A MAN who ran 182 miles across Wales in less than a week in memory of his friend who took his own life, said he was “baffled” he didn’t get heat stroke.

Tom Hunt, from Worcester, started the gruelling Offa’s Dyke trail on July 2 – completing it in five days, six hours and 27 minutes, averaging 32 miles a day – six more than a marathon.

The 26-year-old has so far raised £3,000 for mental health charity MIND, inspired by close friend Nathan Tomkins, who died in 2016 – with the challenge completely self-supported.

He said much of the donations came in after the Worcester News reported on the challenge, smashing his original target by more than a thousand pounds.

“I actually ran 192 miles as I got lost a few times,” he admitted. “With a total elevation of 29,694 feet, it is taller than the summit of Everest.

“The heat was totally ridiculous and I’m a little baffled to how I didn’t get heat stroke, but on day one I managed to drink eight and a half litres of water with only a few toilet breaks.”

To stay hydrated, Tom, who had never run a marathon before – and admitted “I was completely out my depth” – said he drank from streams, pubs and a farm feeder.

“Every hour and a half I was taking salt tablets and constantly eating salted nuts to make sure my sodium levels were up,” he continued.

With temperatures soaring to 30°C during the expedition, which saw Tom carrying his own food and tenting equipment on his back – he also had a GPS tracker and a personal locator beacon fitted.

“If I got into trouble I could pull a cord on the PLB which would alert local rescue,” he explained. “People could also track me with the GPS so if I got into trouble there was always that safety net.”

He admitted that the PLB was only a last-minute addition as he attempted to keep his rucksack weight down, which was nine kilos on setting off.

Tom stopped at a couple of campsites along the way to shower and sleep, with other walkers “baffled how I was managing to do it in this heat”.

“I didn’t think it was a big deal until people started saying it was,” he said.

On day two he had woken up with stiff muscles and so from then on began drinking 500ml before going to bed, then getting up, stretching and going to the toilet then repeating the cycle.

“You train for the fatigue but doing that many miles constantly with the elevation is especially brutal,” he said.

He said day four was the hardest because the first 10km saw him climbing 700m – “it was ridiculous. It was so steep – before you’ve caught your breath on the flat, you’re going back down – it took it out of me.”

Luckily, that night he came across a pub who offered a free room and a “massive burger”.

“The next day was a breeze,” he added.

Tom’s parents surprised him one day while he was going through the village of Newcastle, Monmouthshire, and gave him a cheese board.

He had been eating lots of high fat meats like salami and spam, as well as cheese, eggs and ice cream as he was burning 6,000 calories a day.

“It wasn’t probably the best diet,” he said. “But it seemed to work for me.”

Go to justgiving.com/fundraising/thomas-o-m-hunt to sponsor Tom.