It’s not my Achilles.
It’s my back.
***
I saw my PT last week – the best in the business, Kathy Howell – who in just a few minutes, found the root cause of my Achilles pain: a nerve injury to my lower back, probably caused by my crash at Intelligentsia. My lower back doesn’t even hurt, but the injury and symptoms traveled down the nerve track and into my leg, calf, and soon my Achilles.
(I probably got the diagnosis wrong somewhere in there, but forgive me, this is just a summary.)
I was skeptical at first, when she told me that my Achilles pain had nothing to do with my Achilles. That doesn’t make sense. You must be crazy, thinking that. But then I thought about it more… None of the treatment for my Achilles has worked. Not the ultrasound, nor the stretching, foam rolling, deep massage, light massage, oils and lotion, position changes, cleat adjustment, etc… Nothing worked. Nothing made it even remotely better.
So instead of treating my Achilles, she focused on my lower back. After 15 minutes of painful deep massage, I stood up and felt…nothing. There was no pain in my Achilles. It was gone, just like that. I think she might be onto something.
But treating injuries is never as easy as it sounds (especially for such a fragile being as me who seemingly enjoys hurting himself at least three times a year), and I knew I had a lot of hard work ahead of me.
The pain in my Achilles was gone, but only temporarily. This injury requires daily maintenance – hundreds of press-ups, lots of walking, and correcting my posture.
Wait, you said: walking? To heal my Achilles injury?? I mean, back injury? I’m not sure of all the sciency-mumbo-jumbo (something to do with repeated extensions of the spine), but after just one week of walking, I do know that it works. For the past week, I’ve been back on the bike, easing back into riding, on the trainer, 15 minutes at a time.
This morning I rode for over an hour and a half, with a little bit of calf tightness but no real pain. And no ‘Achilles tendinitis’. My back is loosening up and my ribs are still healing from the crash. Hopefully the eight-week post-crash mark is a magical milestone and everything will be completely healed by then. I can only hope.
***
If there’s one lesson that I’ve learned from all this, it is this: if you have an injury that your are not 100% sure of the cause, or how you should be treating it, see a medical professional.
I thought I was smart, I thought my self-diagnosis was correct, and for 5 weeks, I was treating the wrong injury. I wasn’t even close.