My op was Nov 8.
After my 1 week follow-up, Dr. was happy for me to go on the trainer to do easy rides, but no racing until 5 weeks and no riding up hills. But he also said I can be guided by any pain/pinching feeling.
It actually took another week for me to feel ready to get on the bike. That full 5 weeks had similar lifting constraints to yours.
Weeks 3 and 4 of recovery were really just noodling - keeping the legs turning over at <40% FTP and only for short durations (30mins gradually increasing to 1h). Only the past week or so did I start ramping up to more threshold stuff and hitting VO2 numbers.
!!Note that this was my doctor’s specific advice!! They also said you need to be REALLY careful, because it’s not the sort of thing you want to have open up again - and that that would be really messy! My biggest race for the year was actually the day after I was allowed to race again… However, I decided not to race it in order to get more recovery time.
I’ll continue to tick the legs over and build a bit of fitness back over Christmas and build during the second half of my race season. Based on that, I’ll effectively have 9-10 weeks before I get back to proper race intensities again and I will probably hold back from doing 100% sprints for a further month or so… just to be cautious and ease back into things one step at a time.
Also with what @JimA said - in discussions with people I race with after having my op, I’ve found that a lot of people have had hernias… and I’ve (unexpectedly) seen a lot more of people’s lower groin regions than I wanted, or needed to - as they’ve whipped out their scars in ‘we’ve-had-the-same-operation’ excitement! 