Exceeding Expectations: Back to Light Training

Tomorrow will mark six weeks since I had labral tear surgery on my left hip. My recovery continues to exceed my expectations. Am I actually starting to train again? This week I ran 4 times. Each run was on the 5k trail for the Mines Fall Trail series race. I ran Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday for a total of 12 miles! I feel fine, but slow as I run. Each run was at about a 28 minute 5k pace. My left hip feels stable, balanced, and strong (something that has been missing for 25+ years) and I can sense my muscles readjusting and reorganizing each day. I can definitely sense and see more symmetry between both sides of my body. My hip joint doesn't hurt at all. After each run, I can feel some of the stabilizers and rotators around the hip, but it is not a pain, more like they have been used and are strengthening. I take a day off between runs to let them adjust. My hopes keep getting higher and higher that this surgery is doing more for my body than I could have ever asked for or imagined.


It has been exactly one year from when I decided I needed to see a doctor, as I was pretty convinced at that point that my hip pain had to be caused by a labral tear. I made this post Hip Hobbling Around to announce my thinking.

It took a long time to decide go to a doctor about my hip, but I had some deep suspicions about what is wrong with it and after everything I have tried it has suddenly become worse. I got an x-ray of the hip last Friday. It turned up negative, but I saw an orthopedist this this week. After a short time, he said the words that I expected. He thinks it may be Labral Tear and he wants me to get an MRI to confirm it. I have read about labral tears for the past couple of years, and many things about it seem to fit my hip, however, I wasn't ready to look into seeing if I had that without trying all the available options, particularly when I could still run (even with my constant imbalances, stability issues, and loss of coordination in the hips).

It is also interesting to note that in that post I made one year ago, I mentioned what I though recovery would be like:

If I need surgery, it seems like it might take 6 months before you can return to running, and a year until you are back in form.

Well, this is what I mean by exceeding expectation. I returned to light running 4 weeks post surgery. I have a long way to go, but that prediction was way off! I did have one prediction that was spot on, however, as I wrote in the same post last year:

I haven't been able to run since the aborted run on Tuesday. I have been able to eat extra ice cream to compensate (this won't be good).

I was extremely accurate on that! I only was able to do a few exploratory runs here and there over the past year.What a miserable year for someone who likes to run and exercise. I compensated by eating I guess, or at least not reducing my eating as I was no longer burning calories. Yeah, I ate ice cream and it wasn't good for me. I now have 40+extra pounds from one year of inactivity and I predict it is going to take a year to take it all off, but at the current rate of progression, I predict it is going to be a very good year.