Square One... aka Back to Basics.

Loading the shoulder repair is still a big no-no until three months post op. Stretching and moving it around is not. But now at seven weeks and free of the sling I'm going to try out a couple of short jogs just to see if I can temporarily carry on with jogging without it having an adverse effect. As I don't tend to use my arms too much while jogging hopefully the rotator cuff isn't going to be too badly effected by fairly minimal motion. Being the beginning of August seems as good a time as any to make the first moves towards rehab.

 The local ParkRun course is ideal for a try out. Roughly circular with good paths and grass surround I can run out to almost any point on the course and if I need to curtail the run if things start getting hurty I can cut back diagonally across the course to finish it off early. It's the better part of two months since I last ran anywhere and knowing that what little fitness I've previously obtained can easily drain away like sand through the fingers over that period of time I knew that I was going to have to break the running muscles in again taking it easy... very easy. For that reason I was going to limit today's excursion to a fast walk over the three mile course.

Just for a change, this morning was pleasantly warm and sunny as I fired up the old Garmin and set off along the ParkRun course. I had elected to do the first mile at a forced walk thus bypassing the need for a proper warm-up. That mile went well and at the first mile marker everything seemed to be swinging along without any form of protest from the shoulder. But I was enjoying the rythm that was building up and carried on the walk into the second mile. That went equally well and took me out to the furthest flung point on the course so that it would now be shorter to complete the course than to cut back across it. I was really quite enjoying the exercise after the extended lay off and even starting to draw breath as I went into the third mile. As nothing untoward seemed to be happening to the shoulder I was going to complete the course.

What was hurting though was that my normally reliable shoes were rubbing badly on the underside of my ankle bone. I was deliberately pushing a fast walk and didn't want to slow it up just for that as I was now using arms to drive the pace. By the time I got back to the car park the underside of my ankle was rubbed raw and bleeding into the padding of my shoe, but I'd held the pace to within five seconds on each mile and nothing else had dropped off.

So that went okay as a first move. I'll try again in a day or so and move a quicker over the ground. Hopefully jogging may keep me gainfully employed up to the three month period.