Whoa

Monday: Yoga 30 minutes, walk 1.5 miles
Tuesday: Weights 20 minutes, walk 1.2 miles 

I have been faithfully using the Thumper on my Achilles and calf and have also been pretty good about taking a slow walk every day. Yesterday a miracle occurred and my Achilles stopped hurting.

I’m not sure exactly how to say what I’m about to try to say. But I think when you’ve lived with a pain for long enough—no matter how mild—it just becomes part of your life and actually starts to condition you. So I might say my Achilles feel pretty good today, and that’s true in relative terms, but in the back of my mind of course they’re still going to hurt when I get up after sitting for a while. Or go down stairs. Or walk for any distance. That’s just a given. Only yesterday some of those things didn’t actually hurt at all, and I started realizing that I have been avoiding or delaying standing up, using the stairs, and walking because of the anticipated pain. My pain was slowly training me to be more sedentary.

So yesterday was fantastic and eye-opening. And just to be clear, my Achilles do kind of hurt again today, but nothing like this has happened in four or five years, so surely it points toward healing.