I didn’t write yesterday, and since I’m supposed to keep daily diary on my recovering from achilles tendonitis, I will cover both Saturday and Sunday on one post.

Saturday. I slept quite late. My wife had to get up early, but I didn’t and kids weren’t going to school, so why not take the advantage of sleeping a bit later. We had a plan to go to Udora to visit our cabin and meanwhile deliver some bakery products to local grocery. I as usual will benefit from this by going to Cedar Park sauna and Pfefferlaw river.

I took my four daughters and the one and only dog with me. First the Udora General Store, and then to our cabin. It was a bit cold. At the morning my right calf was still hurting, so I skipped all the calf strengthening workouts and did just the foam roller and stretching.

My super duper invention is to do sauna and cold river several times. That was my main goal on Saturday. Once we get to sauna, I was a bit disappointed. There were other people, so I could not just go to the sauna and lie on the bench like I own the whole place. I had to sit normally and talk with others. In English, since the other guy was apparently only half Finnish. He was joking about it, and mentioned he can only last half of the time in sauna since he is only half Finnish. He had propably had more sauna endurance than I did.

Since that half Finnish guy went to swim to the river, I had not much other choices to go and follow him. Finns are really proud of being able to swim in freezing water. The whole idea of sauna is to recover from that. And oh yeah, that was my plan for my ankle too. With achilles tendonitis I do think, you should do the transformation from sauna to the cold river and back to sauna as fast as possible. The warmth of sauna is good, and when you get to cold river, that’s good as well, but you should get back to the sauna as fast as possible. That’s probably not good for your heart, but it does activate your blood circulation tremendously. I’m not a doctor, so don’t believe me. I’m just saying, it’s definitely NOT good for your heart the way I do it.

I’ve done it before, and it has been good for my leg as long as I have remembered to keep my leg warm. After cold river I go immediately to warm or rather hot sauna, and it’s going to be good. After having last sauna, I’m not going to the river, but just cool down outside following a warm shower.

The Cedar Park sauna isn’t the best looking sauna in the world. But it is one of the best saunas in the world. It was good for my leg anyway.

Saturday:

• Stretching 2x30sec
• Foam roller 3x
•  Calf pain around 3/10.

Sunday:

• Stretching two times
• I did some calf and soleus workout (two times 3x) since my achilles tendon was hurting, and I figured out it must be because not doing any workouts.
• My idea skipping the workouts was to get rid of calf pain.
• I admit, recovering from achilles tendonitis is more art than science.
• My achilles was not hurting yeterday, but today it is.