I’m the third man on the back of a motorbike built for one. There’s nowhere to rest my feet. I’m cramped and tense. Sweating and dirty. Sick with fear. On either side of me lies the thick, impenetrable rainforest of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Ahead of me? Who knows? All I know is that these two men are not my friends.
Already today I’ve pounded 50 kilometres of hard jungle road. I’ve escaped a group of men carrying machetes. These guys on the motorbike said they would help me, that they were my friends. They’re not. We’re driving in the wrong direction.
I’m weak with dehydration and hunger. I’ve lost my support team, our van, everything. I truly think I’m going to die.
As I grip the body of that juddering motorbike, I can’t help but think how stupid I’ve been. I can’t help but think that I’ve let everybody down. I left England without properly fixing things with my mum and dad – and there was plenty that needed fixing.
Russ Cook, 27, is the first person to have run the length of Africa
I imagine them receiving news that I’ve gone missing. I picture them at home, weeks from now, hearing my body has finally been found.
I wish I could speak to them, just once. I wish I could tell them that I regretted the way I’d handled things when I was younger. I wish I could tell them that I was sorry. I wish I could tell them that I loved them.
Just over 100 days ago, I set out from the southern tip of Africa. My mission: to run the entire length of the continent. Plenty of people told me it was madness. They told me I’d die. It looks as if they were right.
It’s not unusual for children to clash with their parents as they negotiate adolescence. My behaviour, though, was extreme.
My parents’ expectations were not unreasonable. I was a bright boy and they wanted me to do well, to work hard, to speak politely to them. They wanted me to treat our house in Worthing, Sussex, and my two brothers, with a basic level of respect.
And for a while I did. At school I was getting good grades and captained the football team. Really, I was a normal, happy and healthy kid.
However things started to change for us when my dad developed health problems and was put on heavy medication – and the dad I knew growing up became somehow different.
I didn’t know how to process all the emotions that came with this. I bottled it all up until it came out in other ways.
Russ’s love affair with running started with a decision to leave a nightclub. ‘I simply walked out into the night,’ he writes. ‘Then I started to run home. Brighton to Worthing. Eleven miles’
I started saying horrible things to my parents. When my mum pointed out I was living under her roof, I’d tell her it wasn’t hers, it was dad’s because he paid for it.
And if my parents presumed to offer me advice, my response would be contemptuous. It embarrasses me to recall things I said.
Dad’s medication had worked and he was better by this point but I still didn’t know how to deal with the emotions which bubbled in me.
So at 17, when the arguments had become too savage and mutual resentment too difficult, I moved out. I got a series of dead-end jobs to fund the rent on a small flat, finding relief from the monotony of my daily life in binge drinking and incessant online gambling.
I was in charge of my life – but not making a very good job of it.
One night I was out with friends at a club in Brighton. It was noisy, hot and I hated it there. I remember looking round in a semi-drunken blur and thinking: ‘What am I doing here? This is stupid. Maybe I can do something different. Maybe I can do it now.’
I didn’t say goodbye to my friends. I simply walked out into the night. Then I started to run home. Brighton to Worthing. Eleven miles. I hadn’t exercised for a long time and pain swiftly kicked in. I stopped to catch my breath, then ran again. I even stopped to sleep on the pavement for half an hour. But as I ran I felt exhilarated. I felt like Usain Bolt.
When I look back on that crazy run, I realise I was not just escaping the club. I was leaving a previous version of myself behind. I was taking a step, literally, towards a different me.
After that, running became an obsession. A friend invited me to do a half marathon in Brighton. It was a turning point for me. I was in. Six weeks later, I did my first marathon. It was the hardest thing I’d done in my life. Yet the exhilaration I felt when it was complete was unforgettable.
One challenge led to another, then another. I did more marathons. I ran from Istanbul to London.
As an endurance test, I lay in a coffin for a week. I cleared out a room in my flat and my mates and I built a big wooden box in it.
At the bottom of the box we placed an open coffin. After I’d climbed in and closed the lid, friends covered it in soil.
It may sound crazy but it allowed me to test myself, to see if I could endure seven days in enclosed quarters, alone, with no food – just tubes for water and ventilation. As I lay there – cramped, hungry and uncomfortable – I had time to reflect. I’d clearly become addicted to challenging myself. Maybe that addiction had replaced something that had left me when I kicked my gambling habit.
Soon I was searching for an even greater challenge. Something that would stretch me to my limits. As the world emerged from Covid in 2022 I felt the lure of one of the world’s great land masses: Africa.
I wondered if it was possible to run the length of the continent: the equivalent of 357 marathons. Was that a thing that could be done?
I looked into financing such a project. Through social media I managed to attract sponsors. Then I met a documentary producer who suggested making a full-on film of the run. He encouraged me to hire a three-person team to organise the logistics.
The idea took shape. We converted a former school minibus into a support vehicle, complete with solar panels and bunk beds. I drew up rules. I would start in Cape Town and run 50 kilometres a day – which I’d never attempted before – ending 15,000km, or 9,500 miles, later in Tunisia.
The support guys would meet me in the van at intervals of 20km so I could rest, refuel and rehydrate.
At the end of the day, we would drive somewhere to camp, or sleep in a lodge or hotel.
Next morning we’d return to the point where I’d stopped running and do it all again. Rinse and repeat for 15,000km, without a single day off.
The task was huge but a journey of 1,000 miles begins with a single step. At the age of 26, I was ready to take that step. It was time to start running.
The colossal expedition to run from one end of the continent to the other
APRIL 2023: S AFRICA
I felt my body stiffen up in those early days. It became harder to move from the hips down, and painful. My knees and ankles became inflamed as I ran. Within a month I lost over a stone in weight. Blisters stung my feet.
But I didn’t care. There was no way I’d let them interfere with my running. Nothing, but nothing, would do that.
I ran through my first township early in the run. The buildings were nothing more than broken sheds with corrugated tin roofs.
People in ragged clothing sat on the side of the road holding up ten rand notes to hitch a lift to the next town. I felt the hot stare of strangers. This felt like a place where I shouldn’t be.
But I made friends, too. In my first week I saw, running up ahead, a young black man, maybe 16 years old. He stopped to stretch and I caught up with him.
We ran together for a few kilometres and he told me how he wanted to be a rugby player. I guess he saw it as his way out of the townships.
None of his mates wanted to run with him, so here he was, smashing it up on his own. He reminded me a bit of myself.
The terrain and climate changed as we got closer to Namibia. I didn’t know what to expect other than barren desert on the other side.
MAY 2023: NAMIBIA
I arrived alone in the middle of the night at the border crossing: I was wearing my running gear and a head torch and carried with me nothing but my passport and the contents of my rucksack: sausage rolls, a slab of Dairy Milk, some sweets and some wet wipes.
The border guards stamped my passport and I attracted a few strange looks. But only a few. They didn’t seem very interested.
I followed the road through the town and into the desert. The temperature had dropped dramatically. It was freezing cold and I couldn’t see very much at all. But all around me I could hear sinister rustlings. My head torch shone into the darkness, however, and occasionally I’d see the glint of light reflecting from pairs of eyes in the desert terrain.
All nights end, though. The sun rose almost in front of me, flooding the desert with its orange and pink light. It was a magnificent sight to witness all alone.
People began to hear about my mission. Soon I received a video message of support from Mo Farah, a real British icon and a hero of mine.
JUNE 2023: ANGOLA
The locals all offered the same advice: don’t stray too far from the road. Angola is one of the most heavily mined countries in the world, with more than 1,000 minefields and more than a million unexploded devices.
Refreshment after a long day’s running in Mauritania, posted to Russ’s Instagram
Despite the dangers, we settled comfortably into Angola. The countryside was beautiful and the people delightful.
As I ran through more rural regions, though, I became acutely aware of my own privilege. As a younger man back in Britain, I would have thought of myself as working class. I might even have thought that I lacked opportunity. My experiences in Africa made me cringe to remember that mindset.
I saw semi-naked children with malnourished pot bellies playing in stagnant lakes of water filled with sewage and rubbish.
The first time I encountered the sight I stopped running and watched, horrified.
Angola also taught me about the importance of communities. I would run through little villages and, poor though they were, my sense was of tiny groups of people who supported each other in a way that never seemed to happen back in the UK.
I realised that the hardest times I’d experienced in my life had been those when I’d felt alone, lacking guidance and separated from my family. Out here the importance of those aspects of life crystallised in my mind.
The temperature and humidity increased as we moved north. The terrain changed too. It became greener. More jungly. Like something out of Jurassic Park.
Within days we would be at the border of one of the most dangerous countries in the world: Democratic Republic of the Congo.
AUGUST 2023: D R CONGO
I cried on the back of that motorbike as two hours became three and three became four. I cried for my family. I cried for my girlfriend Emily. I cried for myself.
For so many years I’d largely done things by myself. In the last few months, though, since meeting Emily, I’d started to see a future where I could be happy with a family of my own. With her.
I’d seen, running through Africa, the importance of family and community. I had put it all at risk. I might have no future at all.
The men had said to me ‘vos amis’ – your friends. But they weren’t. I’d been kidnapped.
After the longest, hardest seven hours of my life, we arrived at a village called Sumbi. I felt all eyes on me as my captors led me to a building by the roadside.
Six men were waiting for me. They emanated hostility. My captors gave me a chair and indicated that I should sit. The men shouted at each other. They pointed in my direction. I stayed quiet. I didn’t move.
These events were out of my control. Another man arrived. He had some authority. This was the chief. He spoke to me in English. ‘What are you doing in the Congo?’ he said.
‘I need to speak to my friends,’ I said. ‘I have a number. Can we call them?’ The chief nodded.
It turned out there was a bounty on my head. I was going nowhere till my team arrived with money. I was a hostage.
They gave me a room with a piece of foam on a wooden base. I could hear rats scurrying around, chewing at the wood.
After two nights, the guys finally arrived with the money – a few hundred dollars. I was more relieved to see them than I can say. But I was angry too, with myself and with the situation. How had we let it happen?
The trauma of that experience would remain with me for a long time. Even now I find it harrowing to recall.
JAN 2024: MAURITANIA
The Sahara. The largest hot desert in the world. One morning, after a full night of running and 65 kilometres behind me, I hit my first sandstorm.
Grains of sand pelted my skin and my face. I had to cover my eyes with my hands and peer out of the tiny cracks between my fingers to stop the sand blinding me.
It was the first, but not the last. My hair became thick with sand. Wicked, weeping sores covered my nose where the grains hit my face. I had sand in my ears. Sand in my lungs.
I developed a hacking cough from breathing it in. Man, I hated those sandstorms. But I was finally beginning to get the sense of an ending.
With only about 50 days left to go, I felt some relief. The end was finally in sight.
Russ runs in Tunisia, just seven days away from finishing his immense challenge
APRIL 7, 2024: RAS ANGELA, TUNISIA
I started the day in tears as I set out from camp for the final time. I would shed plenty more.
At a petrol station that marked the start of the last marathon of the mission, a crowd awaited me. We ran together, a crazy, joyful convoy of people, cars and vans and bikes.
I was 30 kilometres from the finish line when, among supporters lining the road ahead, I saw two figures. The first was my younger brother. He ran towards me.
Behind him was the second figure. My dad. He put his arms round me, I put my arms round him. We cried. As we held each other and wept, I couldn’t help but think of all that happened in the past.
Of my fractured relationship with my parents. Of the moment when, stuck on the back of the motorbike deep in the jungle, I had doubted that this moment would ever come. Of the fear that I was going to die, of never being able to hug my loved ones again.
My dad couldn’t believe how many had come out to see me finish. He couldn’t believe how many had told him that watching me run the length of Africa had helped them in some way.
He said that he was proud of me. I’ll never forget that. It meant so much. Those few words, perhaps more than anything else, made the whole mission worthwhile.
We ran, arm in arm, for a couple of kilometres. I’d run 16,000 of them but those couple of kilometres will stick in my mind for as long as I live. They’d set up a ribbon at the finish line and the crowd that surrounded it was like nothing I could have imagined.
A roar erupted as my convoy of runners and I approached. With the entire continent behind me, I breached the ribbon, arms aloft.
So surreal was the moment that I could hardly identify anyone. But one face shone clearly in the crowd. Emily.
I ran to her and for a few seconds it was just the two of us, together again at last. And we cried, and suddenly I was able to turn and take it all in. There were cameras everywhere, a media frenzy.
But I was more intent on picking out another face in the crowd.
I saw my mum. Like my dad, she was in tears. I gave her a huge hug. It was so brilliant to see her. She had endured so much for her family, for no recognition.
Now the attention of the world’s media was all on me but really I wanted it to be on her, so that the sacrifices she had made could be properly acknowledged. I hoped, at least, that I’d made her proud. And she was proud, I think, but also relieved that she no longer had to worry about me.
I realised that, in many ways, the past year had been a feat of endurance for my loved ones as well as for me.
I thought about the months past, but also the years past. I thought of the path my life might have taken if running had not arrived to save me.
We all have challenges to overcome. Some we choose; some we don’t. But the only way to break them down is to run straight into the headwinds and keep moving forwards. Step, by step, by step.
© Russ Cook, 2024 | Adapted from Hardest Geezer, by Russ Cook (Ebury Spotlight, £22, out now). To order a copy for £19.80 (offer valid to 02/11/24; UK p&p free on orders over £25) go to mailshop.co.uk/books or call 020 3176 2937.