Posted on 08/04/2020 10:41:40 AM PDT by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
Distance running with an upper-body amputation is a war against instability. Muscles can strain so much to compensate for the missing limb that they contort your spine, misalign your shoulders, and worsen your imbalance. In 2017, Ashley Jones—then 15 years old—faced a punishing return to high school sports following the amputation of her right arm. On the soccer field, she had collisions so violent that the pain would bring her to the brink of blackout. Later, during cross-country runs, the jostling of the amputation site intensified her phantom pain—which she’d already rated 7 out of 10 on normal days—to as high as 10.
But Ashley couldn’t slow down. In 2019, she competed in her first-ever cross-country season for one of the top programs in the nation—Valor Christian High School’s varsity team under Coach Greg Coplen. Ashley was green, but Coplen had been trying to recruit her for years. His passion is turning brand-new but talented runners into scholarship athletes, and Ashley had what it took. She was a fighter, Coplen says, and not just because of everything she’d been through over the previous few years. Coplen had seen her overcome physical pain that brought her to tears. He’d seen her hang with able-bodied athletes who many might think “she had no business being in a race with.” He’d seen Ashley endure things on and off the track he still can’t comprehend.
Coplen has always believed that speed emerges from efficiency and economy of movement, when a runner’s arms and legs work in tandem to generate power. He’s always told his athletes, “the arms make the runner, while the legs are transportation.” Ashley was the exception.
(Excerpt) Read more at runnersworld.com ...
Wow! What a strong, brave spirit!
She reminds me of that surfer girl in Hawaii who kept surfing, competitively I think, after her arm was ripped off by a shark.
It’s truly inspiring how some people, some rare people, take the cr*p that is sent their way and ignore it; instead, they push ahead even further.
Why didn’t she run with a prosthetic for balance?
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