In my imagination, our trip to southern Spain and Morocco would involve lots of walking, climbing stairs, sometimes with a backpack and a suitcase, and some hikes of perhaps three miles of so. If I wasn't feeling up to it, I'd let the rest of the family go while I relaxed at a cafe.
HA!! That never happened. There was one time when I could opt to do a 3-mile rocky, hilly trail or a 5-mile one, and my husband and I chose the 3-mile one and our kids did the 5-mile one. But that was the only time we separated like that.
As it turned out, the second day of our trip, according to my son's fitness tracker, was 23, 372 steps, or 8.23 miles! The rest of the trip was significantly more than 10,000 steps per day (over 3 miles for sure).
Good thing I had prepared the way I did, and that my new hip joint was up for it . . .
Before I went, I worked on stair climbing, walking (2 miles!), and stationary cycling. I also did some upper body strengthening work, and kept up with my PT exercises for balancing the muscles around my hip joint. Also, I kept up my nutrition program, adding some Precision Nutrition recommendations for minimizing the effects of jet lag (six hours, Eastern US--Southern Spain).
By now at home I no longer needed daily over-the-counter medicine like ibuprofen to deal with post-exercise pain in my thigh and groin muscles, but I decided to bring along the anti-inflammatory curcumin-based supplement Curcum-Evail as a preventative, and ibuprofen if I had a rough day. I did need both of these on this strenuous trip, but more because I wanted to feel optimally ready to go the next day, as opposed to being in pain at night. All in all, I had no pain in the hip joint itself, just a feeling of being a bit overworked and fatigued. Pretty amazing, actually.
