating myself to new pieces of hard-earned freedom.
What has happened in the meantime?
After finally removing the last wedge from the Künzli shoe, I was allowed to switch to regular sports shoes with a 1 cm wedge. The change felt a bit strange at first because I felt like I no longer had any lateral stability. I could also take another look at my calf under tension (a sad sight).
The lateral stability returned after about 3–4 days, and I was finally somewhat mobile again.
First, I picked up my motorcycle from my aunt (I had ridden to the accident event with it). Motorcycle boots + 1 cm wedge — that was more of a squeeze and quite annoying, but after 3 months, this chapter was finally closed.
Then it was time for a 2-week vacation.
In Bulgaria, I went hiking with my girlfriend and friends. At first, I only dared to do 2–3 km. However, after 2–3 km, I didn’t receive any negative feedback from my tendon. As my doctor said: pain up to 3/10 is okay. So, I actually completed my first 10 km hike with 500 meters of elevation gain!
Riding on that first success, which made me incredibly happy, we repeated it directly on day 2! I was as proud as can be! Especially when going uphill, I made sure to walk on my tiptoes as much as possible. This really worked my calf muscles, and I noticed strong training progress.
After Bulgaria, I went straight to Poland. That meant: 6 p.m. flight from Sofia, arrival around 9:15 p.m. in Frankfurt, straight into the car, and an 800 km drive to Poland for a family holiday. Everything went perfectly — no pain, no negative feedback. Here and there, a slight pull and a few twitches, but that’s fine. Kayaking and long walks were no problem at all.
And here I am now: on August 11th, after 2 weeks of vacation — without explicit physio training, I actually managed my first calf raise on the operated leg. When you read all those stories on Reddit & co., you think: “Damn! They’re already in month 6 and still can’t do it.”
But the enormous training effort and sticking with it have paid off!
More about the calf raise and some more technical details about my leg in the next post — stay tuned ;)