How Far Can You Go

by John Maclean

  I lay back on the leg-press bench and positioned my left leg in the centre of the foot plate, which is more like a small sled. Even the lowest setting on a leg press is three or four times the weight of the lowest settings on other machines. I closed my eyes, turned off the internal dialogue, and pressed. The sled moved up. I pushed it to the top, then slowly lowered it down, then repeated the process a half dozen or so times.

  “Now the right, John,” Ken said.

  I assisted my right leg up and situated it next to my extended left leg in the middle of the push plate. I held my two legs there together, just for a moment. I then moved my left leg away. My right leg supported the weight. I then slowly bent my knee and lowered the sled towards me. I controlled the descent, which was remarkable in its own right. I then told my leg to straighten, and it did. I pushed the weight back up and then repeated the process through a few reps.

  “That’s impossible,” Dr Yeo said, with a tone that conveyed both great amazement and joy. He and Ken then fell into a discussion of how this was and was not possible. I didn’t pay much attention to the conversation. All I knew was I had crossed another threshold and done that which I should not have been able to do.

  After we returned to the house, I felt confident enough on my feet to do something else I had wanted to do for a long time. I walked across the living room and picked up my three-year-old son. Jack didn’t quite know what to think because I had never picked him up from a standing position before. I always hoisted him up on my lap in my chair. As I lifted him up, he squirmed a bit and had a bit of a frightened look in his eyes. I was sure this would soon pass. “Don’t worry, Jack,” I reassured him. “Daddy’s got you.” He kept squirming, which made me think he wasn’t quite as sure that I had him as I was.

  “Hey, buddy, want to have some fun?” I asked. Before Jack could answer I did something dads have been doing since time began. Dads do this. Mums do not, for reasons that soon became clear to me. I gripped on to Jack’s legs at the ankles and tipped him upside down. If Jack wasn’t sure what to think about my holding him, he had no doubts now. He screamed, terrified. It wasn’t quite the father–son moment I had hoped for, but we got over it rather quickly. He soon grew used to me picking him up, and now he even enjoys the occasional tip upside down.

  Later that evening Ken had me go out into my home gym and try out a couple of pieces of equipment Amanda had used after Jack was born: a stationary bike and a treadmill. Not long after my accident someone had given me a bike to try, one where the pedals go up and down like pistons rather than around and around on a crank. It did not work for me. Up until Ken got me on Amanda’s stationary bike, that had been my last time sitting on anything approaching a conventional bike. “Let’s just see what you can do,” Ken said.

  What I could do was push the pedals through a cycle or two. However, because I lack abductor muscles on my right side, my right leg goes inward, and no amount of concentration can stop it. As I pushed the pedals around a time or two, my right ankle banged into the bike frame. It was not an enjoyable experience. However, in spite of my pain, this showed me that I might be able to get back on a bike someday. I just had to figure out some way to keep my foot in line, and my knee from falling in.

  Then we moved to the treadmill. “Don’t worry about trying to do it all on your own. It’s okay if you want to hold on to the sides to keep your balance,” Ken said. I took his advice and held on. “Let’s see how long you can go,” Ken said.

  “I feel like I can go a long while,” I replied.

  I started walking. Again, my pace was very slow, but that didn’t matter at this point. Ultimately I wanted not only to walk again but to run as well. I’ll get there eventually, I told myself. I kept walking along, the belt slowly moving beneath me. Out of the corner of my eye I noticed Amanda walk into the garage with a friend. I turned my head so I could get a better look at her and smiled. She smiled back at me, slightly bewildered. I heard her say to her friend, nearly in shock, “John is on a treadmill, right? This is real? Wow. This is huge.”

  It was the first time Amanda had, with her own eyes, seen me walking more than a couple of tentative steps. I’d showed her the video of both my first steps in Emerald and my walk across the gym in Penrith, but there is something about actually witnessing an event yourself that makes all the difference. If seeing me on the treadmill surprised her, an even bigger surprise awaited both of us when we travelled to see Ken four weeks later.

  13

  My Gold-Medal Moment

  * * *

  Unless I am bum-shuffling up out of the English Channel onto the coast of France, or being carried across the sand to the water for an Ironman swim, I do not go to the beach. I never really spent a lot of time on the beach before my accident even though Sydney has some of the most beautiful beaches in the world.

  I also do not go barefoot. Ever. I put on my shoes even before I get completely out of bed. I guess it’s a protective instinct. Not being able to feel heat or if something sharp cut them, I’ve always felt shoes protected my feet.

  Therefore, I had to completely abandon my comfort zone when Ken announced we were going to spend the day at the beach on the third day of our third set of sessions together. Amanda and I flew up to his place the day before. I expected to spend much of our time in the gym, just as we had both on my first visit to Emerald and when Ken came to my home in Sydney. I should have known better. The more time I spent with Ken, the more I realised that he does not like to fall into predictable patterns. The body tends to adjust rather quickly to patterns. Therefore Ken looks for ways to shock the system to continue to produce different results. “Explore and exploit” means truly exploring, discovering new ways to uncover the potential inside.

  On this day, explore and exploit meant going to Broadbeach on the Gold Coast. Ken had moved to the Gold Coast from Emerald in the two months since I first came to see him. Broadbeach is just south of Surfers Paradise. Arriving there brought me face-to-face with one of the difficulties of life for a wheelie: sand and wheelchairs do not go together. Two months earlier this problem might well have been insurmountable. Not today.

  I wheeled as far as I could down a paved walking path. When we reached the end, Ken said, “Take off your shoes and socks, John. We’re going out there.”

  “To the water?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re the boss, mate,” I said with a grin. I took off my shoes and socks. Amanda and I gave each other a knowing sideways glance and a lift of the eyebrows as I stood up on the warm sand. Amanda handed me my walking poles. Using the poles to keep my balance, I walked nearly a hundred metres through the thick sand. I stumbled a few times but Katrina or Ken caught me, holding me up until I regained my balance. Once we reached the harder, wet sand left behind by the receding tide, I laid aside the poles and walked on my own to the water’s edge. “Step into the water until it laps up over your feet,” Ken said. I waded in until the water came up just above my ankles.

  “Now, here’s our plan for today, John. I want you to just stand here. Close your eyes, feel the breeze on your face, listen to the sound of the waves, and let go. I want you to really engage with everything you experience with your visual cortex turned off. Try to put your mind in sync with nature. Feel it. Experience it. Shut out everything else.”

  I steadied my mind, closed my eyes, and tried to just be. The sun shone down on my head; the wind blew cool across my face. Waves moved up and down on my legs as they bounced up onto the shore. Gulls called out to one another above me. People laughed in the distance as they played and splashed in the water. I didn’t try to analyse anything. Instead I let myself experience it and become one with it.

  The point of Ken’s exercise was less about getting me in tune with nature and more about building on the progress we’d made over the past few months. As each wave washed onto shore, it pulled the sand beneath my feet out to sea. To stay upright I had to make very small, almost imperceptible adjustments with each foot. These
tiny movements were strengthening the neural connection between my brain and my feet and legs. The fact that my toes responded to the moving sand at all was completely new for me, and not a response I was consciously controlling. For years I had hoped to see any movement in my right foot, the slightest twitch in my toes—anything to let me know my foot wasn’t just drooping down at the end of my leg. As the sand rushed about on my foot, my toes instinctively gripped down on the sand, even on my right foot. Like I said, the movement was so slight that one had to look close to see it. Ken saw it. And so did Amanda.

  Amanda was standing off just to one side of me. She didn’t say a word to me or do anything to disrupt my concentration. No one spoke but Ken, and only then very infrequently. Time slipped by, but I didn’t notice. I went into a deep meditative state. Later Amanda told me Ken had said I might be there a while, so she went for a walk down the beach. She was surprised when she returned some time later and found me standing in the exact same place without moving.

  After I had been standing in the water for an hour, Ken had another surprise for me. “You said you wanted to walk and run. Well, today we’re going to run!” he said. “Are you ready?”

  “Absolutely,” I said. “But once you get me going I may not stop, you know.”

  Ken laughed. “That’s what I like to hear,” he said. We moved up from the water a bit to a place where the sand was a little dryer but still flat enough not to trip me. Ken drew a line in the sand with his foot. “There are no expectations here. Every single step you take is a step in the right direction, no matter what happens. You may just take off because there is a history that says you can do that. We’re just going to get moving toward that space. So, if you are prepared for it, step up to the line and let’s have a go at it.”

  I took a step toward the start line Ken had drawn in the sand.

  “Close your eyes for a few seconds. Get the thought in your mind”—that is, about what I was about to do. “Get ready. See yourself running, and just enjoy the ride, mate. Once you step over that line, it’s on,” Ken said.

  “I’m actually looking to run,” I said with a bit of a laugh. I had dreamed of this moment for so long, and now it was about to happen.

  “Okay,” Ken said, as though we went out on the beach for a run every day.

  My mind flashed back to the hours upon hours of meditation I had done six months or so earlier. In them I felt the ground moving quickly beneath my feet and the wind whipping through my hair. In my mind I had already taken off in a sprint. That’s the place where I put my mind as I stood on the line in the sand. I did not wonder if I could run. I knew I could. Now I simply had to have my body do what my mind had already seen. I let out a deep breath and shook my arms out. I could not stop grinning.

  “I’ve seen your legs doing it in the gym,” Ken said. “You’ve got to back yourself.”

  I let out another deep breath. Here goes nothing, I thought to myself and took off. After I took my first step Ken said, “Go.”

  I took off running, arms pumping, legs churning as quickly as I could move them. Ten steps later I fell on my face. No one rushed over to help me up. Ken said, “That’s a good fall.”

  I looked up at Amanda. Her eyes looked like those of a lost mother who could not help her child that had taken a fall. But she didn’t say a word. She didn’t cry out or rush over saying, “Oh my God, John, are you okay?” Later she told me she was afraid my right foot might catch and my weight falling over it would break it. But she kept those thoughts to herself. Instead she let me work through this on my own in my own way.

  I pushed myself back up onto my feet and said, “Well, that wasn’t quite the result I was looking for. Let’s do it again.” I walked back to the line.

  “Bring your arms lower to your body this time,” Ken said.

  When I was ready, Ken shouted “Go,” dropped his arm, and I took off again. Ken, Amanda and Katrina kept pace with me. Ken continually said, “Go, go, go.” Twenty-five steps later I lost my balance and tumbled onto my left side. I had a big grin on my face. I could feel it. I knew this was really going to happen. Ken laughed a triumphant, “Yes, you are doing this!” kind of laugh.

  I bounced up off the sand. “Once more,” I said.

  “All right, get back to the start line. This time keep your knees up high,” Ken said.

  I couldn’t wait to try again.

  Ken asked, “Are you ready, John?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “All right, go!” I took off. I passed the point where I fell the first time. Then I sprinted past the place where I fell the second time. Arms pumping. Knees high. Ken kept pace, telling me over and over, “Knees up. Head up. That’s the way. Nice. Go.” Amanda and Katrina started cheering me on. I sprinted down the beach with everything I had in me. “He’s only a local lad, but look at him go!” Ken yelled, after seventy metres or so. That broke my concentration and made me smile, just before I hit the sand for the final time.

  I looked up. “I ran. I actually ran,” I said to Amanda as she came over, helped me up and gave me a hug.

  “You did! It was awesome!” she said.

  “I was running on the beach, baby. I was running on the beach!”

  “I know, I know!” Amanda said, laughing.

  Turning to Ken, I asked, “So what do I do now?”

  “You once told me you wanted to go for a walk on the beach with your wife. Here’s the beach. There’s your wife. What are you waiting for?”

  I looked over at Amanda. I had dreamed many things, but I never really dreamed this moment was possible. To walk hand in hand with my wife along one of the most beautiful beaches in the world—the very thought took my breath away. I reached over and took hold of her hand. As I did I felt those sparks you feel when you first hold the hand of someone you love. The moment was magic.

  We took two, maybe three steps when Amanda said, “Hang on, John. Don’t hold my hand like that. Here”—she moved my hand over hers the way she wanted it—“like this.”

  I stopped. “Really? Are you serious?” I started laughing. “First time I’m walking on the beach with you and you’re going, ‘You’re holding my hand the wrong way’? Does it really matter?”

  “It wasn’t right the other way,” Amanda said.

  We laughed. “Well, let’s make sure we get it right for the first time that I walk on the beach in twenty-five years!” I said.

  Amanda shot back with a smile, “There’s no point in doing it wrong. I don’t want you forming bad habits, you know!”

  “Well, all right, then.” I gripped her hand the way she wanted, and we both had a good laugh. But Amanda was right about my not knowing how to hold her hand. This was the first time we had held hands with me in an upright, walking position. I had always reached up from my chair. The position of my hand is very different reaching up than it is reaching across. Our silly, wonderful conversation showed we both knew we had moved to a place where we could experience life together hand in hand and face to face, not always with me in a chair looking up, but standing and walking beside my wife.

  I can honestly say that the walk along the beach with my wife was my gold-medal moment. Nothing I had ever accomplished in sports, or ever hoped to accomplish, could compare. We walked along, hand in hand, and all I could think was, This is what I have been searching for my entire life. Anything I could ever do in sports, anything I could ever do for me, does not compare to this moment of sharing my life with my wife and family. Maurie was right all those years before. Life is not about me. It means so much more when it is about us.

  After our day on the beach, I wanted to see the video footage of my run. Ken waited two days to pull it out. I could tell he and Amanda were a bit nervous about my seeing it. “What’s the problem?” I asked. “I really want to see it.”

  “Just keep in mind that what you did out there was amazing. Very amazing,” Amanda said.

  I thought her comment a bit odd until I saw the footage. In my mind, I was runn
ing. I pictured it a bit like the opening scene from Chariots of Fire. I felt I had good form, arms in, knees high—a beautiful sprint. Then I watched the video. My “running” didn’t look anything like I imagined. It didn’t really look like a run at all, at least not for anyone else. I shook my head. “I really thought I was running,” I said.

  “Compared to your walk, you were sweet,” Amanda said.

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “There’s no comparison between this and your walks in the gym,” she said. “Does it compare to the way you once ran on the football field? No. But don’t let that take away from what you did out there.”

  In spite of Amanda’s encouraging remarks, I was a bit down the next day. It took a while to realise she was right. Compared to my walk in the gym, I was running. But I wanted to run as I once did. When I was a young man, there were none faster than me on the football field. My legs were my greatest strength. I always believed I was never out of any race as long as I had my legs under me. That’s where I wanted to be now. The video showed me how far I still had to go. I wondered if I would ever get there.

  However, I did not allow myself to dwell on these thoughts for long. To do so would be so counterproductive that I might not make any further progress. I could not dwell on what I had lost in my accident. Instead, to go forward, I had to focus on what was available to me now and make the most of it. Come to think of it, that’s pretty much been my philosophy for everything in my life. I think it is a pretty good way to live, and it has served me well.

  I spent a week with Ken, while Amanda had to leave after four days to get back to Jack. Before she left I made sure Amanda got to go to the gym and experience the tremor therapy for herself. My reasons were twofold. First, I wanted her to fully understand what was happening to me, and the only way to do that was to experience it herself. Second, and ultimately more importantly, she had some back pain that had bothered her for a while, along with an intermittent pain in her chest that had puzzled all her doctors. She caught on to Ken’s methods quite quickly. In no time she went into a full global tremor. The process worked almost too well on her. On our way out of the gym she went into aftershocks. The tremor so took over that she had to lie down on a mat until it passed. Afterwards her back loosened up and her chest stopped hurting, although the chest pain came back a few days later.