Body

What your body can do if you ask it properly.

Introduction to follow.

Race the Dragon's Back across Wales

Your socks are wet before breakfast, soaked through in the first bog on the Rhinogydd, and they stay that way for five days.

Best time:Held biennially in September
Run the Marathon des Sables

The stage lengths are printed on a card you get the night before, and the jump from 30km to 80-plus km never stops feeling unfair.

Best time:April, before the Sahara heat becomes extreme
Run the Comrades Marathon

The gun for Comrades is a recording of a cockerel crowing, fired in the dark at 5:30am when you can still see your breath.

Best time:June, Southern Hemisphere winter
Swim the English Channel solo

You smear yourself in lanolin and grease before dawn, not for warmth but to stop your own arms rubbing you raw over the next twelve hours.

Best time:June to September, when Channel water is warmest
Qualify for and run the Boston Marathon

Hopkinton's town green is small and unremarkable, the kind of place you'd drive through without noticing, except every Patriots' Day since 1897 it has filled with people who ran a qualifying time somewhere else just to stand there.

Best time:Patriots' Day, third Monday in April
Finish an Ironman triathlon

The marathon starts at mile 112, which is a strange way to describe a marathon, but that is what it feels like when you have already swum 3.8km and cycled 180km.

Best time:varies by race; many popular events run spring to early autumn
Do a strict, unassisted pull-up

Your grip creaks before your feet leave the floor.

Best time:Any time of year
Deadlift twice your bodyweight

The bar looks the same at 60kg and 140kg—same knurling, same flex—right up until it simply refuses to move.

Best time:Any time of year
Climb Ben Nevis in a day

You start talking somewhere around the halfway lochan and stop within the hour, saving breath for the switchbacks.

Best time:Late spring to early autumn, when snow and ice are less likely
Bag a Munro before breakfast

The layby at Glen Nevis holds one car at 5am, and it's yours.

Best time:May–September, when conditions are most reliable
Snowboard in Niseko

Cold air comes off the Sea of Japan, picks up moisture and dumps it on Hokkaido as snow so dry it squeaks.

Best time:Mid-December to March; January is deepest
Run a marathon

The first twenty miles are the training; the last six are the marathon.

Best time:Spring and autumn race seasons
Swim in the sea on New Year's Day

The water on the south coast of England is about nine degrees on the first of January, which is cold enough that your body takes over for the first thirty seconds and does all the breathing on its own.

Best time:1 January