Speaker 1: We'd like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land
Speaker 1: on which this podcast was produced, the Galligle people of
Speaker 1: the Urination. We pay our respects to elder's past and presents.
Speaker 2: Twenty twenty three and we're in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Speaker 2: Twenty seven year old Russ Cook is one hundred and
Speaker 2: two days into his quest to be the first person
Speaker 2: to run the entire length of Africa. This is a
Speaker 2: brutal feat on the body and mind, but the distance
Speaker 2: isn't the only danger. On day one hundred and two,
Speaker 2: he's certain this day will be his last. He's been
Speaker 2: warned about the violence and corruption in the DRC and
Speaker 2: felt hostility the moment he arrived. Russ's approach is just
Speaker 2: to put one foot in front of the other, head down,
Speaker 2: keep running, get through it. He's running through the jungle
Speaker 2: and stumbles upon a village. Instantly, people are shouting and
Speaker 2: screaming at him, confuse as to why he's here. With
Speaker 2: a language barrier and no phone signal, Russ knows he's
Speaker 2: in trouble.
Speaker 3: The chief of the village demands money.
Speaker 2: Russ doesn't even have water on him, let alone any cash.
Speaker 2: He's taken further out into the bush with two men
Speaker 2: wielding machetes. This is his only chance to escape. He
Speaker 2: makes a run for it, sprinting as fast as he can,
Speaker 2: but it doesn't take long for the two captors to
Speaker 2: catch and grab him. I'm at Middleton and this is
Speaker 2: headgame today, Russ Cook on his life lessons.
Speaker 3: From running the length of Africa.
Speaker 2: I think that I'm the hardest gyser right, so, I
Speaker 2: don't know how you got that title. Listen after you're
Speaker 2: still in and following you to be fair, mates, do
Speaker 2: you know what I'd have to give you that title?
Speaker 3: Mate?
Speaker 2: Because what you went through was nothing short of pure survival,
Speaker 2: endurance and talk about head game, you know, getting your
Speaker 2: head in the game to be able to get out
Speaker 2: of some of those sticky situations you're in. I'll let
Speaker 2: you have the hardest Geezer mate for now, first and
Speaker 2: foremost mate, before we get into the nitty gritty of Africa.
Speaker 3: What made you want to run?
Speaker 2: Because it just in my head when I when I've
Speaker 2: been following you know, you're almost like the modern day
Speaker 2: version of Forrest Gumpany did you just decide you wanted
Speaker 2: to run?
Speaker 3: Run one day and well, honestly, it can't. It does
Speaker 3: go a little bit like that, you know, because I
Speaker 3: think I don't know if you can relate to this.
Speaker 3: But as a young man, I was really I was
Speaker 3: one of these guys. I was searching for meaning kind
Speaker 3: of everywhere I could, I couldn't really find it. So,
Speaker 3: you know, I did all the easy things first, like
Speaker 3: drinking and going out and gambling all this stuff. And
Speaker 3: it was actually I was in a nightclub in Brighton
Speaker 3: one day when I kind of just took a moment,
Speaker 3: had this realization that, you know, what am I doing
Speaker 3: with my life? My life's going nowhere. I'm you know,
Speaker 3: I'm out of partying. I'm hating it, like I've never
Speaker 3: really enjoyed it. I don't know what I'm you know,
Speaker 3: what I'm going to do. It felt less like an
Speaker 3: epiphany at the time and more just like I needed
Speaker 3: to run away. So I literally did just ran ran home.
Speaker 3: It was eleven miles home and just napping on pavements
Speaker 3: and all kinds of stuff, you know, took me hours
Speaker 3: from there. My mate got me, got me signed up
Speaker 3: to a half marathon that he was doing. He took
Speaker 3: me out training loads and I kind of started putting
Speaker 3: my energy and focus into this, into this training, and
Speaker 3: then quickly started to see the you know, the benefits
Speaker 3: of what that brought me, like the discipline, the motivation,
Speaker 3: and then you know, ran a marr and shortly after
Speaker 3: we did the half marathon. And then that was about seven,
Speaker 3: seven or eight years ago, and I've just been on
Speaker 3: a mad one ever since.
Speaker 2: Mate, do you know what I love? So basically it
Speaker 2: all stemmed from that nightclub. You just thought, right, do
Speaker 2: you know what? He ran home at eleven miles? What
Speaker 2: change in you from being out in a nightclub running
Speaker 2: home and then all of a sudden going right, do
Speaker 2: you know what?
Speaker 3: Half marathon? Marathon and then tackling what we're going to
Speaker 3: talk about in a bit.
Speaker 2: Yes.
Speaker 3: Really, I think it was the purpose more than anything.
Speaker 3: I think that given having that sense of purpose was
Speaker 3: really massive for me, and I think as a younger man,
Speaker 3: I was really looking for it and I couldn't find
Speaker 3: it anywhere. And with running, you know, I didn't. I
Speaker 3: didn't go from running home from that nightclub to like
Speaker 3: running is my career. That took like five years in itself.
Speaker 3: But I realized that this was something positive that I
Speaker 3: could put my energy into that was going to deliver
Speaker 3: me positive outcomes for my life and return. And it
Speaker 3: was so quick to see, you know, that transformation because
Speaker 3: I was in I was in such like a dark
Speaker 3: place at the time that when I started running and
Speaker 3: those like positive feedback loops cape coming and I felt
Speaker 3: more self confident, you know, I started saving money in
Speaker 3: my job for the first time ever. All of these
Speaker 3: things started happening, got in better shape that you know,
Speaker 3: I just I knew that this was a good thing
Speaker 3: to be pursuing for me.
Speaker 2: Let's jump straight into it, mate. So you've done your
Speaker 2: half marathons, your marathons, your ultra runnings.
Speaker 3: You run for me Istanbul to London, which you know
Speaker 3: was a tricky one for you, right, What did you
Speaker 3: learn from earlier? Well, I mean that was tricky and
Speaker 3: multiple way and multiple sense. You know. I was by
Speaker 3: myself on that one, so that that brought something you.
Speaker 3: I was twenty two, I think when I did that.
Speaker 3: So that was seventy one marathons in sixty six days,
Speaker 3: eleven different countries and I was just camping out mate,
Speaker 3: wherever I was right. So, and you had no support team, nothing, nothing.
Speaker 2: Let's get this right, because people are smashing records around
Speaker 2: the world, world records. Everyone's everyone's fascinating and obsessed with
Speaker 2: world records nowadays. But you know, behind the scenes, and
Speaker 2: fair play to them, but behind the scenes, they got
Speaker 2: their nutrition team, they had their physiotic and you've just
Speaker 2: got your beard, mate, and the hammock and the where
Speaker 2: you go.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, that was literally it for that one, mate.
Speaker 3: So yeah, I would just find I'd run a math
Speaker 3: and then I'd just find somewhere to camp in the
Speaker 3: woods every night. Mate. Yeah, yeah, well, you know what,
Speaker 3: it was European summer, so the conditions were not bad
Speaker 3: like it was raining. It was raining fairly often. I
Speaker 3: even you know, I went into it thinking I'm not
Speaker 3: even going to take sun cream. I'm ginger, mate. I
Speaker 3: went in thinking that I don't even need that. I
Speaker 3: found out pretty quick that was that was daft. And
Speaker 3: then I also went into thinking I don't even need
Speaker 3: a sleeping bag. It's summer light, it's well warm outside
Speaker 3: during the night, I'll be fine, you know, quickly bout
Speaker 3: that it's actually freezing shivering for about two weeks before
Speaker 3: I finally gave in and like went to a city
Speaker 3: and thought, right, we're gonna go and get a sleeping bag.
Speaker 3: So I think, you know, Baptism of Fire. A lot
Speaker 3: of it was was just, you know, it's the class
Speaker 3: you've got to fuck around to find out. And I
Speaker 3: was doing plenty of the fucking a round and I
Speaker 3: was also finding out a lot. So yeah, I mean
Speaker 3: great experience, and I think that's you know, a lot
Speaker 3: of what I changed in my mindset there is I
Speaker 3: was I was getting less scared to fail. I was like,
Speaker 3: do you know what, I backed myself to figure out
Speaker 3: one way or the other, Like, let's take this ages
Speaker 3: learning and thing on. Yeah, I don't know what I'm doing. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I've got like four items in my backpack. Everyone's telling
Speaker 3: me that this is stupid. I'm going to die, but
Speaker 3: I think it'll probably We'll probably be able to figure
Speaker 3: it out out along the way. And all those lessons
Speaker 3: I did learn, you know, they're ingrained into me because
Speaker 3: I learned them. I learn them a hard way, you know,
Speaker 3: whether it was waking up after thirty back to back
Speaker 3: marathons for the first time ever, and like my feet
Speaker 3: feel like they're about to fall off, and it's just
Speaker 3: like taping everything up and going like we're going to
Speaker 3: get away, find a way through this. So all of
Speaker 3: that stuff was it was brutal, but it was you know,
Speaker 3: an amazing learn Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I love that, man, I'm very much like that.
Speaker 2: So you come off with that when if that wasn't
Speaker 2: a lesson enough, mate, what then made you think, do
Speaker 2: you know what, I'm going to run the length of Africa?
Speaker 2: Because mate, if you hadn't already you know, got a
Speaker 2: coup under your belt by doing that.
Speaker 3: What was what was Zafrica all about? You?
Speaker 2: Man? Yeah?
Speaker 3: The Africa one was a whole new level, to be fair.
Speaker 3: But for me, you know, I finished the age of
Speaker 3: Signer Rhyme and I was I was totally infused, used
Speaker 3: by the mission and I knew that. I was like, right,
Speaker 3: I want this is what I want to do for
Speaker 3: a career. But again, there was a lot of pieces
Speaker 3: of the puzzle to put together there. So I'd looked.
Speaker 3: I'd looked at Africa, you know, pretty quickly after getting
Speaker 3: back from Edge to London, and I looked at Australia
Speaker 3: as well. But I thought, right, you know, eventually I
Speaker 3: got to Africa. Let's do Africa. No one's ran the
Speaker 3: full length of it. I've had a great time when
Speaker 3: I've gone there before. It's been an amazing inspirational place.
Speaker 3: It will be like the sharpest culture change I can
Speaker 3: experience from what I know, and I just think it
Speaker 3: will be the best adventure ever. So that's when I
Speaker 3: first think of it, But it took then took like
Speaker 3: a three year period basically figuring out okay, because you know,
Speaker 3: you get the map up, you know, yeah, we're going
Speaker 3: to go through the jungle, We're going to go through
Speaker 3: the desert. So I don't think I can do this
Speaker 3: one with a camelback and a hammock in my bag.
Speaker 3: I think I'm going to think I'm going to need
Speaker 3: some people to along with me and give me some
Speaker 3: water every now and again. So then you know, I
Speaker 3: go down that line of thinking's like, right, I'm going
Speaker 3: to bring people. I need money. If I need money,
Speaker 3: then I'm going to have to get a sponsor of
Speaker 3: some kind. And then I was like, well, you know,
Speaker 3: the obvious way these expeditions were kind of done previously
Speaker 3: is that you get the funding from a big TV
Speaker 3: channel or maybe already if you're already a celebrity, you
Speaker 3: come from money. All these type of things you can
Speaker 3: get a kind of bankrolled to start with, I didn't
Speaker 3: have any of that. I was skinned, didn't no one
Speaker 3: knew I was, and I just had to figure it out.
Speaker 3: But luckily I was born in the social media age,
Speaker 3: where after speaking to a few mates, they kind of
Speaker 3: gave me like, well, look, if you make content online
Speaker 3: and you get a lot of people to see it,
Speaker 3: then brands will just give you money to be part
Speaker 3: of that content, and then you can use that money
Speaker 3: to funda mission like okay, sweet, we're on something here.
Speaker 3: And then I had to go and figure out how
Speaker 3: content works all that side of things. So did a
Speaker 3: lot of that, and then eventually I've met a mate
Speaker 3: of a mate and managed to persuade him to give
Speaker 3: us a bit of a kickstarter to get the thing going.
Speaker 3: But you know, quickly burnt through a lot of that
Speaker 3: funds in in in getting a team together and all
Speaker 3: of these other bits. Then ended up on the start
Speaker 3: line of Project Africa with ten km my pocket, which
Speaker 3: was about four weeks runway before we run out of money,
Speaker 3: three hundred grand expedition. So definitely definitely commit. Commit, Yeah,
Speaker 3: just all in every in every sense of the word,
Speaker 3: was like I've debted myself up to my eyeballs. I've
Speaker 3: got ten g's left, but we just have to start.
Speaker 3: I was trying to sell everyone this vision like I'd
Speaker 3: sold my team. I got them to come on and
Speaker 3: take delayed pay. I've got all of these different people
Speaker 3: to help here and there. I was just trying to
Speaker 3: chat to sponsors selling this vision, like, look, we're going
Speaker 3: to run the length of Africa. I'm going to raise
Speaker 3: a million quid for charity. I'm going to be the
Speaker 3: first one to everyd I'm going to run back to
Speaker 3: back marathons every day. It's going to be incredible, like
Speaker 3: com and support be an amazing, amazing investment. And they
Speaker 3: were like yeah, like are you actually going to do
Speaker 3: it though, or are we're going to give you a
Speaker 3: bunch of money and you're going to get two weeks
Speaker 3: in and go ah, I'm injured, this is it?
Speaker 2: Or they look at it and they go you run
Speaker 2: across Africa, You're not going to be going to die,
Speaker 2: Like you know, just card the terrain, the environment, the atmosphere.
Speaker 2: You know you're running through especially you know through some
Speaker 2: jungles as well. You know you're coming across all sorts
Speaker 2: of tribes and yeah, you know what, from an outsider,
Speaker 2: I can honestly say I would be I would be
Speaker 2: the same.
Speaker 3: I'd be like, why are you going on this suicide mission? Yeah?
Speaker 3: But I was so like set on that vision, like
Speaker 3: I was clamped down on that like nothing, you just
Speaker 3: like there's no way, there's no way moment. I mean,
Speaker 3: that's when people were saying to me, do you think
Speaker 3: you're going to make it? I was like, obviously, you know,
Speaker 3: it wasn't even a question. I was like, yeah, well,
Speaker 3: I will obviously make it. There's going to be a
Speaker 3: bunch of stuff that goes wrong, but I think I
Speaker 3: can overcome all of it. Where do you think that
Speaker 3: mindset came from? You know, there's a couple of things
Speaker 3: going on, Like I'd worked hard for a long time
Speaker 3: in building that evidence in my own head that I
Speaker 3: am who I say I am. And then there's also
Speaker 3: I broke the Africa thing down to it's most simplest bones,
Speaker 3: and it's like, look, my job here is pretty simple.
Speaker 3: I've just got to put one foot in front of
Speaker 3: the other relentlessly. And then I thought about all the
Speaker 3: things that could stop me putting one foot in front
Speaker 3: of the other. So you think, you know, broken leg
Speaker 3: or you know, you get held up here all this
Speaker 3: kind of stuff, right, And I'm like, if I break
Speaker 3: my leg, I'll sit tight in a in a hospital
Speaker 3: in the middle of kinshasa d r C for six
Speaker 3: weeks and then they'll be back on road and I'll
Speaker 3: be able to make forward progress again. And then I
Speaker 3: was like, the only thing that could stop me is
Speaker 3: if I if I die, that's the only thing. So
Speaker 3: for me it was it was run Africa or die
Speaker 3: trine And that was the mentality behind it.
Speaker 2: That deal with di mentality is that is a hard
Speaker 2: one to not only unconvinced, but it's a hard one
Speaker 2: to for anything to come in your way, you must
Speaker 2: have gone through some ship to have to build up
Speaker 2: that resilience psychologically, which is ultimately all got you through
Speaker 2: through Africa. They taught me through when you when you
Speaker 2: were at the start line, you got ten grand. You go,
Speaker 2: what's the first couple of days, like mate, and where
Speaker 2: you're running from?
Speaker 3: Where you're running from?
Speaker 2: You running from south, from from south to north east
Speaker 2: to west?
Speaker 3: Where you running? Yes, I'm running from the most southern
Speaker 3: tip of Africa, which is in South Africa called Capel Gullis,
Speaker 3: and then I'm running to the most northern ship of Africa,
Speaker 3: which is in Tunisia called Los Angele. You know, I'm
Speaker 3: on that start line, thinking, right, we've got about ten
Speaker 3: thousand miles to cover here. It's going to take eight
Speaker 3: months to a year at best. I've got sixteen different
Speaker 3: countries to run through, many of which we don't even
Speaker 3: know how we're going to get into yet. I'm thinking, right,
Speaker 3: let's just not get injured on the first couple of days.
Speaker 3: I'm really just trying to focus on that first kind
Speaker 3: of two week period where it's right, my job for
Speaker 3: this two weeks is to get my body settled into
Speaker 3: that daily ultramarth and rhythm. And that's probably like one
Speaker 3: of the hardest stages because you're going from you know,
Speaker 3: potting around doing your normal training to like, right is
Speaker 3: fifty k or sixty k a day and inflammation everywhere.
Speaker 3: Your body's kind of screaming at you from probably day
Speaker 3: two or three onwards to be like, look, you're taking
Speaker 3: the piss here, mate, like settle down, and it's just
Speaker 3: knocking that back day after day after day after day
Speaker 3: to eventually you get to a point where it kind
Speaker 3: of just it still hurts, don't get me wrong, and
Speaker 3: it doesn't really ever get better, but it stops getting.
Speaker 2: Worse numbs out until yeah, you get a pain threshold,
Speaker 2: don't you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, barrier. So I was like, right, once we settle
Speaker 3: into that nice little glide of where like we're in,
Speaker 3: we're sitting in that pain, but we kind of know
Speaker 3: it's not getting too much worse from here, I was like,
Speaker 3: just focus on getting there. So there was a lot
Speaker 3: of just you know, metaphorically head button against the wall
Speaker 3: until until that was done for the for the start period,
Speaker 3: and then I think what was different about this Africa
Speaker 3: challenge to anything that I've done before is as soon
Speaker 3: as I got to that point, then all of the
Speaker 3: external factors of you know, getting robbed here or attempted
Speaker 3: robbery there, or food poisoning and all of that other
Speaker 3: stuff started happening as well. So it was just new
Speaker 3: type of challenges. You got bobbed at gunpoint, right, Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well you just running along and someone was like, this
Speaker 2: is a.
Speaker 3: Through there, Well, what happened there is I was in
Speaker 3: and go to about sixty days in that was there've
Speaker 3: been a couple of attempted robberies already in South Africa,
Speaker 3: which we I've managed to get out of both of them,
Speaker 3: the first one. I've assumed you spent some time in
Speaker 3: Cape Town before. Yeah. Yeah, So like we were going
Speaker 3: we were driving through one of the townships in Cape Town,
Speaker 3: pulled up to a traffic light and I had my
Speaker 3: window down, which is just such a schoolball era for
Speaker 3: for most people have vincated what you call it, why
Speaker 3: are you doing that? Don't tell me you're on the
Speaker 3: phone as well. But I have my phone up on
Speaker 3: the doing the maps right on the thing. So two
Speaker 3: blokes roll in and they tried to grab my phone.
Speaker 3: I was like, ship, just grab my phone, launched it
Speaker 3: across the other side of the car. And then the
Speaker 3: other one tries to grab the keys out of the
Speaker 3: out of the you know the keyhole. Yeah, and I've
Speaker 3: just grabbed grabbed his hand and I was like, look,
Speaker 3: I'm not letting go, and there just start punching me up.
Speaker 3: And I'm like, ah fuck, this is the cost of
Speaker 3: being stupid here, I'm paying for it. So I'm just
Speaker 3: getting banged up by these blokes. I'm like, I don't care.
Speaker 3: How what is happening. I can't let go of these kids.
Speaker 3: I lose this van, then this mission over already because
Speaker 3: I ain't got money to replace it. So that was
Speaker 3: kind of my first you know, eventually they just stopped
Speaker 3: and then and ran off. But this was, you know,
Speaker 3: my first kind of baptism into you ain't in uh,
Speaker 3: you ain't Insanny South Coast of England anymore? Lad like yeah,
Speaker 3: and then shortly after I think praying me. Two weeks
Speaker 3: into the mission, I had a situation where I ran
Speaker 3: past a township late at night, it was dark, and
Speaker 3: two blokes came running up beside me, one behind me,
Speaker 3: one in front of me, and I immediately clocked. I
Speaker 3: was like, okay, this is you know, this is get Yeah,
Speaker 3: this is getting it. But I noticed that they waited
Speaker 3: maybe thirty seconds or a minute to do anything, and
Speaker 3: because of my life experience, I kind of knew at
Speaker 3: that point. Then I was like, right, they're actually a
Speaker 3: little bit apprehensive about robbing me. And then I thought, well,
Speaker 3: best give them a reason to be even more apprehensive then,
Speaker 3: so I just started going mental and got a Russian
Speaker 3: accent on started shouting, beating my chest, just getting you know,
Speaker 3: getting big getting really active, acting super scatty, and that
Speaker 3: was just about enough for the guy behind me to
Speaker 3: drop off, and then the guy in front of me,
Speaker 3: you know, we ended up having a bit of a chat.
Speaker 3: He's like, oh yeah, my mate was going to rob you,
Speaker 3: but all this kind of stuff, and we ended up
Speaker 3: actually having a really nice chat about you know, about God,
Speaker 3: about life, about his kids, how he's trying to support them,
Speaker 3: and you know, my mates came and picked me up
Speaker 3: and we ended up just giving him a lift back
Speaker 3: home to his really. Yeah, so like that was those
Speaker 3: were the first kind of couple of situations where it
Speaker 3: could have gone south, but we managed to you know,
Speaker 3: just about swerve it. And then in Angola, I'd ran
Speaker 3: thirty k in the morning. I was taking a lunch break,
Speaker 3: so the boys had stopped in the van, got in.
Speaker 3: They're just eating some food, chatting, chatting some usual rubbish
Speaker 3: with the boys, and then three guys pulled up on
Speaker 3: a motorbike behind us. They walk up the side of
Speaker 3: the van, ping the door open, gunning faces and it's
Speaker 3: you know, now, now it's it's slightly different situation where
Speaker 3: it's like, well, give us everything you've got our it's
Speaker 3: you know, light's out, and you know, we lost a
Speaker 3: lot of stuff that day, about five six grands worth
Speaker 3: of which for us at the time was massive cameras, phones, drones, cash, passport.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, they took all that, did they Yeah, they
Speaker 3: took your passports.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, But that's enough about your cameras and all that.
Speaker 2: How did you crackle without a passport?
Speaker 3: Well, we we had we did think of this before,
Speaker 3: so we had back up passports. We've got two, we've
Speaker 3: got to each. But we lost a lot of visas,
Speaker 3: so all of the visas for our upcoming countries are
Speaker 3: in those passports. So it caused a huge delay going
Speaker 3: to different embassies trying to get new new visas and
Speaker 3: all this kind of stuff. So it wasn't nightmare, I
Speaker 3: can't lie. But you know those lessons, oh way, don't you.
Speaker 3: We certainly started restructuring how we keep things in the
Speaker 3: van and all that kind of stuff after that, So,
Speaker 3: you know, brutal lesson, but Saylor v.
Speaker 2: And then fast forward to day one hundred and two.
Speaker 2: So you go from days sixty being robbed at gunpoint,
Speaker 2: you get back into a little routine, you learn from
Speaker 2: your mistakes. You're getting back settling again, and then one
Speaker 2: hundred and two days in you get snatched.
Speaker 3: Yeah, mate, that was a spicy on that, you know,
Speaker 3: probably the scariest time in my life, to be honest
Speaker 3: with you. One hundred and two days in we're in
Speaker 3: the middle of DRC, which, for people that don't know,
Speaker 3: has an extremely complex history in itself. I've noticed as
Speaker 3: soon as we got their hostility from pretty much everyone
Speaker 3: we met went went right up. And there's there's a
Speaker 3: bunch of contexts that can kind of explain that I
Speaker 3: don't want to give to the RC too much of
Speaker 3: a bad name. I spent maybe two weeks there myself.
Speaker 3: I'm in no real position to comment on the whole country,
Speaker 3: but if you know from my experienced, hostility went up
Speaker 3: a lot. And on day one hundred and two I
Speaker 3: got separated from the boys. We started running on roads
Speaker 3: that were just like there's no time out there, all
Speaker 3: mud roads, and the van got stuck, wasn't able to continue,
Speaker 3: and the boys were trying to send messages to me
Speaker 3: saying like, right, come and come to this village, meet
Speaker 3: here and meet there, blah blah blah. And you know,
Speaker 3: on my way to the to the to the meeting point.
Speaker 3: The boys are positioned. I well, I ran through two villages.
Speaker 3: The first one went swimming well, head down, get through,
Speaker 3: no problem. Second one, same tactic, right head down, let's
Speaker 3: not cause too much of a ruckus here, focus on it.
Speaker 3: Just get it, get through, get it done. And kind
Speaker 3: of ended up upsetting a lot of the villages. And
Speaker 3: then eventually the chief of the village they thought it
Speaker 3: was very I think they just it's very rude of
Speaker 3: me to not come and greet anyone or or offer
Speaker 3: up anything for walking through their village. So I've you know,
Speaker 3: I've just head down, got through, and they've they've eventually
Speaker 3: kind of brought me to a stop. And you know,
Speaker 3: the guys how how on foot on foot on foot? Yeah,
Speaker 3: so they've like I'm running directly through the village and
Speaker 3: they've all they've you know, at first it's just one
Speaker 3: person shouting at me, and then it's they could run
Speaker 3: up to me, and then and then they like stop
Speaker 3: me physically, and then they all circle around. But you know,
Speaker 3: by the time this finish, there's quite a lot of
Speaker 3: people around me. They're they're talking, I think Lingala local language.
Speaker 3: So I'm really trying to really struggling to piece anything together.
Speaker 3: I'm reading, trying to read body language and kind of
Speaker 3: work out what's going on obviously the but I can
Speaker 3: see that there's a lot of these these big strong
Speaker 3: men with with machetes, which is kind of really making
Speaker 3: me think, oh, that's you know, that's bad news. And
Speaker 3: I know where I'm not right, we're going this way.
Speaker 3: And then eventually the guy kind of sends everyone off
Speaker 3: and then gets two blokes to walk me out to
Speaker 3: this totally off off where I'm going into the bush
Speaker 3: and they've got these machetes, and I'm like, oh, fuck,
Speaker 3: this is bad. You know, I don't know what's happening here,
Speaker 3: but I can't imagine it's good.
Speaker 2: Are you thinking, do I just conform or what you're
Speaker 2: thinking in your head just do do what they say
Speaker 2: because they've got machetes and or are you thinking, well,
Speaker 2: I need to get the hell out of here.
Speaker 3: Well at that point, I've kind of I'm working out
Speaker 3: that they want they want money from me, they want
Speaker 3: stuff from me, and I haven't actually got an anything
Speaker 3: on me. I've got a phone, I've got to watch.
Speaker 3: I really don't want to lose them, because if you know,
Speaker 3: if I lose that. I'm just rolling about in the
Speaker 3: middle of the jungle, no idea where I'm going. So
Speaker 3: I've kind of hid them away, and they're they're walking
Speaker 3: me out into this jungle and I'm thinking, right, conform,
Speaker 3: conform at the moment. Definitely conform at a moment, because
Speaker 3: there's a bunch of people here, and if I start
Speaker 3: kicking off, you know, I just get grabbed taken into
Speaker 3: some you know somewhere and it's bad news. But there's
Speaker 3: only two of these guys and they're going to walk
Speaker 3: me out into this bush. No one's else going to
Speaker 3: be there. That's like my olds are best there, right,
Speaker 3: So they kind of walked me out into the bush.
Speaker 3: I empty my bag. I just give them. I had
Speaker 3: some biscuits. I slap it in the Geezer's hand and
Speaker 3: just bouncing. I'm like, right, off we go, running, You're gone, yeah,
Speaker 3: boom off, and I'm kind of I'm scattery here. The
Speaker 3: guys are shouting, but they didn't seem to chase me immediately.
Speaker 3: Something right, Let's just get out of here, like off
Speaker 3: we go. And then over the course of the next
Speaker 3: half hour hour, I'm hearing like motor bikes I'm hearing
Speaker 3: people shouting in the bushes, I'm hearing people running through it,
Speaker 3: and I'm just like, I'm an anxious to put it
Speaker 3: in concepts. We've heard a million stories of of of
Speaker 3: d r C, of people getting you know, wrists snapped
Speaker 3: off for less than a quid, watch is stolen, like
Speaker 3: all of it, so much horrific stuff. And on both sides,
Speaker 3: by the way, like I think Europeans have gone in
Speaker 3: there previously in a Belgium, you know, from all accounts,
Speaker 3: did a pretty horrendous job out there as well. So
Speaker 3: i think they're quite scared of me, and I'm also
Speaker 3: quite scared of them. It just creates a really like
Speaker 3: everyone's acting out of fear. But I eventually get away
Speaker 3: onto this road that's taking me to this meeting point
Speaker 3: where the boys are proposed, and I eventually get there.
Speaker 3: But by this point, I've done fifty k, I've run
Speaker 3: out of water ages, I've got no food, you know,
Speaker 3: I've got no I done no signal for hours, and
Speaker 3: I'm on my last legs here. I'm I'm getting up
Speaker 3: to this village and I'm like, I'm really cooked. I'm like,
Speaker 3: I need the boys to be here. Because I'm just
Speaker 3: done in now they're not there, and I kind of
Speaker 3: poke my head around see if this big blue van
Speaker 3: is there. It's not there. And I'm thinking, right, well,
Speaker 3: we need to get out of here asap too. And
Speaker 3: I've kind of worked out if I had about ten
Speaker 3: twenty kilometers down this road, then there's and I'll make
Speaker 3: it back to the last tarmac road that we were on.
Speaker 3: And I was like, they must be there. That's the
Speaker 3: only logical, you know, they would wait that at that
Speaker 3: point if they can't get there. So I start making
Speaker 3: my way down this road pretty out of it, and
Speaker 3: then two more guys pull up on a motorbike and
Speaker 3: they try and stop me and they say like, look
Speaker 3: you well they can't speak any English, but I'm trying
Speaker 3: to work out what they say. And they said and me,
Speaker 3: which is friends in French. And I thought, okay, they've
Speaker 3: said friends. Maybe they you know, maybe they're talking about
Speaker 3: they're going to take me to my friends. So it's
Speaker 3: getting dark at it's starting to get dark. At this point,
Speaker 3: I'm obviously extremely dej and I'm like, well, I ain't
Speaker 3: I if I say no, And I try and get
Speaker 3: back on my feet. One I'm not even sure I'm
Speaker 3: going to be able to get there too. If I do,
Speaker 3: there's no saying that they're going to be there. And
Speaker 3: then three, you know, if anything goes wrong, I'm looking
Speaker 3: at a night in the jungle here with no water,
Speaker 3: the ich, there's snakes running about, there's an angry set
Speaker 3: of villagers that are already looking for me. You know,
Speaker 3: this could this could be my best bet. So I
Speaker 3: get on the back of this bike and I think
Speaker 3: to myself, the boys are no more than sort of
Speaker 3: ten care away. So if I'm on the bike for
Speaker 3: more than half an hour, then I might be in trouble.
Speaker 3: But until then, like really, I was trying to put
Speaker 3: my mind at rest. Right now, it's going to be
Speaker 3: all right. Then half an hour goes by stealing a bike,
Speaker 3: hour goes by stelling a bike, two hours, three hours,
Speaker 3: five hours, seven hours, no seven hours. Yeah, so I
Speaker 3: spent seven hours on this bike get to this rural
Speaker 3: conglese village, right And at this point, you know, you
Speaker 3: can imagine the amount of things going from my head
Speaker 3: at this because I'm just trying to analyze the situation
Speaker 3: as best possible. Going okay, but you know, you know,
Speaker 3: I'm on this bike and I'm getting off every you know,
Speaker 3: half an hour, So I kicking off a bit to
Speaker 3: see what they're doing. They're getting more and more hostile.
Speaker 3: But the more I'm getting off and causing a bit
Speaker 3: of a problem. And I'm thinking to myself, right, like,
Speaker 3: if they were going to rob me, then I've done
Speaker 3: they would have just done it, right, Well, why are
Speaker 3: we going to the rural? Like while we're going rural
Speaker 3: and into this jungle, we're going away from everything. And
Speaker 3: I'm like, they're either taking me to hold me like
Speaker 3: my folk. They're taking me to hold me ransom, or
Speaker 3: they're taking me to kill me somewhere. And I was,
Speaker 3: I was just flopping between those two things in my mind,
Speaker 3: like and I was like, ah, maybe they've seen like
Speaker 3: stuff we've been putting out of our stuff on Instagram.
Speaker 3: We've got quite a lot of traction Instagram. Maybe they've
Speaker 3: seen some of that and been like, ah, you know,
Speaker 3: followers equals is rich, let's like get him in. So yeah,
Speaker 3: I mean that's seven hours on a motorbike. I was,
Speaker 3: you know, everything went through my head, and you know,
Speaker 3: it got to the point where I thought, oh, I
Speaker 3: think this you know this could be here. I'm like,
Speaker 3: that's this might be me. I've pushed it too far,
Speaker 3: and now I'm going to find out for real, for real.
Speaker 3: And you know, I just thought about what I thought
Speaker 3: about everyone I'm letting down at home, my friends, my family,
Speaker 3: my girlfriend, you know, all of these things. I said like, Oh,
Speaker 3: we're going to make it work. We're going to get
Speaker 3: through it, and we're going to raise all this my
Speaker 3: and it's going to be such a great you know thing.
Speaker 3: And and then here I was on my silly little
Speaker 3: mission about to get you know, get myself off yeah
Speaker 3: for this, and it was, you know, I was. It was,
Speaker 3: you know, the hardest, hardest little moment ever there And
Speaker 3: did you were you?
Speaker 2: Were you that knacker that you just didn't you didn't care,
Speaker 2: you just sort of gave.
Speaker 3: Up for a moment. I was, I would say for
Speaker 3: the first few hours, I was intensely like trying to
Speaker 3: figure out a solution. And then you know, when I
Speaker 3: realized you can't get off the bike and run because
Speaker 3: you're in the middle of the jungle. They'll know the
Speaker 3: area much better than you. It's already you know, it's
Speaker 3: from my experience in DRC as well, it's not like
Speaker 3: I thought, if I run to a village, they'll keep
Speaker 3: me safe. It was more like, if I run to
Speaker 3: a village, then they'll probably just do the same That
Speaker 3: was my experience. Then they'll probably just do the same thing.
Speaker 3: So I didn't feel safe and that I could get
Speaker 3: anywhere or do really anything about my situation. I was like, well,
Speaker 3: you're going to have to sit on this motorbike. And
Speaker 3: you know, I've been going on a spiritual journey as
Speaker 3: well throughout that kind of probably the year or so
Speaker 3: before meeting my girlfriend who's who's a Christian and then
Speaker 3: and I was kind of going on that journey myself,
Speaker 3: and I just you know, there was a point in
Speaker 3: that motbike where I just thought, this is this is
Speaker 3: in God's hands right now, and whatever's happening is happening.
Speaker 3: And I don't know necessarily why. I don't understand, but
Speaker 3: I am just a man, I'm just a human. I
Speaker 3: wasn't meant to understand everything. And you know, I'm going
Speaker 3: to trust that what God's plan here is the best
Speaker 3: thing for me. And it's just a case of how
Speaker 3: painful will this turn out to be?
Speaker 2: So what what what happens? To you obviously end up
Speaker 2: back with your team back. How did that come about?
Speaker 3: Yeah, so we you know, we've driven seven hours into
Speaker 3: this rural village and we've got there. It's the middle
Speaker 3: of the night. It's the maddest thing I've ever seen,
Speaker 3: because you know, they're not They've got a few they've
Speaker 3: got a couple of light bulbs here and there, but
Speaker 3: no real electricity. The village has made out of kind
Speaker 3: of like corrugated iron roofs and then wooden kind of
Speaker 3: shed so it's more like a structure of sheds rather
Speaker 3: than what you would call houses. There's obviously no timac
Speaker 3: on the road, so it's completely dirt roads. And I
Speaker 3: get there and i'm you know, I'm at that point
Speaker 3: I'm thinking, okay, like we're about to find out now,
Speaker 3: and I'm just extremely anxious. So they kind of march
Speaker 3: me into this little shack building and a load of
Speaker 3: the men from the village gather. They all start arguing.
Speaker 3: It gets a bit more progressively heated, and I can't
Speaker 3: understand anything they're saying, but you know, I can still
Speaker 3: read body language, so I'm just kind of trying to
Speaker 3: work out the hierarchy here. Who's in charge, who's definitely
Speaker 3: not in charge all of this type of stuff. And
Speaker 3: I can see that they're arguing about kind of money
Speaker 3: and me and all this stuff. So I'm thinking, all right, okay,
Speaker 3: you know, well at least i'm you know, at least
Speaker 3: I'm not. It's looking to me at this situation like
Speaker 3: they just want they want money out of me more
Speaker 3: than anything, is what I'm thinking. And then the guy,
Speaker 3: a guy rolls in and can immediately see he's got
Speaker 3: authority amongst everyone, and it turns out he was the
Speaker 3: second chief of the village. And he said to me, like,
Speaker 3: you speak to me English very slowly, and I was like,
Speaker 3: thank god, right, and I said to him, like, look,
Speaker 3: big mistake. If we make contact with my friends, they come,
Speaker 3: they bring you money, right. And then from that moment on,
Speaker 3: you know, we we went. We were able to make
Speaker 3: contact with with my friends and explain the situation, and
Speaker 3: then they kind of started this kind of two day
Speaker 3: rescue mission to get out into the rural conglese village
Speaker 3: and then you know, we handed everyone some money. Everything
Speaker 3: was squared up, and you know I was allowed to leave.
Speaker 2: Wow, So you not an EU, you know, going through
Speaker 2: it physically, you know, emotionally psychologically, you know, you're drained
Speaker 2: at this point, and then to want to risk all
Speaker 2: of that again, What was what was going through your head?
Speaker 3: Mate?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: So, I mean, I think the backup moment bike was
Speaker 3: the only time in the mission where I really contemplated
Speaker 3: what I was doing in terms of like, do I
Speaker 3: really want to be doing this kind of thing? Yeah?
Speaker 3: That was the only time I ever really asked myself
Speaker 3: the question. Once we got away, I got out of
Speaker 3: I thought to myself, like, we've come this far, and
Speaker 3: if I quit now, it's all for nothing. Or I
Speaker 3: can carry on pushing through and complete everything that I
Speaker 3: set out to achieve. You know, I did think about
Speaker 3: it properly, but I thought, do you know what, like,
Speaker 3: there's just no way I can let this negative experience
Speaker 3: to find defind me like that, And uh, you know,
Speaker 3: the next day I was up and running again. I
Speaker 3: think as well, like part of my experience up until
Speaker 3: that point had taught me is that you know, when
Speaker 3: you're in the bad moments and the bad things do happen,
Speaker 3: the only way out of that really is to go
Speaker 3: straight through it. Because I think, like, if I think
Speaker 3: about myself as a person. I think if I had
Speaker 3: quit at that point, then it would have eaten me up.
Speaker 3: It would have eaten me up that I quit because
Speaker 3: that happened. So I was like, well, I get it.
Speaker 3: I get it.
Speaker 2: And so Mate, you say, you crack on telt me
Speaker 2: about crossing the finish line. So mate, listen, it doesn't
Speaker 2: get much better than that. What was it like crossing
Speaker 2: that finish because I know the world at this stage, Mate,
Speaker 2: was fully awake. And how how did you feel, mate,
Speaker 2: that you could finally let everything go? Yeah, I think
Speaker 2: really hard to kind of put that, put that all
Speaker 2: into words. I remember, you know, that last that last
Speaker 2: few days was quite emotional because it was a lot
Speaker 2: of lasts, and it was this had been you know,
Speaker 2: three ingred and fifty two days on the road, right,
Speaker 2: running marath more than a marathon every day. It had
Speaker 2: become a way of life, and I knew that it
Speaker 2: was all ending. So for me, you know, like I've
Speaker 2: woken up on that last day and I'm like saying
Speaker 2: goodbye to the boys, the boys that have been there
Speaker 2: for so much of this journey as well.
Speaker 3: So like immediately, you know, water works on and off
Speaker 3: all day. I'm extremely emotional seeing my dad for the
Speaker 3: first time in over fourteen months, likewise, with my mom
Speaker 3: and my girlfriend and my brothers. And I remember coming
Speaker 3: over that hill, right, so there's the last hill before
Speaker 3: I could see the med And I've been looking forward
Speaker 3: to this Mediterranean Sea for over a year, right of
Speaker 3: everything that we'd had to overcome to get there. And
Speaker 3: I mean that in the sense everything I'd had to
Speaker 3: overcome in Africa, but also before that, and immediately when
Speaker 3: I when I ran over that hill, I had like
Speaker 3: a flashback to I was seventeen. I was I was
Speaker 3: having a really I was struggling a lot. I remember
Speaker 3: I had my I was living by myself in this
Speaker 3: flat and I was working about five jobs, cleaning, scrubbing toilets,
Speaker 3: anything I could to kind of just pay my way,
Speaker 3: pay my living, survive, literally survive. And I was, you know,
Speaker 3: I remember being seventy. I opened this cupboard in my
Speaker 3: kitchen and I looked at tin and new potatoes from
Speaker 3: little that I had then it was all I had
Speaker 3: for dinner that night. And I remember staring at this
Speaker 3: tin of new potatoes for a few minutes at that
Speaker 3: point in my life, thinking where is my life? Going
Speaker 3: what like what am I going to do with my life?
Speaker 3: What direction am I heading in? Like I'm desperate to
Speaker 3: make something good of my life, and I just don't
Speaker 3: know if I can. And then I thought of that
Speaker 3: when I was running over this hill and sort of
Speaker 3: med and I just had like that moment where it's like,
Speaker 3: you know, we made it, rush, like we did it,
Speaker 3: Like I'm proud of you, Like we we got through
Speaker 3: all of that. Mate, that's a fucking hell.
Speaker 2: That's that's put the hairs up on my arms because
Speaker 2: you know, I have flashback like that. You know, there's
Speaker 2: there's some trauma that you've obviously flipped into the life experience,
Speaker 2: which I love. You know, you've obviously revisited a traumatic
Speaker 2: situation and you flipped it into a life experience from
Speaker 2: the magnitude of the task that you've just achieved. You
Speaker 2: probably don't even realize that you've done that. But I
Speaker 2: can't make the whole well newed about and knew about you?
Speaker 2: How how surreal was it that you went and never
Speaker 2: a nobody because nobody's a nobody, but when you went
Speaker 2: there and you had ten grand in your pocket to
Speaker 2: bring this global sort of matter sort of Elite Endurance
Speaker 2: Runner and then known as Endurance.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean it was it was wild. I mean,
Speaker 3: I'm sure you can, like with a lot of stuff
Speaker 3: you've done, right, you can't back to the UK after
Speaker 3: a long time, whatever it is that you've been doing,
Speaker 3: and you just kind of look at everything with a
Speaker 3: totally new perspective. I remember I landed in London. I
Speaker 3: was looking around London going like, look at these skyscrapers. Man, Like, obviously,
Speaker 3: you know that's just a part of normal life for
Speaker 3: a lot of us. But I was like looking at
Speaker 3: the city of London, going like, do you know people
Speaker 3: have built this over thousands of years of sacrifice and
Speaker 3: hard work and the like, and this is the accumulation
Speaker 3: of all of that in one you know, in one spot.
Speaker 3: Like how incredible are humans? And I was like, I'm
Speaker 3: having those kind of thoughts looking at like it is
Speaker 3: incredible what we're like, what people have done, and everyone's
Speaker 3: just batting around and I'm going, how good is like
Speaker 3: a double cheeseburger. There's a lot of hard adjustments and
Speaker 3: I think it's still I think it's still an ongoing
Speaker 3: process for me. But yeah, it's been even like getting
Speaker 3: recognized on the street and stuff like this was a
Speaker 3: new one. Yes, surreal, But.
Speaker 2: The good thing about it is the beautiful thing about
Speaker 2: it us is you're getting recognized because you're You've inspired people,
Speaker 2: you motivated people, you have changed people's lives, You've changed
Speaker 2: people's perspective, you've changed the way people, you know, tackle
Speaker 2: things and look at things differently. It's phenomenal when you
Speaker 2: do something like that because people look at you and go, goh,
Speaker 2: it's possible. It is possible if you, if you, if
Speaker 2: you've got the right people around you, you've got the
Speaker 2: right mindset, you've got the right purpose and ambitions in life,
Speaker 2: and there's nothing out there that can't necessarily be achieved. Mate.
Speaker 3: What's next with the Hardest Skeys? Good? Yeah, good question.
Speaker 3: I think since finish in Africa, I've thought about a
Speaker 3: lot of different things, and for me, I kind of
Speaker 3: settled on I really want to make sure that whatever
Speaker 3: we're doing moving forward, we're having that positive impact. We're
Speaker 3: inspiring people to take on the adventure of their life.
Speaker 3: So doing it in a few different ways. I've set
Speaker 3: up Hardest Adventures. We're going to continue making our content
Speaker 3: that that delivers that message and I've also just set
Speaker 3: up a warehouse in my hometown. We're partnering with the
Speaker 3: running charity there and we're going to be delivering impact
Speaker 3: sessions for young vulnerable people all over Worthing and Brighton
Speaker 3: as well. So yeah, lots going on, busy, busy with
Speaker 3: it all, but it's all good stuff, mate, can't go flat. Listen.
Speaker 3: Love your loads, mate, your big inspiration.
Speaker 2: I love your story, I love following you, and I'm
Speaker 2: looking forward to seeing what's next.
Speaker 3: Mate.
Speaker 2: Listen, keep up the good work, keep inspiring and thanks
Speaker 2: for coming on buddy.
Speaker 3: Cheers Anne, I appreciate it. Mate.
Speaker 2: Russ Cook is the author of the Hardest Geezer Mind
Speaker 2: over Miles. If you'd like to find out more on
Speaker 2: link the details in the show notes. Thanks for joining
Speaker 2: me on this episode of head Game. If you enjoyed
Speaker 2: this episode, please share it with a friend.
Speaker 3: I'm at Middleton. See you again next time.