I rode the Peloton today. For ten minutes. No class, no leaderboard, no metrics that matter. Just pedaling.

It has been nine months since I’ve been on the bike. Nine months. I am almost into the third trimester of my ankle recovery, which means any day now I should be giving birth to a fully functional lower extremity. Fingers crossed.

I got cleared for light physical therapy, which in medical terms means “you can start doing things again as long as the things are extremely boring and very gentle.” So I got on the bike and I pedaled slowly and it was ten minutes and it was everything.

Here’s the thing about being injured for a long time — and at this point we’re talking a long time — you stop feeling like a participant in your own recovery. You’re just sitting there. Waiting. Elevating. Icing. Going to appointments where someone looks at your ankle and says words and then you go home and sit there some more. You’re a passenger. Your body is doing the healing and you’re just the guy who lives in it.

Getting on that bike changed something. Ten minutes of slow pedaling and suddenly I’m not just waiting to heal. I’m in on it. I’m doing a thing that is actively making me better instead of just hoping my ankle figures itself out while I watch Hallmark movies on the couch. I mean I’m still going to watch Hallmark movies on the couch. But now I’m doing it as a person who also rode a bike today.

Ten minutes. It’s not much. But after nine months of nothing it felt like everything.