Page 39 of Your Pace or Mine
Sebastien had Jamie stretch out on his front and used a small metal tool to massage his calves before having him turn over and doing the same on his shins. It was an odd feeling, ticklish in some places and excruciatingly painful in others. They didn’t speak much while Sebastien worked, just the occasional check-in on pain levels. Jamie found himself curious about what Sebastien was doing, his thoughts moving on from his Darius obsession for the first time since he’d walked in the door.
After, whilst Jamie sipped his tea and Sebastien showed both him and Darius how to stabilise Jamie’s knee with bright blue physio tape, Jamie worked up the courage to ask a question. “Can you tell me more about it?” he flushed, embarrassed by his interest. “I mean like, how you know what to look for, that kind of thing.” Jamie had always had an interest in body mechanics through dance, but something about Sebastien’s approach to it had sparked a long-abandoned curiosity.
Sebastien raised an eyebrow, his grin softening into something more thoughtful. “Curious, huh?” he teased gently. He leaned against the edge of the massage table, crossing his arms as he regarded Jamie. “Alright, let me give you the crash course.”
Jamie hopped down from the table, knee taped up, sitting next to Sebastien on Darius’s ridiculously pristine white sofa. He felt out of his depth, but his curiosity was genuine. He’d been to physio before, but this was the first time he’d had a physio who seemed to really take an interest in helping him understand how to manage his recovery.
“So,” Sebastien began, gesturing to Jamie’s leg, “physiotherapy is all about understanding how the body moves and what happens when something goes wrong. With your injury, it wasn’t just about the running—it’s how running affected the mechanics of a body trained for something completely different.”
Jamie frowned. “You mean dance, but I thought it would help me with running?”
“It probably has, in the sense that you’d have a good cardio base,” Sebastien said, nodding. “But your muscles and joints are conditioned for flexibility and explosive movement—turns, leaps, quick changes of direction. Distance running uses a completely different set of demands. It’s repetitive, sustained movement, which can strain areas that aren’t used to it. With all the training you’ve been doing, you’ve overloaded certain muscle groups. That imbalance puts extra stress on your knee, plus most amateur runners don’t really consider form, so that can exacerbate it.”
Jamie blinked, taking it all in. “So basically, I overtrained and had bad form?”
“You just didn’t have the base for it, and you pushed too hard, too fast. And yeah, looks like you may have been overstriding.”
Jamie couldn’t look at Darius. He knew he’d be smug about that one.
Sebastien continued. “It happens all the time. But we’re getting things back on track, so your body can handle both dancing and running—make sure you’re ready for your marathon.”
Darius interjected. “He’ll be ok to run it?”
“He’ll be fine,” Sebastien nodded. “What we’ll do now—stretching, strengthening, addressing those weak points—it’s all to get you safely to race day and prevent this from happening again, no matter what activity you’re doing.”
Jamie nodded, a flicker of understanding lighting in his eyes. “So, it’s not just the knee. You’re looking at the whole picture.”
“Exactly,” Sebastien snapped his fingers, pleased. “The knee is where the pain showed up, but the root of the problem was higher up, in your hips and core. That’s why we’ll work on your alignment and movement patterns, too. Treat the cause, not just the symptoms.”
Jamie tilted his head, intrigued despite himself. “It’s like solving a puzzle…but how do you know what to look for? Like, how did you figure out it wasn’t just my knee?”
Sebastien leaned forward, his tone growing more earnest. “It’s a mix of training and experience. You learn the mechanics of the body, how everything works together. Then you spend years seeing how it breaks down. You look for patterns: how someone stands, how they move, where their pain is. All of that tells a story about what’s going on underneath. The more you do it, the more you learn to spot the subtle stuff.”
Jamie nodded slowly, looking down at his knee. “It sounds... rewarding.”
“It is,” Sebastien said. He grinned. “You thinking about a career change?”
Jamie laughed, shaking his head. “I don’t know. It’s just interesting. I’ve never thought about it before.”
Jamie was very conscious of Darius’s gaze on him. He felt exposed, but he knew Darius wouldn’t make fun of him, not for this.
“Well,” Sebastien said, clapping him on the shoulder, “if you ever want to learn more, let me know. You’ve got the right mindset for it. Dancers understand their bodies better than most people. I bet you’d be great at it.”
Jamie chuckled, but something about the idea stayed with him as Sebastien gestured for Darius to hop up on the table.
Chapter 10
Darius
9 weeks to the London Marathon
Having Jamie in his house was doing strange things to Darius’s brain. Darius had never liked having other people in his space. He guarded his privacy fiercely, and only his closest friends like Jackson and Sebastien ever entered his home, even then—small doses only.
The strange thing about having Jamie there was that it didn’t feel strange at all. Darius rested his head on his folded hands as Sebastien sorted out his calves, content to just think quietly while the two of them discussed the various ups and downs of physio as a profession. That was interesting. He’d written Jamie off initially as a shallow wannabe star, but that hadn’t been fair, not at all. Their conversations lately had shown him just how deeply Jamie cared about, well, everything. Darius didn’t think he’d ever had such long, intimate conversations with anyone before, not even his closest confidantes, and he loved listening to Jamie’s quick accent, strong opinions, and dry humour. He’d always been too quick to judge. It was a side effect of a childhood spent wondering what people’s motives were for getting close to his family, and with Jamie, he’d completely missed the mark.
When Sebastien finished up, Darius sat up on the table. Sebastien started busying himself packing up his things.
“So, ideally, I’d like to see you weekly until the marathon, Jamie. Just to make sure things stay on track. I know your schedule’s probably pretty full, but…”
