The hip

Thise of you I see all the time have heard the crazy fun I've been having with my right hip. For everyone else here's the story so far.

I started running a year ago. When I first started I had to deal with stretching out my hip flexors while strengthening my glutious medius. It took about six months for me to be able to run any distance pain free. Most times I would have pain set in around mile three but it would ease if I pushed through. By September I was running 10 miles without pain. Right on target for the Columbus half marathon in October. Then I sprained my left ankle getting out of my car after work. The injury put a halt to my training.

As race day drew close, my ankle healed, I started easing back into the distances. But only doing a total of seven miles before the race, I knew I would be walking. My ankle just couldn't handle the repeated impact from running. I figured I would probably have problems around mile 10 and would have to stop to stretch again. The day of the race came and I was feeling amazing.

Long story short, mile 10 was when the pain in my hip resurfaced worse than before. I stopped at the water station and stretched. Getting blood flow back into my upper body helped and I was able to continue after a few minutes. Mile 11 was painful but nothing major. Through the last mile though I was ready to quit. The pain was just too much. But I shuffled on.

I finished the race bent over. I'm surprised I didn't just fall on my face I was leaning over so badly. I didn't realize it at the time but my hip flexors had tightened up so badly that all through the last two miles I was bent over, hinged at my hips. This tightening lead to the horrible pain that lingered for a week. I couldn't move much for a full 36 hours after the race. And the activity of sitting down was painful for three days.

Now almost four months later I'm having some serious problems with my hip. Last week I got two 5 mile runs in. Both were a struggle after 2 miles. Even walking for more than 15 minutes hurts. I'm doing all my stretches and strengthening exercises from last year but nothing is really helping. I've changed my training to keep it at a lower intensity to help keep the pain from lasting more than an hour after a run. Even using the bike irritates it. I'm getting frustrated as I have my next half coming up in May and I should be faster for longer at this point. But with the pain I can't do more than 5 miles at a time amd only twice a week. Any more often I can't walk for days.

Tomorrow I'm going to my doctor to find out what he says about my hip. I'll update tomorrow.