Good plan, Tim – I had my second hip done at 66 as I couldn’t trust it not to let me down in the hills. Ironically I was running pretty well in the month before the operation, fortunately I could still remember how much it had hurt a couple of months before that! It is great to have a surgeon encouraging you to run again but I think he is unduly pessimistic – January would be a good target for jogging, April should be back to racing! Good luck – 5 years later I am still running at roughly the same Master’s percentage as I always did, even though it does seem slow sometimes…
Pete