Hip! Hip! Oh Shit: Overcoming an Unfortunate Injury

I love running. For nearly eight years it has been a central part of my life, having participated in both middle school and high school cross country. Now that I am in college, my relationship with running has changed from one of quick competitions, to long, slow introspection. I no longer compete, so running sincerely is a hobby I derive joy from. 

For the past couple months I had been training for the Dallas half marathon. I had run it once in 2017 and remembered really enjoying my experience. In 2019, I was ready to make my comeback to long distance and was training consistently. Everything was going well. I was steadily building up my weekly mileage and taking good care of my body. I had even worked myself up to a 12 mile run the first week of November. However, right around this time I started noticing pain in my left hip. Having run for so many years and experiencing a fare amount of running injuries, I didn’t think too much of it. I wrote it off as a minor hip flexor strain and felt all I needed to do was rest for a couple days and continue my healthy habits. 

A week later I attempted running again. I was encouraged by the fact that while walking I had felt no pain, just slight discomfort. Unfortunately, the moment I took my first stride and landed on my left foot, the pain had returned just as intensely as it had been the week before. One week of no running, and no progress was made towards my injury’s recovery. This meant it was not likely a hip flexor strain. In this moment I knew that something was REALLY wrong. 

My next move was to see a physical therapist while home for the Thanksgiving holiday. I expected my physical therapist to tell me I had some sort of muscle strain and would need to take up to a month off of running. While this sucked, I knew that a month off running wouldn’t completely ruin all the progress I had made in my training over the past couple months. With this in mind, I was completely surprised when he told me I was demonstrating symptoms of a labral tear, and the best way to fix a labral tear was through surgery. My whole world crumbled before me. Not only did surgery meant no half marathon, but it would mean no running for months. This terrified me as running had sincerely been such an important part of my life up until this point. It was how I dealt with stress, felt healthy, cleared my mind, and took a break from the rest of the world.

A week later I had an MRI done which confirmed my worst nightmare, I had a labral tear in my left hip socket. This meant surgery and no running for half a year. I was devastated. However, having been able to sit with my likely diagnosis for a week, this news was no surprise. What was a surprise was the fact that I seemed to have a shift in my mentality. I felt like I had started to come to terms with my injury. I no longer felt completely defeated. Instead, I felt hopeful about the possibility of getting surgery done in December and focusing on my recovery as soon as possible. I was also assured by the fact that my injury was not due to running, but instead due to extra bony growths in my hip socket that tore my cartilage. In other words, the injury was not my fault and likely would have happened sooner or later. 

Anyways, I am scheduled to get a hip arthroscopy in the next week or two which will leave me in crutches for about a month and unable to run for about 6. However, I still remain hopeful about my recovery and I have confidence in myself and my body to get through everything. Lately, I have actually been feeling really grateful. I have an amazing surgeon who I completely trust, I am expected to make a full recovery after the procedure, and most importantly, I will be able to get the procedure done. So despite my labral tear being a major setback, it is also a major opportunity to focus on other areas in my life and re-evaluate my lifestyle. Instead of looking at everything as a disaster, I am choosing to see my situation as a challenge to overcome, which in turn will make me stronger.