Former Kiwi Paralympic sprinter Liam Malone has put his body through agonising pain, so much so that his legs start bleeding after 10km of running.
Malone is set to conquer the Hawkes Bay marathon on Saturday, signing up for the event two months ago.
The double gold Paralympic sprinter says he struggles after 10km with the pain in his legs, with the blades he runs in not designed for long distance running.
"The really challenging part for me is that by about 10km I'd say I am at about a seven to eight out of ten pain in my legs because I'm putting all my body weight through a surface area that's about the size of my wrist," said Malone.
"My legs bleed like crazy so the hardest part for me is not going to be the fitness involved it's actually dealing with the sheer physical pain of my blades beating against my leg and that's really sore."
The 24-year-old revealed to 1 NEWS that he has done minimal training for the 42km event saying has done only about 10 training runs.
"I really haven't planned for this at all, I don't even know what I am getting myself into.
"I did a run on Sunday and the previous run before that would be about six weeks ago, you know after the sort of high after entering the competition," he said.
"I think I have done about a 15/20km run.
The Kiwi Bladerunner won two gold medals at the Rio Paralympics in 2016. (Source: Other)
"I was nearly crying after the 20km so I am genuinely measuring success by being able to get to the end of it."
Malone said a big challenge for him also at the Hawke's Bay marathon will be dealing with the terrain of the course.
"It's going to be hard I mean I think there's part of it (marathon course) that's on gravel I think, maybe all of it is on gravel I haven't actually checked.
"But my blades are made for running on a track and I have basically done a real poor job at converting them to be able to run on like a non-track surface like concrete.
"They (blades) are definitely not designed for running on gravel so I totally expect that I'll probably be tripping up along the way as well."
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