\n<\/p>\n
Going for a run can get a bit more difficult when it lasts for a year and is complicated by robbery, illness and men with machetes.<\/p>\n
Russ Cook, a 27-year-old Englishman, completed his south-to-north run across the continent of Africa on Sunday in Cape Angela, Tunisia. He had set off from Cape Agulhas, South Africa, on April 22, 2023.<\/p>\n
Along the way, he faced hardships not often seen in an easy meander around a suburban park.<\/p>\n
In Angola, he was robbed at gunpoint. In Namibia, he got food poisoning. In the Republic of Congo, he was accosted by men with machetes. In Algeria, he had visa issues.<\/p>\n
In the end, he passed through 16 countries. After his start in South Africa, he mostly skirted the west side of the continent, sticking fairly close to the ocean. He said he chose the West African route primarily for safety reasons, although he nonetheless ran into dangerous situations.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
In June in Angola, Cook was taking a break with his crew in the team\u2019s support van when a man with a gun opened the door. The man made off with money, phones and a camera, but no one was hurt.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s going to take things; we\u2019re going to have to allow it,\u201d Cook said shortly afterward<\/a> in a YouTube video.<\/p>\n The incident in the Republic of Congo was even scarier, he said. In August, running separately from his team because of impassible roads, Cook encountered some men with machetes who demanded money, though his entire inventory at the time was a half-eaten cookie.<\/p>\n \u201cI gave it to them and ran,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Later that day, still away from his team, he met two men on motorbikes who gestured for him to get on board. With \u201cno money, food, water, signal, data or knowledge of where the boys were,\u201d he said, he decided to do so.<\/p>\n He was taken on a seven-hour ride.<\/p>\n \u201cIn my head I thought this was it,\u201d he wrote on social media<\/a>. He arrived at a village and was met with more fruitless demands for money. It took several days for his team to reach him, give money to his captors and get him back to running.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cMy head ain\u2019t fully there right now,\u201d he said after the incident.<\/p>\n Cook also suffered back pain, food poisoning and other health issues, which, along with the frightening motorbike detour, eventually led him to take more days off than he had originally planned and lowered his daily mileage.<\/p>\n In the end, he ran 10,100 miles and raised 690,000 pounds, or about $873,000, for the Running Charity, which supports young people who are experiencing homelessness, and Sandblast, which supports the Indigenous people of Western Sahara. Cook, who has been nicknamed the Hardest Geezer, wound up averaging about 29 miles a day, even factoring in rest days and his various maladies and mishaps.<\/p>\n Though it was billed as the first ever traverse of the continent, a runners\u2019 group, the World Runners Association, told The Telegraph<\/a> that a Danish athlete, Jesper Olsen<\/a>, achieved the feat in 2010, although by a different route. He ran about 8,000 miles, north to south, from Egypt to South Africa.<\/p>\n The group said that it did recognize Cook as the first to run from the southernmost to northernmost point of the continent.<\/p>\n