Here I am wearing my old callipers - the lower half of a full length set. My feet are dragging on the treadmill as I haven't got the strength yet to lift my legs sufficiently. That bloody dragging sound haunting me because I knew that Hratch wasn't far behind to tell me not to drag them, meaning I had to make more and more effort all the time. No let up!
When I watch this clip, I'm just amazed at how little there was at that point. I mean, control-wise. It was just a question of getting enough tension to haul the leg forwards, one after the other after the other. You can see the feet swinging out and forward and no real placing of the feet. They landed where they landed.
But there have been days where I have absolutely loved this one. When the legs just get a real run for 30-60 minutes, and I just pictured my hill walking, or a forced tab on a T.A. weekend. Whenever I was struggling then with the distance or the weight, I would just get into the zone and just think, one foot in front of the other repeatedly, and the distance would add up, the breathing would ease off and be more natural, and at the end I would feel completely invigorated. And so it could be here too. Exactly the same motions and thought processes, always making me happy.
Sometimes we go fast, other times slower, depending on what Hratch was hoping to achieve: opening the instinctive memory or controlling and activating leg muscles. Although they're intrinsically linked, at earlier stages of my rehab it was necessary to break them down.
It's helpful seeing me muck it up. All my exercises I muck up at various points. This has been incredibly frustrating and some days it would leave me in a real low. But it also serves its purpose. Each time I progress, I have thought it normal and just assumed that of course I can do such and such. So when I can't do something one day that I could the day before, I am reminded that that was earned progress, and either the muscles are now tired (showing that they are responding) or my mind has gone somewhere else in my legs to work on something else and that later, I'll make permanent the previous progress. Nothing gets lost or goes away. If I keep working, everything stays.