Oh, the irony.

I got my age group award plaque from Rock 'n Roll in the mail today. I went ahead and propped it up by the crutch I relied on for the past month.

So, how've you guys been? Missing my miserable injury, reinjury, and new injury recaps? Of course you have been. I got hurt again and took a break until I had a sort-of diagnosis.

Briefly, I was having a STELLAR week of training - killed my track workout, knocked out a perfect progression long run, had a lovely yoga stretch day that made me feel 10 years younger - when I got hurt. The week ended in Atlanta, visiting friends, and I jumped in a 5k kind of last minute. I wanted to test my fitness, and this race had a gift card for overall winners and a history of slow winners :)
Looking back, I can identify weird hip and groin pain during the race warmup, but I didn't pay attention then. Mile two of the race I suddenly stumbled in excruciating groin pain! But I was winning the women's race, so I plugged/limped on to a pathetic 20:xx win. I wanted that gift card! And I paid for it by being totally incapable of walking by the end of the day. In fact, as soon as I got home from my trip, I borrowed crutches and called my doctor. He told me stay off it, it was almost certainly a pelvic or femoral neck stress fracture and pretty serious.

Smiling right after the race, before my hip completely called it quits 

Well, it took so long to try to get an appointment with my regular sports doctor, that I ended up seeing a different doctor: Wade Van Sice, a hip specialist. He's great! And I'm glad I went. He suggested a hip labral tear and did a steroid injection, plus MRI.
I do indeed have a hip labral tear on my MRI, but Dr. Van Sice is not sure that's the cause of my pain. The steroid did not help the pain, and some people run on labral tears with no problem. He put me on a trial of gabapentin (an anti-seizure medication generally used for neuropathic pain) to see if perhaps there was nerve / spine involvement.
A week into my course of gabapentin, and I'm 50% better. He's probably right! His interpretation of the situation is that I may have had this torn labrum for a very long time (it may have caused last year's lingering thigh pain, and is almost certainly my REAL diagnosis for groin pain, not osteitis pubis!). The tear on the MRI may be an artifact - old, not a source of new pain at all. Or it could be worsened, and I could have two sources of pain right now: nerve, and labrum.

So where am I now?
- Have to schedule MRI of spine to look for pinched nerve or compression
- If negative, will discuss surgery to repair labral tear. It's basically the only treatment, but Dr. Van Sice isn't positive I'll do well with surgery based on position and condition of labrum.
- My activity is limited by pain: ie, do whatever you can and still tolerate pain. Now that I'm on gabapentin, I've actually felt much better, so much so that I've gone on a few runs. I do still feel the area (I definitely do!) but it's not very bad and it isn't causing a limp.
- "Competitive running" is over and done for me. I mean speedwork, long runs, races - that's history. I'm ok with that. I was getting slower and slower anyway. Now I just want to be able to tool around the park for some fresh air.
- I miss everyone. All the running bloggers. All my real life running friends. My running group. It's time to get back, even if I'm just hanging out and not running.

So that's my story. I'll keep you updated. Have a beautiful weekend!