Lee toughs it out with the SAS (From Stroud News and Journal)

Lee toughs it out with the SAS

BEING hunted by the SAS across the bleak Scottish wilderness with exhaustion and torture all you have to look forward to may not sound like a barrel of laughs but one Stroud fitness fanatic would not have missed it for the world.

Fitness champion Lee Rankin from Ebley is among the hardy souls who responded to the BBC's challenge to appear on knock-out TV contest SAS: Are You Tough Enough?

The show has been putting people through a condensed version of the most rigorous military training in the world.

Lee was thrown in at the deep end and did not really know what to expect.

"I'd entered a competition up in the Midlands called The Tough Guy and I'd done quite well in that," he said.

"It's a bit extreme - you have to run through fire, swim across freezing rivers and all sorts.

"They asked me to go along and represent them so I went for the fitness test which was a breeze."

"I didn't know what it was about, I just got thrown into it."

"I was going into it as a fitness champion and I thought it would be a boot camp which I think I would have found easier."

"It was completely different from what I had expected.

"I went in as a fitness champion but you're tested mentally."

With no prize money up for grabs and physical and mental hardship all part of the package is difficult to understand what motivated Lee.

"It's the ultimate challenge just to see if you can do it," he told the News & Journal.

"It was brilliant, a hell of an experience, and I'd recommend it to anyone." What Lee is recommending would make most men quail.

For more on this story and much more Five Valleys news, see this week's SNJ