dawn drills: Hal's ankle, shaved and braced and long since torn
Hal wears two bandages over a left ankle he shaves way more often than his upper lip. Over the bandages goes an Air-Stirrup inflatable ankle brace that’s very lightweight but looks a bit like a medieval torture-implement. It was in a stop-and-reverse move much like Side-to-Sides that Hal tore all the soft left-ankle tissue he then owned, at fifteen, in his ankle, at Atlanta’s Easter Bowl, in the third round, which he was losing anyway.
Context
The regimen's accumulated cost worn on one joint: Hal's left ankle, shaved "way more often than his upper lip," double-bandaged, encased in a brace "like a medieval torture-implement." And the injury it manages was itself made by a drill-shaped motion — "a stop-and-reverse move much like Side-to-Sides" tore the ankle at fifteen, in a match "he was losing anyway." The body that the conditioning builds is the same body the conditioning wrecks; Hal's morning now begins with strapping armor over the damage a stop-and-start once did, so he can go do more stops and starts.