Darren Hardy will pull a Land Rover 100km in 100 hours to raise £100,000 for the H-ABC Foundation
Image Credit: Dunsfold Collection/Craig Pusey
Army veteran and extreme athlete Darren Hardy, from Fleet in Hampshire, is set to take on his biggest challenge yet as he aims to set more world records by pulling a 1.5-tonne Land Rover 100km in just 100 hours, making it the furthest vehicle pull ever.
His latest challenge is driven by his determination to help develop a life-changing treatment for 17-year-old Aggie Candy-Waters and others like her who live with a rare, deadly, and currently incurable brain disease, H-ABC.
With the aim of raising £100,000 for the H-ABC Foundation and SynaptixBio, which is developing a drug to tackle the disease, the money raised will pay for the development of a new, much safer and easier method of delivering that drug into patients.
Darren is encouraging businesses and the public to get behind his world first challenge, adding: “This is bigger than anything I’ve ever done before. It’s going to take a massive effort to pull a Land Rover the distance of more than two marathons, but you really only know what you are made of when you push yourself to the absolute limit.”
His latest challenge is planned to commence at noon on March 20th, with Darren pulling a 1.5 tonne Land Rover 100km at Blackbushe Airport, Camberley, in Hampshire.
Darren added; “This is not about speed or handling but is all about resilience and brute strength.
“This really is the biggest and toughest challenge I have ever attempted. I’ll have to battle sleep deprivation, weather, keeping on top of eating and drinking – let alone the pure physicality of the challenge.
“Over the 100 hours I’ll be pulling, I’m expecting to wear through 2 or 3 pairs of shoes, consume about 45,000 calories and drink around 50 litres of water and electrolytes.”
The type of drug being developed by SynaptixBio has been shown in trials to halt the progress of disease symptoms and has even reversed some of those symptoms. The company is preparing to enter clinical trials as soon as possible, hopefully in early 2027.
Darren continued: “For those interested in supporting the challenge, the team at The Dunsfold Collection is lending us two rare 1981 prototype Land Rovers. Only four were ever made, and only two have survived, making them some of the rarest Land Rovers in the world. So, for people wanting to get involved, there will be a second one to pull alongside me!”
Darren, the founder of StayStrong, was medically discharged from the Army with C-PTSD in 2017 following a series of triggering incidents in Iraq, and then on a training exercise in Canada.
With the support of friends and family, and a renewed dedication to pushing himself to his physical limit through extreme challenges, Darren has now committed himself to record breaking feats of endurance for charity.
In 2019 Darren was particularly touched when he came across the story of one child, Aggie Candy-Waters, and has since dedicated his efforts to help find her a cure. To date, Darren has raised over £120,000.
Since embarking on his mission to support Aggie, and others like her, UK biotech SynaptixBio has been founded and has raised £11 million in additional investment to develop a treatment for H-ABC.
The money raised by Darren from this challenge has been ringfenced for the development of a new method of delivering rare disease drugs into patients, which today is a risky and complex procedure; the problem is made harder as the majority of those patients are young children. The new method avoids the challenges of injecting directly into the cerebrospinal fluid, instead making it possible to deliver the drugs intravenously.
To support Darren and donate to this valuable cause, visit here.
Darren would like to thank his partner Ellie, close family and friends, and sponsors for their support with the challenge.