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Re: Proximal right femur stress fracture [Herding Cats] [ In reply to ]
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Your swim will be awesome my March! Good luck
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Re: Proximal right femur stress fracture [dado0583] [ In reply to ]
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dado0583 wrote:
Your swim will be awesome my March! Good luck

Thanks, I'm looking forward to the swim in Puerto Rico.

Death is easy....peaceful. Life is harder.
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Re: Proximal right femur stress fracture [Herding Cats] [ In reply to ]
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I'm signed up to Austin 70.3. Strangely I'm not looking forward to the run which used to be my favourite part!
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Re: Proximal right femur stress fracture [dado0583] [ In reply to ]
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dado0583 wrote:
I'm signed up to Austin 70.3. Strangely I'm not looking forward to the run which used to be my favourite part!

I don't blame you after recovering from a SF. You could focus on a fast swim and bike and treat the 13.1 as a nice moderate "sunday long run". I think that's what I'll be doing in Puerto Rico. Austin is such a cool city. Make sure you hit Barton Springs for a lovely outdoor swim!

Death is easy....peaceful. Life is harder.
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Re: Proximal right femur stress fracture [Herding Cats] [ In reply to ]
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I'll be racing against a couple of friends for the first time so I'll be going all out :)
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Re: Proximal right femur stress fracture [Herding Cats] [ In reply to ]
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Herding Cats,

Are you back running yet?

I'm now just over 4 months out from my proximal shaft femur stress fracture and I ran twice this week. Both times I experienced what I would describe as "quad fatigue" on the affected leg during running. It makes me super nervous, but this odd feeling in my quad is down towards my knee (away from the fracture). No pain with hop test or fulcrum test. No pain in my groin or thigh where the fracture was. But it feels like my distal quad won't relax for a day after I ran. I'm having a tough time deciding if this is normal muscle stuff after having a stress fracture and not doing anything for a long time, or its just not ready. I work in an ortho practice, and all the docs say it's gonna hurt some, but then they caution me to be careful.... So helpful...

Any of you guys experience this with a femur stress fracture?
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Re: Proximal right femur stress fracture [dawnawanna] [ In reply to ]
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dawnawanna wrote:
Herding Cats,

Are you back running yet?

I'm now just over 4 months out from my proximal shaft femur stress fracture and I ran twice this week. Both times I experienced what I would describe as "quad fatigue" on the affected leg during running. It makes me super nervous, but this odd feeling in my quad is down towards my knee (away from the fracture). No pain with hop test or fulcrum test. No pain in my groin or thigh where the fracture was. But it feels like my distal quad won't relax for a day after I ran. I'm having a tough time deciding if this is normal muscle stuff after having a stress fracture and not doing anything for a long time, or its just not ready. I work in an ortho practice, and all the docs say it's gonna hurt some, but then they caution me to be careful.... So helpful...

Any of you guys experience this with a femur stress fracture?

I'm not quite better yet but will have my third MRI on Dec 30th. I am running at 75-80% of my body weight on the AlterG (Anti-gravity treadmill) so I am making progress. Hope to be at 90% in a couple weeks. And outside by January doing the run/walk thing. Hopefully I get a clean MRI so I can start officially training sometime in January.

I haven't experienced the quad fatigue. Here's my current situation: I get other sensations and twinges around the SF area and also on the outside of my hip at random times even sitting. I'm hoping these random twinges are just the bone healing or bone re-mineralization. My SF area feels OK when walking and running on the AlterG so that's important. Another odd thing I get is soreness on the outside of my hip from time to time. The doctor said it's not referring pain from my SF but I feel like it's connected. The soreness on the outside of my hip started when I had the initial hip pain running before my femur fractured (the soreness would move from groin to outside of my hip and back and forth while running). These things are frustrating as no medical professionals seem to know what sensations are OK and what ones are not when I explain mine. Even online I can find nothing. My gut feeling is that there is going to be some soreness getting back into running so I keep doing the Alter G and try to move forward.

You are lucky to be back running after 4 months. I'd take it slowly and carefully. Do you have access to an Alter G to supplement your running? (I'm not an Alter G rep :-)...I just really love them and can't imagine getting through this nightmarish injury w/o it).

Death is easy....peaceful. Life is harder.
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Re: Proximal right femur stress fracture [Herding Cats] [ In reply to ]
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Thanks for the response. No access to Alter G. Just lots of pool and biking.

The bonus for me is that I caught it really early, so it was really just a stress response. Regardless, I don't want to be back where I was 4 months ago.

I talked to my sister (she had a stress fracture in the same spot as me years ago). She said she recalls nagging pains when she got the ok to run, and she would just back off again and try a short run again in a week.

It's so tough to know what's ok and what isn't. I expect some soreness, but any unusual sensation in that leg makes me nervous. I'm thinking I'll just back off again. Sigh.
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Re: Proximal right femur stress fracture [dawnawanna] [ In reply to ]
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dawnawanna wrote:
Thanks for the response. No access to Alter G. Just lots of pool and biking.

The bonus for me is that I caught it really early, so it was really just a stress response. Regardless, I don't want to be back where I was 4 months ago.

I talked to my sister (she had a stress fracture in the same spot as me years ago). She said she recalls nagging pains when she got the ok to run, and she would just back off again and try a short run again in a week.

It's so tough to know what's ok and what isn't. I expect some soreness, but any unusual sensation in that leg makes me nervous. I'm thinking I'll just back off again. Sigh.

I would let things settle down and try again. I had more soreness than normal a couple weeks ago after standing at a social gathering for 4 hours. But I had also increased my weight on the Alter G the previous day. After the party, I gave my legs a rest for a few days and got on the Alter G the following week and things were back to normal. Maybe just a rest is all you need for a few days (or a week).

Death is easy....peaceful. Life is harder.
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Re: Proximal right femur stress fracture [dawnawanna] [ In reply to ]
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dawnawanna wrote:
I experienced what I would describe as "quad fatigue" on the affected leg during running. It makes me super nervous, but this odd feeling in my quad is down towards my knee (away from the fracture). No pain with hop test or fulcrum test. No pain in my groin or thigh where the fracture was. But it feels like my distal quad won't relax for a day after I ran. I'm having a tough time deciding if this is normal muscle stuff after having a stress fracture and not doing anything for a long time, or its just not ready.

Any of you guys experience this with a femur stress fracture?

This sounds similar to what I experienced when I got back to running. It wasn't down next to the knee but sometimes I'd get a throbbing pain very occasionally during a run, and often in the evening or the morning after a run. I'd do a partial single leg squat to test and then to the hop test and both were fine. Physio and doctor were fine with me running despite these 'pains/aches' as long as they were mild/intermittent/etc. Although they couldn't tell me what was the cause of these sensations they said that it could be when the blood flow gets back into the bone, the muscles adjusting to the new bone shape (i.e. the bit that fractured would be a bit more dense and the muscle has to 'get used to it').

I can post my diary of the SF which is very verbose if you want? It's a day-by-day account of what I did and I wrote down when I was feeling issues
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Re: Proximal right femur stress fracture [dado0583] [ In reply to ]
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dado0583 wrote:
I can post my diary of the SF which is very verbose if you want? It's a day-by-day account of what I did and I wrote down when I was feeling issues

If you don't mind posting, I think it might be helpful for dawnawanna and myself. Thanks for the offer. I trust you are doing well?

Death is easy....peaceful. Life is harder.
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Re: Proximal right femur stress fracture [Herding Cats] [ In reply to ]
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Yeah, I'm great. After the stress fracture I had a bike crash but it didn't keep me immobile for long. The stress fracture/reaction is a distant memory now.

Note are below. I pulled them from my email so they're not quite in chronological order, but go to the bottom first. I probably have X-rays/MRI images available somewhere I can post for reference although not sure when I can get round to doing that.

============

My notes trailed off after early September. After the date below I think I started doing 30 minute sessions. Eventually I got to the point where I would do 2 30 minute sessions in one day, then started building back up to normal training. Did Austin 70.3 in November with no issues.

====

9/5 - Did 110km on the bike. For the most part very chilled although I did a few hard sprints up some of the hills. Leg felt good and my bike fitness is starting to come back.
9/6 - Did 160km today in a group and it was a hammerfest (very hard session!). Exhausted by the end of it. No pain during or after. Haven't run since 9/3. Trying to keep it to 2 days a week until we lengthen the session. I figure the bike sessions are great for overall fitness and the run will come back gradually. No point in pushing it.
====

Notes below. First run was fine although brief. do we need to do another MRI or checkup before starting to figure out how to reengage in normal activities?
8/27 - did the rehab exercises as well as my normal injury prevention routine. Lots of stretching. Did a very easy 20 minute swim focusing on technique followed by hot tub.
8/28 - physio in a.m. swam for an hour then cycled 150km. Cycle was very chilled over 6 hours.
8/29 - cycled 110km. Did a few pickups and legs felt good. Starting to feel at one with the bike again. No pain from previous day and legs felt strong.
8/30 rest. no pain at all. Did lots of stretching foam rolling and rolling on a lacrosse ball.
8/31 swam. Felt good.
9/1 jogged for 9 minutes with 1 minute walking break in the middle. No issues. Figured best to keep it short. I felt really heavy when running. Think I got used to the reduced weight on the altra-G. Swam for an hour and then did an easy hour cycling with the team practise. No issues so far. Taking a rest day tomorrow and then PT on Thursday.
9/2. Chilled all day. No issues. Stretched in the evening.
9/3 - Swam in the evening. Then did a 20 minute jog on the treadmill. Walked to warm up, then 9 min jogging, 1 min walk then 9 min jog. Ran at 7.5mph @ 1%.
9/4 - No issues from run yesterday! Swam in the evening.

====================

8/14. Swam. No problems with leg. Kicked during the entire main set.
8/15. Cycled for 90 minutes with 5-6 hard hill repeats. No pain/ache/etc. Swam in the evening with the pull buoy (didn't use legs for the swim)
8/16. Took a rest day. The legs were fatigued from the previous day. Not sure if there was any damage done from going hard. Difficult to distinguish muscle fatigue versus the aches I was feeling a couple weeks ago so figured I should play it safe.
8/17. Leg throbbed a couple times while sitting at the desk. Did some one leg pistol squats to see if there was anything wrong. After the pistol squats there was no pain or throbbing. I can't seem to correlate the throbbing back to any causal event. The only thing I can think of is that the Saturday bike ride was way too hard and caused damage. Will scale back on the cycling again for a few days and see what happens.
Swam with buoy before PT, no issues. Ran for 20 Mins at 70% body weight.
8/18 - leg feels great today. Muscle a little sore where it was worked from the massage but no throbbing or anything all day.
8/19 - rode in the a.m. for 2 hours. Did a few efforts sightly harder than the previous week. Swam easy in the evening with pull buoy. [EDIT: I think this was a 2hr team ride where I made the silly mistake of going way too hard]
8/20 - leg feels terrible today, it aches a lot more than normal. I attributed it to yesterdays bike ride. Not sure if I've done damage to the bone. No pain when doing single leg squats or moving around. Occasionally complains throughout the day and commuting home on my bike it complained multiple times. Did an easy swim with pull buoy.
8/21- PT. No treadmill today. 'Good' leg was tighter than bad leg. Did normatec booties. Leg feeling better afterwards although I've lost confidence in it. Swam in the p.m. and no problems pushing off the wall. Will reduce the bike for a few more days to see if that makes a difference.
8/22 - easy 30 min swim. Did stretches and rehab exercises. Leg still not feeling great. Walked a lot today.
8/23 - leg feeling okay. Did an easy swim and relaxed a lot.
8/24 - did altra-G in the p.m. ran 10mins at 75% then 10 @ 80%. Leg felt great. No issues. Swam in the a.m. sometimes swimming with kicking.
8/25 - still commuting easy to work. No pain at all. Lots of swimming in the p.m. no pain. Was kicking while swimming for about 30% of session.
8/26 - slept 10hrs. Guess I needed it!? Leg feels good although maybe a little tight at hip on 'bad' leg. Will take it easy today and tomorrow.

==============

Quick update and question:
8/12 - cycled in the a.m. ended up doing 90 mins with some stints at 170bpm which is harder than I had been doing previously. (My Max on the bike is 182-185).
8/13 - no pain/ache/spasm at all today. Did he altra-G at 65% of body weight for 20 Mins. I feel great so far.
So. Now for the question. What's the thoughts on doing an bike 'race' this weekend? It would be ~100 miles on the bike but my heart rate would be <150bpm and I wouldn't actually be racing, just participating. Is that a crazy thought? I'm already entered and lots of friends are doing it but recovering is my primary concern.
=============
8/2
Another hour easy cycling on the trainer where I can control intensity easily. Riding at 110w which is less than 50% of my Max one hour effort before the fracture. Heart rate at 105bpm.
No pain. Will be swimming this evening with the pull buoy throughout.
8/1
Swam. Used pull buoy for 90% of the session.
Cycled for an hour very gently. Heart rate averaged 110-120. (This is very low for me). This equates to my warm up intensity normally.
I can walk up stairs comfortably with no pain but most of the time I'm still using the handrail as a precaution. Now able to balance on bad leg with no problems. Still afraid to do anything impactful on it.
July 7/26-7/31
No pains. Swam Tuesday, Thursday. Still not pushing off at normal force. Using the pull buoy so as not to use my legs for most of the session. I use my legs in the warm up and cool down now and not kicking with full force.
Cycling to and from work at a very very gentle effort. On my racing bike being passed by citibikes. Not even sweating in this heat with my work clothes on. It's VERY easy!
July 25
Swam in am. Walked without stick - no issues.
Did 200 yards swim without buoy, kicking. No pain. Wasn't kicking very hard though
July 22/23/24
- No issues. Still using the walking stick.
- On evening of 24 I realised I was standing around chatting with people for 10-15 minutes without using it and didn't feel a thing.
- On 24th I got the okay to start walking without it, although keeping it close by.
Tuesday July 21st
- Feeling a lot better. Walking stick feels like a safeguard rather than a necessity now
- Swam in the evening. Push-offs from the wall feel fine and pushing a little harder
Monday July 20th
- Swam in the a.m. used pull buoy. No discomfort or issues. Pushing off the wall with a little more confidence but still holding back a lot.
- Walking with walking stick today, sometimes with the crutches I trip
- No pain/discomfort with the walking stick at all. I know I can't stand on it yet though!
Sunday July 19th
- Supposed to be racing today :(
- Stayed in bed until 4pm.
- Leg feeling stronger compared to Monday which is good. Still using the crutches.
Saturday July 18th
- On two crutches. Leg feels okay but not putting any weight on it
- Occasionally mistime walking with the crutch and put weight on my leg and can feel it's very weak (wouldn't necessarily call it pain, at least compared to a week ago).
- Swam for 20 minutes very easy, followed by hot tub. Plan is to go easy today to do a longer swim tomorrow. Still using the pull buoy.
- Introducing Calcium, Vitamin A,D and K supplements into diet.
- Eating more fish (for magnesium) and cutting out soda/coffee/sugar
- Got MRI done
Friday July 17th
- Confirmed stress fracture/reaction. Crutches for 4 weeks, resume activity ~ 4 months (I presume this means I will be in full training again in ~ 4 months).
- Swim with pull buoy so not using the legs. Total ~3500 yards. Swam at higher intensity with no pain, very careful when pushing off the wall (using mostly my left foot), no pain.
- Walking with crutches. Two is more cumbersome and occasionally trip and have to put a little weight on the bad foot to balance. Doesn't hurt too much but can feel it's very weak.
- Pain in the middle of quad has subsided completely. Last time this was when I started jogging again. Only pain is closer to the hip (is the hip fractured too?)
- Still can't think of a single cause for the fracture, no real change in training intensity or volume over previous 3 months. Guess it must have been a small issue that gradually got bigger.
Wednes/Thurs July 15th and 16th
- Pain still mostly felt in the middle of the bone when standing on one leg (eg. putting on the shoe)
- Walking with a walking stick helps a lot (practically no pain unless I trip up)
- Very easy swim on Thursday to see if there is any pain. Kicking hurts a little so using a pull buoy between the legs so I don't have to kick. Pushing off the wall gently has no pain.
=== Weekend of July 12th ====
- Go to Mont Tremblant to train
- Day 1: swim, 90k bike and 5k run (no pain)
- Day 2: swim, 90k bike and 10k run (no pain)
- Day 3: swim and 30k run. Felt a couple twinges during the run but thought it was dehydration as it was hot and my left leg didn't feel 100%. Drank some electrolytes and felt great and ran the rest of the run. No pain for the rest of the day.
- Wake up on Monday and leg is starting to hurt again. The first few steps of the day hurt the most but after that pain subsides.
- Book appointment with the doc


=== Intermittent Weeks ======
- Assumed it's a muscular injury and some stabiliser muscle as it only hurts when balancing. Zero pain when cycling or running.
- Saw a physio and they didn't refer me to a doctor
- No running for a week or so but continue biking as no pain then.
- Gradually reintroduce running into regime. Pain practically gone but put it into the 'can-train-through-this bucket'
=========================

Thurs June 25th
- Put on backpack to run 9k to work. Within the first 4-5 steps I realise something is wrong.
- Stop and walk for a minute and then attempt again, another 5-10 steps and it feels bad
- Abandon workout and rest.

First feeling of pain - Wednes June 24th

- Finished 90 minute intense bike session on stationary trainer. No pain at all when cycling
- Jogged 100 yards slowly (not part of training, just to give someone a key) and noticed it felt strange.
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Re: Proximal right femur stress fracture [dado0583] [ In reply to ]
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Wow thanks for all that information. It's great to learn about what other people are going through with their injuries like this. It sounds like you felt some strange soreness as well but it always went away. It's great you went from 80% on the Alter G to getting outside. I'm not brave enough to try yet. I did run 77-88% on the Alter G this afternoon and it felt good. I do have orders from the Doctor to only do the Alter G and swim (with 2 rest days a week) until my MRI on Dec 30th. And then I hope to be cleared to run/walk outside.

Congrats on doing Austin! I hope you had a great day! I had to withdrawl from PR 70.3 this March. If I had been running outside sooner I think it would have been OK. My doctor and coach feel I should just focus on the Mont Tremblant half and full Ironman this summer. Takes the pressure off a bit. I was stressing out worrying about not healing quick enough. But it seems I should be able to be outside in January and slowly start training.

I noticed you were in MT this summer training from your notes. Did you do the Lisa Bentley training camp?

Well hopefully this thread can help others going through stress fracture/reaction recovery too. It's really tough but there's light at the end of the tunnel!

Death is easy....peaceful. Life is harder.
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Re: Proximal right femur stress fracture [Herding Cats] [ In reply to ]
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No problem, I took notes and overcommunicated with my doctor and PT because otherwise I knew I would wake up one day feeling fine and just go too hard (which I did marginally once anyway). Patience was definitely a virtue and it at least forced me to try to improve the swim a bit :)


Herding Cats wrote:
I did run 77-88% on the Alter G this afternoon and it felt good. I do have orders from the Doctor to only do the Alter G and swim (with 2 rest days a week) until my MRI on Dec 30th.

Speaking to friends who went through the same, some doctors took this same approach to get the MRI confirming the bone is healed before being allowed out. My SF (more of a reaction) was quite mild so I think my doctor/physio were willing to let me run outside earlier.[/quote]
Herding Cats wrote:
I had to withdrawl from PR 70.3 this March.

That sucks, sorry to hear! I think I'd be too hard headed to not race if I was back running by January...

Herding Cats wrote:
I noticed you were in MT this summer training from your notes. Did you do the Lisa Bentley training camp?

No, I went up there with a friend to do race recon (first time I went to that effort) for IMMT. I was hoping to KQ so embraced my OCD by going up there and taking photos/trying multiple wheels/gear ratios/etc. I loved the course and I'm gutted I can't race 2016 (logistical reasons this time).
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Re: Proximal right femur stress fracture [dado0583] [ In reply to ]
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dado0583 wrote:
No, I went up there with a friend to do race recon (first time I went to that effort) for IMMT. I was hoping to KQ so embraced my OCD by going up there and taking photos/trying multiple wheels/gear ratios/etc. I loved the course and I'm gutted I can't race 2016 (logistical reasons this time).

What a fun trip to make and check out the course! MT is a great one for sure! If I ever do Lake Placid I'd want to spend a weekend there before the race and ride the course since it's within driving distance.

Death is easy....peaceful. Life is harder.
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