Will Power - Spinal Cord Recovery - Ultra Running

Just over a year ago a good friend of mine Will had an accident in which he broke his neck and damaged his spinal cord, paralysing him from the chest down.

Wills Accident

Will knew instantly what he had done. After landing on his back, he felt a shooting pain in his neck, and as he tried to get up, he realised he couldn’t move. He reached down to grab his legs but felt nothing. Within the hour the Great Western Air Ambulance and critical care team had moved him to Southmead Hospital in Bristol. MRI and CT scans revealed that Will had fractured and dislocated his C6+C7 vertebrae, suffered major trauma to his spinal cord and needed emergency surgery to reset his spine and relieve his cord.

After 6 hours of spinal surgery, Will woke up in ICU with an incomplete SCI (spinal cord injury) leaving him paralysed from the chest down.

Update on Will

Will has been working his absolute socks off. SCIs come with a whole array of medical conditions that have been kicking him for the last couple of months. But true to form he hasn’t stopped pushing.

He has come so far in a year since his accident. It’s hard to explain the complexities of what is going on inside Will’s body, from high levels of tone, to spasms, stiffness, damaged neuro-pathways, muscle fatigue and huge weakness.

Progress for Will is steady, the ‘goal’ at the moment is to be upright around the house, but the progress in the last 6 months have been absolutely massive !! Will has been biking swimming can and started work again part-time.

He is slowly finding equipment that works for him. He has bought some parallel bars and FES stimulation bike with FES pads that send high-frequency stimulation to his muscles and is designed to help strengthen them.

He is trialling some wheelchair add-ons to make life a bit easier and looking at some outdoor add-ons to try and get back into nature.

What I am attempting to do

Will and I are very much alike, we love our sports & live to be active!! It is because of this and our shared passion for being active and using our bodies that I have decided to push my body and continue the fundraising. I want to help Will get back to the physical life he loved so much and ultimately to walk again.

All the fundraising that has occurred so far has helped will with physio and bought equipment that has been life-changing to his physical and mental recovery. So your thinking, what else does he need? Will needs to do Physio pretty much every day for the rest of his life. Will has done nearly 300 hours of private neuro physio since he was discharged from the hospital, that’s £100 an hour.. I’ll let you do the maths. I want to raise funds for something more financially sustainable for Will.

We want to build Will a rehab room in his garden, This rehab room will be something Will can use every day, independently, with a physio or with friends and family. It will give him the ability to exercise safely, on his own terms and (once built) for free.

To help this happen I’m going to be running my backside off by attempting to run the following:

1) Manchester Marathon,

2) Keswick 50k Ultra Marathon

3) The Race to the Stones 100k Ultra Marathon.

With Will’s sheer grit for his recovery as my motivation, I’m going to have to go “Full on Beast Mode” to get these done. The aim is to complete the Manchester marathon in 4 hours the Keswick ultra in 9 hours and the race to the stones in hopefully 14 hours. Whilst Will Is getting back to moving his body normally again, ill be running and running and running and you guessed it more running to take my mind and body to a place it’s never been before.

But with big challenges come big rewards and I’m hoping these challenges over the course of this year will help raise the funds necessary to help get the Physio Space he needs to get walking again !!