Watching Mike Shaw train for the Royal Victoria Marathon, it’s hard to believe he was paralyzed in a catastrophic accident.

“When I was injured, like life came to a full stop,” Mike Shaw says. “Everything I knew to be true about my future was taken away in an instant.”

Watch the story below:

As a freestyle skier, Mike loved the thrill of flying through the air, but that all changed on Dec. 16, 2013.

“My life physically and figuratively came crashing down,” he says.

A horrific fall almost 13 years ago left the extreme athlete with a severe spinal cord injury.

“I was paralyzed from the neck down and given a prognosis that I would probably never walk again,” Mike explains. “I’d be lucky if I got back the use of my arms, which didn’t include my hands.”

Mike was just 26 years old when he was given that life-shattering news.

“It was devastating to hear that, but I left the sort of door of opportunity open, even if it was just a crack in my mind, that I might be able to recover,” he says.

After almost four months in hospital, Mike began a long and gruelling road to recovery that tested on only his strength, but also his family’s.

“My injury wasn’t just hard on me mentally, emotionally, physically,” Mike says. “It leveled my family.”

But with his parents’ unwavering support, Mike was determined to walk again, and his emotional first steps were captured on video.

Mike kept pushing through the intense physical recovery, determined to not just walk again without help ― but also run.

“My recovery has been phenomenal,” Mike recounts. “The fact that I can run is incredible, and so I signed up for the Royal Victoria Marathon because it was a huge challenge and an objective for me to hit as an incomplete quadriplegic.”

Mike ran in the half marathon last year and he’s tackling the full marathon this Thanksgiving. It will actually be Mike’s second full marathon – after pounding the pavement in Kelowna two years ago.

“I said I would never do another one because of how hard it was,” Mike laughs. “But I had real complications that day, so I kind of wanted redemption.”

But Mike isn’t just running for himself. He’s also fundraising for the Children’s Health Foundation of Vancouver Island as part of the CHEK Charity Pledge Program.

“A marathon in and of itself is a challenge, and knowing he’s overcome so much and is giving back in such a big way is incredibly meaningful to us,” says Children’s Health Foundation director of development Shelley Engelhardt.

Mike wanted to help support sick kids and their parents because of what he went through.

“But perhaps most significantly now, as a new dad, to me, supporting this charity and being new to Vancouver Island as a new dad, I just felt so aligned and so grateful for the opportunity to get to give back because I was so lucky with the support I had along the way when I was hurt,” he says.

Mike knows how lucky he was to recover from a spinal cord injury, but what makes his story all the more incredible is that he has five vertebrae infused in his neck and can’t fully feel his legs or hands.

“I live with the challenges of spinal cord injury every day, which is part of what fuels my gratitude to run and the motivation to get out.

If you’d like to make a donation to Mike’s fundraiser, click on this link.