The recovery

My injury had a huge impact on my life because not only is running my passion, it’s also my full-time job. Under normal circumstances most everything I do in my life is in some way impacted by running, from diet to sleep and even leisure activities.

After my surgery, I was basically confined to my house aside from rehab appointments for my knee. There wasn’t a lot I could do for my job except to get healthy.

This is what my recovery looked like:

• The first two weeks: I was totally non-weight bearing on my right side.
• At two weeks: I could begin to “toe-touch” meaning I was allowed to begin putting incrementally more weight through my injured side.
• At four weeks: I gradually weaned off of the crutches while still relying heavily on the knee brace I had used since surgery.
• At six weeks: I was finally able to remove my brace and start walking on my own. Almost a decade of running 60-plus mile weeks was seemingly undone by this first six weeks of recovery.
• The next 10 weeks: With some serious rehab and time, I went from struggling to walk through a grocery store unaided to finally running again. In late November and early December, I began alternating short stints of running with some walking in between until I was able to run continuously.
• Currently: Full strength and training in earnest.

During the recovery process I tried to stay as patient as possible and have faith that I could still come back and be better than ever. I stayed sane by setting small, short-term goals for myself. I also tried to focus on executing every rep well and with intention. If I was only allowed to do a handful of exercises that day, I wanted to make every single rep count.

A fresh perspective

Throughout the recovery process I came to appreciate running like never before. In my previous 14 years of running, I had never taken such a long time off. It gave me a fresh perspective.

Typically, I’ll take a couple weeks off after a season. In that time, I go from dying for a break to itching to run again in about three days. This was the first time I had ever taken long enough off to get over that hump. I had broken the “habit” and I no longer woke up every day feeling like I needed to run.

This was an interesting realization when I had gone through so much pain and effort to get back to running. The extra time away from the sport allowed me to reflect, take a step back, and hash out why I run. It is easy to go on autopilot and just keep doing something because you always have. Now I run with intention and can draw on those reasons for motivation.