Dad runs 5km despite life-changing motocross crash

Mr Corr never believed the prognosis he was given

A father-of-two has completed a 5km parkrun less than a year after being told to prepare for life in a wheelchair.

Brendan Corr crashed while motocross racing in San Diego, California, in October.

The 56-year-old, who lives near Stansted Airport in Essex, needed four minutes of CPR and spent nine days in an intensive care unit with multiple fractures and spinal cord damage.

Despite being told by one clinician to accept his condition, he ran 5km (3.1 miles) at the Millhouses parkrun in Sheffield on 2 August.

"[The prognosis] was just something that I couldn't see for myself, or I don't know whether it was denial initially, but it just wasn't going to fly for me," he said.

Mr Corr, who is a business owner, said he technically died after a cerebrovascular stroke in hospital.

"I had to be resuscitated and defibrillated," he recalled.

"So, from dead in the Californian desert, to alive and running around a Sheffield park in under 10 months."

Mr Corr's friends made sure he was not running in Sheffield without support

He has received physiotherapy from a private rehabilitation company, where he used a new rehabilitation robot to aid his recovery.

"It looks a bit Terminator-ish; this black carbon fibre metal and plastic exoskeleton that goes around me, but the only way it's controlled is by me relearning my own signals," he explained.

"I had absolutely no movement in my right arm at all; some of that from the stroke, some of it from my spinal injury."

After regaining the ability to walk independently, he set himself the goal of completing a Parkrun.

"(I wanted) to prove that my rehab was real... I also had lots of friends travel up to Sheffield and do the run with me, and it was super emotional."

Mr Corr has also begun walking his dog Fergus again, a springer spaniel, and is learning to cook again for his family.