Issue #130 The Race I Was Never Planning To Run

I want to tell you about a decision I almost talked myself out of making; one that cost me a 3am alarm, fifteen kilometres of pavement, and soreness in muscles I clearly hadn’t used in a while.

Last weekend, my friend Mike Shaw invited me to join him at the Red Bull Wings for Life World Run in Kelowna, a race unlike anything else I’ve experienced. 

At exactly 4am Pacific, more than 300,000 runners around the world begin running at the same moment. A short time later, a Catcher Car starts off behind you, and from that point on, the race becomes beautifully simple: keep running at a brisk pace, until you are eventually caught.

Eventually, it catches everyone.

This year, the global winner was Jo Fukuda from Japan, who somehow managed to run nearly 79 kilometres at a pace that hardly seems human.

My number was 15.28 kilometres, but the distance itself was never the real takeaway. What mattered most was what the experience revealed through the process.

The Night Before

My original plan was not to run.

Mike had invited me and a few friends to a pre-race event the evening before; a gathering where spinal cord injury survivors shared their stories with a room full of people. I figured I would show up, support my friend, and head home feeling like I had done my part.

For those of you who read Mike’s guest piece in this newsletter, you already know some of his story. But for those who don’t, here’s the short version.

Mike is a world-class freestyle skier who competed and later coached at an elite level. In 2013, while training with his team, he crashed and dislocated his neck, leaving him a quadriplegic.

Doctors told him to prepare for a life without the use of his arms and legs. But through some remarkable combination of modern medicine, surgical precision, relentless rehabilitation, and the kind of stubborn refusal to accept limits that defines who Mike is, he walked out of the hospital three and a half months later.

Since then, he has run a marathon, climbed mountains, learned to wake surf; and together we have skied some of the most spectacular backcountry terrain imaginable. More importantly he married Jocelyn, an amazing woman, and together they have recently welcomed their son Charlie into the world.

He is, in every sense of the phrase, a walking miracle and an incredibly lucky man.

Furthermore Mike is an awesome coach and speaker who has a gift of being able to move people through his words. That evening as I sat in the room listening to him speak, Mike made a simple but profound statement:

“I’m choosing to run for those who can’t.”

And those words landed for me, far more deeply than I expected.

The Thought That Wouldn't Leave

My father used to say there is no difference between a person who can’t read and a person who won’t read. The outcome is ultimately the same, but only one of them has a choice.

As I sat in the room listening to speaker after speaker share stories of bodies altered in ways they never would have chosen, that phrase kept echoing in my mind.

Because the truth is, I can run.

I’ve run several half marathons, a marathon, and a couple of ultras over the years. My legs and my lungs work. And yet I had already decided not to participate because waking up at 3am felt inconvenient and uncomfortable; a price I had quietly decided I wasn’t willing to pay.

Meanwhile, many of the people speaking that night, and the millions they represent, would give almost anything for the inconvenience of being able to run at all.

So with a slight trepidation, knowing that I had not been training and that the very early morning would feel rough… I signed up and so did several others featured in the picture above.

What 15 Kilometres Costs

I have heard it said that the wealthiest place on earth is the graveyard, because buried there is not just human life, but human potential. Unused gifts. Unspoken ideas. Deferred courage. Entire versions of people that never fully emerged because comfort quietly became more persuasive than possibility.

That thought stayed with me when my alarm went off the next morning.

I was tired, the bed was warm, and nothing about that moment felt inspiring. But a few hours earlier I had listened to people speak about losing abilities most of us move through life assuming will always be there. 

Suddenly, inconvenience felt like a weak excuse…so I got up.

I went through my hydration routine, drove to the OKGN headquarters (Thanks for hosting us Jaclyn), and joined roughly seventy other runners standing in the dark, all of us about to participate in something happening simultaneously across six continents. Then, at exactly 4am Pacific, we started running.

The following day, I was sore in a way I had not been in a long time; which informed me of something I did not entirely love knowing. I identify as a runner; it is part of how I think of myself, part of the story I tell about who I am. But the truth is I have not been running much lately.  I am an active person but I have defaulted to other activities, apparently at the cost of the thing I kept telling myself I still was.  

The truth is that if you don't use it, you lose it; a reminder that arrived right on schedule that If I value something and it is part of our identity then we need to put it to regular practice.

What I Learned

As I reflect on last weekend, what I keep coming back to is not the race distance, the soreness, or even the 3am alarm….it is Mike.

A man who was told he would likely never use his legs again, ran the course and achieved just under 18kms, doing so with a full and grateful heart.  Not because he had to, but because he could, and because he understands in a way that most of us will never appreciate, what it means to lose that ability and fight your way back to it. 

Gratitude, for Mike, is not a practice he occasionally returns to; it is the posture from which he approaches life itself. It is the very ground beneath his feet, shaping the way he sees everything.

And his presence in my life has become a reminder of two things.

The first is that none of this is guaranteed. Our health, our mobility, our abilities, even the rhythms of ordinary life can change in the blink of an eye. As Mike’s story, and the stories of so many others reveal, we are far more fragile than we like to believe.

The second and even more important truth, is that when bad and unexpected things happen in life (I promise they will) and on the other side of it, we get to choose whether that event will define us or if we will use the challenge to help refine us. 

Mike is a walking miracle, but anyone who knows him understands that he never lost faith in what might still be possible. He chose optimism over despair, belief over bitterness, and gratitude over self-pity. Even in the darkest moments, he refused to surrender to the story that his life was over. 

But belief was not enough. Day after day, he backed that belief with painful rehabilitation, relentless effort, and the willingness to be proactive and do the work required to reclaim his life.

There is real power in that kind of mindset. The ability to believe that something meaningful can still emerge from suffering changes the way we endure hardship itself.

Being around him has made me realize how often I move through my own days assuming my health, my legs, my lungs, and even my time are somehow guaranteed. As though the ability to wake up, show up, and fully participate in life is a permanent condition rather than a gift arriving one day at a time.

We do not get to keep our abilities forever; the real question is whether we are actually using them to their full extent while we still can.

This week, ask yourself:

What ability or gift are you taking for granted right now that someone else would give everything to have back?

Where are you opting out of discomfort in a way that is quietly making you smaller over time?

What would it look like to choose, just once this week, to run for those who can't?

If this resonated, share it with someone who might need the nudge. And if you're curious about what it looks like to stop deferring your potential and start investing it — that's exactly what we explore together inside Full Spectrum. You can learn more at fullspectrumlife.com,

P.S. Mike's story is worth following. You can find him at mikeshawski.com or on Instagram @mikeshawski — he's the real deal.

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