Apparent Groin Pull (Read 89 times)

I am 54 years old. I have run off and on since I was 13. About a year ago, I got serious and was running a 4 mile course 3 times a week that included one very serious hill. I also do a 50 minute circuit workout with weights 3 times a week. About 3 months ago, I changed my running route to increase to 5.5 miles but it eliminated that horrible hill. A month ago, I felt pain develop in my groin that, after 3 runs, stopped me. I could hardly walk the 48 hours after the last run.

It was localized pain dead center in the front of my hip right in the bend at the top of my leg. At times, I had corresponding pain in my butt. I went to an orthopedic doc who is also a runner and he said it is a pulled groin.

I am frustrated, it has been 4 weeks not running on 2 Aleve once a day. I am still doing the circuit work 4 times a week with no real pain.  I am not sure the pain is 100% gone. How do I return to running and when? Any suggestions?

Thanks. I will read that thread. Are you running? Any suggestions for starting up again and when? I am so anxious to run. Now.

Thanks. I will read that thread. Are you running? Any suggestions for starting up again and when? I am so anxious to run. Now.

I am.  Super low mileage and lots of walk/run.  But my last few runs were almost totally painfree, so I'm staying hopeful...

Again, thanks. I am starting the walk/run thing today and see how it feels. So frustrating.

It is, incredibly.

And listen to Mandy, she knows what she's talking about!

 

You could pretty much post this on almost any injury-related thread, couldn't you? 

Well I guess you are at least sort of running, so you are ahead of me....

I have - literally - been through it all.  lol

The book I'm reading discusses how a little bit of activity helps with the healing process.  I'm going with that theory for now.

Groin strains/tears (as well the same to the hip flexor) take a long time to fully heal. I had a groin strain that took about 10 weeks very recently (and a hip flexor 2 years ago that took 3 months to fully heal). These injuries develop more from sprinting (strides, hill sprints), plyometrics or an inordinate amount of speed work. Not sure what weights you do but that could have caused it (if your doing plyometrics or Adductor exercises). I'm not a doctor. You would want to go to a PT initially as they can both diagnose, treat it and give you a green light to start up. Generally, if you have pain in the beginning of your activity, and it goes away at some point, that is a good sign (meaning your not damaging it, the muscle is tight to start but loosens up -- and what will happen is you can time how long the pain is apparent and over time that period of time your in pain should decrease assuming you don't overdo things). The other measure is your "bounce back" -- how quickly you recover following the activity (meaning how long it takes where you don't have pain when simply walking around or doing normal activities) -- this is how you gauge when to do the next activity. I would resume as follows: (a) walk fast (12 -13 min pace) for 25 minutes and assess your pain (does it go away and at what period of time or are you pain-free?); (b) wait till your pain free and then walk fast up to 40 minutes (assess your pain); (c) once you can walk fast on consecutive days pain free then you can integrate running -- jog 1 min/walk 2 min going about 10 jogging segments and then gradually increasing the segments and jogging period over time. If your in pain you should take the following day(s) off for the pain to subside, or walk fast that following day or days. W/my groin, it hurt like crazy for 8 weeks but over time I could see that the period of time that I had to endure the pain was decreasing, and that my "bounce back" was improving (fr 48 hours, to 40 hours, to 36 hours, to 24 hours, etc.). You also need to be stretching. I found after a couple of weeks of experimentation that ice did not work, but using a water pik with hot water focused right on the area for 5-8 minutes really accelerated the healing.