Five days after attaching himself to a 1.5-tonne Land Rover on a concrete runway near London, British Army veteran Darren Hardy set a new world record for a vehicle pull on Tuesday.
The 40-year-old former Royal Engineer hauled the rare vintage vehicle in a bid to raise money for H‑ABC, an extremely rare and incurable degenerative brain disease.
Just after lunchtime on Tuesday he clocked up his 100th kilometre, two hours ahead of his 100-hour target.
“I’ve felt better,” Northern Ireland-born Hardy said after finally parting company with the 1981 prototype that had been his unlikely travelling companion at Blackbushe Airport near his home town of Fleet in Hampshire.
“Physically, day 3 was the hardest day. Today I felt sort of great because of the adrenaline and the finish.”
Hardy, who is no stranger to extreme sporting feats, said his legs felt like concrete and his calves were horribly swollen while both feet had stress fractures after four brutal days.
I don’t know where I really go, but I sort of enjoy that dark place
— Darren Hardy
He survived on a few hours’ sleep each day in a tent and fuelled up with protein gels and electrolytes to replace the estimated 50,000 calories he burnt off during his feat. His initial pair of trainers lasted 65km before disintegrating.
Former Royal Engineer Hardy was medically discharged from the British army in 2017 with complex PTSD following service, including in Iraq, where he suffered shoulder injuries.
Two years later he came across the story of Aggie Candy‑Waters, now 17, who was diagnosed with H‑ABC in 2015 and can no longer walk or communicate verbally. Only around 100 sufferers, mainly children, are known.
Hardy had already raised £120,000 (about R2.7m) from previous fund-raising feats of endurance for the H‑ABC Foundation and hopes to raise another £100,000 (about R2.3m) from his Land Rover pull.
While the physical challenge was immense, the monotony of going up and down a bleak strip of concrete, especially in the dark when temperatures dropped near freezing, was something Hardy, who once ran five marathons in 50 hours, embraced.
“I don’t know where I really go, but I sort of enjoy that dark place,” he told Reuters.
Reuters
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