Redefining the Impossible with Darren Edwards
This story is called ‘Redefining the Impossible’, and it’s about Darren Edwards – a man so formidable it’s difficult to introduce him in a way that does him justice.
When you read Darren’s extraordinary story, you’ll understand what I mean.
Darren and I met in a strange way – in the sense that we didn’t meet at all. I saw him speak on stage in Birmingham at big business conference, and he blew me away.
In fact, I was crying my eyes out.
Darren’s an adaptive adventurer – a term he’s chosen to reflect the fact that a disability can adapted to and overcome.
With the right mindset, he believes, nothing is impossible.
To understand Darren’s story, we have to start with the life-changing events that led him to where he is today.
It all started when Darren moved with his family to Shrewsbury at the age of 12. Surrounded by fields, forests, rivers and hills, it was a far cry from his former life in inner city London.
Suddenly, his weekends were all about the outdoors.
“That started a love affair for me; a passion for climbing and mountaineering,” says Darren. “It was those early experiences of getting out of my comfort zone, learning what I could achieve, failing and then trying again – that was my inspiration.”
As an adult, he became a history teacher but yearned for a challenge outside of his day job.
He’d read about the SAS Reserves – the toughest unit in the world with a notoriously grueling selection process.
Something drove him to apply.
A rigorous six-month training schedule followed, culminating in the notorious endurance sprint – a task which requires applicants to lug heavy gear across the Brecon Beacons and back in 24 hours.
Just months before Darren signed up, three applicants had lost their lives attempting the same feat.
Then came the condensed battle camps, where he had to learn how to operate different weapons and assault rifles in a short space of time.
“In the reserves, you’re doing weapons handling test in your spare weekends, having not slept, having already smashed through forests and been on patrols.”
Darren had to learn in a matter of hours what a regular unit would have multiple weeks to learn.
It forced him to ask himself questions.
“Questions like can you learn quickly and adapt to rapidly changing situations? Are you resilient when things go wrong? Can you think on your feet, work in a small team, assimilate masses of information really quickly?
“And when you’re completely battered, bruised and exhausted, can you keep pushing?”
He didn’t know it at the time, but that kind of training proved instrumental in helping him navigate the life-changing situation that was about to happen.
Darren’s love of the mountains grew, and by the time he’d passed the SAS Reserves tests, he was an experienced climber. Almost every spare moment was spent in the hills and mountains.
Then the unthinkable happened.
One August weekend, Darren and his best friend Matt set off to attempt a climb called World’s End – an imposing 300ft vertical limestone rockface near Llangollen.
The pair had climbed together since they were 15 and both knew the drill.
One person takes the lead, putting in the screws and clipping the rope through. The person below feeds the rope and watches in case the lead climber falls, so they can be ready to arrest the descent.
With Darren leading, the pair spent a beautiful summer’s day climbing, eventually reaching a 6ft-wide ledge that formed the final section of rock to the top.
Darren turned to walk away from Matt along the narrow ledge and as he did, Matt took his picture.
It would be the last image of Darren in the life he’d known.
The last part of the climb was difficult. Darren was at the limit of his technical ability (“I’m no Alex Honnold”, he admits), but when he finally reached the top, he felt that same familiar buzz of achieving something difficult that he’d experienced in SAS training.
“I peered down over my shoulder to Matt, who was on the ledge below. Then I turned and started to walk away to set up a point from which I could protect Matt as he climbed up to me.
“But as I shifted and my weight moved, the rock I was standing on began to collapse beneath my feet. I was standing right in the center of this mass, so there was nowhere else I could get to.
“Before I knew what was happening, the rock collapsed.”
The only thing between Darren and the bottom on a 300ft drop was a ledge.
As he fell into the void, time seemed to slow down. His life flashed before his eyes. Not his childhood or his first love or all that ‘Hollywood stuff’ as he calls it. But his Mum. His Dad, his sister, his girlfriend, his mates.
All the things he’d miss out on with them if he didn’t survive the fall.
Then he hit the ledge.
But he hit it with so much force that he bounced towards the edge and would’ve dropped to the bottom – if it wasn’t for Matt.
In a split-second decision, Matt instinctively threw himself over Darren, hoping that his weight would pin Darren to the ledge and stop him falling further.
It was a move that could’ve taken them both off that ledge.
But it was a risk Matt was willing to take to save his best friend’s life.
The rescue operation took three hours.
Darren knew he was badly injured. When Matt moved him to safety and he tried to stand up, he couldn’t feel anything below his chest.
“Initially I put it down to the shock. I thought if I stayed there and didn’t move for a few minutes, I’d be alright. As the minutes passed by, I tried again. To flick a foot, to wiggle a toe. And I still couldn’t feel anything.
“That’s when the reality began to dawn on me.”
Once the rescue team arrived, Darren remembered hearing the words ‘spinal injury’ over and over again. When they moved him, he felt a shooting pain across his body.
He later found out that he’d broken his back.
“We were there for hours, Coast Guard helicopters hovering above our heads. That was really daunting. I was going through this huge, emotional wave of denial, acceptance anger.
“I said to myself, then to Matt: ‘Whatever happens, don’t let me give up’.”
Something about that making that little commitment to self-accountability seemed to turn the tide back towards him.
He made the decision then and there not to let that afternoon’s events define him for the rest of his life.
Darren woke up the next day in the major trauma unit.
He’d been in surgery for nine hours. The fall had snapped his spine into two pieces. His surgeon told him bluntly that his climbing career was over – for life.
“He said that he could tell me with absolute certainty that no matter how hard I tried, there was no version of this situation in which I would ever stand back up on my feet and walk. Those words landed like lead.
“I felt like I’d been stabbed in the heart.
“Then he paused and said: ‘I’d encourage you to look to the future and not the past.’
“In that moment, part of me wanted to punch him because it was the opposite of what I wanted to hear. Which was: ‘Darren, if you give it everything, I believe you can walk again. You can be the one person who does this’.”
In the days after his surgery, Darren lay in intensive care.
He was in physical and psychological shock. But as his body started the slow path to recovery and he began to process what happened, he found himself coming back to the surgeon’s advice.
Eventually, he began to appreciate what the surgeon was saying.
“A lot of doors shut to me on the day of my accident. But I started to see that there were doors still ahead of me to be found and opened. And I wasn’t gonna find them if I spent the next two or three years looking backwards and trying to chase the past.”
Darren spent the next six weeks immobilised in a hospital bed, unable to do anything.
Apart from family and friends, his only source of entertainment was the small TV in his room.
Coincidentally, the Paralympics were on.
He was seeing kayakers, rowers, sprinters, people that had stepped on a bomb or hit by a car or born with a limiting condition. All showing the world that they weren’t going to be defined by what happened to them.
That planted a seed for Darren, and led him to a huge realisation.
There was still opportunity.
And there was still hope.
He used that inspiration to endure the next few months of grueling, intensive rehab.
It reminded him of those days training for the SAS Reserves, because he was constantly being asked to push one step further.
“In a weird way, I loved those three months. As hard as they were psychologically, and as much as I was still coming to terms with the frustration, I had a clear task ahead of me. And it was that same unrelenting pursuit of excellence that I felt in back in training.”
But there was more pain to come.
“One of the things I thought about as I was falling from the cliff was this girl who I thought I was gonna marry; the love of my life who I couldn’t see a future without.
“I needed her then more than ever. But her presence at the hospital became less frequent. Her emotional availability less obvious. I didn’t register it at the time because I was so desperate for her to never leave me.
“Then, two weeks before I was discharged to move back into the home we shared together, she came in and broke the news that she didn’t think we’d survive this as a couple.
“She couldn’t support me through it. She burst into tears and said: ‘I’m so sorry, I just can’t do this’.
“Then she just walked out and I never saw her again.”
“People assume that World’s End was my rock bottom, but that was my rock bottom. It killed me. That was the first time in the months since my accident that I almost gave up. I didn’t see the point of being here. It was my darkest moment.”
His friends and family rallied round.
Desperate to make him feel better, they said the things we’d all say in that moment. That he’d find someone to love again, that there were plenty more fish in the sea.
But it only made him feel worse.
It was the words of Kate – Darren’s physio who’d helped to rebuild him from what he describes as a ‘weak shell of a bloke’ – that gave him the most strength.
“I hadn’t been to physio or therapy for a week, and she came up to me and said: ‘Look, there’s nothing I can say that’ll make you feel better. But if you do one thing for me, think about the man you want to become. And every day, take one tiny step towards becoming him’.
“Those words echoed in my head.”
Slowly, he began to wonder. What if in four years’ time, he’d be competing in the Paralympic Games, having watched it from his hospital bed in those first six weeks of lying in intensive care?
He pictured himself in a kayak and began to think about how he’d get himself there from where he was now – a ‘heartbroken wreck of a bloke in hospital’.
Then he did something most men don’t do, even at the best of times.
He asked for help.
“I got my phone out, called up Matt and said: ‘’There’s something I need you to do. Can you pick me up from hospital tomorrow?’.
“He turned up the next morning and said: ‘Where are we going?’ And I was like: ‘Oh, we’re going to a kayak and a canoe shop in Manchester.
“He went: ‘Right, OK’ and just started the car. Didn’t question me, didn’t challenge me. Two hours later we’re in the shop and he says: ‘How much kayaking have you done? I told him I’d never been in a boat in my life.
“He stood next to me and said: ‘Well, if you’re doing it, I’m doing it’.”
That day, they bought kayaks and paddles. Buying a kayak was Darren’s first step to the Paralympic Games.
The next step was to actually get in it.
He was discharged from hospital on 23 December after five months of rehab. On 24 December – Christmas Eve – his mates booked out the local swimming pool for him to practice in.
Kate’s advice still rung in his head. ‘Think about the man you want to become and take tiny steps every day to becoming him’.
Those words carried so much power.
They gave him a purpose – and a life without purpose is almost impossible.
He still struggled to get dressed. Still nursed a broken heart. Sometimes, he fell out of his chair.
But now he was in pursuit of something. There was a reason to get up, get out of bed, go back into the world and re-engage.
A few months after leaving hospital, Darren turned up at the National Water Sports Centre in Nottingham.
In his local swimming pool, he’d capsized 27 times.
Now, he found himself in an Olympic-grade water sports facility, having fabricated his level of experience to the Head Coach, multi-Olympian canoeing legend Steve Train.
“I pushed off from the side and within 30cms, I was upside down for the first of many times.
“Steve gave me the chance to leave with a bit of pride, but I tried again. Same thing happened. We did this over and over for an hour and a half.
“Finally, he said: ‘OK, shower, get changed, meet me in my office’. Then he sat me down and said:
“‘I’ll be completely honest, you’ve got absolutely no talent.’
“’But you know what?’ he said. ‘I can’t doubt your mindset. I can’t doubt your determination to make this work. And that’s actually the hardest part because I can teach you a skill, but I can’t teach you character’.”
Over the next few months, Darren started going three times a week, then five.
Gradually, he progressed from a pool to a canal, then a river, then a lake. A year later, he raced in his first British championships and even though he finished last, he stayed dry.
But that didn’t put him off; in fact, it delighted him.
Because it was just another step towards becoming the man he wanted to be, and celebrating all the little wins along the way.
Three years later – a year before the Paralympic Games – he had the second best paralympic canoeing time in the country.
But then the pandemic struck, and the games were called off. In that time, Darren seriously injured his shoulder and could no longer train – or race.
“I’d built myself up for three years and then felt like I’d fallen flat on my face. It was the first time that I felt like I’d failed; like I’d properly gone for something and fallen short.
“I knew the Paralympics were rescheduled for 2021, but I probably wouldn’t make them. So I thought: ‘Right, I’ve put four years of hard work and effort in, and I don’t want it to be for nothing.
“What can I do instead?’
“And I came up with this idea to kayak 1,400kms from Land’s End to John o’ Groats across the Atlantic Ocean, Bristol Channel, Irish Sea and North Sea. I built a plan and a team – Kayak4Heroes.
“We soon discovered that it had never been done before – even by anyone able-bodied.”
Suddenly, Darren found himself announcing to the world that five blokes with life-changing injuries who weren’t even high-level kayakers were about to attempt something incredible.
Everyone told them it wouldn’t work.
‘It’s impossible,’ they said. They admired the team’s enthusiasm, but no one believed there was a chance in hell that a journey like that could be done.
Darren’s team knew that, of course – and they still went for it.
“The decision to embark on that adventure turned failure into the greatest opportunity of my life. Because actually, the failure of the Paralympic stuff pushed me back in a very authentic direction.
“It led me back to the world of adventure I started from.”
Amongst his team of five was a former SAS member who’d been shot seven times on operation and had been lucky to survive. There was a guy who’d stood on an IED in Afghanistan. A guy who’d had a stroke when he was an ultra-marathon runner.
They didn’t have much technical skill, but their strength lay in their ability to work as a team and persevere with resilience.
It was Darren’s toughest challenge yet.
For 12 hours a day, he and his teammates battled day against wind, waves and sea swell – massive cliffs on one side, roiling ocean on the other.
They veered into shipping lanes. At one point, two of their team members lost contact with the support boat for a while.
But what drove Darren and his team to carry on was the desire to inspire others like them. There was a real, genuine drive to motivate and better people through their journey.
So when they eventually made it to John o’ Groats after 26 days at sea, there was a huge sense of relief.
“It wasn’t a dramatic finale like summiting a Himalayan mountain.
“Basically, it was a signpost in a car park. But that signpost had a huge emotional attachment to it, and to stand below it with my team was the proudest moment of my life.
“Because for me, it all came back to the promise I’d made myself. That I wouldn’t give up, whatever happened. And after that expedition, I realised that my life with a disability could actually out-achieve and outperform my old life.”
Coming home from John o’ Groats, Darren was on top of the world.
But life was about to deal him another devastating blow.
Darren’s family environment had changed a lot over the years. His parents had separated, and his Dad had been facing serious battles with mental health. One night, Darren got the call from his sister; their father had taken his own life.
Despite everything he’d already endured, this was by far the worst.
“What’s more frustrating than dealing with something yourself is trying to help someone else deal with something, and not being able to get through to them.
“I could say all the things in the world to my Dad about everything I’d learned since my accident, but I just felt like I couldn’t get in.
“He did what he did because he couldn’t see the hope in his future.
“All he saw was the change and the negatives. I’m so grateful that the last time I saw my Dad, something told me to tell him that I loved him – something we’d never normally do. And he said: ‘I love you too, son’.
“It was the night before he died, so it’s likely the last thing anyone ever said to him was: ‘I love you’. To me, that was worth something.
“And that ended up being the reason I started speaking on stage; to try and help people like my Dad.”
Darren’s stage presence is refreshingly honest.
He’s not up there trying to be Ant Middleton or some kind of hero; he’s just himself. Real. Raw.
And he hopes that one day, there’ll be a Dad in the audience like his Dad – or anyone suffering in silence – who decides to stay around because of something they hear.
That goal is more important now than ever; the leading cause of death in men under the age of 45 is currently suicide.
Darren wants to show people that they can be genuine and sincere, and share their stories without judgement. And that being an alpha male doesn’t mean you can’t be vulnerable and have moments of weakness.
You can’t be brave without feeling pain.
As his speaking career began to take off, another adventure beckoned.
“After Dad died, I wanted to do something for a mental health charity. Then a call came through from a guy who runs an event called the World Marathon Challenge.
“He was looking for someone with a disability to run seven marathons in seven days on seven continents, and my name had come up in conversation.
“He asked if I’d be interested and I was like ‘f**k yes – sign me up!’”
But Darren had never run a marathon.
The organiser was asking about his current marathon time, but just like the kayak situation, Darren had never attempted anything like this before. And the marathon was in just 10 months’ time.
Darren told him: ‘If you believe in me, I promise you right now that I’ll do everything I can to be ready.’”
The schedule was intense; a marathon a day starting in Antarctica, then Africa, Australia, Asia, South America, Europe and finally North America. On the final day, competitors would run the last 26.2 miles in Miami.
“On my first run in the hilly village where I lived, I was pretty confident I could do about 20 miles. But after five miles I thought my arms were gonna drop off. It was a huge reality check moment.”
Yet 10 months later, he touched down in Antarctica.
“We landed on snow; there are no runways in Antarctica. And from the moment I got off that plane, I had a six-hour window to run a marathon in -50c with 20 other runners.”
Darren was in a specialised wheelchair mountain bike that’s designed to dig into the snow. Luckily, he found himself in a tailwind which helped him finish the race in just under the allocated six-hour run time.
He had just 10 minutes to get back on the huge cargo plane and fly to Cape Town, eight hours away. After the African marathon, he was back on a flight to Perth for the Australian marathon, then Dubai, then Madrid.
It was like the Three Peaks on steroids.
“My body was in bits; with the lack of sleep, lack of food, lack of rest, fatigue doesn’t even come close. My hands were torn to shreds. I tried to sleep on flights or at the airport, surviving on McDonald’s which wasn’t the best fuel.”
Seven days later, he arrived at Miami and ran the final stretch at 3am surrounded by drunk people on South Beach.
Finishing the final marathon gave him an even bigger sense of relief than his John o’ Groats expedition.
Once again, he’d done something no one had ever done before.
And these two gargantuan achievements would become the first of many.
“Impossible is a word I’ve heard too many times to count. I always wanted to rebel against being told anything was impossible. Now, I’m laying the groundwork for anyone who wants to do things that people have said are ‘impossible’.
“It is possible – there’s a bloke who’s already done it.”
After I first heard one of Darren’s talks, he gave me the opportunity to create a logo and website for him – Redefining Impossible. I could not be more proud for Codebreak to have played a small role in his epic journey.
The website is a showcase of his biggest adventure yet.
This December, with a team of three others, he’ll battle through extreme conditions in temperatures below -30c to attempt the longest ever sit-ski expedition to the South Pole in just 25 days.
Only two people have ever achieved such a feat, and the current world record is 111kms; Darren’s goal is 333kms.
He and his team will be unsupported and unassisted, with no possible rescue.
It will be unbelievably hard.
Darren will be in a wheelchair without the wheels, with two skis strapped beneath it, two ski poles. He’ll use those poles and his upper body strength to drag himself across the snow.
The Antarctic terrain, the frigid environment and the weight of the gear will mean they’ll only cover around 20km a day. But Darren’s approaching it like he’s approached everything else.
One tiny step at a time.
“For me, it’s not about a Guinness World Record. It’s about proving what’s possible, inspiring that next person to do this or the average person wanting to do well in our own lives.
“We can all redefine impossible in whichever shape or form we want that to be.”
If you’re a business owner and would like to support Darren’s incredible journey, you can join the amazing list of brands that are helping Darren push the boundaries of human achievement.
Don’t miss the next episode of Stay Hungry – we’ll dive into straight-talking insights on business marketing, growth mindset, and the realities of running a business. And if you want to take the hassle out of your marketing, we’ve got you covered with our done-for-you service.