When injury brought a temporary halt to Ben Thackwray's football career with Guiseley he started running instead.

And not one to do things by halves he went on to take part in a gruelling endurance race across the Sahara, to raise money for Facing Africa, a charity devoted to the treatment and prevention of a disease which leaves its victims dead or horribly disfigured.

Since then he has gone on to put himself to the test, with an action-packed ascent of Mount McKinley in Alaska where he and his fellow climbers ended up suspended over a huge ice bridge as it started to collapse.

His next challenge was to have been an attempt to run hundreds of miles across an ice cap in Greenland in an attempt to set a new speed crossing record - a feat regarded as one of the three classic Polar adventures.

But in between he has decided to fit in an attempt at the Atlantic rowing record after he was invited to join the small crew, who are trying to better the time of 35 days, eight hours and 30 minutes which was set by a French team 15 years ago.

This time he and his fellow crew members are raising money for Wateraid - a charity which provides safe water, effective sanitation and hygiene education to the world's poorest people.

And the team have carried on regardless despite being a man down after one of their number suffered an injury.

In these days of easy celebrity Ben is a truly remarkable man - pushing himself to the very limit of endurance while helping to make a real difference to the lives of those less fortunate.

If anyone deserves to break the record Ben and the rest of the crew surely do.

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