My stupid hip. My stupid 41 year-old hip.

Biking in Colorado, October 2009 -
a miraculous week of pain-free riding.

About three and a half years ago, in July 2009, I had a huge spasm of pain while trail running. I was about 6K into an 8K run, when – I have no other way to describe it – my right hip freaked out.

I hadn’t fallen, I hadn’t tripped, it was just a sudden – surge of pain, which stopped me utterly. As was my way back then, I gave it a minute or two of walk time, and then started running again. Which hurt, but wasn’t impossible – it was limpy sort of running, but it got the job done.

When I got home, I did what I usually did after a hot July run. I jumped into my cold, river-fed pond. Which, looking back, was probably a good thing to have done, a great way to keep the leg and hip mobile (through swimming) while icing it (the pond generally didn’t get above 60 degrees F – which, granted, isn’t precisely icy, but is certainly cold enough – the equivalent of a cold bath, really).

The rest of that day involved only super tentative movements, as it was clear my leg wasn’t working as it should.

The next day I could hardly walk.

It was impossible to pull my leg forward, almost as though I had no muscles in and around the hip/hip flexor area. I had definitely injured my hip, and the injury caused a lot of collateral damage. In this whole process, my IT band had also become injured, which meant that my knee also fell victim to this wretched injury.

And so began a very long process of foolishness.

Hindsight tells me I have certainly not treated this problem with the respect it deserves, as I have, since then, more or less had to give up my two favourite sports – running and mountain biking. Both sports cause a cascading series of problems with my leg – first a pain at the front of the hip, mid-hip-flexor region, then pain radiates into the deep middle of the glute, and then this weird tightening feeling happens, where it’s as though an elastic is being tightened from my hip to my knee, which then tightens - like crazy - around my knee. Sort of like a knee boa constrictor or something. In the moment, the pain’s never so much that I have to stop doing what I’m doing because it hurts too much. But the next day is usually a limper, sometimes so bad that, say, if I’m grocery shopping, it’s been nice to use the cart as a crutch. Sigh. So, even though I can get through a 5K run, or an hour mountain bike ride without trouble (more or less) – the next day – or two or three days – can be kinda excruciating.

The foolishness is that I thought it was the sort of problem that would just go away. I saw an Active Release chiropractor, who helped somewhat in the acute phase of the injury – she certainly kept me moving. But it took me two years to go to a sports medicine doctor, and even then, I neglected to get the hip x-rays required for assessment before I could be booked for what he diagnosed as a very necessary MRI.

I miss my bike. I miss running. Heck, I miss the associated chocolate. So, my goal for the next six months is to get back into the sports I love. To be precise: I want to be able to run without pain the next day, and I want to be able to ride without pain the next day.  I’m thinking accountability will be the way to keep me on track with this set of goals, so here we are in blog land.

I welcome comments, tips, feedback and suggestions. I’ll share with you the process that I’m going to go through, and hopefully you can share with me any useful thoughts you have as I go along. Not-so-useful but funny and/or encouraging comments are equally welcome, too.