Coping with blindness, then paralysis, to showing us that we can achieve more than we thought possible.

Blindness

Mark Pollock started losing his sight from childhood, culminating in blindness just before his finals at Trinity College Dublin in 1998.

Mark’s blindness is tied to the date of the Good Friday Agreement being signed on 10 April 1998 in Northern Ireland. He speaks of the uncertain years of autopilot after this diagnosis, the five stages of grief and the sense of being left behind as his friends went off to start their adult lives.

Mark had to navigate the loss of what he had assumed was his identity; one very much tied to being a sportsman, defined by things he did. He speaks of being a spectator on the sidelines of his life.

Slowly, as he emerged from this state of shock and grief, he moved from being a spectator to competitor, designing a life with clarity, confidence and commitment. Small goals built up confidence. Always a lover of endurance sports, he went on to attempt many such feats, both ‘successfully’ and other times needing to be helicoptered off mountainsides.

Mark went on to become a global adventure athlete, competing in ultra-endurance races across deserts and the first blind person to race to the South Pole in 2009.

Paralysis

Perhaps a worse tragedy occurred in 2010, when a fall from a second story window nearly killed him, leaving Mark with a broken back, fractured skull and many internal injuries. He survived, just, but paralysed.

Since then, Mark has redirected his attention to the intersection of humans and technology to cure paralysis in our lifetime. Off-air he spoke to me about a particular teenager he shared a ward with, whose life’s potential was wiped away at the time he was paralysed from the neck down.

Mark Pollock works to inspire us all, optimise performance and build collaborations and communication channels that can ultimately effect change. He is Chairman of Collaborative Cures.

Mark now works a lot with neuroscientists, to understand how to best achieve a state of flow. He also believes in collaboration with an element of competition to get the best results. This also requires great communication, and that relies on trust.

Run in the Dark

Mark is the founder of the global running series Run in the Dark and here Luxembourg plays an important role! This event will be held on 13 November at 8pm in 50 cities around the world, with 25,000 people running 5km and 10km. You can choose to race, walk or be a Marshall or volunteer on the night.

If you want to support Mark’s work you can contact him here:

https://www.markpollock.com/

runinthedark.org/volunteer