A Cheadle Hulme man aims to round off a 72-hour mega-triathlon by pulling a plane as he crosses the finish line.
Carl Thomas hopes to raise £250,000 for Ollie’s Army, a Poynton-based charity raising awareness of Batten disease.
Carl is no stranger to charity challenges.
And bizarrely, he is no stranger to dragging planes behind him as he runs.
In fact, he previously set the record for running a marathon while pulling an aircraft behind him.
He has also completed 10 marathons in 10 days from London to Stockport and cycled from the borough to Stirling Castle and back in one day.
“This is the last one — I’m turning 37 in November and my body is starting to break down,” he said.
“This next challenge will encapsulate everything I have done so far, with the addition of swimming.
“The different thing about this challenge is that I’ve invited and organised a lot of other events at the same time, so there’s people cycling from Scotland, cycling from Wales, running and walking for 24-36 hours from Stockport all to raise money for the same thing.”
Starting at 3am on Thursday, July 15, from Great Ormond Street Hospital, Carl will cycle 250 miles in a weighted vest to an open water swimming site near York, where he will swim for five miles.
Then, he will don his weighted vest again to run a marathon to Elvington Airfield — the site of his last challenge of running 26 miles while pulling a plane.
This time, Carl, who is also a multiple kickboxing world champion, will only pull a vehicle the length of the runway — but that is still 2.5 miles long.
He hopes to finish at 3pm on Saturday, July 17, and be surrounded by kickboxing trainees from his coaching academy, as well as TV daredevil Guy Martin.
“The issue we always had was that initially we were dealing with two very large charities,” Carl told the Manchester Evening News when asked why he chose to support Ollie’s Army.
He added: “We were dealing with Macmillan for the first one and Teenage Cancer Trust for the second.
“I looked at how much I raised for them — it was £28,000 for the first one, and thirty-odd-thousand pounds for the second — which was great, but you see how much they raise from big corporate events and I thought because I’m based in Stockport, I am going to look for a small charity who will really see the benefit of every pound raised.
“It’s a local charity, a family-run charity and it is brilliant awareness for a disease not many people know about.”
Carl says should he hit his £250,000 target, the money will be used to help restore eyesight for a child who suffers from Batten disease.
You can find out more about the Carl Thomas Project on his website.
