Slacker

OK, clearly I've been slacking on the blog. Some reasons....

1. Kids are kicking our asses lately making it difficult to sit down and write.
2. Recovery has been going pretty good. And I haven't needed to blog to keep me honest/sane.
3. When I do write in the blog, I find that every thing I type is, well, boring.

OK, here goes...... I'm 12 weeks and a day post-op. I've been trying to work out at least 6x per week, twice at the gym, 3 runs, and a bike ride. My hip has gotten sore occasionally when I overdo it, but unlike last time, I haven't had a major setback where I have to stop exercising for several days for my hip to recover. As long as I take a day off and/or take some Aleve, I'm ready to get back into it in a day or so.

The running has been pretty good. I ramped up to 16 minutes per run fairly quickly-- about 2 weeks after I started running, but the progression slowed quite a bit after that. Currently I'm at 24 minutes per run, divided up into 6, 9 and 9, or 7, 8 and 9 minutes with a 2 minute walk break in between. Pretty soon I'll take out the walk breaks.... and keep increasing the volume, slowly, slowly....

I've always tended to hammer my workouts..... as if the lessons of 2 hip surgeries have taught me nothing. But watching the Austin Marathon last weekend, it occurred to me that I care much less about how fast I am--- I'd just like to run a marathon again. So lately, I've been focusing strictly on volume-- keep the pace slow while increasing volume. 1 week into this radical new strategy and my hip is significantly less sore. I'll let you know how it goes...

I talked to my Doc yesterday and told him how I was doing. There was one thing he said that I found interesting-- paraphrasing-- when the osteoplasty (the bone grinding) exposes new bone material, a new sheath of cartilage needs to form around the exposed bone. In the meantime, the exposed bone can irrate the surrounding tissues. This may be why full recovery can take a long time-- 6 months, 1 year.... We will see.....