Earlier this year, I broke my ankle. It was truly terrible: not only was it incredibly painful in the moment, but I then couldn’t put any weight on it for six weeks, and I couldn’t run for another 6 weeks after that (about three months total). As someone who works out in some way at least once a day, this was a truly torturous six weeks. One of the things I remember most from that time was the fear of getting back into running. Since 2017, I’ve been an active runner. It moved beyond just being something to keep me active and became an important part of how I connect with nature, the world around me, and my own internal thoughts and feelings. To go from running nearly every day to not even being able to walk was a shattering experience, requiring me to change my relationship with fitness and adjust to my new way of life. I remember googling how soon I could get back to running, when I could next race, and what I could expect from the way back. But I’ll be honest, none of the articles I found really helped that much. So this is the article that I wish I’d had back then — one that outlines the rough steps at each point, how I stayed healthy, what I did to keep my fitness up, and how, after all that hard work, I PB’d a 10km race within 11 months of the break.

The First Six Weeks: No Weight

These first six weeks, as I’ve already outlined, were torturous. If you’re active like me, going from being able to do anything you want to becoming essentially locked inside barely able to move anywhere alone was a massive and debilitating change. But, there were a few things I did to try and keep myself sane, and keep my fitness up. Normally, day-to-day I aim for 2 workouts a day, except Sundays. One of these is a run, and the second is cross-training and strength-training. So I aimed to do something similar in these six weeks. Every morning, when I woke up, I carefully lowered myself from my bed to my floor, and I did 100 crunches. This is a good exercise because it’s non-weight bearing, and really it’s one of the few non-weight bearing exercises you can do —almost everything else involves even minimal amounts of weight. If you think of a push-up for instance, you can’t do that without putting weight on the foot. But lying on your back and doing a crunch puts no weight on your foot, so you can lie it out or bend the knee slightly and go nuts. This might sound insane, but it was important to me to keep my sense of fitness up, and this was really the only exercise I could do, and in that situation you take whatever you can get.

In the afternoons, I would go for a walk, with the knee scooter I got. This was mainly more just pushing with my left leg while my right leg sat in the knee scooter, but again, I found going outside and doing a brief walk, even if I could only do 20-30 minutes, was something to compensate for not being able to get out into nature. A family member came with me, so I wasn’t alone like I would be on runs, but it was good for the company, and sometimes I would sit somewhere while they went further ahead which gave me some of that peaceful serenity myself. Where possible, I also went out with my family if they were going grocery shopping, for instance. Pretty much any opportunity I had to get moving, I would take. At night during this time, once my initial bandages had come off and I got the OK from the doctor, I would try rotating my foot through a range of motion.

I should make clear: these two steps are just for mental clarity. There is no way (as far as I’m aware) you can maintain fitness while not being able to put weight on a leg for 6 weeks. Having said that, I definitely feel like this maintained my schedule. James Clear, in Atomic Habits, discusses how habits shape identity. Even though I could no longer exercise, the fact that I kept to my exercise routine by doing two exercises during the day meant that once I could exercise again it became much easier to substitute these exercises out with better ones once I could put weight on my leg.

The Next Six Weeks: Relearning Walking

Once I was able to put weight on my leg again, I had to go through the humiliating step of actually relearning how to walk properly (this wasn’t helped by having to wear a moon boot, which is heavy and does change your gait slightly). I definitely jerked around like a dog who had just put on booties for the first time when I first started, but my physio was really great at helping me walk naturally again. At this point, you need a physio, ideally one who is very proactive with recovery, rather than reactive (shoutout to Dave at Canberra Podiatry, who is an absolute legend and I can’t recommend enough). Dave gave me a pool aquatics program which saw me go to the exercise pool and begin weight-bearing there without the moon-boot. To start with I went into the lap pool, as it was deeper and the more deeper you go, the more weight you take off. After that I was able to use the exercise pool. My routine consisted of cycles of walking forward, walking backwards, walking side to side, calf-raises, and just standing on the foot and letting the waves of other pool users wash over me. The point of this part is to get the legs used to walking again, making it a smoother process once the moon-boot comes off at the end of this period.

My physio Dave also assigned me some other exercises to do, which I did mainly at night. These revolved around flexibility: using exercise bands in the door to build up the ankle flexibility; writing the alphabet with my ankle; standing on a pillow with my eyes closed for balancing, calf raises, and so on. These get your ankle back to a regular level of flexibility so that you can get back to regular activity with it soon.

The Next Month: Increasing Fitness

At this point, the moon-boot comes off and you can start walking normally again everywhere. Huzzah! It was a great feeling not needing to wear that thing anymore. This month revolved around much of the same as the above section, but building up more fitness. At this point, I was encouraged to use an exercise bike to build up my cardio again (I may have been able to do this in the above section too, but I forget when exactly it came in. I do remember doing some sessions with a moon-boot still on, so I must have been able to do it earlier). I could also aqua jog, which is where you run in the pool with the flotation belt so your feet don’t touch the ground. It’s hella boring but supposed to be very good for maintaining and building fitness in injured runners.

The real benefit was being able to run again in the exercise pool. Because the pool takes off weight, it was a good way to prepare for running without putting pressure on the ankle. I worked it into my aqua routine; starting off with 5 laps of the ~15m pool, and using a kick-board and kicking back to the start before doing another cycle. The point of all this is to prepare you for being able to run again, which finally comes in…

Months Five Through Seven: Starting to Run

At this point, you can start running again, but I warn you that it is not quite at the level of what you used to be able to do. I started with a walk to a local park and ran 100m at a time, based on the advice of my physio, and slowly worked my way up to doing a session of 4x400m (1.6km total) I did this 3 times a week, and on Sundays, to replace the long run, I would usually do a hike of some kind on my local trails (anywhere from 6-10km but only walking). On the other days, I would do strength training, back to my normal sort of stuff which I do anyway to benefit my running. The point of this section is to reach a point where the ankle feels can handle a pounding, as running is one of the most high-impact activities you can do. It’s important not to rush this point, as going too hard can cause problems, and then you might have to go all the way back to square one.
Note that during these months I was travelling, and while I kept up this routine, had I not been overseas I may have been able to progress sooner to the next step. I don’t feel that I missed out though.

Running Properly

After this, my physio gave me the all clear to run properly again. I started by slowly increasing the runs to a regular amount. So I went from 1.6km running to 3km, and saw how that went, then 4km, then 5km, then 4x5km a week, then I dropped down to 7x3km a week, and then built up from there until I was consistently running 5km every day, and then beyond that. Again, it’s important to not go too hard here, as you can mess up all your progress. If you think you’re going too hard, it’s OK to drop back a bit and build back up again. Just enjoy being able to run again! From this point, I was back to my regular schedule completely (and could even ride a bike again).

The Race

Originally, I wasn’t planning on signing up for the 10km, but a few friends had signed up and it seemed like a nice no-pressure event to do. I didn’t sign up originally because I didn’t have time to follow a 10km race plan, which seemed like a waste. Then I realised that I didn’t need to follow a plan, I was feeling pretty good, and it was a chance to get a medal and achieve something this year, which I wouldn’t have gotten to do otherwise. So I signed up. After I did so, an idea took shape in my head. See, I’d never actually run a 10km race properly before. All my other attempts had been hampered by illnesses so bad I didn’t even start the races. So my 10km Personal Best was just the fastest time that my watch had ever recorded me running 10km in a row, which was during a mixed interval session at one point: a 49:25. Which is not a bad time, but I felt that it was very beatable (for context, in the races I’d trained for before getting sick, I was aiming to beat 40 minutes). This time felt very beatable to me, and just to make sure, the week before the race I went and did an interval session where I did 3km at 5 min/km pace, just to see if the ankle could handle it (it could). So I was feeling like this might actually be possible, which would be a huge achievement: to go from a broken ankle to PB’ing a race in the same year.

My plan was to follow the 50 minute pacer and then tear away in the last kilometre or so so I could guarantee beating the 35 seconds. I don’t have a long race report, it went pretty smoothly and with no issues, and I ended up coming in around 48:38, beating my PB by around a minute: great success!

Concluding Thoughts

It’s been almost a month since that race, and I’m feeling good with where my running is at. The race was actually really good for me as it gave me the itch to compete in the next one. That I put no pressure on myself was nice, and it actually felt pretty easy in the end (compared to many other races, where I tend to put too much pressure on myself). I’m already looking forward to the next one. While I still have a bit to go before I feel like I’ll be at marathon distance again, I know if I prioritised that that I could get there sooner (for now I’m actually quite enjoying the shorter stuff, and it works within my broader life plans currently). My goal is to do an ultramarathon next year, which I think will definitely be achievable. Like I said at the start, I hope this gives you some ideas and peace of mind if you have also recently broken your ankle. It is possible to recover, and you can get back to running once you’re able to. I have come to appreciate the new outlook and gratitude I have for running from this experience. Until something is taken away from you, it often seems like you don’t really know how important it is.

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