In an email correspondence, my cousin, Lee, reminded me of a post I wrote in China, Slowly by Slowly. In the post, I quoted Rob Giebitz who “first heard this phrase from our Chinese production manager“. Rob went on to say:

“Those odd sounding phrases that often amuse the native English speaker, those Chinglish phrases, may offer a key to understanding our host culture. “Slowly by slowly” may carry some meaning absent from the more familiar “little by little” or “step by step” that a native English speaker would use. “Little” indicates size or quantity, “step” implies distance; “slowly” brings our attention to the element of time.”

As I mentioned Tuesday, I broke my patella. I got in to see an orthopaedic surgeon and he gave me good news. Luckily, the break was the ‘right way’ (vertically on the bone) and I can start putting weight on my leg right away. It’s still very swollen, sore, and stiff, but it could have been a lot worse.

So now comes a 4-6 week recovery. It will go slowly by slowly. This will be tough. I’ve been doing 5 or more cardio workouts a week since the start of the year, but now I can’t run or ride for a while. I’m also still doing Physio exercises to strengthen an injured shoulder that’s recovering well. So, I have to be careful with upper body workouts too.

What will my fitness regimen look like? I’m not sure? I was too achy this morning and still want to get into work today, so icing and elevating is my workout after an unsettled sleep. But I’ll be up early tomorrow, I’ll hobble down the stairs and figure it out. Sometimes we have to accept that slowly by slowly is the best approach, and save the sprints for another time.