Before the Accident
I wasn’t a runner. I wasn’t a trainer. I wasn’t a speaker.
I was a transport man. A workaholic. Transport was my life and I loved it.
That day was a long one — close to 14 hours on the job, finishing the last linehaul unit of the night. I was fit, active, healthy. Life felt normal.
And then, in a single second, everything changed.
The Accident
A stack of six-metre steel pipes began to fall toward a workmate. I didn’t think, I just moved. I shoved him clear — but I was struck myself.
The impact crushed me. My back cracked three times. Later, doctors told me it looked like I’d been in a high-speed car crash. Three vertebrae fractured. My spine broken. My body changed forever.
They told me I might never walk again.
They told me I’d never be pain-free.
The Darkness
For a while, I believed them.
The pain was relentless. Day and night, it tore through me. I swallowed painkillers like they were lollies, desperate for relief — but nothing worked. Nothing touched it.
I wasn’t a transport man anymore. The work, the long hours, the life I knew — it was all gone in an instant. And with it, my identity.
That was the horror. That was my darkness.
The Fightback
But somewhere deep down, I refused to accept this was the end.
At first, it was humiliating. I dragged myself along the streets of Auckland in the dead of night. Fencepost to fencepost. Crawling on the grass. Gripping power poles and branches just to inch forward.
I didn’t want anyone to see me like that, so I covered myself in scarves and beanies. I was embarrassed, but I kept going.
From crawling, to walking, to running.
The Starship Walks
When my granddaughter was admitted to Starship Children’s Hospital, I decided to walk from my home in East Auckland to the hospital — a 40km round trip.
The first day, I barely made it to the letterbox. The next, the neighbour’s fence. Then the corner. Some nights I crawled. Some nights I wanted to quit. But I refused to stop.
Over 18 months, I made nearly 290 trips to Starship — 20km each way. By the end, I wasn’t just walking it. I was running it in just over two hours.
The Recovery
That was my recovery.
Since then, I’ve completed over 320 marathon distances. But more important than my own miles are the people I’ve taken with me. Through free boot camps, running groups, and crews, I’ve helped more than 6000 people begin their own fightbacks.
Our motto is simple: no one gets left behind.
We’ve run together in Auckland, Gisborne’s First Light, New York, Hawai‘i, the Petra Desert in Jordan, Mexico’s Lost City, and even on the Great Wall of China.
The Lesson
I never asked for the accident. I never imagined this life.
But sometimes it takes being broken to discover what you’re truly made of.
The accident stole my old life.
The recovery gave me a new one.
And if my story tells you anything, it’s this:
Even when everything is taken away in a second, you still have the power to rebuild.