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All, I have been a competitive middle distance runner since high school and have been competing as a Masters athlete for many years (Iām 68). Although
[See the full post at: Middle distance running and racing post THR]I had a bilateral THR in January 2020 (at 57), started running again May 2020. My first love was always track, in my youth I was a (UK) county standard 800/1500m runner, and have always returned to it over the years including masters competition.
In the last 2 years (i.e. since the op), I have competed over all distances from 100m to 3000m, albeit very slowly compared to my youth. I have had no adverse effects from racing in middle distance spikes, and it’s been a relief not to finish track races in excruciating pain.
The only thing my surgeon was not happy with me doing is long or triple jump, because of the potential twisting action when you hit the sand. Apart from that, the whole purpose of the surgery was to get me competing again.
So in summary, I’d say go for it! š
Thanks so much for the uplifting reply. I plan to enter some all-comers track meets next summer. I am curious about your training methods. In my youth, we would run lots of miles, run tempo or fartlek sessions and intervals twice a week. As a Masters athlete, I have followed the same training approach but reduced my weekly mileage. Instead, I put more emphasis on quality interval sessions and tempo runs. I think that this is/was a good compromise between endurance and speed and was working until my left hip became a problem. At this point, I am reevaluating my training strategy and am interested in other mid-distance athletes approaches.
Thanks again for your reply.I’m currently running between 20 and 30 miles / week – compared to the maximum 50 – 60 miles I have ever done in the past. Typically one interval / tempo / quality hill session a week, one long run and 2 recovery runs. I am now trying to increase to 5 sessions every other week, but I don’t ever plan to do more than that, as I believe the no running days are more important than ever.
Not sure I will ever go back to doing 2 speed / high intensity sessions a week, as again I suspect that is probably too much of an ask on my ageing body, let alone the replacement hips.
I have recently moved from south of London, where the terrain is mostly undulating, to the wilds of Exmoor. Every run now has lots of climbing in it. I think it is having a positive effect on my running, activating the long disused muscle groups. However, the jury is still out on that one!
I’m a coach as well as a runner, but unfortunately the coaching manuals don’t cover how to train following hip replacement. So it’s all been a very steep learning curve and experimenting a bit to find out what works for me.
Hope that helps.
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