THE MUSCLE IS THE BOARD
Every cell fires, then cannot fire again until it has recovered. A pacer beats the far edge and the firing spreads: a ridge of light sweeping toward you, with the tissue it already spent trailing behind it. Land that front on the tendon line and you have a stride. Hit the field's quota of strides and it is cleared.
HYDRATION IS THE ONLY CLOCK
It does exactly one thing: it sets how fast a cell recovers. Full, and the muscle is ready before the next beat arrives. Empty, and it is not — and a beat landing on tissue that has not recovered is the one way a front ever tears. At zero you seize up and the run is over. Sticks drop on the field; run a front over one to take it.
A CRAMP IS A FRONT THAT CLOSED ON ITSELF
Where a front tears it leaves a free end, and a free end curls. Close the curl and you have a rotor: a spiral that fires forever on its own clock, out of step with the pacer, eating the field the real beats need and burning water the whole time.
Watch the red seams. They show you where the field is tearing before it goes, and the STRAIN bar is the worst of them.
KILLING ONE
A rotor needs a core to turn around. Drop MAGNESIUM on the spinning centre — not the arm — and hold it there. With nothing to rotate about, the spiral annihilates itself.