 Hello to your fans, Cakes. Cakes is done with us now. It was fun while it lasted. Today's video is sponsored by one of my absolute favorite companies, Skillshare. Stay tuned in this video to hear me talk about them a little bit later. Hello there, my beautiful, lovely, wonderful, delightful, talented internet friends. Welcome back to my channel. Thank you so much for joining me here today on Footless Show where I am Jo and I am still missing a foot and oh boy, do I have some exciting news to share with you guys. So if you've been on my channel for a little while, none of this is going to be new information to you. But if you're new here, welcome. I'm really glad to see you here. I am, as you know, a below the knee amputee. I lost my leg about two years ago after having surgeries and surgeries and surgeries on my ankle for 14 years prior to that. Eventually we made the decision to just cut our losses, quite literally take it off and have a hope of a life with less pain and able to do more things. And that dream has been realized. There have been a lot of ups and downs in this journey so far, which I've all documented on my channel, but I am now at the place where I'm able to walk every day with minimal pain, where I'm able to go for hikes. I can take my dogs for a walk. I can try new things like cartwheels, things that would not have been possible with the leg that I had previously are now possible with my prosthetic. However, since the age of 13, when I had my initial horseback riding accident that caused all of this, there's been one thing I've never been able to do. And that is run. It's a very normal, average human thing to be able to do. But because of the surgeries that I was having, because of the pain that I was in, because of the damage that it would cause, running was a no go. And when I had my amputation, I knew, like in the back of my mind, who are we kidding? It was definitely in front of my mind. I knew that being able to run is a possibility. There would be obstacles in this journey. Like for instance, some people simply can't use running blades. You can't get the fit right or it's too painful. Also, they're really expensive. And to me, the dream of being able to run again has been like icing on the cake, right? Like I'm okay if all I can do is walk and like go for hikes and you know, try some physical new things. Okay, cool. But what if what if I could actually run a few months ago, an amazing friend of mine who you will see later in this video made this dream possible by gifting me a running blade, which was an incredible, incredible gift. And I brought it to my prosthetist. He worked his magic and just a couple weeks ago, I was able to try running for the first time. But it was still like in the office, it was very short distance. We just went on to the parking lot, like try running for a second. It was freaking amazing. But I couldn't take it home yet because they actually had to finalize it. Now a seemingly petty and yet very important thing was what color to make this running blade. I had the ability to choose kind of like the pattern and the color I wanted to make it look like. Generally I go like black and boring because it goes with everything. But I was like, this is a running blade. I can have fun with it. So over on Patreon, my patrons voted on what we were going to do with it. I went with what they decided. I'm so excited to show this to you. So I got the call that this was ready for pickup that I could actually bring it home. I could start like learning and training. And that glories appointment happened. And here's how it went. Are you ready to see this unpleasant personal? Oh my God. Look at this. Look at this beautiful, beautiful device. So Zach and Tyler and my prosthetics team surprised me by making it like sparkly and super pretty and cool. And I absolutely love it. It's perfect. So once I actually had this beautiful thing in hand, it was time to try it out, do some final adjustments. So running blades and aligning them is a little bit more complicated than you might think. It takes some trial and error. So I ran some practice runs down the hallway. They took a look. They adjusted things. We made it better. And then someone made this suggestion that I raised my friend, Annika. I am not one to back down from friendly conversations. So I said, heck yes, absolutely. I'd like to pause for a moment and recognize that this may not have been the smartest decision as you are about to see. But as we are learning about better decisions to make on our first days of getting a running blade, let me take just a moment from this video to introduce you to our sponsor Skillshare. I know you've heard me mention them before. You've heard other YouTubers talk about them. But Skillshare is an online learning community that I absolutely love and fully endorse. This is a service I used well before I partnered with them for these videos. One of the reasons I really love it is because it's great in finding new direction or exploring creativity, especially when so many of us are stuck at home and there's literally nothing to do outside of the house because the world shut down. Most recently, I've been going through a course on unlocking your style. This class in particular involves five hands-on exercises to help unlock your artistic identity, which I think is pretty cool. I'm an artist. I always grow in expanding what I can do, and this helps me think in new ways. Whether you are looking to fend off pandemic, stuck at home, boredom, or just invest in some self-care, check out the link right down below. The first 1,000 people who use that link will get a free trial of Skillshare's premium membership, something like I said I would highly recommend. Thank you so much to Skillshare for sponsoring this video. With that being said, let's dive back in. I really do love this company and being able to work with them. I recently started watercolor painting, which I've never done before, and so I've taken some courses on Skillshare regarding that, so I highly recommend them. Check out that link down below. It helps to support the channel, but I also think it's a fantastic service, and I'm pretty darn sure you're going to love it. But without further ado, let us proceed to the race. So not really to anyone's shock, I definitely wiped out on that first race run. Thankfully, I came away with very minor bruises. My knee is still sore, but was it worth it? Yes, of course it was. I also want to note the fact that a dear, sweet, lovely Anika stopped and waited for me to get up and then like ran with me to the finish line. Clearly, she's the grand winner today, but give me six months and maybe I'll be a challenge. So having completed all the minor adjustments on this puppy right here, it was time to try her out in the real world. So we just got back from picking up my running blade. Anika's got her running blade on, and she's going to teach me a few more drills, which I have definitely never learned. What are we going to be practicing today? The basic warm-up. We're going to do a couple of just jogging around the track, then we'll do some static stretching, some dynamic stretching. And then if you want, we can do some starts. I've never, I've always seen starts. People look very cool doing them. I've never tried them. I'm not one of those people that looks cool. Yeah, then I'm a good company. Okay, cool. Let's go do this. Yes. Awesome. Anika, Brian and I went to a local track to actually kind of try some practices and warm-ups. Anika's worked with a coach. She's obviously come a fantastically long way in running. She looks amazing running. It is definitely not intuitive or easy to run properly on a prosthetic. So I aspire to one day run as well as she does. So we spent probably about an hour there going over different track things and running and how to like actually swing both arms because I tend to keep this one really static, like I'm protecting my side. It's weird. I'm working on it. Working on different drills and training things and things to strengthen different parts of my body. And it was amazing. And I got to bring it and one journey ends. The journey to get a running blade and another one begins. The one I've actually been waiting for where I get to really learn to run again. I get to run again. I don't know about you, but for me personally, I find that I do a lot better when I have some kind of goal or deadline in mind. And so I'm definitely planning on finding a 5k to attempt to run perhaps six months from now. Hopefully when it's a little bit safer to be around humans in the outside world, the cool and the challenging part now gets to actually begin. I have a long way to go, but I can't wait for that journey for that process. And now onto a community exciting part of the video. This puppy needs a name. We can't just keep calling it a running blade or this puppy. She needs a name because she has a personality. She's her own unique being and I would love your help in doing that. Instead of just doing, you know, comment your name below and I'll consider it. I wanted to do an actual live stream where we would determine this all together in live. We'll have voting, we'll have some games. I think it'll be a lot of fun. That live stream is going to be taking place this Tuesday night. Time and additional details are displayed on the screen, but I would love to see you guys there. We're going to have a lot of fun and we're going to give her a name. I do think she's a her. What do you think? Do you think she's a her? I don't know. She just, she's a feminine energy about her. It strikes me. Thank you again from the bottom of my heart to Annika for giving me this blade and to my fantastic team at Rise Prosthetics for creating this for me. It is, I don't say dream come true for many things but this is quite literally a dream come true and I am unbelievably excited and grateful for this. Thank you. And now the journey begins. I can't wait to bring you along. Thank you for being here. Thank you so much everyone who's been so excited for me. It touches my heart and tears me up and just truly thank you. A big thank you and round of applause goes out to Skillshare again. Thank you for sponsoring this video and making these videos possible. To my patrons over on Patreon I am unbelievably grateful for each and every one of you. If you are interested in checking out Patreon or what that is or if you want to be able to vote in future polls like the poll that everyone voted in to be able to determine this cool galaxy pattern check out Patreon linked on screen also down below. But to you most importantly watching this video thank you for spending a few minutes out of your day here with me today. You could be anywhere in the world doing absolutely anything and you chose to spend a few minutes with me and that means a lot to me. I appreciate it. I love you guys. I'm thinking about you and I will see you in the next video. Bye guys.