I know that Myhill writes about this describing patients who as children on a cross country run would make it to the school gate but then walk the rest of the way. Which is pretty much me, but I would walk then jog then walk then jog for the 10k.
As a teenager I could walk very quickly at about 6 or 7 kmph for just about any distance, and did walk quickly just about everywhere (40km plus a week). At school sports days I could run 100 or 200m without any trouble but would come last. And I would do long jump and high jump, discus and so on, but was never much good.
I could play field hockey as a wing or a half doing that sprint stop walk jog sprint stuff without any trouble but I afterwards I can remember getting home and sitting on a couch for an hour too exhausted to move or talk. This happened more than once but I do not now remember if it happened every time or not.
So Myhill thinks this subgroup of pwme/cfs perhaps had an underlying energy problem, and I think that would apply to me.
I was also probably the worst at sport. I can remember being useless at soccer at 6 or 7. Having trouble catching things, being uncoordinated and ungainly.
The complication is that I have always being visually impaired with what is called visual disturbance. It is sort of like the field of your vision is full of pixels and maybe 10 or 15% of them flash white or or black or some other shade or tint of the colour their meant to be several times a second.
Now I wonder if this too is an energy problem. If some of those cones or axons or other cells in my visual system have dodgy mitochondria.
I was also diagnosed with dyslexia. One of the arguments is that there are two overlapping populations with dyslexia. One that has visual disturbance, gets headaches from fluorescent lights, and benefits from Irlen Filters (coloured glasses) and one that has problems breaking a word down into its component sounds and putting sounds together to make a word. I was in the first group not the second.
When I got the glasses my depth perception improved and my ability improved. I became one of the best people in my year at playing handball (the type played informally with a tennis ball on concrete or tarmac or another hard surface) but I know part of my success there came from being able to clearly hear the ball. I was still pretty bad at other sports.
When I was 16 or 17 I did a test at my local university which measures how much you can see in one saccade. A saccade is an eye movement you make 4 or 5 saccades per second as you read. I could see less than one character per saccade without my glasses and at least one but less than two with them.
So it is no surprise that I often did not really understand the games I was playing, was bad at catching and hitting balls etc. And I do not know how much is down to poor vision and how much to poor energy production, or if there is a difference.
And yeah I was pretty much the worst person at PE and most sports. Indeed in year seven I probably the worst cricketer in team 7h (the worst team). I never made a run, never caught anyone out and only bowled one person out.
