British army veteran completes record 100km Land Rover pull

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, Hardy reached his 100th kilometre, finishing two hours ahead of his 100-hour target.

"I've felt better," said Hardy, who was born in Northern Ireland, after finally parting ways with the 1981 prototype that had been his unlikely travelling companion at Blackbushe Airport near his hometown of Fleet in Hampshire.

"Physically, day three was the hardest day. Today I felt sort of great because of the adrenaline and the finish."

Hardy, no stranger to extreme sporting feats, described how his legs felt like concrete and his calves were severely swollen. Both of his feet had stress fractures after four grueling days.

He survived on just a few hours of sleep each day in a tent, fueling himself with protein gels and electrolytes to replace the estimated 50,000 calories he burned during the challenge. His initial pair of trainers lasted 65 km before falling apart.

Medically discharged from the British army in 2017 with complex PTSD, Hardy had served in Iraq, where he also suffered shoulder injuries.

Two years later, he learned about Aggie Candy-Waters, now 17, who was diagnosed with H‑ABC in 2015 and can no longer walk or communicate verbally. Only around 100 people, mostly children, are known to have the condition.

Hardy had already raised £120,000 ($160,860) from previous endurance challenges for the H‑ABC Foundation and hopes to raise another £100,000 from his Land Rover pull.

While the physical challenge was immense, Hardy said the monotony of walking up and down the bleak concrete strip, especially at night when temperatures dropped near freezing, was something he embraced.

"I don't know where I really go, but I sort of enjoy that dark place," he told Reuters.

($1 = 0.7460 pounds) -Reporting by Martyn HermanEditing by Toby Davis/Reuters/Reuters