Well after more than two weeks of total rest, lots of stretching and icing, I laced up my trainers and skipped out the door, surely that will have sorted it!
Nope.
Still the same old problem.
Been back to physio. She thinks that it might be a stress fracture, so need to get referral from GP to get a scan to find out, or rule it out (what I'm hoping for, obv).... soooo ....rather than being at the end of the road of this, it seems that I'm still at the start! Gutted doesn't even come close.
Naturally having being told this, I immediately fired up Google and became an expert on stress fractures within minutes. I don't even know for sure that I have one, but now I know all about them, and I have confirmed that even if I don't have one, I am definitely at a high risk, as http://health.ucsd.edu/ says "runners, women and people with a low BMI are at highest risk of stress factors".Tick, tick, tick. So, there's another thing to add to the list of things that I might need to worry about.
A hip is a bad place to have one. Continuing to run on it is bad and can make it into a proper fracture. So just as well I haven't run anymore marathons since then, or any long weekend runs. Oh, apart from that other marathon I did last month where I fell over again (but at least on the other side), and then those two weekends when I ran 30 miles each time along Hadrian's Wall. Oooooh. Ooops. Not ideal that.
On the plus side, it's December I suppose....and I am uncomfortably remembering back over who knows how many Decembers, when I have cursed (loudly) of having to run in this weather, this cold, this dark. Oh! To be running outside even in this storm, in fact, especially in this storm, I LOVE storms - I would give anything!
But I can't because it would be stupid, and I am many useless things, but I won't be that. My physio said it's OK to cycle, because I've been doing that without any pain, and to try swimming, which should be OK too. So, there you go. Maybe I could even be a triathlete by the end of this.
Also spent a lot of the last couple of days working on the orthopedic ward, which seems like some kind of a premonition.
But basically, I currently feel like this: