For the past nine months, Lewis Pugh has woken at 5.30am every day and punished his body through a gruelling regime of swims, runs, weights and kayaking.
When he dips his toes into Lake Tear of the Clouds, New York state, this morning, for the opening stage of his mission to swim the 315-mile length of the Hudson River, he will finally discover whether the hard work has paid off.
Each day he will spend at least five hours in the water, and will run alongside the Hudson when it slows to an unswimmable trickle in stages while descending the Adirondack mountains.
But after such exertion, there is only one way Pugh can properly relax.
“I need a good hard bed, like a rock,” he