Hip Flexor Strain
I went and saw the Doctor last Wednesday, as my injury was not getting any better with rest, I was also having trouble sleeping because of the pain. I was diagnosed with a hip flexor strain. They also gave me an x-ray and that came back negative, so that’s good. Thus, I was wrong in thinking it was my IT Band.
One thing that I realized about this type of injury is that it’s not something you can train through. I often take that approach with minor injuries, like a sore IT-band, et al. The true pain happened after the half marathon, however it was bothering me two weeks prior. At one point, I even took five days off thinking it would get better. It improved, but it wasn’t completely healed, thus when I started running again I simply reaggrevated it and went back to square one.
I was pretty bummed out because from Sunday-Saturday, I felt like I had little to no improvement. It hurt getting in and out of the car and I was still walking with a limp. Sunday was a whole new day, it was weird and I was no longer limping, but still sore. Sunday I also started biking, so hopefully I don’t loose too much fitness. I tried to do some core work as well and to give you an idea of the pain, on Monday I was lying on the floor trying to do some simple leg exercises and I couldn’t even lift my right leg off the ground to do the exercise. Today though I was able to do that exercise, thus the road to recovery is a long one.
I’m still undecided about the Lincoln Marathon. My guess is that I will not run it, but I will think about it if I can get back to running by Monday. I won’t run unless I am 100%, it would be foolish to run poor race, reagravate my injury and screw up my summer racing plans.
The bummer is I have put in all the hard work for the marathon, I was one week from my taper when I get hit with the big injury. I tell ya, I turn 30 back on 3/11 and everything just falls apart! What happened to the good old days of high school CC when the only thing you had to worry about were sore muscles!

Hey Simon,
I’ll be hitting 43 in may! Stop belly-aching about 30, you are 5 years away from your fast years!!! Relax. You have plenty of time. I was 38 before I raced my first race!
Hey, Run Colo,
First, I want to thank you for regularly stopping by my blog and encouraging me. You’re awesome.
Second, I saw that you had a hip flexor injury and I tracked back through your posts to see how it happened and what you did for it… Cause I sure don’t want it to happen to me. I was interested to see that you went to a doctor for this injury, not a chiropractor. My trainer is also my chiropractor so he’s right in touch with any limps or stiffness.
But I was just wondering, do you ever see a chiro or is it just an MD that you see? I’m curious to know what would be the difference in the effectiveness of care and if I should see my MD more or my chiro more. My experience with my MD is that he refers me to a specialist who takes expensive tests and ultimately does nothing or tells me to “quit doing that”. The chiro works very slowly through whatever seems to be needed — stretching, taping, electro-stimulation, infrared, etc. He does tell me, x amount of down time or you can do thus and such, so I feel like he’s more into not shutting me down like the MDs are.
So interested in your advice!
Teresa from Aurora