Yup, no surgery! Surprised everyone, I think! All I will require is some physical therapy and rehabilitation to help me walk again, and eventually run again. I’m very thankful for this news, as I’ve always had this idea that surgery is the “kiss of death” for endurance athletes.
The doctor must know me better than I think, because she won’t set a date for my return to training. My guess is she doesn’t want me to get focused on a date, and get out there well before my hip is ready, which I totally would do. I know it won’t be until 2012 though:-/. She laughed when I asked if I could swim or bike..or pretty much do anything period. She looked at me with this piercing look, as if to say, “ARE YOU SERIOUS?” but instead offered, “You don’t realize how serious this is. You can’t do anything but rest.”
Doc mentioned that I also damaged a few muscles. I don’t remember their names, except for one: gluteus minimus.. I remember that one, because I thought to myself, “There is NOTHING minimus about MY gluteus!” Ha!
But yeah, walking could be more likely to actually happen when those muscles and tendons start to heal in the next few weeks.
The doctor also told my mom something else, “Nobody in their right mind would ever run 140 weekly miles.”
…….
Guess doc never met an ultrarunner.
And guess what else.. The instant I’ve got the green light to run, I’ll be SLOWLY and CAREFULLY making my way right back to the same level of training I love to run at. I disagree that running SO much broke my hip. I think I injured it with the insane amount of speed training I did in the last month of training. I hit a sub 5 mile in august, for crying out loud! I know there must have been a tiny ounce of pain in that hip before the start, and I tuned it out. It got horrendous, yet I still tuned it out.. for almost 80 miles. That’s what I do. Thats what I TRAIN myself to do. Ignore pain. I took a gamble on it being muscle related, and held hope that it would fade out so I could finish my race. That’s what usually happens. This time it didn’t. I’m not a moron, and had I known it was my hip bone, I would have stopped way sooner than I did. Regardless of how it happened, I’m not going to be used as “an example”. Nope. I run….Hard. I get hurt. It’s ultrarunning, not safetyrunning. Sure, I crave longevity. But I also have no interest in settling for mediocrity (thanks Mccurdy for reminding me of that) and I have no plans to change my love for high mileage because a doctor thinks it’s ludicrous. Welcome to my world, doc, it’s twisted!
Don’t take it personally, doc. I have trouble listening to anyone’s advice..just ask my husband. Shoot, he even wrote a whole post inspired by my lack of trainability.daniel’s rant
ASHRUNS100s 