{"id":18628,"date":"2016-02-26T12:08:59","date_gmt":"2016-02-26T12:08:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.pyranha.com\/blog\/?p=18628"},"modified":"2016-02-26T17:13:19","modified_gmt":"2016-02-26T17:13:19","slug":"man-vs-hell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pyranha.com\/blog\/man-vs-hell\/","title":{"rendered":"Man vs Hell"},"content":{"rendered":"

I largely despise any sort of Charity Challenge; far too often they are elaborate reasons for students to stroll up a mountain in the sunshine and feel empowered about it. Whilst it is brilliant that they have the forethought to raise money for charity, I’m not sure if going on holiday is the right way to go about it\u2026<\/p>\n

However, there are a few challenges out there that are absolute \u201csuffer fests\u201d, where human endurance, willpower, and sheer tenacity is stretched to the limit in the name of others, so much so that even my penny pitching self felt morally obliged to cough up some cash. With this in mind, there was one charity challenge that piqued my interest; Man Vs Hell.<\/p>\n

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The Man vs Hell challenge centres around one man, Richard Brooks, and his desire to push himself to the limit in the name of charity.\u00a0The challenge has, in the past, been 24 hours of non-stop kayaking on the Upper Dart river in Devon, quite an achievement in itself. However, this year, Rich would be taking it to the next level by immediately getting on his road bike and cycling a distance of 300 miles for a further 24 hours. My first thoughts when I heard that Rich was going to attempt this ambitious feat were; \u201cNot an \u2018effing chance mate!\u2019.<\/p>\n

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Rich got some training under his belt, the months flew by, and soon the challenge was upon him. I was lucky enough to join Rich for the 24 hours of kayaking on the Dart; we started at 12:00am on Friday morning, the levels were low but not terrible, and the first couple of laps flew by. Just another day on the Dart.<\/p>\n

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Things quickly changed once the sun went down though, and we began getting into double figures in our total amount of laps. Visibility was a major issue, despite various elaborate lighting systems we could only see at most, two feet in front of ourselves. It had been raining steadily though the day and the river began to rise in the early hours of the evening, not enough to be dangerous, but just enough to change the lines on a few of the rapids. This led to several moments of carnage as we adjusted to the different levels, notably Rob Harris at Pandora’s Box, a tricky little slot with a tight lead in that is near impossible to see in the dark. Rob had a few crashes on this drop but came up smiling every time, at least, I think he was smiling\u2026 he could have been grimacing, it was rather dark at the time.<\/p>\n

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A post shared by Bren Orton (@bren.orton)<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n