On Sunday 10 August, Jason “Jase” Vaux will attempt his first marathon. So what, you say, lots of people run their debut marathon every day, all over the world.

Jase expects it will take him around 12 hours, including necessary rest and fuelling breaks, and that he’ll crash to the ground multiple times. No, it’s not an ultramarathon on particularly difficult terrain. It will take place at Albert Park Lake in Melbourne, comprising just shy of nine loops of a flat 4.8km track.

Nonetheless, this will be one of the harder marathons ever run. Because Jase lives with cerebral palsy. It would be tidy if there were some simple metric to convert how hard what he is doing into able-bodied terms, but there’s not. And as Jase says, the experience of cerebral palsy (CP) is different for every person who has it. So there’s no apples-to-apples comparison to be made even within the CP community. To begin to understand, we can only listen to Jase and use our empathy and imagination to try to picture the enormity of what he’s doing.

“I just want to see, firstly, what’s possible,” Jase says. “I like to push boundaries. I’m a very stubborn and determined individual. I like to see where I can take my mind and my body. So it’s somewhat of a personal and philosophical kind of thing. What am I made of? What can I do?”

Those are questions that runners everywhere ask themselves every day: “What am I made of? What can I do?”

“But the other part of it,’ Jase continues, “is what traits am I able to continue to develop within myself? So is that resilience? Is that determination? Is that encouragement for other people, just for the fact of me trying something? Is that spreading a message that movement and exercise and getting out there and giving things a go—is that having a flow-on effect?”

One tangible way Jase hopes to make a difference is through the GoFundMe page he has set up. Supporters can contribute to Scope Australia, a not-for-profit organisation that provides a wide range of disability support services to people with complex intellectual, physical and multiple disabilities.

Seeing the Person

“Cerebral palsy is an umbrella term for a range of physical disabilities that impact on muscle control and range, posture, balance, strength and flexibility,” Jase explains. “But the primary origin or cause of cerebral palsy comes from the brain. It occurs when you have a brain bleed or haemorrhage through the birthing process or, sometimes, some sort of brain injury shortly after birth.”

For the 32-year-old, this manifests as right-sided weakness and tightness. “The brain-to-muscle connection, the signals from my brain to different parts of my body – the transmission of the signals gets a bit mixed up and it causes extreme muscle tightness,” he says. The muscles “either overfire or some of them severely underfire as well”.

People with cerebral palsy can “burn two to four, maybe even five times the amount of physical energy just doing daily activities”, whether walking, running or moving around. The muscles are inefficient, “trying to work much harder”, Jase says. “So then my energy reserves ... they’re utilising more physical energy to move around.” It’s something to think about, given the intense demands on energy and fuelling that go into anybody’s preparation for a marathon.

Yet for all the clinical explanations, Jase is keen to emphasise something crucial: “We’re just human beings. People sometimes look at my disability as the overarching driver of my identity, when it is a part of me, an important part, but still just a part nonetheless, and not everything about who I am or what defines me.

“I’m Jase. I happen to have cerebral palsy, but at the end of the day, whether I have a disability or not, we’re all people and just human beings.”

The Journey So Far

A case worker helping young people disengaged from school, Jase started at Olivers Hill Run Club in Frankston, Victoria, in January 2024, but not for the reasons you might expect. I wrongly assumed that, as someone with a visible disability, he must have gone there to improve his physical capability. In fact, like so many of us who get into running, he was chasing better mental health and social connection.

“Primarily it started off to improve my mental health and my mindset through physical exercise,” he explains. His outlook had been “in a bit of a bad place” for several months, affected by external circumstances involving people he cared about. “So I was really looking for a community, an outlet to get back into physical and mental activity and exercise, and to meet people and start getting out there.”

When his brother-in-law, one of Olivers Hill’s original members, suggested he join, Jase didn’t hesitate. “I said, ‘Yeah, I’ll come tomorrow.’” He’s been a key crew member ever since.

When Jase first started, his pace was around 16–17 minutes per kilometre. Now, he’s knocked 4 to 5 minutes per km on average off that time. Moving as fast as possible, he says he can hold an 11-minute pace for around 5 kilometres, and can sustain much longer distances at his more comfortable pace around 12–13 minutes per kilometre.

“I’m not confident to say what I do, yet, is running,” Jase says with characteristic honesty. “I’d almost call it shuffling – that’s probably what I’d term it at the moment. I really would like to work towards building a running gait. I’m unsure whether that is within my capability, but I’m very curious to see what the next few years bring if I continue to work on it.”

The Connor Connection

Central to Jase’s journey is his friendship with Connor Sahely, who founded Olivers Hill Run Club and has become both mentor and mate. Regular Tempo Journal readers would already know Connor as one of the New Balance runners who tackled the New York City Marathon, someone committed to creating safe spaces for all runners.

Now New Balance are helping Jase, giving him the shoes, gear and apparel he needs for his marathon. “Their support is so kind and amazing,” he says. “I want to do them proud!” Connor and Jase’s meeting 18 months ago was immediate chemistry. “Straight away I just got a really good energy from Connor,” Jase says. “I could tell I really respected him and we had a good mutual banter from the beginning.”

As well as organising Olivers Hill, Connor owns a sports recovery business, Impact Fitness, where he offers massage therapy, rehab and injury prevention alongside complementary therapies such as dry needling and cupping. Soon Jase began a holistic course of strength training and treatment. Connor’s approach is revolutionary in its simplicity: treat Jase like any other athlete, albeit one with specific challenges.

“I’m still looking at him and treating him professionally like a human who has, you know, a really weak right calf. An inability to extend his hip the same way that a lot of other runners and walkers would. I need him to improve his core strength the same way that you and I would if we’re training for a marathon,” Connor explains.

The pair explain that outside of Jase’s work at Impact Fitness he’s supported by a range of medical specialists including exercise physiologists and podiatrists. “That’s been more of a care team approach and Connor’s probably the main professional that I see regularly at the moment,” Jase says.

Their friendship has what Connor calls an “angel–devil dynamic”: “My goal is to prevent him from doing too many ridiculous things because he’ll just randomly say to me he wants to attempt a PB or he wants to do a 25K walk and my goal is ‘No, pull back, stay with the process, trust what we’re building.’

“But it’s like an unstoppable force meeting an immovable object,” Connor continues. “I joke that nobody on the planet annoys me more than Jase. He is my most frustrating friend because I set these very clear boundaries … and then he just tells me he wants to do something different because he wants to challenge himself.”

The pair like to give each other shit. “I’m always trying to make sure he limits his daily Hungry Jacks Whoppers – because I tell him that’s not the food of champions,” Connor says.

“Sometimes he thinks he’s a bit more humorous than he really is,” Jase retorts. “So work on your jokes, mate – work on your jokes. Plus he thinks the buzzcut is the best haircut that you can ever have in history, and he wants to make me into his clone.”

But Jase deeply appreciates Connor’s best characteristics: “He’s very supportive of other people. He wants other people to do well, and not everyone in life wants that for others ... he’s very encouraging and wants to pump people up, wants to encourage them, wants them to find what he’s found within himself.”

Proof of Concept

The proof of what Jase has become capable of came late last August at Ballam Park Athletics Track in Frankston. He nailed down 32 kilometres – his age in kilometres, a challenge popular among the Olivers Hill community. It was his third attempt, having been forced to reschedule twice due to hip pain and illness.

“I thought, I’m not rescheduling this son of a gun again,” Jase recalls. “We’re going to do it or we’re not, and I’m staying on this track until I complete it.”

What followed was 80 laps of the 400-metre oval, approximately seven hours of moving time, nine hours total on and around the track. “There were probably 10 to 12 times where I legitimately thought about throwing in the towel early. And I’d never experienced that on any other walk I had done prior.”

But Jase’s stubbornness – the trait that will prove essential for his marathon attempt – saw him through. “I was not getting off that track regardless of how long – if it took me all day, I would have been out there all day.”

This progression has come alongside discoveries about his capabilities. “Not until this year and parts of last year have I really pushed my physical body to this level,” he reflects. “So there’s been parts about my cerebral palsy and my physical recovery that I didn’t necessarily realise before, because I’ve never walked these distances or pushed my body to the threshold that I’m now trying to get it to go to.”

Training Reality

Including his build-up to the 32km challenge, which he admits was a bit impulsive and improvisational, come August Jase will have been training for his marathon for nearly a year. Obviously, that’s a lot longer than the typical 16-week block you’ll find in most marathon plans. With that, and with Jase’s CP, comes a greater risk of illness and injury.

The training regime is comprehensive but carefully managed around a concept Connor calls “cost”. Currently, Jase does two to three sessions per week at Olivers Hill, plus one long walk and two strength and treatment sessions with Connor.

“The cost of doing a 10 to 12K walk this weekend is not super high in terms of how much fatigue it’s going to build up for Jase,” Connor explains. “The cost of doing a 20km-plus walk is pretty high. The chance of injuries and niggles, or central nervous system overload, is a high cost.”

Recovery is the biggest challenge. While most marathon trainees might bounce back from a long run in a day or two, Jase needs several days or even two weeks to recover from major training efforts. Connor describes it as “a cycle of two steps forward, one step back – over and over and over again”.

Jase’s falls are a reality that can’t be ignored. “I’m very acutely aware of the fatigue element. The amount of hours that I’m out there highly correlates with the more falls happening,” he explains. But his attitude to this reveals something profound about his character.

“In a privileged way, and this is going to sound a bit odd, but I’ve fallen a lot in my life. So I am semi used to it happening now,” he says. “I’ve trained myself to switch my mind very quickly from ‘Shit, I just fell over’ to ‘I’ve fallen – this happens, this is what my body does, unfortunately’ and to try and get up as quickly as I can and switch my mindset back to the task.”

This has become more than just a coping mechanism – it’s a philosophy. “It’s a beautiful life lesson in that there’s lots of things about our life that we cannot control, and mine just happens to be a very visceral and physical reminder of that aspect.”

For someone who describes himself as “a bit more of a creative person... a bit more of an intuitive person”, following a structured training plan for months has been its own challenge. “Sometimes it’s been tricky, but it will help me not only in the marathon event – it’s helping me to develop skills that potentially I’m a little bit weak in in general.”

Marathon Day Reality

Jase’s expectations for 10 August are refreshingly honest. “I think it’s going to be hard as fuck,” he says. “I’m expecting a journey of all different emotions. I’m expecting body complaints. The distance scares me – to add on another 10.2km to 32km is a heck of a long way.” Naturally enough, his mother is worried he’s bitten off more than he can chew. “My mum is joking that she doesn’t want to come down at all. She worries that she’s going to see her youngest son in a fair bit of emotional and physical pain. She’ll definitely come.”

But alongside the fear is excitement and a commitment to enjoying the experience. “I want to have fun. I want to giggle. I want to laugh when things go amiss because they certainly will on the day. I’m expecting that. If I’m not having fun in parts of it, I’m doing it the wrong way.”

A sense of community is central to his vision for the event. “I want people to see the power of people supporting each other,” he says. “Not just getting around me, but like me getting around other people on the day.”

Jase also hopes his effort could create change for others. He’s discovered that accessing official marathon events in Australia is challenging for people with disabilities due to cut-off times and road closures.

“I’ve approached a few different places across Victoria, and even interstate, explained my situation, explained that I’ve got some credentials now behind me in terms of my physical abilities, but it’s unfortunate that unless a lot of people are willing to go overseas with disability, there doesn’t seem to be enough categories of accessibility,” he explains while acknowledging the wheelchair category in most major Australian events.

“If I can get exposure and speak on it, it may even provide some small change in opening the doors for people with disabilities.”

Which isn’t to say that people with cerebral palsy haven’t completed marathons before, especially internationally. Scottish runner Andrew Tomlinson completed his sixth major last year at the London Marathon when he finished in under four hours. In 2023, Spaniard Alex Roca Campillo became the first person with a 76% disability to complete a marathon when he finished the Barcelona Marathon in 5:50:21. But as we noted early on, every person’s experience of CP is different, and these runners were able to complete their events within the standard cut-off times.

How to Support

Jase welcomes community support at Albert Park on 10 August. “The more the merrier,” he says. “I’m not expecting people to do the whole distance or anything crazy, but come down for a couple of laps or a specific amount of time and then head off again.”

Connor will be there for the full 12 hours, providing live updates through his Instagram account and the Olivers Hill Run Club account, despite having Sydney Marathon to prepare for once he’s completed Gold Coast in early July. As mentioned, Jase has also established a GoFundMe campaign for Scope Australia, a disability service organisation.

“If I can complete this, it just goes to show that, if you put your mind to it, you can achieve something great,” Jase says.

“I think I’ll be quite emotionally touched if I manage to complete it – not only for some of the challenges I’ve gone through when I was younger but also to show myself and the world what we’re made of, regardless of our different life experiences.”

Come the day, we’ll find out just what Jase is made of. But we already know it’s something special.

Follow Jase’s journey and Connor’s updates on Instagram. You can donate to Scope Australia through Jase’s GoFundMe page here.