I logged the grand total of zero miles this week due to my swollen and tender left Achilles Tendon. I did however venture to the community pool twice and on both occasions kicked my way up and down the pool for 30 minutes with my sparkly new kickboard (which looks something like this one, but with a shark print!) and did a 10 mile bike ride in a really low gear. I even had to miss the McDowell 5K-ish run this Sunday (which disappointed me more than having to miss any of my other runs!)
After a couple of days of resting my legs on Tuesday and Wednesday, I started my rehab phase on Thursday with Eccentric Heel Drops. I have suspected for a while now that my calves are a weak point for me given how much trouble I have had with them since I started running more than a few miles at a time and Eccentric Heel Drops are one of the best ways to strengthen the muscles and tendons from my ankles to my calves.
Eccentric means "muscle lengthening" and in this case, the calf muscle is lengthened by dropping the heel below the toes. The photo below shows the first stage of the exercise where I stand on one straight leg on a stair and slowly lower my heal from a raised position down lower than my toes which lengthens my calf muscle and Achilles Tendon. I then place my other foot down and lift my body back up to the starting position and perform the drop again. I do 3 sets of 15 of these heel drops per leg. This focuses on the gastrocnemis muscle.
The next stage of the exercise is to do the same heel drop with a bent leg. The soleus muscle is connected to the gastrocnemis to form what people refer to as the "calf" muscle. It is isolated during exercises by bending the leg at the knee. I perform 3 sets of 15 of these bent leg heel drops per leg.
I have found that until recently I neglected this muscle completely during warm up and warm down stretching as I always performed my "runners stretch" with a straight leg (as shown below) which only stretches the gastrocnemis.
I discovered my neglect when reading one of my books earlier this year and started adding the exercise shown below to stretch the soleus muscle.
I currently do my Eccentric Heel Drops twice a day and need to continue them for 12 weeks before cutting back to once a day.
So far I have seen an improvement each day. The swelling is no longer visible and I didn't develop a bump on the Achilles (which is one of the tell-tale signs that the injury is bad enough to be classed as "Tendonitis"). There is still some discomfort when I perform the pinch test on the tendon, but it is less than it was this time last week.
I plan to do a jogging session on Thursday to evaluate whether I can run in the Susan G Komen 5K on Saturday. I am going to play soccer tonight and continue with my kicking and cycling this week - hopefully I'll be back running soon!
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