As I mentioned in a previous blog, September had been a good month, filled with great memories, October and November however were challenging months to say the least.
With the hip pain post IM Wales, I had chosen to not run for about 7 weeks and had been having physio on my hip flexor. I was able to wake up without any hip pain or discomfort and thought the rest had certainly done me good. I had been swimming well and the bike sessions were starting to ramp up a little bit so fitness seemed to be going in the right direction. One evening, on getting back from work late and not really being able to fit a bike session in, I decided to try a little run to see if the hip issue had been alleviated with the rest and physio. My hip flexors were sore from the off, but I wasn't totally surprised by that, and although I managed to do 6km, the hip pain was making itself known throughout most of the run. The following morning getting out of bed was painful and I was hobbling around for a couple of days again, well at least I knew rest wasn't going to cure the issue.
Luckily I have BUPA as a work perk, so I used this to go and get the hip issue checked out as quickly as possible. The consultant on examining me indicated he thought it was hip impingement and ran through the available options should that prove correct, but he would need to see X Rays and scans to give me the full picture. I had to wait 2 weeks before I could get the scans, but in the meantime I spoke with a few people that had gone through a hip arthroscopy, thanks very much for all your advice, to get a better idea over recovery times. I also googled a lot and read quite a few articles about Femoroacetabular impingement (FAI) over the 2 week period. I had sort of resolved myself to only having the surgery as a last resort and set about trying to solve the potential issues myself in the meantime. At the end of the day I was shit scared of surgery and the chance of post surgery complications and I knew I just had to do all I could to avoid it.
In all honesty although I was told my hip flexors were tight, doing the stretches they seemed pretty much OK, but one area where I was massively tight was the quads, I couldn't even get into some of the more extreme stretch positions. I decided that this could be a likely issue with these pulling my pelvis out of a neutral position and causing potential issues with tight hamstrings. I had in the past had other left glute issues and I did wonder if they were all linked. Now I am not the best for stretching but I set about daily stretching especially of the quads and slowly I was able to get into the more extreme stretch positions and generally started to feel overall less discomfort around the hip.
Throughout the 2 weeks of waiting for scans, my motivation plummeted off a cliff, I wondered if Kona was just going to end being a waste of time and money, and I questioned if I would ever be able to actual run properly again. I guess if I had the surgery that would have happened all OK, but the recovery might have ruled out Kona anyhow. This period also coincided with Heather going away for a break with a friend so I had to stop swimming for a week to look after the morning chores, and then I couldn't be bothered to train in the evening after work so it meant a week or so of complete downtime, that doesn't help with motivation either. At least I did stretching and S&C work so not a total loss.
The night before my scans I thought I would try another run, this went better, my left hip flexor started hurting a little after 1km but the hip in general seemed OK. The post run pain was virtually non existent however, progress had certainly been made and it did fill me with a little hope. The scans went well and I actually looked forward to seeing the consultant. I did another run the night before seeing the consultant and this was even better than the one a few days earlier, so this lifted the mood even further. It was obvious that the stretching was helping a fair bit, but was that going to be a false hope.
The scans did reveal I had a pincer type hip impingement in my left hip with some cartilage damage, but the consultant said he didn't think it was bad enough to warrant surgery. I explained about the stretching and the runs I had done and he was of the view that surgery should only be used as a last resort. The earliest I could even think about surgery would be in January and then the timeline for recovery meant Kona would likely not happen. I decided to try and manage it with rehab alone. I was advised that a steroid injection could be a possible short term solution, but I am very reluctant about this as I am not sure how this would affect any potential drug test.
I have done a few runs since and the hip flexor pain is getting less and less with each run, and so far not post run hip pain. The furthest I have run is less than 7km so a long road to go yet, but with regular physio and stretching I hope to be able to manage the problem for at least 2017, what happens after than is anyone's guess. The news and the improvement in the pain has helped massively with motivation so I am back on the wagon and again starting to see a slow improvement in fitness, let's hope things continue to go in the right direction.
