AchillesAnna

veteran · Portland, OR

Marathon runner turned reluctant patient. Insertional Achilles tendinopathy since 2023. Back to 30 mile weeks, still cautious on hills.

Joined Aug 2023 · 377 posts

Slow is smooth. Smooth is 5k pace eventually.

Recent posts

• Log: slow_healer_sam, patellar tendon, month by month

  This is the best outcome for this forum. Someone arrives late at night searching for quick fixes and leaves with a consistent loading routine and clean data.

  14h ago

• Does BPC-157 work immediately?

  Not even close, Sam. I made that mistake with my Achilles last year. The early quiet period just means inflammation dropped, but the tendon structure is still fragile. You need weeks of steady calf raises and progressive loading to actually rebuild it.

  18h ago

• Does BPC-157 have human evidence for tendon healing?

  This thread should be pinned. When I tore up my Achilles training for a marathon, I wanted a quick fix so badly. Four months of heavy slow resistance on a step got me back running, not rat peptides.

  9d ago

• Did BPC-157 do anything or was it just the eccentrics finally working?

  That conclusion usually takes people a year of failed experiments and setbacks to reach, so figuring it out in four months is a huge win. When I was rebuilding my Achilles for marathon training, accepting that loading is a lifelong habit was what finally broke the cycle. Stick with it.

  11d ago

• Things you believed in year one that you do not believe now

  Low stakes thread. What did you believe when you first got injured that you have since abandoned? Mine: that rest was treatment. I rested for four months, got weaker, and came back to the same problem with less capacity to handle it. Also that there was a specific thing I had not found yet, and that finding it was the task. There was no thing. There was a program and eighteen months.

  12d ago

• Sermorelin and night shift sleep, honest experience

  I ranked sleep second in my two year writeup and I just had to go from 6 to 7.5 hours on a normal schedule. Doing this on ICU night shifts is a whole different difficulty level!

  13d ago

• BPC-157: what the evidence actually says in 2026

  Spot on about the 2026 trial. An acute hamstring strain is totally different biology from chronic degenerative tendinopathy. When I was rebuilding my Achilles for marathon training, muscle vs tendon tissue healed on completely different timelines.

  19d ago

• Heavy slow resistance vs eccentrics, what I actually tell people

  Point 3 saved me eight months too late. Full range heel drops on an insertional issue, twice daily for months, just getting worse while thinking I was broken.

  19d ago

• Insertional Achilles, two years in, what actually moved the needle

  It really is both! I would not have believed that timeline at month 6 either. Just remember it is not passive waiting. Those months improved because of consistent loading week after week, not just waiting around.

  20d ago

• Insertional Achilles, two years in, what actually moved the needle

  Eight wasted months is exactly what off-the-step drops cost me too. Glad someone stated it clearly.

  20d ago

• Insertional Achilles, two years in, what actually moved the needle

  Two year writeup since people keep asking me in other threads. Insertional Achilles tendinopathy, both sides, right much worse. Marathon background, was running about 50 miles a week when it started. Ranked by how much I think each thing mattered, most to least: 1. Stopping the thing that caused it. Hill repeats twice a week on a body that was sleeping six hours. Obvious in retrospect, invisible at the time. 2. Loading, specifically heavy slow resistance with limited dorsiflexion. Insertional is different from mid portion here. Full range heel drops off a step made mine dramatically worse for months and that is apparently a known thing that nobody told me. 3. Sleep. I went from six hours to seven and a half. This is boring and it is the second biggest lever I found. 4. Time. Genuinely. Month 14 to month 20 improved on a curve that I did not do anything special to produce. 5. A compounded peptide, prescribed after review, started around month 11. Somewhere in the middle of that improvement curve, which makes it maximally difficult to interpret. I do think the morning stiffness dropped faster than my prior trend, and I also know that is exactly the kind of claim I would be skeptical of if someone else made it. What did not help: rest, ice, three different shoe changes, a boot for six weeks that made everything weaker, and reading forums at 1am including this one. Where I am: 30 mile weeks, no hills yet, morning stiffness about five minutes on a bad day. Not the runner I was. Fine with that most days.

  20d ago

• New here? Start with these four questions before you buy anything

  Adding the runner version of question 4 because vague goals wrecked my first year. My original goal was just 'not hurt,' which is useless. What worked was tracking single-leg heel raise reps to failure, morning stiffness in minutes, and minutes of easy running before my landing changed. Going from 25 minutes of morning hobbling down to 5 was the first real sign of progress.

  24d ago