Paralyzed man finishes marathon 3 years after accident took his ability to walk as a teen

Mason Branstrator is going the distance — one way or the other.

The young man, now 20, just completed his first marathon in a wheelchair three years after breaking his T-12 vertebra in a skiing accident that saw him paralyzed from the waist down.

“I was going for an ordinary day of downhill skiing, but this time, it was a lot different,” Mason told CBS News.

“I remember thinking right as I left the jump, ‘I’m going a little fast.’ And that was the last thing I remember before everything went black.”

While in the ICU, the 17-year-old athlete learned that he might never regain the ability to walk — much less continue skiing, running and playing all his favorite sports.

“In the ICU, multiple doctors came into my room and said, ‘Mason, you might not be able to walk again.’ And in the eyes and mind of somebody who was 17, I had no idea what was going on. That was devastating,” he said. 

Branstrator spent a little over a week in the ICU before being airlifted to Craig Hospital in Colorado where he underwent paralysis rehabilitation for four months. During that time he tried to come to terms with the fact that he would likely never fully regain the ability to walk.

“Around a year and a half after my accident, I had come to the point of realizing that walking was not going be a very functional thing for me to keep pursuing and it was time to look into everything else the wheelchair world had to offer,” he said.

“I had all of these people giving me offers to come play adaptive sports and try them out but I was pushing it back. And I finally realized it’s time to just live life.”

Since getting into his wheelchair, Branstrator has realized that the device could change his life in ways he had never imagined, including becoming a content creator with nearly 270,000 Instagram followers.

“The first time I got in a wheelchair in rehab, I felt so free,” he said.

“In this really hard situation, you’re given freedom and independence. And I’ve always been so grateful for my wheelchair. And people look at the wheelchair and say, ‘That sucks. It’s awful to be limited to using a wheelchair.’ But this wheelchair doesn’t limit me. It’s actually my freedom.”

He shared that instead of slowing him down, his wheelchair has helped him to move forward even faster.

“Now I just zoom everywhere,” Branstrator told the Duluth News Tribune. “I have my electric attachment — I go faster than the average person everywhere.”

He plays tennis, swims, kayaks, surfs and recently completed a marathon.

Last month, he returned to his hometown of Duluth, Minnesota to race in the annual Grandma’s Marathon as part of the wheelchair competition.

The para-athlete trained with 1996 U.S. Paralympian and Grandma’s Marathon 2006 runner-up, Jacob Heilveil, and raced in his new custom-fitted racing chair.

He came in at 2:03:52 minutes.

Branstrator admitted that some things have become more difficult since his accident, like getting in the car and riding escalators, but overall he has an optimistic spirit — which he shares through his social media and mentoring at the Craig Hospital.

“I also think that with serious hardship can come a lot of joy and gratitude for life.” Branstrator said to the Duluth News Tribune.