Russ Cook (Hardest Geezer): I Haven't Told The Whole Truth About Africa!, They Took Me Into The Jungle To Kill Me! | The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett

When I say the 102, does it bring back any memories?

Yeah, it's the only YouTube video that I didn't release.

My name is Russ Cook and I'm attempting to become the first person ever to run the entire length of Africa.

It was probably the highest part of my whole life.

What happened? So, going down this dirt path and two blokes on a motorbike pull up.

I knew that I'm on the bike for longer than half an hour.

It's bad news. I ended up spending seven hours on a motorbike just going into the jungle.

I was getting kidnapped.

Your partner told us that she thought you had died.

I mean, I thought I was going to die as well.

Were you thinking about people back home?

Russ, I don't think many people know that you did all this stuff before Africa.

22 years old, you become the first person to run from Asia to London.

You've bared yourself alive for seven days.

You pulled the car as well, which is pretty crazy.

What were you looking for?

Class one hell of a question, man.

Things have got pretty bad.

I wasn't speaking to my family.

I was drinking and gambling.

I would wake up throughout the week and just burst into tears, crying.

You had dark thoughts?

Yeah. But, ultimately, you know, no one was going to come and save you.

You just had to be me.

And I thought Africa would be the best adventure ever.

But, day 30, you start pissing blood.

I knew it was bad. It'd probably end.

You get robbed at gunpoint.

They got passports, money.

And then are falling out amongst the team.

You've not talked about this in detail either?

I just blew up, shatting everyone, throwing chairs.

What happened? Well...

Russ. You know, York, someone that has achieved and has pursued really anomalous feats in their life, feats that most of us as muggles would never have the insanity to take on.

So, I was so curious to understand from your perspective, what are the dominoes that fell in your life that led you to be the guy that sits here, that everyone around the country and around the world is perplexed and astonished and inspired by?

Where does it start?

That's one hell of a question, man.

I think, really, I had quite a normal upbringing.

And maybe that's the basis for why I ended up doing all this kind of stuff.

Yeah, like, dad... My early memories of, like, my dad were, he was a very hard -working man.

He cut metal for a living, and I didn't really see that much of him when I was young.

He would be out working, 13, 14 hours a day, coming at him, metal dust all over him.

Mum would look after me and my brothers.

And I think he kind of instilled the...

like, that hard -working mentality in me.

And, you know, a lot of the dominoes fell from that, really.

And what was your mum like when you were growing up?

My mum was very... What I always remember about her mum is she really enforced it in us to be polite.

That was, like, a big thing for her.

So, always, like, yes, yes, please, thank yous.

Whenever we'd go around to people's houses, she would just, like, make sure that we behaved well and all of this kind of stuff.

And her dad is, like, a military man.

So, 18 to 65, always.

RAF, like, very well -respected.

So, I think she got that from him, and that's what she passed down to us.

But she was, like, very caring.

She... her whole life was her kids, really.

So, yeah, like, a lot of respect for my mum.

The absence of your father.

You said a second ago that because he was quite absent, your mother kind of carried the responsibility of raising the kids herself.

Do you reflect on that and as you look back in your life, understand how his absence had an impact on you?

Because before this conversation, did I got to speak to...

My team and I got to speak to lots of people around you, as you know, because I'm sure they're all snitches.

So, we spoke to your girlfriend, we spoke to your dad, spoke to your team, spoke to everyone around you privately and got all of their take sort of perspectives and stuff.

And it appeared from those conversations that the early sort of absence of your father had a pretty big impact on shaping you as an individual.

Yeah, I mean, I guess...

I think my... Now I'm older, I just look at it like my dad was doing everything that he could to provide for his family, you know?

I think he took that responsibility really seriously.

And... Yeah, I mean, it's hard to really contemplate how that affected me.

But the few things I did see if my dad...

He was just always...

He ran a marathon when I was a kid.

And I remember that being like a big...

You know, he'd always talk about willpower and he didn't say much, but he was more of a man of...

He did things rather than spoke about them.

So he'd go out and work really hard or he'd go and run a marathon.

And I'd see these things happening.

You know, he'd come home from work and he'd be knackered and he'd be on the sofa and...

Like he kind of just...

That was the way he led, you know?

It's a generational thing in many respects, isn't it?

Because my dad, I feel like is very much the same.

I don't think we had many deep conversations.

No. But he led by example in a sense that he worked hard, loved his family.

Yeah. That marathon your dad ran, did he do things like that a lot?

Not really. He was working pretty much all the time.

So he ran two marathons, one when he was 31, when he was 40.

But he used to take me out on runs when I was quite young.

And, you know, he wouldn't really say anything, but it was more just me seeing it that I think was important for me.

That's how he operated, you know?

What about affection?

Yeah, no, my dad's...

My dad or my mum aren't very affectionate people.

I don't think I've ever seen them even kiss maybe once or twice when I was young.

But like, you know, that I love using stuff like this wasn't words that got thrown around in our family.

Not that they didn't mean it.

I just think that like we are families a bit stiff like that.

Not all families have the tools.

Do you know what I mean?

Just maybe they didn't get them from their parents.

No, I think that's exactly it, you know.

And I think when as I've got older, I've understood like where they've come from and their parents and their upbringing, then it's like makes sense.

But it didn't make sense.

It didn't make sense at the time.

It's hard to like when you're young.

I find it really hard to make sense of a lot of things.

I was one of them, like, I had a lot of questions.

Hard to find the answers, but I kept digging.

What kind of questions did you have?

I guess it was more stuff like I was finding it hard to find my way in the world.

And especially when I got to like teenage years and I'd be like, how do I do this?

How do I, you know, how do I build a career?

How do I make money?

How do I do all of these things?

How do I navigate friendships and relationships?

All these kinds of complex, how do I find meaning in my life?

Not that I was directly asking those questions, but those kind of things.

I'm prodded at that age.

And I think, you know, from my parents, it was quite hard to find those answers just because I think we all struggled with communicating like that, you know.

When you were 13, 14 years old, do you think you're different from your peers?

Do you feel like you're different in any way or isolated in any way from other people?

I looked at people and I was like, teachers, for example, or any kind of authority figures in my life.

And if I sensed that they weren't very happy in their lives or they were a bit miserable, I would kind of discard a lot of what they were trying to tell me.

I found at that age, I had a lot of people trying to tell me what to do or, you know, do this, do that, behave like this.

And I was like, if I do what you say, then I'm going to end up like you.

And I don't want that.

So I'm doing my own thing.

And I think that kind of started a journey of trying to find my own answers and stumbling across a lot of different things to try and find that.

Do you think your mum and dad were happy?

No. I kind of feel bad for saying I want to do them a service when I'm talking about them because I do respect them a lot now, especially now I'm older and I understand things more, but I don't think at the time, I think they've had their struggles, like a lot of us have our struggles, you know.

Yeah. I asked the question because I even look at my own life and I think whatever the source of my parents and happiness was, I think as kids, we sometimes, our relationship with whatever is making our parents unhappy often has a big impact on us.

And I sit here a lot with comedians and stuff.

And I remember Jimmy Kast, I think it was Jimmy Kast said to me, he goes, listen, when you sit down with a comedian, Steve, you don't need to ask the comedian if they're depressed, you need to ask them which one of their parents were depressed, because the reason for their behavior will be at some level

a desire to please or make one of their parents smile for a change.

You know what I mean?

And, and I wondered that with, with your early upbringing, because, you know, I got to speak to your family and I got to speak to people around you.

And the picture that was emerging was that home wasn't the happiest place and it wasn't the most loving, connected, cuddly, perfect, rosy, smiley, you know, idyllic environment to say the least.

No, yeah, I'd agree.

I'd agree with that.

And yeah, yeah, I mean, I think it wasn't for the lack of trying, but it's like you said, they didn't have the tools.

And, you know, ultimately that is what kind of pushed, pushed me to go and try and find my own things, which is worked out for the best.

And when you say pushed you to go find your own things, 16, 17 years old, you move out.

Why? Well, things, things have got quite bad with, with family stuff.

I was, I was a piece of shit, very rebellious, very disrespectful.

We didn't listen to anything that they were saying and very intent on doing my own thing, and I think that kind of took a big toll on everyone in the family.

Because I was, you know, I was stressing everyone out.

Why? What were you looking for?

I think like deep down, I was just like looking for something more in my life.

I was looking at what, you know, the life that the adults around me were living.

And I was like, I don't, I don't want that.

I want, I want more than that.

I want to go and see, want to go and live, you know, and.

You know, that's kind of when, you know, you've got a kid that's 16 hasn't done anything with his life and he's just kind of disrespecting you, ignoring everything you're saying and doing his own thing, coming home or whatever.

Kids don't, kids aren't born like that though.

Yeah. Do you know what I mean?

They're not born, acting out and disrespecting people.

So that's why I'm asking about the cause of it.

Cause, you know, sometimes when you hear kids doing that kind of thing, you kind of think they're trying to, they're acting out to try and get some attention.

And then they're kind of like rebelling from, you know, authority because they feel, I don't know, disconnected in some way or whatever.

I think that's maybe it, you know, like it's probably part of it.

I'm not, I'm not exactly sure why.

Um, but that's, that's kind of what happened.

And I think I was, I had a lot of energy, a lot of motivation, viciously ambitious, but didn't really know how to apply it, where to apply it to get what I wanted.

And I was looking around me for, I think I was looking around, searching for the guidance that would help me, but I wasn't really finding it.

So I was just trying to make, I was just basically discard in things I thought weren't important or opinions that weren't important.

It weren't going to get me where I wanted.

And I was just looking for, looking for it.

And yeah, that's kind of how things started unraveling and ended up moving out.

And that, that induced the quite a tasty few years in itself.

When you say moved out, do you mean like organized the removal van and add an apartment you were moving into?

Or what was the day like when you moved out?

Ah, it was quite a messy, it was quite messy for a couple of years and they're like, I remember my parents sent me up to my granddad in Scotland one summer when I was like 15 and this was kind of the start of when things were going quite bad.

Um, your parents were doing okay.

My parents were doing okay.

Yeah. But then, so then, and then I remember one night they moved all my stuff to my other granddad's house and changed the lock on the door.

They were like, you're not coming back and I'll kick the door in and bold in.

So it was kind of happening for a while.

And then it got to the point where I remember my mom being like, yeah, you need to go.

And I was like, cool.

It wasn't like a out the door with tail between my legs or anything.

It was, I don't need you anyway.

Sit out. Like at what age 15?

That was about 17. Okay.

Yeah. And then, um, I organized the flat.

It was the cheapest flat I could rent in Worthing and I was still, I was at college.

So I was working about four or five part time jobs, just like cleaning.

I was up on my bike going to Waitrose, cleaning toilets in the morning for college and then finished that and I went into sales at first.

You know, when they change the locks on the door and tell you that you can't come back home.

Yeah. If I asked them at the time, why they had done that, what do you think they would have said?

They would have said like, this guy needs humbling.

His, he's, he doesn't know anything about the world.

He's very arrogant, very disrespectful.

And then in hindsight, as you said, totally right.

Yeah, totally right.

But you, you must have empathy for that kid.

Yeah. Because you now, you look back as an adult, you can understand a complex range of emotions.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Cause there's no kids aren't like, they're not born to be like terrors like that.

Yeah. Uh, well, I get it from, I think now I'm older.

I just get it from both sides.

Like it, it's really difficult.

It was really difficult for them to manage that like complex kind of personality.

And it was also really hard for me to express or communicate in a way that was, I was going to get myself listened to.

I wasn't doing that.

I was just like totally trying to run everyone over, you know.

You wanted to be heard.

Yeah. I think so. What does that mean?

I guess I just wanted someone to like understand and I just, I think I just wanted the guidance, like if someone, I wanted guidance, but from someone that I, someone that I looked at and was like, I want what they've got.

You know, or like they've done life in a way that I want to do life and they could teach me the lessons, but I didn't, I was struggling to kind of find that at that age.

It reminds me of my conversation with Ashley Walters and from Top Boy.

Yeah. He said pretty much the exact same thing.

His father wasn't around.

And so he was looking for a role model or guidance answers and he couldn't find it.

So he ends up joining these gangs and that spirals somewhere else.

And it's so interesting that, you know, a young, a young man at your age, that age sort of, you know, 14, 15, 16, 17, if they don't have someone there to model themselves on, they can descend into different forms of chaos.

Yeah. Like so much energy, which is in a lot of ways, I think a positive thing, but just without those guidelines to actually get you somewhere, it just kind of becomes chaos.

When you moved out then, so you moved out sort of 16, 17 years old, how was your relationship with your parents from there?

Terrible. Really? Yeah.

Didn't speak to them for a long time.

Uh, even up until, I would say up until probably the last year is, is a couple of years.

It's been pretty sure, but, um, You're 27 now.

Yeah. We're talking about when you were 17.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's, it, there was, there's moments in there where it's got better and then got worse and got better.

But for, for a while, it was tough.

When you, you know, 17 years old, they changed the locks you move out.

I'm sure your response was hardest Giza.

Cause it always is.

Like you said, it's just, I don't care.

I'll figure it out.

But at some deeper level, you're, I think we're all bullshitting ourselves.

Just if we say that it doesn't have an impact, because I can relate.

I remember the call to my mom at 18 and telling how I was leaving university.

And I remember what she said to me.

I can't repeat what she said.

Cause it's so vicious.

Really? Yeah. It's like, it's so, it's so vicious.

One of the things she said to me, but it was hardest Giza exterior.

Yeah. And then at some deeper level on certain days, you know, set the catch me in the.

And I think the hardest Giza kind of approach like that aggressive approach to it is just like a way of coping with it.

And every now and again, you know, like the emotions would roll out and yeah, I'm not denying that for a second.

I remember seeing, I moved out and then I think I saw my dad maybe.

I can't remember how long after it was a good few months, maybe a year or so.

And it just made me cry.

Just seeing him. So like, the emotions were always there, but to kind of get through it, it was like, right.

You know, fuck everyone.

Why did you cry when you saw him?

Just cause I think like there's always a part of me that understands that my parent, there is no, there's no one else in the world that loves me.

Like my parents do.

And like, no matter what they do or like how badly I felt I'd been wronged or which I wasn't really, they were just trying their best.

I always knew that, you know, whatever happens to these, these are the two people actually care about me the most.

And I think that just makes you like when things aren't going well, that makes you emotional.

Cause it's like, these are the people I'm supposed to be close with things real bad right now.

So you're so right.

I think so many people are probably in that situation right now where they, they love that person, but they don't know how to build the bridge.

Both people. Yeah. And it takes two to build the bridge.

So it really does. They can't build it.

I can't build it. So we love each other, but we're fucking at war.

Yeah. I think like a big part of that for me in building that bridge was actually my girlfriend when I was away.

Cause she, she went over and she went around the house and spoke to him loads.

And she's cause even before I left, like I went around to see both my parents before I left.

It was the first time I'd see them in like maybe like a year and a half, two years.

Really ending your parents.

Yeah. Before I left for Africa, we'd spoken, me and my girlfriend spoke a lot about these kinds of things and how like important we want family to be.

And she, I felt like at a loss making that, that step.

I just didn't really know how to do it.

What to say, blah, blah, blah.

But she kind of over this year is really like done a lot in that sense.

People might think this is sexist, but I do think women have more tools.

100%. My girlfriend's the same.

If my girlfriend, me and my mum sometimes don't speak for prolonged periods of time and my girlfriend like insists upon it.

Yeah. Dragged me down to Plymouth and was like, we're going to see her.

Yeah. Oh, mate. I couldn't go anymore.

Especially with me and my girlfriend's dynamic anyway, like that's really, she's, I look at her like a wizard in that sense.

I'm like, I don't know what I'm doing, but she's got that under control, which is amazing.

So you're 17 years old.

You've moved out. You're on your own.

What's the plan? Yeah.

Yes. I remember I had this flat in Worven.

It was the cheapest flat available on right move, 450 quid a month, which is more than I could afford.

But I was like, right, let's do it.

Um, was working a bunch of different jobs, trying to finish college, kind of scraped through.

And then I, um, I actually was watching this.

This is so cringy. It's funny.

I was like, one of them lads that watched Wolf of Wall Street.

And was like, this is it for me.

Do you know what I mean?

This is the game. I'm going to, I'm going to become a millionaire doing sales stuff.

So I went and got a few sales jobs.

Um, made some actually not bad money for my age, but really didn't enjoy it.

And, you know, ended up with that kind of lack of guidance.

I ended up just doing the things that felt to me like the most fun or the most like they would bring in my naivety, they would bring me the most meaningful experiences at the time, which ended up being going out a lot with the boys and drinking and gambling.

And that's kind of what my life was for the next kind of two, three years after that.

Were you, were you addicted to gambling?

Um, cause I was reading through your story and speaking to some of your friends and they told me that there was some instances where you basically lost everything you had and had to borrow money a few misses at the time.

Oh man, it was, it's embarrassing to even talk about.

Like I remember, you know, I didn't have much money, but I'd done one night on roulette.

I'd done about two, I think it was over two grand on online roulette.

Just sitting there on my phone late at night, just tapping away.

And that was kind of everything I had at the time.

I had plus the overdraft plus all the rest of it.

And I had to, I was too embarrassed to say anything.

So I told my missus, like, I think I just made up some bullshit lies about what this X, Y, Z and said, like, I need to borrow money for rent and stuff this month.

There was a moment there where I was like, okay, this really is stopping.

I just went on every single gambling website I could find and did the self -band thing.

Never gambled since.

I mean, alcohol. Yeah.

I mean, I think the alcohol stuff was just like binge drinking culture.

I wouldn't say like I was an alcoholic or anything like this.

That was just the only way I could really, the only thing I look forward to.

I'd hate my job, so I'd hate work all throughout the week.

But I'd be like, all right, Saturday with the boys or Saturday drinking this, whatever.

Going out here was like the thing that I look forward to.

That was the only thing I was really looking for.

Was there part of you throughout that period of your life when you're working in sales, you're gambling too much, you're drinking too much.

I heard you were overweight at the time as well.

Was there a part of you that sort of a voice inside your head that was saying like, come on Russ, like this isn't it?

Yeah, definitely. I was so miserable, man, so, so miserable at that time.

Really struggled. I remember I would like, wake up throughout the week just like crying.

Just so miserable. Yeah.

You'd wake up through the week crying.

Just like, I'd wake up that supposed to go to work.

I should be, I should be like, so upset.

I should be like the worst.

So miserable. Couldn't just fathom.

I was like, why is, why is life this much?

Why does it suck this much?

You know, like I really had no, felt like I was kind of trapped.

Lack of connection.

I think was a big part of that.

You had people around you though, but you just weren't connected.

So not, I didn't, I mean, I had like a few, few of my boys, but I wasn't speaking to my family at all at this time.

Well, I guess I was just doing a lot of things that would make you miserable.

Like I was, I had no control over my finances cause I was pissing away for an hour on roulette.

I was the only things I look forward to was going out and getting pissed, which would make me feel like shit as well.

And then I would go to work and pay it working every day.

So like, he doesn't take a genius to work out.

That's going to be a pretty miserable distance.

You know, and you didn't have family around you.

Didn't have like many deep connections.

So how old were you at that point in your life?

So that would be like 18, 19, 17, 18, 19, 20, maybe just about.

So if you had to give me a word to summarise your sort of mental health throughout that period, what would you, how would you describe your mental health?

Toilet. Yeah, bad. Pretty bad.

Was there a worse day that you can recall?

Um, yeah, I mean, I remember like, I do remember just.

You don't want to talk about it.

You, you, you go to your place.

Tell me what you're talking about.

I mean, I remember days, like I said, I'd wake up crying to speak to my boss.

I remember even one day with my boss speaking to one of the phone, just bursting his tears crying.

And I think what was hard is that I didn't understand anything.

I didn't understand why.

You know what I mean?

I didn't have the tools to really make any sense of, of the situation.

Cause you know, now I'm seven, eight, nine years older.

I can look back and go, yeah, well, it's what happens when you gamble loads and you piss all your money away and you drink loads and you don't have anything in your life that's going to bring you any meaning or fulfillment.

It's obvious at the time.

I didn't know that.

So that kind of sense of helplessness was a really big weight on me.

And it just felt like I was never going to be able to shift it.

I think that was the most difficult thing.

I was like, I don't know how I'm going to get out of this.

Yeah. Dark thoughts.

Yeah. The most dark thoughts.

Pretty. Yeah. Pretty much.

That season of your life, I've heard you kind of describe it as a rock bottom moment.

And it's interesting because there's so many people that are somewhere along that journey where they're struggling.

They've, they've got that sense of helplessness that you've described and they're searching for answers.

And I think in some respects thinking about some people I've spoken to recently, they, they've kind of given up believing that they can solve this because it's gone on for too long.

And as you said, they don't even know what's causing it.

They just feel it. They feel it intensely.

I've got a couple of friends that are really going through that at the moment.

And I wonder, I always wonder to myself, like, how does someone get from that moment, they're like personal rock bottom.

What does it take to get them starting the climb?

Cause that's why, that's why I'm asking these questions.

I see it in your story.

I see you go in further and further and further and further and further and further down, reaching this rock bottom moment.

And then in that rock bottom moment, you have some of the, I think the darkest thoughts anyone can have, and then something causes you to make a decision.

Yeah. I think there's a few different things that went into that melting pot.

Um, I think actually a massive thing was like things like listening to podcasts.

And I started, I remember listening to like Joe Rogan a lot back in the day.

And, um, he thought, I remember the Jordan Peterson, there was a Jordan Peterson episode age ago, I noticed it was like a classic thing, but that really kind of hit me and that's what I liked.

I love listening to him now and I know he's a bit controversial these days and people have X, Y, Z's there by him.

But for me, like just having that was like my, uh, guidance in a lot of ways.

And I think so blessed to have been born in this generation where the guidance can come through all of these online resources.

Whereas before, you know, like 20, 30 years ago, maybe that would never have come for me and maybe 20 years later I'd still be in the same spot.

So like incredibly grateful for that.

But then. Can I ask a question?

Yeah, go on. In that moment when you were 19 years old, do your parents know what you're going through?

No, I don't think so.

Do you think today they know what you were going through in that?

Probably not. No, probably not.

I reckon like, I don't know.

I reckon my mom's probably thought about it to be fair.

But they don't know the ins and outs.

What are the ins and outs that they don't know?

Well, just like the day to day, you know.

And I, I've, I've get - I'm quite like I keep a lot of things to myself a lot of the time anyway.

So like, no one really knows.

There's a real cost to that in there.

There is. Yeah, I guess.

There is this, you know, these things, I always think with these things, keeping them to yourself doesn't mean that they stay inside.

It means they express themselves in other ways.

Yeah, smart. Whether it's smart.

I see it with a lot of people, so I've, I've come to learn about myself, but I've come to - one of the things I've definitely come to learn is that keeping it in doesn't actually keep it in.

It just comes out in other ways.

It makes it like a pressure chamber.

Yeah. And you get the little escapes.

Someone will say something, you can fuck up!

Or some people have expressed themselves in pornography addictions or gambling addictions, they're trying to find other ways to ease the burden of having to hold on to that, all that stuff.

Or running the length of that car.

So they had no idea?

No. If you could go back and have a word with him when he's woke up on that morning, when you're at your rock bottom, and he's crying and he doesn't want to go to work and he's thinking about dark, you know, dark thoughts.

If you could go back and just have a telephone conversation with him now, what would you - what would you say to him?

Oh. I guess I do, I do have empathy.

I think for that guy, I think the thing that I needed to hear, which was the most, which actually got me to force me into action was like, I need to take responsibility for my own situation.

So like that version of me at 19, 18, 19 was very much one that looked at my outside world and blamed everyone else for my problems.

Like, oh, it's because my parents did this or my boss did this and all of these other things.

And I didn't need anyone else to come in and say, Oh, it's not your fault.

I needed someone to go.

That's the fucking world, mate.

Get used to like, do something about it or don't up to you.

So that's probably the message that I'd give.

Maybe I'd deliver it in a nice little empathetic way, but ultimately, you know, no one was gonna come and save me.

It just had to be me.

You talk about this, I was reading different sort of seasons of your life and there's this one moment where you're in a nightclub and it seems like you have a bit of, I don't know whether you were on something or you were taking something, but it seems like you had a little bit of a dance floor epiphany

moment at two, three o 'clock in the morning.

Yeah. So I think it had been leading up to this cause I would, I'd been, I've been finding life really difficult for a while and I was doing all these different things, trying to find something that I could put my energy into that would give me something positive in return.

And yeah, I remember being in the arch in Brighton and just being like, I need, I need to sort my life out.

What am I doing? I proffered one of them like mirror, bit pissed, looking in the mirror moments going fuck, you know, and then ran home about 11, 12 miles.

Took me ages or something.

Sorry, you ran home from the night club.

Ran home from the nightclub.

I don't know, really.

It was a bit Forrest Gump in the way.

It was just like, I just felt like running kind of vibes.

At what time? Like 3 AM to 3 AM, something like this.

You ran 12 miles at 3 AM.

Yeah. I took my ages.

Yeah, yeah. Totally off it.

Sleeping on the side of the road.

Yeah. Took me up, power napping shawl, pavement.

But yeah, I mean, so I ran that mar, well I ran that little bit and then a mate of mine I'd been mates with for a long time had just started getting into running properly and he signed up for a half marion and he said to me, like, come and run it.

Like, let's do it. I'll train with you, blah, blah, blah.

And I think that was the moment where I was like, oh, this, might be something that I can do.

Like I'm out of ideas here.

You know, I need something.

So I literally just on a whim was like, fine, let's do it.

Signed up. And then he took me out of training.

We did the half marathon.

Then a few weeks later, we signed up, did the full marathon.

And that process was like a huge relief for me.

It just made it for the, it made me really like it hammered in the sense that if I do something positive, it will pay itself back to me.

You know, like that accountability of like, go and do something good.

Here we go. And you can see the improvements come in week by week by week.

And it, I think that's why I love running so much, like, cause that's it in its simplest form.

It's like you go out, run.

It's really shit. And but then you keep going, you keep going.

And now a month later, you can run a half marathon or two months later, you can now run a marathon.

And it was that process of going from someone that I like, I couldn't even run around the block and then I could run a marathon and I was like, shit, this is this, I've got something here like this is how we progress.

That's really the word in it, progress, that feeling of progress.

Like you'd learn because that becomes a metaphor for life, like I set out to do something and I got better at it.

I progressed and I accomplished something.

That's a, that's a pretty strong transferable idea for the rest of your, like for everyone's life to learn that lesson.

That's kind of what happened for me.

I managed to like save up some money off the back of ran around these marathons and then it's like stopped drinking as much.

Stop wasn't gambling anymore and saved up a bit of money for the first time.

And then a few months I had decided, right, just being off the wheels, cleaning jobs, I'm going to go and travel the world with a few grand that I'd managed to save up.

And where did you get around the world traveling?

Did a bit in Europe, then went over to Africa, got to Kenya, did, did some, I was really into my run at this point.

So I was training really hard every day.

It was like my living and breathing it, went to the training camp, this village called item, which is like home to some of the best long distance runners ever.

I keep chokies from them, all this kind of stuff.

Just trained with them.

Got my ass whipped up pretty good.

And that just, I met an Italian guy who'd been cycling around the world for six years, super inspired by his story, how he was living, what he was doing.

And decided like, I want to do, I want to try and do something like that.

And I was, I was pretty good at running by now.

So then I first kind of conceived the idea of running from Istanbul to London.

And then that was the next, I was like, all right, that's what we're going for.

I don't think many people know that you did all this stuff before Africa.

No, I don't think so.

Yeah. I don't think they do.

I don't think people, I was speaking to my mates.

I was like, well, do you know, he, he like ran, he was the first person to run from Asia to London and people are like, no, you just know that he ran Africa and then all these other things you did beforehand.

But 22 years old, you become the first person to run from Asia to London because you ran from Istanbul to London.

You completed 71 marathons in 66 days through 11 countries.

And you had no team with you.

Yeah. You basically just did it on your, by yourself and your phone was dying and all that stuff.

When you told your family and other people that you were going to run from Asia to London at 22 years old, what was their response?

Cause that would be the first big.

Most of them were like, yeah, you're like, you're gonna, you're going to die.

Or like that's not going to happen.

I remember pretty much everyone being like that.

I probably count on one hand the amount of people that I was going to do that.

What did your parents think?

Can't actually remember.

I don't know if I was speaking to them very much at this time.

Oh, really? Yeah. I remember my little brother was the only one that was like, yeah, he's the only one I remember being like, yeah, he's deaf.

He's going to do it.

What was that like?

You know, cause you're on your own.

It's different to the Africa run, but this time you're on your own for that whole, that whole journey across Asia to Europe.

Yeah. What's that like?

It was an amazing adventure, man.

It really was. It was, it was tough though.

Like really tough, being by myself the whole time I would literally run a marathon, I'd have a little bag with a hammock and toothbrush, toothpaste phone.

I just find a couple of trees at the end of the day, sing the hammock up and go again the next day.

So yeah. Did you not need like friends or something?

Why do I think the.

That a lot of people said this to me at the start, they're like, well, you're going to need this, you're going to need that.

Yeah, but why? Actually, why?

Why can't you just sleep in a hammock every day and then go run a marathon?

Did you speak, who were you speaking to?

And it Biddy back home around that.

I don't really. You must look at that objectively and go, that is not normal behavior.

And then, and then from that, I asked, I go, so what is it that's abnormal about you?

Because you're performing a normal behavior.

It's super inspiring, but it's not normal.

It's not typical. That's a good question, man.

I'm not really sure.

Yeah, it wasn't normal.

Yeah, I guess it definitely wasn't normal.

I love that you just figuring that out now.

I think, you know, I met this, I met this Italian guy and he'd been cycling around the world for six years and he showed me a setup.

He had nothing on him, really.

He had like, he had basically nothing, but he just had a coffee kettle.

That was the only thing he really cared about.

So meeting these kinds of people just made me realize, like, what is normal?

Who even cares about normal?

I don't care. I just, like, this, this is normal.

This guy's cycling around six years.

Why not? But he seems like he's had a pretty good adventure.

I want a bit of that.

And Africa, specifically Kenya.

I've been there, certain parts of Kenya can really teach you that you don't need much.

That's a primal. Exactly.

I think it was just a different way of looking.

That's what the, I mean, it is the classic traveling.

Like, I'll go traveling for yourself, blah, blah, blah, but it does.

You know, sometimes meeting these people from doing the craziest stuff and from different cultures will just make you look at things in a different way.

You know, even I found that coming back to London now and it's like, all of you, I'm back into the motor.

Like, oh, you need to go and get a flat and you need to go and live somewhere and blah, blah, blah.

And I'm like, hold on a minute.

I don't need, why do I need to do any of this?

You must realize upon returning to the UK, how much people are kind of programmed.

Yeah. Yeah. And I just, I guess the, uh, the age of the unknown one was the first time I was just like, let's give it a go.

What's the worst going to happen?

And at the end of that run, your father joins you.

Um, yeah. So my, I remember my dad, my dad came up to London and saw me.

It was, he said that he was proud of me.

I don't remember that hitting cause like, he didn't say it often, but when he says it, you know, it's probably, I can imagine your dad being similar, like kind of thing where, you know, he means it when he says it.

And I think that's like one of the most powerful things that dad can say to their son, like proud of you, son.

Even makes me emotional just saying it, like thinking about it.

I'm like, wow. Um, So yeah, that was nice.

I mean, he ran the last day with you.

He ran like the last five K I think we had.

Yeah. I lost five K and I was actually joined for the last couple of days by the mate that got me into running in the first place, which is really cool as well.

Interestingly, there was no followers.

No, there was no YouTube views.

There was no headlines.

There was no BBC articles.

That was nothing. Most people don't even know it happened.

Yeah. Frankly. Cause you went on your own and you didn't do all the social media stuff.

You then get back to the UK to much different fanfare than you got back to this time.

You go back to your parents house a couple of days in.

Everyone's looking around going.

Yeah. What's that like?

Couple of days in. Yeah.

I mean, I remember my body being pretty in a pretty bad way.

After that I couldn't even walk.

Like I was really struggling.

Body was really hurting and I got back into the country.

I was skinked. Cause that's done all my dough on this age line and run and my dad was like, I remember speaking with does like, what are you doing?

You lazy? Like get you all the same.

So I was like, Oh fuck.

All right. And then when it got.

How did you feel when you heard that?

It was hard at the time.

I just, I was, I was, I was really struggling because I'd just been away for a whole, you know, for about a year or something.

Done this big thing, finally finished.

And then I was like, Oh, that's reality.

Slap me in the face again.

But yeah. Yeah, I was.

Yeah. When he told you to get a job.

Yeah. I was fuming.

Yeah. Because I was, I was just mentally just absolutely done in and physically done in and then he'd like just been like, Oh, I'm so proud of you.

I remember he'd been like, I'm so proud of you.

You've achieved more in your life already than I ever have.

Blah, blah, blah. I like, and it really felt like I made a bit of a breakthrough there.

What do you mean breakthrough?

Just like I felt like he respected me more.

Like he'd actually seen that I, I was capable of doing something.

Um, that he thought was good.

You hadn't felt that before.

Not in that way. What did you think that he thought of you growing up when you were sort of 19 years old and you're gambling and doing like.

Probably just disappointed.

Um, yeah, disappointed bit of loser.

You eventually end up burying yourself alive.

It's a ton of events.

I didn't, I didn't see coming in your story.

So you do this run at 22 years old.

Um, there's sort of a two year gap between then and when you bury yourself alive, what are you doing for those two years?

So I was just working bits and pieces here and there really.

Um, pretty much like I, I finished the ages of London run.

And in, in my head from then I was like, I would really love to make this kind of thing a career somehow.

Don't know how I'm going to do it, but I would love to be able to do that.

And then that kind of started like a three or four year process of working out.

Okay. You know, if we make content, then maybe brands will sponsor that.

And then I can go and do adventures with that money, but that it took a long time to kind of put those pieces of the puzzle together.

Like that was never the really what I was thinking of when I did Istanbul to London.

I chucked a few photos up on Instagram, just really for my boys to see.

It would be like I'm out here in Serbia camping or whatever.

Um, but yet then, you know, did the age line of run figured out if we make some content and that's how we're going to do it.

Buried myself alive, pulled a car from my iPhone.

Then the Africa planning started happening.

You buried yourself alive.

You asked your parents if you could bury yourself in the garden.

They told you to fuck off.

Yeah. Yeah, it's got it.

I remember that. Oh yeah.

You buried yourself alive for seven days in underground.

You basically just dug a hole in a tin can and jumped in the tin can and then they buried you there.

Um, and then eventually the plans, as you say, you pulled the car as well, which is crazy.

Do you know when I actually found out all this stuff, which was a shock to me was I don't know, a week or so into your run in Africa.

I saw you pop up on my feed and then as you know, I clicked on your profile and then I clicked on the DM box.

Yeah. You sent me a DM.

Yeah. And the DM you sent me was in May the 5th, I think it was 2022.

So it was a long time ago.

It was more than two years ago now.

And paraphrasing, because I just...

Speculative one. I bet you get these kind of DMs all the time.

Yeah, I missed it. I didn't see it.

So I didn't, I didn't, I didn't see it at all, but, um, it's funny.

It's funny because I actually replied to you exactly one year to the day when you sent me a message or I replied to you on May the 5th as well.

But you email me on May the 5th, 2022.

And in that message you said some nice things.

And then you said, you'll probably get a lot of these DMs, but let me explain why this one is special and exciting.

Oh, you're creating your own backlist.

This is your sales background.

They're actually coming through.

Now I've removed some parts.

No, no, no, no, no.

I just, you know, I'm an endurance athlete in 2019.

I was, I was the first person to run from Asia to London in 2020.

I pulled a car for a marathon in record time in 2021.

I got buried alive with nothing but water and I live streamed it for an entire week.

And in 2022, I'm starting a mission to become the first person to ever run the full length of Africa.

You sent me that DM two years ago, um, hoping that I could assist you in some way with the Africa and when I saw that the most shocking part was that you've done all of these other things and I'd never ever heard about any of them.

Yeah. Yeah. And then in that message you explained to me, cause it was a very long message and you really, it was really thorough message.

You explained that this time would be different.

People would actually know because you'd figured out content and you've got some good people around you and you'd spent almost two to three years thinking about this Africa run before you even, you set off going.

Why Africa? Why was that the plan?

Well, I knew that Africa hadn't been done before and it's one of the few things left that hadn't been done.

So that was probably one of the big reasons.

Also like Africa is not very travel, not very well traveled.

Not many people, tourists, not many tourists go there and I thought it would be like the best adventure ever.

So that's why I decided to do it.

So you were going to run from the bottom of Africa to the top.

Yeah. How long did you think it was going to take?

Two, I thought it would take 240 days.

That was my goal. I was going to do 360 marathons in 240 days.

It didn't quite work.

How long did it take in total in the year?

352 days. Long time.

There's lots of hurdles along the way.

Before you set off, I think it's four to five months before you set off, maybe six months, you meet a young lady called Emily Bell.

Ah yeah. Wow. What a girl.

What a woman. Was it six months before or something?

No, I actually, I met her.

We first met at one of our mutual friends birthday party.

Yeah. And I said to my friend, like, why have you never introduced me to her?

She's beautiful. And then, um, then that started like a three month process of me trying to convince her to go on a date.

It took a while, but we got there eventually.

We got there eventually.

Um, actually we had a secret Santa going and I think one of my friends did me a solid and kind of like rigged the secret Santa.

So I got her and then I got her, uh, tickets to go to Commedia, Comedy Club in Brighton.

Got a two ticket. So I was like, well, you could, you could take me.

And then, um, yes. And then that's when first I day in the, uh, this Africa thing was already in the works.

So it was quite complicated.

But then before I left, we were like, right, this dirt.

And we kind of like, we spoke on the phone every day.

And I was one of these people, if you'd asked me two years ago, could that have ever worked like 14 months away, we spent from each other.

I'd be like, nah, that's never gonna, never gonna work.

But I think we, we spoke pretty much every day for hours whilst I was running, if I had signal and the, the kind of stuff that we got to speak about and really go through in depth on is the kind of stuff that I think in a lot of ways.

Relationships would just get swept away in the rigmarole of the day to day life.

So I'm actually super grateful for that time and really proud of her and us for like, navigating that kind of weird situation.

Knowing your childhood and knowing the early model of relationships that you experienced in this mother and this father didn't seem like they always had the best time, little bit distant.

The affection wasn't there.

When you go into a relationship, there must be a part of your subconscious that still has that model of relationships front of mind.

So you must be in some respects, like I am, to be fair, or at least like I was until I was about 27, 28 when I had my first relationship.

I had my first relationship at your age, an avoidant.

Cause you hadn't learned, you didn't have the tools to be affectionate and to be open.

Totally avoidant, still am.

But, but when you met her, Yeah, you hadn't done, had those deep conversations.

Now, I think it's created her more than me.

She, she kind of brang that out.

I didn't have tools to go to do any of that stuff, to be honest, you know, she's just, I think sometimes like, I don't know, I think I just think we fit really well like together.

What I can do well, she can't, what she can do well, I can't like, it works.

It's so interesting because we got to have a conversation with Emily.

Yeah. And the way she described you sounded very, very much like me.

It's nice, funny, because I've actually listened.

I remember messaging you actually about it.

I think I listened to, you'd had a podcast with some relationship person.

Esther Perel, I remember that.

And yeah, like the way you were talking about how I was like, God, this is like, this is hidden over here.

And we both, we do that a lot.

Sometimes we listen to podcasts and talk about it and I do this, I'll do this.

I'm going to play this.

Oh God. This is going to be awkward for you, but listen, it's, it's word for word me.

Yeah, I think he, um, he's not the easiest to support and hasn't been the whole time I've known him because he doesn't accept support very, like he's got so much better at it.

But I'm a very like nurturing.

I want to help. I want to make his life easier.

What can I do? How can I support you?

And my, I think we have different, um, support looks different for me and for him.

So support for me looks like a hug or like a chat or something.

Um, that's, you know, it's different for everyone, but for him support looks like, um, space.

That's textbook me.

Support is leave me alone.

It's my love language.

That's really what it's about here.

We're talking about you have different love languages and she goes on to explain that, um, this is much because of the way that like your early, early years, you're used to independence.

Um, she's smart. Let me just it's definitely been hard and he has like changed and he's changed so much.

When I first met him, I was not thinking, oh, I could actually see it.

Yeah, no, I remember those days.

You've, um, you've changed you've changed.

How have you changed?

Wow. How have I changed?

All this sort of intimacy related relationship, love related stuff.

How have you changed?

I think I've definitely become more willing to accept something.

I do still struggle with that.

But I've definitely tried to do that more.

So I think for me, it was...

I really cared about Emily.

So I really wanted to be the best that I could for her as well.

And I just think like the level of desire to make that happen was really high.

So I've just... I think before, I wasn't very willing to compromise on a lot of stuff.

I was like, I'm doing my thing, you either fit in or you don't see it later, whatever.

Whereas with Emily.

It reminds me of you.

With Emily, I was like, she's special, I really wanna make this work and I'm gonna have to...

It's actually a benefit to me if I can compromise because she, that kind of having that connection will also bring a lot to my life and I need to, I need it.

She kind of got over the fence, she got over the wall of the castle and managed to invade and change you from inside.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But you didn't wanna let anyone over the fucking...

Nah, nah. Is that how it's been for you as well then?

100%. Yeah. I met a person who I cared about so much.

Yeah. It's exactly what you said.

I was finally willing to compromise on things.

Before then it was like, as you say, my way or the highway.

Don't get in the way of my dreams.

You're either on the bus or you're off it.

But not like I'm willing to go in a different direction in some areas of my life here.

And I think that's good news for a lot of people that are avoidance because it offers us all hope that we'll meet someone and they'll be worth it.

And they'll help to rewire some of the evidence we have from our earliest years about what relationships are and aren't and the freedom they make us compromise and all of those things.

She sounds like a really wonderful person.

She is man, she's great.

She's the best. I love her to bits.

They always say you strengthen a relationship by going through something difficult together.

And that's exactly what happened as you ran the length of Africa.

The really remarkable thing was I was reading about your preparation for this trip.

And to say the least, Russ, you were ill prepared.

Yeah. You landed in South Africa with 10K, which is 4 % of the money that you would need to make it the whole way.

I mean, there's so many other things here.

You knew that you couldn't get through, think it was Angola?

Algeria. You knew you couldn't get through Algeria because they don't issue visas if you're not in the country.

They denied our visa already.

And they don't issue visas when you're not in the country, we already left.

So you just look like I figure it out when we get there.

Pretty much. What is that mentality?

Because there's so many people that need everything figured out and all the answers and to feel that psychological feeling of I'm ready.

You don't seem to give a fuck, frankly.

I don't think I was afforded the luxury of being able to wait really.

We were running out of money.

It was now and ever, make it work with what you've got or don't do it basically.

And I was like, I think we can do it.

Where did this 10K come from?

Well, we actually got 50K to start with from an investor.

That he was a mate of a mate.

I've managed to persuade to give us some money to get things going.

What was in it for him?

He's got a percentage of like everything we make off the backend.

So he's done all right.

He was a risky one.

That's a hell of a.

Yeah. Risky one for sure.

I think he, it was more like a, he just wanted to see it happen.

He was a fellow working boy, year younger than me.

Made a bunch of money in crypto.

And yeah, so he fronted the first bit of money to get us going.

And 50K was more than enough to get us going.

But what ended up happening is that the mission got delayed more and more.

We had some people involved at the start that kind of long story, they kind of said that these things were going to happen, blah, blah, blah.

Brands were going to happen.

All of this stuff they were trying to make happen.

None of it ended up coming to fruition.

Did they take money?

They didn't take any money.

No, they, but we ended up burning through a lot of the money before we were supposed to be on the start line with like 50K and we ended up, months rolled by, we wasted money on X, Y, Z ideas, didn't come.

So we basically got to a point where I kind of got rid of all these people.

Start line, 10 grand, I was like, if we don't get funding within, you know, if we don't get any kind of sponsorship within the first month, we're this is game over because we've run out of money.

Said to all my team, going to have to delay your wages, et cetera, just really tightened up.

And then I got a message from some bloke from dragons then like two weeks in.

Who did, who did, who did Jones?

Yeah, no, so I mean, I don't know.

This is another thing that people probably don't know that you're like such a massive part of the story.

Like, you know, when, when you messaged, I remember being in South Africa, I think it was about 10 days, two weeks in or something like this.

Got a message from you.

There was like, oh, like, just seeing what you're doing, something like this, love it, like if you need any help, let me know.

And I was like, mate, you should see, I ran Emily up.

I was like, you were never going to believe who's just messaged me.

Like, it was crazy.

You know, obviously, you all got sorted out.

Perfect Ted got sorted out.

Two unbelievable sponsors.

And it just kind of changed the whole mission, man.

Like I can't even put into words how grateful I am that you messaged me that.

Like, it was, that was like, you know, sometimes when you have like a moment where you're like, wow, like that's like that you were that moment for me.

Really? Yeah. Yeah.

But you did that. I know.

You didn't know that like, no, you did.

I'll tell you why you did that because two things.

The first thing is you had messaged me a year earlier and I just had totally missed it.

But the second thing is you went in, did some, so you planted a seed there.

Then you went in, did something so awesome that the world brought it to my attention.

And when the world brought it to my attention, I looked at what you were doing.

I think you were two weeks, roughly two weeks in.

And I just thought it was awesome.

I thought you're a cool guy and I could play out how this mission goes in my head.

And I thought this is really fucking cool.

I'm an investor in, I'm a part owner in various companies.

And there was two companies that I am very close to, Perfect Ted and Hugh, who I felt were just perfect because no pun intended, because Perfect Ted are like an energy drink company that I met on Dragon's Den.

You need energy. And they're all about positive energy and the founders are very much like you.

And then obviously Hugh on the nutrition side of things, I thought they were perfect for you as well.

And I messaged both of them and they were both down instantly, I just sent WhatsApp.

So I said, there's this guy, he's running the length of Africa, he's so cool.

He's really, he's like gonna do it.

And both brands were like down in one message.

I messaged them both the founders on WhatsApp and they were like, we're in.

So, and you had done that, you had because you had messaged me, most people, I say this because sometimes people can see things like pivotal moments in their journey as luck.

But I think it's important to highlight that you planted a seed a year earlier when you literally sent me like three pages in a day.

Yeah, I guess I'll describe it like, I was knocking on the door, but I needed someone to open it and you opened it.

So like, it's a kind of a dual thing there.

I think you planted a lot of seeds.

Yeah, I was knocking on a few doors, yeah.

And I'm sure there's lots of messages you sent that were never replied to.

So I'm really glad that I saw it.

I'm really glad, but I saw it because you were doing something awesome and it just popped up in my feed one day.

And I went down a rabbit hole and I was like, this is fucking cool.

This guy is cool. It'd be dope to be, you know, to do anything we can to see him see this through.

So that gives you a little nudge forward, those two incredible brands.

You get going on the mission, you run into a bunch of health issues.

I mean, it went around the internet for a while.

I think at this time you've got, I don't know, you didn't have many followers at the time.

20, 30, 40 ,000 followers.

Yeah, it kind of grew.

It grew a lot quite quickly, early doors.

But we started the mission with, I think 20k on Insta, 6k on Twitter, 10k on YouTube.

And you start pissing blood by like day 30.

Is there a part of you at day 30 when you're running through Africa and you're pissing blood and you go, I ain't going to be able to do this?

Nah. I knew it was bad.

You're running out of money a couple of weeks before.

Then you start pissing blood.

For most people, either one of those things would be, okay.

Let's get a flight.

Well, I just I knew that, you know, it was a bad situation, but it would probably end eventually.

And then we'd carry on going.

You get robbed in South Africa, which is the first sort of minor robbery incident thieves approach you.

They try and take your stuff.

I think you give them a lift home.

Yeah. Yeah. That was two guys came up to me whilst I was running at night.

One came in front of me, one came behind me and I kind of instantly knew this was a bit shaky.

And I just went a bit mad.

Just like weighed up situation just started acting a bit crazy.

Started beating my chest and shouting and stuff to try and put them off.

Cause I could, I've got the feeling that like, okay, they're going to, this is an attempt, but they haven't gone straight in with the robbery.

They're kind of feeling out.

So it's like trying to give them enough of reason to think I'm crazy enough.

It's just not worth it.

It kind of worked. Sorry, you started beating your chest.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I started beating my chest.

I started shouting as they, cause they just joined.

I was mid run and they joined me running.

It's like one in front, one behind, they were running it like they, I think they, it was a situation where they were trying to fill me out, you know, like, should we rob this guy?

Yeah. And I just thought if I can put them off enough.

So can you describe to me what you?

I literally beat in my chest.

Yeah. I was just like, we're running by.

Like just going totally a bit, just to make them think like, oh, this guy's, you know, he's a bit off it.

Maybe we just get the next one.

Did you learn that somewhere?

Or was that like a plan you had?

No, that was just purely like, you wrap differently to different situations.

So we've been robbed at gunpoint where there's a gun in my face and I'm not going to start beating my chest cause I don't want a bullet in my head.

But then there's other times where you think like, you're kind of looking at them going, he's actually a bit nervous to rob me.

So if I can put him off enough, then he's just not going to bother.

Which was that situation.

So what happens when you start beating your chest, acting like a lunatic?

Started beating my chest, I like lunatic.

The one got the runt, the guy running behind me ended up dropping off.

So then it was just a guy in front of me.

He was quite a small guy anyway.

And I was like, I don't reckon he's about it.

And then... Did you tell him you're the hardest key?

And then we ended up speaking a little bit and he was like, oh, like my friend was going to rob you but we're not hit, but he's gone.

We're not going to rob you.

And I was like, oh, your friend was going to rob me?

Was he? Yeah, like nice.

And then, you know, I actually ended up speaking to him and he was saying like, he's just, he needs some money to like feed his family and stuff.

He was living in a township next to the road which was like pretty bad conditions.

And I was like, look, mate, my boy's going to come pick me up in a couple of minutes.

Like, we'll give you some food.

And he was like, oh, sweet.

You fed the robber.

Yeah, so then the boys came and then we ended up giving a lift back.

What a nice story. Yeah.

It's going to be a movie one day, that.

This whole thing's going to be a movie.

You get to Angola and then you get robbed at gunpoint.

Yeah, robbed at gunpoint in Angola that was.

350. Yeah, I mean, they're a bit more successful that time.

I got a lot of my stuff.

What happened? So, around 30K I was on a lunch break.

We sat in the van. Me, Jared, Harry, my sporting and we were just chatting shit like usual.

Two, three guys pull up on a motorbike.

Two of them get off, come up the side of the van, crack the door open, gun in all of our faces, started speaking Portuguese.

Then they took a bunch of stuff.

Yeah, that was a nightmare to be honest.

They got passports, money, cameras, drone, phones.

It was long. Have you processed this stuff?

I don't know. I don't think so, man.

Like the thing is, is that these things happen.

You're on the road again the next day.

So, you know. Could you say it's such a casual sort of blasé way, but if someone had a gun pointed at them, most people would be in therapy trying to resolve this sort of complex set of psychological implications that causes.

And when I asked you the question, I could see your demeanor changes a little bit because it's not as blasé as you sometimes make out, is it?

I don't know, man. I guess it just is what it is.

I haven't really, I don't know if I've deeped it that much at this point.

You know, we're over it.

Nothing bad happened in the end.

I mean, we got robbed, but no one died.

You lost the cash you had, the equipment and your passports, which is probably the most annoying thing of all those things.

Yeah, that cost us like at least two or three weeks in terms of going to really get visas and things.

Day 50, you get to day 100 and you're at day 102.

When I say day 102, does it bring back any memories?

A couple, yeah, a couple.

Congo. Congo, DRC. Yeah, that was one hell of an experience that.

You described this is probably the hardest part of the whole trip.

Probably the hardest part of my whole life.

Really? Mm -hmm. You've not talked about this much in detail either, for some reason.

So we made a YouTube series online, which kind of followed the whole thing.

It's the only YouTube video that I didn't release because it was quite, I mean, it was quite, it's a difficult one at the time as well because it was the hardest time for us as a team.

And we, there was a lot of arguments, a lot of fallouts around that.

And I didn't think that the video that we've made was really what told the story, how I wanted it to be told.

What happened? So, yeah.

You're emotional about this.

Yeah, I mean, it, yeah, that whole thing was mad.

The, so we got to DRC, I think 800 we got to DRC.

It was hostile from the start.

We'd been warned loads about it, about the country.

It's one of the poorest countries in the world.

It's quite known for corruption.

And we'd been sent the videos of the craziest things happening there.

And I think we were all a bit apprehensive.

You've been sent what kind of videos?

The craziest, like people getting chopped up, all kinds of stuff.

Yeah, it was, it definitely, yeah, I mean, I don't know how much I can really, what I would say about DRC is that we spent a few days there.

My experience was very subjective.

It's a massive country, loads of people, loads of great people, but my personal experience of the small amount of time I spent there was a bit rough.

But yeah, I mean, we landed in the country, across the border.

It was a very chaotic border town.

We had people from the get -go, very, not very happy to see us at all, shouting at me whilst I was running, trying to like explore us for money.

Officials, all this kind of stuff, trying to get money out of us.

And we'd heard about all of this from people traveling.

So we kind of half knew what we were rolling into, but it really created a kind of atmosphere that was difficult, challenging.

Yeah, I mean, the day before, day 102, we had a guy come up to, guy came up to me with a rock, spikes in the rock.

And he was like, I'm gonna smash your head in with this.

He was speaking French, I didn't really get it, but Harry spoke French.

So he was basically threatening us with this big, spiky rock that he had in his hand, saying, give me three quid, the equivalent of three quid, or I'm gonna start smashing it all up.

And so we, I gave him a quid in the end because I'm not getting my head smashed in over three quid, but also I didn't want to get word around that there was a bunch of people just throwing money around to anyone that would threaten them.

So, yeah, I mean, woke up day 102, I was running 100k that day, and I felt very anxious from the get go, really finding it difficult already.

Ran, left the boys in the morning like I normally do, ran 20k, then ran another 20k.

Start, we took a turn off onto a dirt road, so the boys are playing this route, took, went down this dirt road.

Then the van, basically, the sport van couldn't get to me.

So, the boys sent a guy on a motorbike, and so I'm running around this dirt bike and this guy on a motorbike just keeps trying to stop me.

And I was so like, scatty already, that I was, I didn't want to stop for, he was trying to get me to stop, and I was like, nah, I'd had it the day before people trying to stop me on motorbikes and it was all a bit, didn't, didn't feel great, like, I was, I was quite anxious about the whole thing.

Anyway, eventually I did stop, he gave me a note that basically said like, the boys can't get round to where we were going to meet, but they're going to go to this other place and meet there.

And it's about 20k through the jungle, no roads, like barely even a path, I was just kind of like whacking my way through bushes to get to this meeting point where I was going to try and find the boys, run out of water, phones, got no signal.

And I'm going through these, these bushes, stumble into this village.

And cause, I think cause of the experience that I already had in the first couple of days at DRC, I was very much like, I just want to get my head down and get through these places as quickly as possible with less fuss as possible.

So I'm running through this village, and like people shout at me and stuff, and I'm like, okay, this is happening all the time now.

Like just care I'm going, care I'm going.

But I think I upset quite a lot of the village by doing that.

And then the chief of the village comes over.

And then, you know, before you know it, I'm like surrounded by half the village.

They're all like very upset.

They don't get what I'm, they don't get who I am, what I'm doing, why I'm there.

And they start trying to say that I need to give them money.

I didn't have anything on me.

So then, like the chief of the village kind of got some people away and he got two blokes, took me out into the bush with machetes, and I was bricking it.

Yeah, I was absolutely bricking it, thinking like every, my mind's totally racing at this point, I'm like, what is going on here?

Why am I going out to the bush?

Like this doesn't make any sense.

Like, is this a shake down?

Like what is the worst happening?

Don't know. And then got out into the bush.

I basically emptied all my bags, had some biscuits, gave them the biscuits and then just darted.

And then I was just like right, beeline for this meeting spot.

And mine's totally frazzled at this point.

I've got, I'm hearing motorbikes coming.

I'm hearing people jumping in bushes, like totally just out, kind of off it here.

Kind of get through this jungle bit, get to this meeting spot, the boys aren't there.

Now I'm really like, oh this is bad because I'm about 50 something K in, dehydrated, I've got no water, I've got no signal.

And I don't know where the boys are, I don't know how to get to them.

And I'm in the middle of the jungle.

And I know that there's like, I've upset a lot of people in the local area and I've just ran away from the wall.

I'm like, this is bad.

This is bad news. Anyway, I figured out that the tarmac, the last nine bit of tarmac was, I think about 15 or 20 K away.

And I was like, I reckon I can just about make it there.

And if I make it there, then that makes sense that the boys, that's the last bit they could get to.

So did you just sprinted away from the guys with the machetes?

Pretty much, yeah. Like it was, they walked me out into the bush and I didn't really, I didn't know what was happening, but I was just so like, this is bad.

Gave them biscuits and just died.

And then like, I've ran off and I can just hear loads of like commotion going on.

And I'm just running through this jungle.

It's all quiet. I mean, it's all quite mad.

I'm like adrenaline going through the roof.

I was like, oh yeah.

Were you scared? Yeah, I was petrified man.

I was absolutely petrified.

I think what didn't help is that, I didn't understand any of the language, like Lingala local language.

Didn't know any French either, which would have helped.

And I didn't have a very good understanding of the culture or anything.

So I think if I went for it again, a lot of these things would have been rationalized in my mind easier.

But because I was so unaware of the situation and I'd had all of these horror stories built up in my head and the first couple of days in DLC was quite rough.

And I was just like in this spot where it didn't take much for me to kind of just assume the worst of everything.

So it really just got me into a place where I was like quite skatty.

But yeah, I mean, I find, I find this, I go see the bit of time I can not write.

Let's head there. It's about, you know, two hours away, I could probably make it there.

And as I'm going now, I'm going down this dirt path, another two blocks on a motorbike pull up.

And, you know, I was like, I just don't want any part of this.

They're trying to stop me.

You know, mine's totally gone.

And they, they were trying to, I think they were trying to communicate to me like, oh, we're going to take you to your friends, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And I'm thinking about, I'm like, if these guys, who are these guys sent from?

They sent from this village or that village.

Is there like a Bush telegraph of, there's a white guy running around here.

He's upset, like don't get him kind of thing.

So I'm like, nah, not doing it, blah, blah, blah.

Thinking, you know, the boys, they send a note with the driver if it's from them.

And it's got these guys had no note.

And I was like, ah, but it was, you know, getting later and later, I was like, I've got no water.

I've got no signal.

I've got no way of know where the boys are.

They're probably no further than 10 or 20K away.

So if I'm, if I get on this bike and I'm on the bike for longer than half an hour or an hour, then I know that it's bad news.

So I just thought, fuck it.

Get on the bike. How long were those two men on the bike following you and asking you to get on the bike?

A while, like, probably, we probably about 20 minutes.

So yeah, got on the bike, half an hour went by.

Then now went by, I start like kicking off.

I'm getting off the bike.

I'm having a go at them, but like the language barriers just, we're not wanting to sound the word anyone's saying.

And then yeah, ended up spending seven hours on my motorbike going into the jungle, which was like terrible.

Seven hours. Seven hours, yeah.

What goes through your mind in those seven hours?

I thought, well, I assumed after about an hour and a half, I was like, okay, well, I am getting kidnapped.

Then like we're, this is it.

You know, and then I was thinking rationally, I was like, had such limited knowledge about DRC or any of this kind of stuff.

I was like, they're probably just gonna, they probably just want money, but then you also start thinking, well, maybe they're just gonna kill you.

And the stories that I'd heard about DRC and that wasn't the craziest thing.

You know, like people get stabbed for Fiverr.

Literally like a couple of quid people get stabbed.

People get killed for the, a watch.

So I was really trying to, like I was really trying to be rational about the situation, but just like very, quite emotional as well.

And then, I mean, for the last few hours, I was just like, you know, what God has for me, he has for me, you know, whatever it is, it is.

And that's fine. And I was just trying to be like, you know, it's out of my hands, but it was very scary.

I was like so nervous, like just shaking.

They took me to this village in the jungle.

Later night, no electricity.

It's like wooden little shacks with tin corrugated roofs and stuff.

And got me off the bike, took me into this little hut.

Then loads of the men of the village came into the hut.

They were all arguing about money and this kind of stuff.

And then the second chief of the village walks in and says to me like, you speak to me in English very slowly.

And he understood a few words.

I said to him like, this is a big mistake, you know, like, call my friend.

He speaks French and like, and then he can come and like, we've got money in, we can sort it out.

And then they spoke on the phone.

And then basically we agreed like the boys would come.

We've got the money.

And then it took the boys like, I think about 36, 48 hours to get there because it was so rural.

There was no roads go in there.

It was all dirt paths.

They tried to rent some motorbikes, got scammed.

Then they ended up trying to borrow the police, a police chief's four by four, who also scammed us.

So yeah, so then, I mean, the boys got there eventually.

We gave everyone some money and then I was free to go.

I was just looking as you were talking about how fast seven hours is.

And for people in the UK, seven hours is London to Edinburgh.

Yeah, it's not in DRC.

So if I go from London to Edinburgh in a car, that's seven hours, just to give people an idea of like how long that is on the back of a motorbike with strange men going through the middle of the - We're literally going through the jungle.

So it's like little tiny paths that are going up and down through rivers, through over the mountains.

For seven hours. Seven hours, yeah.

I was like gripping on the side.

I was absolutely done in by the end of it.

And you got to that village they wanted money.

Did they explain anything?

Did they say anything to you about who they were?

I think they were, I think they were actually just, they were more scared about who I was and why I was there.

And all the rest of it.

And the, I mean, after the phone call with the team, things seemed quite settled.

Like they were pretty all right with me.

And they, I think they, you know, it was, I was just in a state of like totally, totally whacked.

What do you mean? Just exhausted, but like petrified and I was just very nervous around everything twitchy, you know?

Yeah. Have you suffered with anxiety?

I don't know. I think, I don't think so, but like, I do, obviously I'm a human.

I do know what anxiety feels like.

And I do get it sometimes, but I was, I was anxious then for sure.

You're speaking to Emily back home, your partner throughout the journey on most days, but for this period of time, sounds like you were out of communication with her.

And she seems like she was very, very worried about you.

She was, yeah. In fact, she told, she told us on a research call that she thought you had died.

I mean, I thought I was going to die as well.

Did you actually? Yeah.

Genuinely thought you were going to die.

And how did you, how do you sort of rationalize that thought?

How do you deal with that thought when you, and what comes to mind?

Like what are you thinking?

What if you, if you really believe, you know, I think I'm going to die here.

Like, I mean, it's different.

I guess it's different for me.

I was just like, you know, if this is the way that God wants it, then I guess it is.

That's it, you know.

And there's more for me elsewhere.

That's how I was, that's how I was trying to make sense of it in my brain.

Were you thinking about people back home?

Yeah. I mean, I was thinking about, I was thinking about like all the things that, I wish I had the chance to repair that I haven't in relationship with my parents.

I was thinking about all the things that, you know, I wanted to do in my life that I wouldn't be able to do.

I was thinking about what it would do to, you know, everyone that, got myself killed in the Congo for just trying to run the neck for Africa.

I felt stupid because I was like, you know, this was, these were like mistakes that have been made that were like quite, should have been quite easily preventable that we didn't do.

And, you know, that's helped me in my responsibility as well.

So, it was, yeah, it was a hard few hours.

You're thinking about things that you should have repaired with your parents.

It's interesting in moments like that, people always talk about how they have a retrospective like clarity on their life and their priorities that most of us will never understand because we've never been in a situation where we've genuinely believed there was a chance that we weren't gonna make it

out. When you say you were thinking about how you should have repaired relationships with your parents, what do you mean?

I don't know. I guess it's like you said, it was a moment of clarity where I was like, I've probably wasted a lot of years there holding onto things that weren't necessary, for bullshit reasons.

And, like life's too short for that.

What have you been holding onto?

Like resentment and pride and, you know, not trying to understand, all like avoiding things and not trying to connect with people that love me and these kinds of things.

You think these are your last hours?

You've obviously got a person there in your life who has loved you and has shown you a different way to connect and to be and to intimacy and all of those things, which is Emily.

Are you thinking about Emily in those moments as well?

Yeah, I was, yeah, I mean, I was thinking of all the things that we talked about, like our future together and everything that we wanted to build and like having kids together and all these things that just felt like they were just, and just felt like I was letting her down.

And, you know, I wasn't, like delivering the things that I, you know I was going to run the length of half and we're going to do, everything's going to be all right.

Like don't worry about, you know, all these dangers.

No, it's going to be fine, babe.

And, yeah, I knew how much, how hard that was, that time was for her as well.

But I mean, especially, I'm in the thick of it, you know.

I'm in the thick of it, she's like at home, just to think about it all the time.

And there was a few moments like that when we didn't have signal and things.

Your boys eventually find you.

They pay off the guys in that village and they let you go.

Doesn't really stop there though, does it?

Because there's so much now to process and to figure out and to kind of - That was, I think the hardest point for us as a team of the mission was like the aftermath of that.

It's very difficult because I think we were all struggling.

Everyone was right at their limit and probably because that no one had any spare energy to think about anyone else in that situation.

It was all like, well, I'm struggling.

And so that's it, you know.

And yeah, I mean, there was a good few arguments.

People don't really know about this moment.

No. Because people like me that just watch from YouTube and from social media, we just think, oh, they're all getting on, it's all fine.

Oh, it's Piss and Blood again, ha ha, funny.

But when I did those research calls and spoke to members of your team and spoke to people around you and even members of the team that were out there with you, this was really a falling out amongst the team that no one in the public ever got to see.

It's difficult to talk about because I don't want to throw anyone under the bus or paint anyone in a bad like we were all ultimately just trying our best.

I think for me, what I recognised that I did wrong in that situation was I set us up in a bad way.

Like I'd hired so heavily on content side because I knew that we start with no money and we had to get content out there to get brands to sponsor us that I basically recruited three people that were almost entirely there for content reasons.

Being able to make YouTube videos, take photos, record documentary, this kind of thing.

I completely blindsided the logistics element and like having knowledge of Africa and all of this kind of stuff.

I just thought, that's a luxury we can't afford right now.

Because of that, I'd ended up asking a support team that were mostly there for content to basically be like African logistics experts.

And that's put them in a position that's obviously going to be really difficult.

So yeah, I mean, the whole situation could have been avoided with different planning.

I recognised that and I thought off the back of that, I was like, right, I'm going to get a four by four because the van can't travel up any of these dirt roads.

And I'm going to hire two new people.

One of which is going to be like a proper logistics guy that's going to get us through all these tough situations.

A team member actually departed around this time as well.

Yeah, that was a difficult one.

We actually, we had a big argument.

Me and Harry had a big argument on just after this Congo thing.

We were travelling back through these villages.

He'd obviously had a rough time as well trying.

He'd been scammed for motorbikes, had these dealings with the police chief.

And as we were coming back, he was buying like fags and alcohol and stuff in all these little tiny remote villages.

And I had an issue with it because we're going through some of the poorest places in the world.

There's kids running around with like manarish bellies kind of feed themselves.

And as Europeans, if we bowl through these villages, drinking and smoking, blah, blah, blah, then it's giving off the sign that we got a lot of money to spare.

And that's why we're getting scammed so much for extortionate amounts of money.

So I had an issue with it and I told him, and I probably didn't say it in a way that was how good leadership would say it, you know?

So we had a big argument about that.

I've obviously just been in this rural village for a couple of days.

I'm already, I'm tightly strong already.

So is he. And then we get back to the other boys.

These guys had no idea what had just happened.

And they were all struggling themselves.

So they were very much, everyone was just concentrating themselves.

And they were all kind of like, everyone was a bit pissed off of each other.

And then we had a meeting and I just blew up, just blew up, started shouting at everyone, throwing chairs about completely lost my call.

It's not, not, obviously not the way to act.

And yeah, I mean, it was, it was all good.

It's all good. A few days after that, I was, I just went straight back to running, wanting to get out of DLC as quickly as possible.

It was, everyone was on eggshells.

We got to Cabinda, which is an Angolan exclave.

And then I said to, I was like, to Harry, you're going on holiday.

And I said to the other boys, you'll all be going on holiday at some point.

I think at that point I'd realized that for me, I'm running every day.

And my body's very stressed.

I'm very stressed in general.

I'm managing a lot of things.

And I can't have the people around me also being at the edge of what they can do.

Cause then it just leaves me in a totally fucked spot.

So I tried to kind of put some reorganized reshuffle things so that that wouldn't happen by sending everyone holiday, hired Gus, hired Jamie, another editor to take some workload off stand cause the geezer was working like 18 hours a day trying to get two YouTube videos out a week whilst recording and producing.

And I was like, right, I need to change something there.

Gus, ex -power from Dutch military, he'd cycled up and down Africa by himself, absolute beast of a bloke.

I was like, he's coming in.

He's going to do our logistics and one of the best recruits I've ever made.

So that's kind of how the aftermath happened.

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But it's not smooth sailing.

I mean, as you continue on, you have all of these issues.

You have a bunch more health issues.

Your back starts to give out.

I think around day 205 and 206, you completely stopped because you had back issues.

But the back was probably the worst injury.

It's not even healed still.

But basically my back started to season up and I would get like shooting nerve pains coming down my leg and it would just totally, like totally jar and wouldn't be able to move.

Or yeah, I mean, God knows what happened there.

I mean, there's a chance that you've done permanent damage to your back.

Probably. I mean, I ran the marathon on Sunday and it was still going a bit, so.

Did you have to stop?

No, but it's basically been on and off.

On and off, very painful for the last kind of, well, whenever that was day 205, since then.

Emily said around that time, that sort of 200 day mark you were, like you were pretty done.

What does she mean by that?

When she said you were pretty done?

I was in a lot of pain, like every day.

So I really just wanted it to be over at that point.

And that was still like five months to go.

You still have five months to go.

Yeah, yeah. Was that, I've heard you answer this question before, but what day was the closest to quitting?

The closest, where you thought, do you know what, maybe the thought...

The only time I ever really had the thought was in the Congo.

Really? On the motorbike.

Yeah, like that was the only time I actually ever actually thought like, why am I doing this, this is stupid.

Why am I going to get myself killed by this?

And it was a fleeting thought, came in.

And then I thought, well, I ain't got a fucking choice.

I've got to do it now anyway.

December time, which is day two for one.

You're in, I think the Ivory Coast.

And the Ivory Coast think you're a spy.

They took you to the local police station because they thought you were a spy.

Yeah, they were very confused.

Did they tell you that they thought you were a spy?

Or did you just kind of piece that together?

Yeah, it was more piecing that together.

They were very confused about who I was, why I was there, why I was running in the middle of the night.

And yeah, they made sure they did all their checks on me, so that wasn't any suspect individual.

January comes around the new year.

How'd you celebrate Christmas out there and all that stuff?

Well, yeah, it was back to basics kind of Christmas.

We had chickens on the fire and it got a bit pissed.

Missed the family? Yeah, Christmas would have been a bit of a weird one for my family anyway.

But yeah, like, I mean, it was business as usual.

I think it was pretty much focused on the job and had a couple drinks and that was that.

One a day shortly after that, that really, I think things took a bit of a turn in terms of publicity was when you reached Algeria and you had the issues with your visa because Algeria, as we said, is a country that doesn't grant visas unless you're in your home country currently.

And so you were advised by the FCO not to travel there, I believe.

I can't remember, a lot of people advised us not to travel there.

And the Algerian authorities were saying absolutely no to you getting a visa.

So you decided to start an online campaign to try and like, it's such an interesting thing because very few people would have a country say, we're not gonna give you a visa, you cannot come into our country.

And you decide that the way to overcome that is with some tweets.

Yeah, it was bold strategy.

We were strategizing for a couple of weeks before like, right, this, you know, we are backs against the wall here, what are we gonna do?

And we kind of, you know, Gus and Stan had, were putting together these kinds of plans to get residency in Mauritania and then potentially, you know, do all of these little things to try and somehow get a visa.

And just got to a point where I said like, boys, let's just tell Mary, just get this, let's just blast it on socials because it's gonna take someone right at the top to say yes, you know, just swing for the fences.

And that's what happened.

You launched this kind of online campaign led predominantly by Twitter to get someone in Algeria, someone high up or a politician in the UK to speak to Algeria.

The campaign goes pretty viral, everyone's posting it in the UK.

So much so that even Elon Musk tweeted at one point, which is bad, basically saying that this is what this platform's for, what he loves about the platform.

That was sick. And then Algeria tweet you basically say, and we'll give you a visa on the spot, which is mad, isn't that bad?

Actually mad. What do you think about where you came from?

You've got Elon Musk tweeting and they're like Algeria's Twitter account.

I'll tell you that, you go and come on in.

We're gonna change our laws so that you can come through here and Elon Musk's tweeting, that is just mad.

It was mad. It was absolutely crazy.

And then you get through, you get your visa, you're able to enter Algeria.

The Sahara desert was another big challenge for you.

You get to day 313, the truck breaks down in the Sahara desert, 250 kilometers away from the nearest road.

What I found so interesting about this little chapter in the story was that when we spoke to Stan, who is part of your team on the research call, he says that you weren't really concerned because everyone just assumed everything would be fine.

We'd been through much worse.

Stan said that the resilience they had built up was accumulative and gradually they became less and less concerned about setbacks.

And I read that and it was really inspiring to me because it says something about life.

We all have these like subjective setbacks that we can like fall into a dark hole thinking or like the end and it could just be like Jenny, it works and I'll see.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Whereas you're in the Sahara desert and your truck is broken down 250 kilometers from the nearest road, the repair team can't fix it.

And you guys just shrug, it'll be fine.

Barely before that, mate, I can't lie.

Really? Yeah, yeah, I remember just thinking, ah, that's a minor, we'll figure that out.

Because you had so much evidence that you guys had been able to figure out so many other things.

Yeah, and I think like by the end as well, like the team was so, it was slick.

Like the way everyone was operating, everyone knew what they had to do.

No one needed, you know, no one needed telling.

We all just got on with our jobs and the amount of output for four people was crazy.

That really is what resilience is.

People always ask like how do you become more resilient?

But it seems to, your story taught me that it's like go through some difficult shit together and come out the other end and you'll have evidence.

Yeah, and even if you go through some difficult shit and it doesn't work out, then you've got a few lessons in there, right?

At least you survived, right?

That's a lesson. And then you get to the final leg of the trip and all of the people around you tell me that there was a noticeable increase in your sort of happiness and demeanor when you could start to see the finish line.

In your mind, you get sort of what, two weeks out and the social media interest goes pretty fucking crazy.

Yeah, it did, yeah.

Yeah, even like mainstream media kind of picked up, I think, the last few days.

Last few days? Yeah.

The whole of the UK only had one thing to talk about.

Really, yeah. I'm sure it was, you know, very much the case in other parts of the world, I saw news reports in America and other parts of the world, but it felt like back here in the UK, the UK was just talking about one thing.

It was following you.

You know this, surely your girlfriend and stuff must have told you it was fucking pandemonium.

Every social, you know, I'd go on social media and anyone that I knew was posting about you running that last leg, driving money to those charities that mean a whole lot to you.

As you come into that last leg, that last day, crowds of people, like hundreds of people flew out there.

It's nice. Absolutely nice.

And they're running with you.

A lot of them, I heard from some of your team, I think it was Stan that was saying to me, a lot of people flew out there, but they were keeling over and like collapsed on the side of the road because I don't think they anticipated that this isn't London, mate.

Yeah, it was so funny.

Like Tunisia at that time wasn't even that hot.

Really? Coming from the UK, everyone's just absolutely cooked.

And you come into that last day and your dad is there as well?

Yeah, yeah. It was an emotional day, man.

My dad came and ran, he could only bang a two or three count these days.

He came and ran and put his arm around me and that and it was special.

Your relationship with him started to pick up as you got closer to the finish line, it seems.

Yeah. I've heard that from a few people.

Yeah. Throughout the whole mission really, I think, but Emily's definitely a big part of helping that.

What was it like to see him?

And where did you see him?

Was it on the last day?

On the last day. Yeah, we ran a little bit of couple tears.

Just like. What were the tears for?

I don't know, I guess it was like a signal.

It was like, this is actually over now, my dad's here.

And everything I've been through, but also everything he'd been through, everything his dad's been through.

It just felt like a moment.

He was proud of you.

Very, very proud of you.

We got to speak to him on the phone and hearing how proud of you he was, was one of the most moving things actually, of this whole experience of speaking to your friends and family, hearing just how proud your father is of you.

It moved me when I heard it.

I actually. I couldn't believe it's my son, crossing the line and, it was not real sort of thing.

It is, you know, it's hate.

You know, but it took a while to see it.

He was sinking in now, really.

And he went on to say, I couldn't be more proud of my son.

Yeah, it's nice. It's powerful when your dad says that, isn't it?

Always. Always. You crossed the line.

How does that feel?

Oh, yeah. I mean, that finish line honestly felt like a fucking mystical thing that was never coming for the longest amount of time.

So the fact that it finally came was just like, wow, it's finally over, you know?

Like we actually did it.

So yeah, very grateful.

It's quite complex emotions.

I can see it in your face.

Yeah. What are those emotions?

I guess it's just grateful that it all worked out, you know?

And like all the hard work paid off and all the hard times paid off.

Your girlfriend said that you walked over to the edge of the water and reached the northern most point of Africa and you saluted.

And to her that salute meant more than just a sort of random token gesture.

It was a salute in many respects to say, you know, there's certain chapters closed in my life now and there's certain things that I've proven.

I think maybe the right word there is proven.

Yeah, I think so. Hopefully.

What have you proven?

I guess I'm capable, you know?

I can do it. Your mum was there as well?

The whole gang? The whole team.

Was that the best feeling of the whole journey?

That end moment with your family was, because I heard you described that the start was amazing, the first day.

And in that moment, I imagine it's overwhelming for so many reasons.

It's so much to process.

So overwhelming, man.

People there are screaming and with cameras and the sky news are running alongside you.

It's like, it looked batshit crazy.

I was watching. It was, it was totally mad.

I think the finish line was one of them things that was just so overwhelming.

Like, I don't know if you had it, like, when there's so much going on and it's so overwhelming, you kind of like, it almost feels like an out of body experience.

And you're someone that's like lived most of their life in relative isolation.

Yeah. You like being alone.

Yeah. Emily told me this, she goes, I think he's happiest when no one's there.

I do like being alone.

I do like it. Interesting still is like you get back to the UK and you've been running this crazy, you've done this crazy thing for more than a year, right?

It was 352 days. I was out there for 14 months though.

14 months. You get back to the UK, you land, the weather's different.

Obviously society's completely different.

Now everybody knows who you are here.

So wherever you go, someone's got, hardest case you got, I have a fucking picture lad.

Like, how is that? Still think I'm kind of working that out at the moment.

Don't really know. It's definitely different.

But everyone's so nice.

And I think like the stories of people, like they come up to me and they're like, I was running the marathon on Sunday and people were like, you're the reason I'm here and stuff.

I'm like, that's kind of mad, but that's sick as well, you know.

Are you feeling overwhelmed?

Yeah, definitely. How do you know?

Because I'm trying to distance myself from everyone and everything at the moment.

Really? Yeah. Like, yeah.

Just, I think my social batteries run out quite quick.

And once that happens, I'm just like, well, I need to be alone, like immediately.

Done. Can't speak. And you're getting all these emails now.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's just like, well, I think there's a lot of things happening as well that I'm not, that I don't know how to handle properly.

Like emails and all these other things.

You don't have management.

You don't have anyone, an agent, nothing.

I kind of need a moment to work out what I actually want to do.

I think, but it's fine.

Like, I'm not running ultra -maffins, sorry, there's no work.

Like, it's all right.

You know when you were running that marathon, you ran the London Marathon like two days ago or something.

Yeah. That's a very public place to be.

Yeah, I didn't quite anticipate that.

I had some people that saw you down there and they were a little bit concerned.

Really? Yeah. Cause you looked a little bit overwhelmed.

Yeah, was a little bit.

There was just a lot of people.

People grabbing at you and stuff.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, people are nice.

So like, they only had nice things to say to me.

It was just like so much stimulation.

You know what I mean?

I was like, I'm not used to this.

It's, I find it fascinating.

So you're at the very top of this mountain in terms of like publicity and attention and everyone's screaming and grabbing at you and wants you for stuff.

You've just done this incredible adrenaline inducing feet running the length of Africa.

There's all of these chemicals in your body, the adrenaline, the endorphins, all that stuff that comes from endurance sports.

And then done. Zero.

Like stop. How's that?

My body needed it. It's absolutely, you know, bashed in, but it is also, it was, it's been quite difficult to, I had like such a solid routine every day for a year.

It was like, get up, run, break, eat, run, do the same.

Every single day. And now the schedule is like wildly different.

It's like, okay, wake up, interview here or go and do this and then this and, you know, meet this person, chat to that person.

And I'm kind of missing that, that routine of exercising all the time.

Kind of want to start that back up again pretty soon.

Maybe not 60 or 70K a day, but like I need, I actually need that, you know?

So. How's your mental health?

I think, I think it's fine.

I just need to get, like, I just need to get a few things sorted.

Like I haven't got a place to live yet or I don't really, I don't know the immediate next steps, like career wise, what I'm going to do.

And a lot of things have changed obviously.

So it's just working out a lot of all of this stuff.

But I think when there's that many uncertainties in your life, it's always going to create a certain level of like mental challenges.

So I just need to figure them out and then I'll be all right.

You know, you must get bored of people asking you, what's next?

Cause it's so, this is what everyone asks when everyone does it, when anyone does anything interesting, like, what's next?

They want to know the next challenge.

I have got a lot of ideas.

I think like one of the big things that I would be really, what I really love to do is, in some way be part of like documenting other people's journeys when they go on, you know, they're starting from somewhere and they've got this big thing that they want to do and just like either helping them or being

like in some way do it.

So I'd really love to try and do more of that.

The last year as well, like one of the things that I struggled with is it, like it was so much, everything was geared towards basically helping me run.

And I've had enough of that.

You know, all of my support team were there basically to facilitate me running as far as I can in every day.

And it would be nice to do things for other people more than just everyone doing things for me.

That's an interesting thought.

You've had enough of that.

Enough of it being about you.

Yeah. It's interesting because you're someone that quite clearly through your story likes being alone and low key under the radar, do their own thing, spend time in my own head.

And then exactly that, doing exactly that in you running the length of Africa, being alone out there in the Sahara Desert alone has built this massive fucking audience and all these people watching you that are now like very much compromising in some respects.

Obviously there's so much privilege and stuff that comes with it, but they're compromising the very thing that you loved the most, which is you running from London to Asia alone, Asia to London alone, on your own with the hammock.

It's never quite going to be the same.

You know what I'm saying?

You can't even walk down the street in London.

You're like a really distinctive notice recognisable guy as well, because that ginger beard and stuff.

Yeah. Well, I think it will, it will die down like eventually.

So I think it's going to be all right.

It's just different.

Yeah, it's just different.

It's just different in a new set of problems, I guess.

Yeah. To manage and stuff.

Yeah. You did all of this to have the experience, you inspired all these people along the way and obviously central to this was the running charity.

They do incredible work for people kind of like yourself that are in that situation where you're looking for guidance.

Yeah. You're looking for a sense of purpose and meaning, et cetera, et cetera.

How much, how much, what was the goal?

Fundraising goal. Yeah, what's your fundraising goal?

A million? Yeah. And what are you on at the moment?

When I checked yesterday, I think it was 970.

I'm not exactly sure what it is now.

You've been down to see the work that this charity do, haven't you?

I've worked with the charity for like years.

You know, I used to, before I left, I was the adventure guide, so I'd take people, take groups of people up, climb the mountains or out into nature and we'd do stuff.

I did stuff with fundraisers who were raising money for the charity.

I mean, I did run for the running charity as well.

So I've been involved for four or five years.

Well, I have to say, Russ, you inspired millions of people.

You don't know this, but like when I'm in the gym, and I start thinking about quitting, the whole time you're in Africa, I was like, fucking Russ is running three marathons today.

So what the hell am I doing thinking about quitting?

It was this thought in the back of my head that helped me over and over again when I was in difficult moments, when I'm in the gym, when I'm thinking about quitting, when I'm thinking about not even doing the workout, and I'm like, that guy's gonna be up today running another 20, well, 60K or 100K.

So it was even like this motivational force for me in my life and I'm really, really appreciative of that.

But I also know, because I've seen the messages and I've seen the DMs, that for many people out there that are Russ at 19, that don't know the path forward, that don't have guidance, that don't have something to aim at, you've given them a blueprint for how to turn your life around.

And there's, you've given 19 year old Russ, all the 19 year old Russes out there are blueprint for how to turn your life around and you've given them evidence that it's possible.

And people in that situation, as you are, they don't always believe it's possible.

You described the hopelessness and the helplessness of that situation.

That's exactly what you've done.

And also, you've raised a shit ton of money.

Now, your goal was to raise a million pounds, which is a ridiculous amount of money.

So before we sat down, I made a few phone calls.

You know, I'm an investor in a few companies and I'm on the board of a few companies.

I called Julian Hurn at HUEL and I said, listen, wouldn't it be great if HUEL could get behind this and make sure he hit that target now?

There you go. Wow. They've donated the remainder of the cash to you for your fundraising.

So you've hit the million pounds.

And we wanted to say a huge well done and congratulations on behalf of all of us here at the D So thank you so much so much.

Thank you so much for everything.

Absolutely incredible.

And I know the team at Perfect Ted here, they've, could you chuck me this, um, daiquiri thing on here?

This one. This one.

Yeah. Again, I'm an, uh, an investor in this company and, uh, we, we have a partnership together.

They've also produced the hardest energy, which is a limited edition strawberry daiquiri flavored Perfect Ted, which will be on sale.

And I think the proceeds, much of the proceeds of this will be donated towards this campaign as well.

Um, it begs the question, why strawberry daiquiri?

Some people that don't know why strawberry daiquiri?

I don't even know. Like he just ended up becoming a thing that I was saying towards, throughout the mission.

I'd be like, get me to Tunisian beach for a strawberry daiquiri.

And it was in my head and then we finally got it done.

And then here as well.

So we'll, we'll include the link to buy this in the description below.

So anyone that wants to celebrate your incredible achievement with us will be able to do so.

We do have a last tradition on this podcast.

We usually have the end, where the last guest leaves a question for the next guest, not knowing who they're going to be leaving it for.

So if it's a good one, there's two questions.

Interestingly, I'm going to ask you both questions because they're both applicable.

Okay. So first question is if there was a movie about your life, which I'm sure there will be, who would you want to play you?

Ron Wazie. Okay. And question number two, what place do you feel the most comfortable in and why?

One of the things that I just love doing the most is mid run, going to Tesco, getting some snacks and just sitting outside Tesco on the pavement eating my snacks.

My favorite place ever.

Love doing that. Very relatable as always Russ.

Thank you so much, honestly.

Everything I said then about the inspiration you've given me is completely true.

And I know that there's so many people out there that feel the same way.

And you've made me want to aim higher in some of the things that I do in my life and push you bigger challenges and really push myself to the limits, because as you've proven in your life, all of the good things are on the other side of some form of discomfort.

The purpose, the meaning, the connection as you've proven.

And like so many people at the moment in society are suffering with their mental health, with a lack of sort of a sense of meaninglessness and you're this like, this shining example for all of us, this North star of this first step we have to take to go on that incredible journey.

So thank you so much Russ.

Mate, thanks for everything you've done, honestly, I can't thank you enough.

You made it happen as well.

So amazing.

[Russ Cook: The Hardest Geezer's Journey from Rock Bottom to Running Africa]-[Russ Cook (Hardest Geezer): I Haven't Told The Whole Truth About Africa!, They Took Me Into The Jungle To Kill Me! ]

📋 Summary

Introduction: The Man Who Ran Africa

The Roots of Rebellion and Rock Bottom

The Path to Progress: From Sales to Endurance

The Africa Mission: Resilience and Teamwork

Relationships and the Power of Vulnerability

Conclusion: A New Blueprint for Purpose

🎯Key Sentences

📝Key Phrases

📖 Transcript

[Russ Cook: The Hardest Geezer's Journey from Rock Bottom to Running Africa]-[Russ Cook (Hardest Geezer): I Haven't Told The Whole Truth About Africa!, They Took Me Into The Jungle To Kill Me! ]

📋 Summary

Introduction: The Man Who Ran Africa

The Roots of Rebellion and Rock Bottom

The Path to Progress: From Sales to Endurance

The Africa Mission: Resilience and Teamwork

Relationships and the Power of Vulnerability

Conclusion: A New Blueprint for Purpose

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🎯Key Sentences

📝Key Phrases

📖 Transcript

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