WHEN the clocks spring forward to mark the start of British summer time this weekend, Tony Pulis will be one happier man.

The longer days will not necessarily mean longer training sessions for Middlesbrough’s players in the pursuit of a play-off spot, but they will mean more time to work on his own fitness levels.

While Pulis’ main focus is on keeping Boro in a top six place between now and the end of the season, he knows that another huge challenge he faces this year is rapidly approaching.

Just days after the Championship’s play-off final will have ended at Wembley in May, where he wants to have walked Middlesbrough’s team out on Saturday, May 26, and celebrated a return to the Premier League afterwards, he will be heading over to Paris to begin his latest charity charge.

Over four days he will be part of a team that will travel from the Eiffel Tower on a bike to Le Havre, row across the English Channel to Brighton and then from there he will walk over road and countryside to the Tower of London.

The stresses, strains and the sleep deprivation they will encounter during the gruelling trip is designed to raise at least £100,000 for The Donna Louise centre in Stoke-on-Trent, which provides respite care across Staffordshire and Cheshire, and awareness of the challenges faced by children and young people with shortened life expectancy and their families.

The Donna Louise is just a few minutes’ drive from Stoke City’s home ground, hence the attachment for a man who spent two successful spells building them up to become a Premier League club. Given he turned 60 in January, though, it still represents a huge challenge, and one his wife, Debs, even tried to talk him out of.

After all Pulis can't be accused of not doing his bit. He has ran two marathons, climbed Mount Kilimanjaro, cycled from John O’Groats to Land’s End and rowed for 450 miles from London to Paris. So why, three years after that last success, is he gearing himself up for more torture?

“I have always just felt the warmth in this place,” said Pulis, clearly touched by his surroundings as he sat chatting in one of the suites at The Donna Louise. “Some of these children here are very close to death.

“A little story that highlights why I keep doing this … there was a little boy named Lucas last year, who I got to know over the period.

“When I was manager at West Brom, Lucas had a bucket list. He was a big Stoke supporter but he wanted to be mascot for my team, we arranged everything and he would be mascot against Chelsea at home.

“Mel (Williams, from The Donna Louise) rang me a week before the game to say the tumour had started to grow again, we knew it was terminal. They couldn’t allow him out of the hospice and asked if I would come to see him.

“On the Thursday before we played Chelsea, I drove here, he was sat in the lounge waiting for me. I pulled two big boxes of biscuits out, he was only six or seven, and he was with his little mate.

“I opened the biscuits up, his eyes lit up and said ‘thank you, thank you Ton, for these biscuits.’ I said ‘Lucas, before you can eat these biscuits, what’s your favourite football team?’ He said ‘Stoke City’ and I replied ‘WRONG answer Lucas!’

“His face washed away, his little mate knew what I was getting at and said ‘West Bromwich Albion’ so I gave him a biscuit. Lucas almost physically collapsed. I asked him again and he said ‘West Bromwich Albion’. I gave him the biscuit.

“Lucas took me around this incredible building, he was the boss, showing me the arts room, the quiet room, the lounge, the stuff in here is remarkable. When we finished I said ‘right Lucas, you can have another biscuit, but who is your favourite team?’

“He was holding his face, he had completely forgot what he had to say, but was so desperate to have another biscuit. Then he looked at me in the eye, and went … ‘YOUR football team Tony!’ I nearly cried, I gave him the box and said ‘here, have them all’.

“Lucas lived a lot longer than we thought and just a few weeks ago he passed away. Those little things make you feel if I can’t do this …”

Pulis could have reeled off the stories all day he had encountered over the years at The Donna Louise. He is a family man, a devout catholic with strong values and he is a loving granddad to six children. He cherishes the time he spends with them, particularly having lost his first granddaughter Olivia, who contracted a virus at just two months old.

Pulis said: “My daughter Laura has three wonderfully healthy children. But we lost our first one. That was an absolute tragedy and something that affected me terribly for a long, long time. There’s that, so if you can invest a bit of money to join in to charities like this then it gives you enormous satisfaction.”

He added: “Twelve years ago, my first spell at Stoke, I went down one day and took the players, this was a small place then and we then got this attachment. I would bring the players down two or three times a year, to get them out of the bubble.

“I have said for the last six years I wasn’t going to do any more of these challenges, my wife is going berserk with me. We did seven days on the rowing last time, there’s a picture of me with my hands all taped up, with blisters.

“Debs didn’t sleep worrying about me crossing the channel in that little boat, she will be the same again! I have said this is probably going to be my last one. It will be tough.

"Mentally it will be a really tough challenge, and with the football that’s going on it will be draining. But when you see the kids running around, if you can’t help them, sacrifice something for them, then there is something wrong.”

Pulis, whose family home is in Bournemouth, took over at Middlesbrough in December. To prepare for his latest experience he has been putting in the miles around County Durham and North Yorkshire on foot. He is also intending to get out on the bike more, helped by the clocks going forward this weekend.

By the time his latest challenge comes around he will know whether he has successfully led Middlesbrough back to the Premier League, and combining that with travelling from Tower to Tower just days later would lead to a remarkable summer 2018.

Pulis said: “Kilimanjaro was dreadful. We climbed that mountain and we could have seriously got in trouble because the people who took us up were not professional enough. I could write a book about that one, it was scary going up and coming down, scary like minus 28 degrees at one stage. The weather came in. The people couldn’t believe we were up there when we went down. That is a great story.

“The cycle was extraordinary because my daughter, Steph, did it with me. Great times. Then the rowing, after two days we still had England on the right hand side! We rowed out of the Channel, rowing up to Beachy Head and then over to France. I was thinking ‘two and a half days and we haven’t even pointed the boat south yet’.

“I remember sitting on the boat because I can’t sleep in claustrophobic areas, I couldn’t sleep downstairs so I had to sleep at the back of the boat on a little bench. There were little drips of rain and the waves were soaking my clothes.

“I was thinking ‘Ton, what the hell are you doing?” Then it clicks in and you think ‘Lucas, and the other people’. It is only a day in your life, four days in your life. Get the mindset and get it done.”

He will be shaping up on foot, bike and even on the Cornish gig rowing boat, measuring 10m in length and 1.5m wide, when he is not on at Boro's training ground with the players looking to keep Middlesbrough’s promotion push on track.

He said: “I need to get out more to be honest because the weather hasn’t been very good. I have been going to the gym. I have spoken to the doc, he has told me a few cycling routes. I will do that a few times a week.

“There’s no comparison to getting in that little boat though and rowing through six foot waves, trying to get ten minutes sleep on it. I have been walking down the River Tees near the training ground, around Hurworth.

“The staff go mad with me because I pick a member of staff to go walking with me and I pick on Jonathan Gould more than anyone else. He hates the walking. It has been taking us a lot longer because of the snow.

"I have tried to do a lot, I have been up early to do an hour and a half in the gym, then go walking. As well as all of those I will be doing my damndest to get this blinking team in the play-offs.”

The proud Welshman has certainly got Middlesbrough moving in the right direction. The six-match unbeaten run, including four wins, building up to the international break has them in good shape for the run-in. The test of leaders Wolves’ visit to the Riverside on Good Friday could be an indication of how far they have come under him, before then heading to struggling Burton on Easter Monday.

“The squad is a really good group of players, a nice group,” said Pulis. “Cometh the time cometh the hour, though. They have now got to show as a group. Irrespective of what I do or anyone else, we have to get that now in the dressing room. They are the ones, the leaders in that group, they have to get everyone together and take it on.”

If the players can show a bit of Pulis’ passion in the remaining weeks of the season, Middlesbrough will have a strong chance of achieving their goals.

“I went to see my ex-chairman at Stoke, Peter Coates, while I was here at The Donna Louise,” said Pulis. “I pop over every time I come to see him, so he can tell me what I am doing wrong.

“The one thing he says is that people are born with that little bit of energy, enthusiasm and that people are fortunate to be born with that. I am 60 and still going mad, jumping up and down and shouting on the line.

"My wife thinks I am absolutely crazy, and I if I didn’t do it then I don’t know what I would do.”

Probably rowing a boat and raising money, Tony.