Rout of Africa! Britain’s ‘Hardest Geezer’ runs length of continent
DURING his epic journey, he was robbed at gunpoint, kidnapped in the jungle, and enveloped by sandstorms in the Sahara desert.
So, perhaps not surprisingly, Russ Cook was looking forward to a party as he yesterday became the first person to run the length of Africa.
On the final leg, the 27-year-old British endurance athlete from Worthing, West Sussex, nicknamed ‘the Hardest Geezer’, said: ‘We’re going to have strawberry daiquiris on the beach tonight.’
Supporters, many of whom had flown out from the UK to join him on the last leg, cheered him on at the continent’s most northerly point in Tunisia.
He then hugged loved ones while fans chanted ‘geezer, geezer’. He took a dip in the Mediterranean and afterwards said: ‘I’m a little bit tired.’
Before the final leg he had said: ‘Three hundred and 52 days on the road, a long time without seeing my family and girlfriend, my body’s hurting and in a lot of pain – but one more day and I’m not complaining.’
Mr Cook, who has told how he used to be a ‘fat lad’ who ‘ lived for the weekend’ before discovering running, set off from Cape Agulhas in South Africa on April 22 last year on the 10,000-mile run. Accompanying him was a small team filming him, and he slept in a van. In Angola, he reported that he and his team had been robbed at gunpoint and had cameras, phones and passports stolen. ‘ Nothing like a gun being pointed at your face to let you know you’re alive,’ he posted on social media.
Then he said he was separated from his team in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and kidnapped by villagers with machetes who demanded money, but he had ‘ nothing but a halfeaten biscuit’ to offer them.
His team eventually managed to free him. Then, in the Sahara, sandstorms made him wear goggles and cover his mouth with cloth.
Trouble gaining a visa for Algeria threatened to stop him completing the run. But after a social media campaign, the Algerian embassy granted him a courtesy one.
Mr Cook has raised more than £500,000 during the journey, the beneficiaries being the Running Charity, which helps young people through running, and Sandblast, which stands up for the indigenous Saharawi people of western Sahara.