0.51 miles, baby!

Yep, you read that right. I went 0.51 miles today! Okay, it was walking. And it took me 10 minutes. On the treadmill. At PT. But it was my first "distance" of any sort since I got hurt. 

Yippee!!!!!

My physical therapist usually starts me on the exercise bike at all of my PT sessions (when I first started post-surgery, it was for only 3 minutes at a time, but I worked up to 15 minutes). This morning she threw me for a curve. She said I could warm up on the treadmill instead, only walking, for 10 minutes to see how I feel.

I never thought I'd love being on a treadmill so much! I started the pace at 3, and ended up working up to a 3.3 speed. I bumped it up to make sure I at least went half a mile in ten minutes; anything less would be unacceptable in my head. (I'm used to covering more twice that distance in that amount of time. Well, when I was running.) 

Is it wrong that I had a little devil on my shoulder that kept telling me to crank it up, just for 30 seconds, to see what it felt like to RUN? No, I didn't listen. But I felt like a kindergartner staring at the cookie jar right before dinner. It was oh-so-tempting. Sickeningly so.

When I got off the treadmill, I told the PT how for the first time in all of my recovery, I wanted to break her rules and break the MD's rules and just run. She said she heard me crank it up a couple of times (when I worked up to the 3.3 speed) and was curious if that had crossed my mind. Good thing I didn't act on it. 

But I can't wait to run. Today was just a little "taste". And it was delicious.