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

Episode Date: May 2, 2024

What does it take to become the Hardest Geezer and run 9,940-miles in 352 days? Russ Cook, also known as the ‘Hardest Geezer’, is an ultra-endurance athlete and the first person to run the entire length of Africa, raising over £1 million for charity. He is also the first person to run from Asia to London. In this conversation Russ and Steven discuss topics such as, his childhood and difficult teenage years, hitting rock bottom, wanting more from life, being robbed at gun point, and the struggles of being the first man to run across the length Africa. 00:00 Intro 02:00 Russ' Childhood & Being Rebellious 05:50 Relationship With My Parents 12:00 Trying To Get People’s Attention 16:42 Distancing Himself from Family 16:22 The Impact of Russ' Girlfriend 19:11 Moving Out as a Teenager 21:02 Going Down the Wrong Path 25:10 Russ' Mental Health 26:18 What Would Russ Say to His Younger Self 30:52 Russ' Epiphany 32:09 The Feeling of Progressing in Life 35:07 Travelling the World Running 35:53 First Challenges 36:51 Doing Things That Aren’t Considered Normal 39:03 Returning from the First Trip 42:26 Relationship with His Dad 44:09 Burying Himself Alive 44:33 Russ DM’d Steven Before Going To Africa 46:40 Why Africa? 48:40 Meeting His Girlfriend Before Leaving to Africa 52:41 How Have You Changed 54:52 Preparations to Run the Entire Length of Africa 01:03:25 Getting Robbed 01:03:26 Being Kidnapped 01:10:05 Facing Death 01:24:14 Team Struggles 01:31:52 Was Quitting an Option? 01:36:18 Visa Issues 01:37:59 Nearing the End 01:45:12 Crossing the Line 01:45:44 What’s Next? 01:50:41 What Was the Goal? 01:55:36 Russ Inspiring Others 01:59:20 The Last Guest Question  You can donate to Russ’s charity fundraiser here: https://bit.ly/3Wr2WJR Follow Russ: Instagram - https://bit.ly/4djAL5I Twitter - https://bit.ly/3UFqZmV YouTube - https://bit.ly/3Up8YYH Watch the episodes on Youtube - https://g2ul0.app.link/3kxINCANKsb My new book! 'The 33 Laws Of Business & Life' is out now - https://smarturl.it/DOACbook Follow me: https://beacons.ai/diaryofaceo Sponsors: PerfectTed: bit.ly/PerfectTed-DOAC with an exclusive code DIARY10 for 10% off PerfectTed x Hardest Geezer - Strawberry Daiquiri Flavour: bit.ly/PerfectTed-HardestGeezer-Daiquiri-DOAC (all profits to charity) Uber: https://p.uber.com/creditsterms

Quick one. Just wanted to say a big thank you to three people very quickly. First people I want to say thank you to is all of you that listen to the show. Never in my wildest dreams is all I can say. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I'd start a podcast in my kitchen and that it would expand all over the world as it has done. And we've now opened our first studio in America, thanks to my very helpful team led by Jack on the production side of things. So thank you to Jack and the team for building out the new American studio. And thirdly to to Amazon Music, who when they heard that we were expanding to the United States, and I'd be recording a lot more over in the States, they put a massive billboard in Times Square for the show. So thank you so much, Amazon Music. Thank you to our team. And

thank you to all of you that listened to this show. Let's continue. When I say day 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 hardest 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. Ended up spending seven hours on a motorbike 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. What are you thinking about people back home? Ross, 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 buried yourself alive for seven days you

pulled the car as well which is pretty crazy what were you looking for that's 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 bursting 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 you. And I thought Africa would be the best adventure ever. But day 30, you start pissing blood. I knew it was bad. It would probably end. You get robbed at gunpoint.

They got passports, money. And then a falling out amongst the team. You've not talked about this in detail either. I just blew up, shouting at everyone, throwing chairs. What happened? Passports, money. And then a falling out amongst the team. You've not talked about this in detail either. I just blew up, shouted at everyone, thrown chairs. What happened? Well. Congratulations, Dario Vecchio gang. We've made some progress.

63% of you that listen to this podcast regularly don't subscribe, which is down from 69%. Our goal is 50%. So if you've ever liked any of the videos we've posted, if you like this channel, can you do me a quick favor and hit the subscribe button? It helps this channel more than you know, and the bigger the channel gets, as you've seen, the bigger the guests get. Thank you and enjoy this episode. Russ, you know, you're 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. 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 uh i think really i had quite a normal upbringing and maybe that's like 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 hardworking 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 home, metal dust all over him. Mum would look after me and my brothers. And I think he kind of instilled

that hardworking mentality in me. And 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, 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 this kind of stuff and uh you know her her dad is like military man so 18 to 65 always in raf like very well respected um 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 her whole life was her kids really so yeah like a lot of respect for my mom 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 before this conversation did i got to speak to my team and i got to speak to lots of people around you yeah

as you know because i'm sure they're all yeah little snitches so we spoke to your girlfriend we spoke to your dad yeah um spoke to your team spoke to everyone around you privately um and got all of their take sort of perspectives and. 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 of my dad, he was just always, he ran a marathon when I was a kid. And I remember that being like a big, you you know he would always talk about willpower and he didn't say much but like 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's i feel like is very much the same i don't think we had many deep conversations but he he led by example in the sense that he worked hard loved his family yeah um that marathon your dad ran did he do things like that a lot um not really he was he was working pretty much all the time so he do 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 uh yeah no my dad's my dad or my mom aren't very affectionate people i don't think i've

i don't think i've ever seen them like even kiss maybe maybe once or twice when i was young but like you know that i loved using i love using stuff like this wasn't words that got thrown around in our family not that they didn't meet don't know they didn't mean it i just think that like we're our families a bit stiff like that not all families have the tools yeah do you know what i mean yeah they're just maybe they didn't get them from their parents no that's 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 upbringings and it's like it makes sense but it didn't make sense didn't make sense at the time it's hard like when you're young it's really i found it really hard to make sense of a lot of

things i was one of them like 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 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 and all these kind of complex how do i find meaning in my life not that i was directly asking those questions but those are the kind of things i'm prodding out of that age and i think you know from my parents it was it was quite hard to find those answers just because i think they will struggle 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 like teachers for example or any kind of authority figures in my life and if if i sensed that they weren't very happy in their lives so they were a bit miserable I would kind of discard a lot of what they were trying to tell me that I found a lot at that age 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 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 I'm 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 um our relationship whatever with whatever's making our parents unhappy often has a big impact on us and i you know i sit here a lot with comedians and stuff and i remember jimmy car i think it's

jimmy car 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 i mean and and i wondered that with with your early upbringing because 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 yeah you know idyllic environment to say the least no idea 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 was what kind of pushed, pushed me to go and try and find my own things, which has 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 have got quite bad with family stuff.

I was a piece of shit, to be honest with you. Very rebellious, very disrespectful, 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 i want i want more than that i want to go and see i 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 whenever 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 because you know sometimes when you hear kids doing that kind of thing you kind of think 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 exactly sure why. But that's kind of what happened. And I think 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 discarding things I thought weren't important people 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 a quite tasty few years in itself when you say moved out do you mean like organized the removal van and had an apartment you were moving into or what was the day like when you moved out uh it was quite a messy it was quite messy for a couple of years in there. 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. Your parents were doing okay? My parents were doing okay. Yeah. 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 keep the door in and bowled 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 like, I don't need you anyway. Sit down. At what age? 15, 16?

That was about 17. Okay. Yeah. And then I organised a 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 before 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'd done that,

what do you think they would have said? They would have said like, this guy needs humbling he's he's he doesn't know anything about the world he's very arrogant very disrespectful and then in hindsight as you're totally right yeah totally right but you you must have empathy for that kid because you know you look back as an adult you can understand the complex range of emotions yeah yeah yeah yeah because 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 my

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 think I just wanted the guidance. I wanted guidance but from 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. So 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 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 um which is in a lot of ways i think a positive thing but just without those guidelines to 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 I didn't speak to him 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. 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's, yeah,

it was tough. When you, you know, at 17 years old, they changed the locks, you move out. I'm sure your response was hardest geezer because it always is right yeah like you said it's just fuck it i don't care yeah i'll figure it out yeah 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 her i was leaving university and i remember what she said to me yeah i can't repeat what she said because it's so vicious really yeah it's like you it's so it's so vicious And I remember what she said to me. I can't repeat what she said because it's so vicious. Really, yeah. Yeah, it's like, it's so vicious, one of the things she said to me. But it was hardest geezer exterior. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And then at some deeper level, on certain days. Oh, yeah. You know, it would catch me in the odd day. Oh, 100%, man. And I think the hardest geezer kind of, that aggressive approach to it is just like a way of coping with it.

Every now and again, you know 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 because I think like there's always a part of me that understands that my parent, 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 these these

are two people actually care about me the most and i think that just makes like when things aren't going well that makes you emotional because it's like these are the people i'm supposed to be closest 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 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 or I think like a big part of that for me in building that bridge was actually my girlfriend when I was away. Because she went over and she went around the house and spoke to him loads.

And she's, because even before I left, like I went around to see both my parents before I left. It was the first time I see them in like maybe like a year and a half, two years. Really? You hadn't seen your parents half two years really anything your parents yeah yes before i left for africa we'd spoken me and my girlfriend spoke a lot about these kind of things and how like important we want family to be and she but i 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 has really like done a lot in that sense people might think this is sexist but i do think women have more tools 100 100 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 yeah like dragged me down to plymouth and was like we're going to see her yeah oh mate I couldn't agree more especially with me and my girlfriend's dynamic anyway like that's really she's I look at her like a 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 wow um yeah so i remember i had this flat in worthing 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 scrape through and then i um i actually was watching this this is so cringe 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 um this is the game i'm gonna I'm gonna become a millionaire doing sales stuff so I went and got a few sales jobs um made some actually not bad money for 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 because i was reading through your story and speaking to

some of your friends and they told me that there was some instances where you you basically lost everything you had and had to borrow money off your missus at the time yeah oh man it was it's embarrassing to even talk about like i remember 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,

plus the overdraft, plus all the rest of it. And 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 xyz 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 needs to stop and i just went on every single gambling website i could find and did the self-ban thing never gambled since and the 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 living 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 on Russ, like this isn't it. Yeah, definitely. I was so miserable, man. So, so miserable at that time. I 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 like supposed to go to work i'd just be like so upset just be like the worst so miserable couldn't just fathom i was like why is why is life this 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. I didn't, I mean, I had like a 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. I had no control over my finances because I was pissing away everything I earned on roulette.

The only things I looked forward to was going out and getting pissed, which would make me feel like shit as well. And then I'd go to work and hate working every day. So it doesn't take a genius to work out. That's going to be a pretty miserable existence, you know? And you didn't have family around you? Yeah, didn't have like many deep connections.

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 a word to summarize 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 worst day that you can recall yeah I mean I remember like I do remember just Like, I do remember just...

If you don't want to talk about it. Yeah. Go at your own pace. Tell me what you're comfortable talking about. I mean, I remember days days like I said I'd wake up crying to speak to my boss I remember even one day with my boss speaking to on the phone just bursting into tears crying and I think what was hard is that I didn't understand anything I didn't understand why you know i mean i didn't have the tools to really make any sense of the situation because you know now i'm seven eight nine years older i can look back and go yeah well that'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 gonna get out of this you had 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 yeah 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 going further and further and further and further and further and further down. Yeah. Reaching this rock bottom moment. And then in that rock bottom moment, you have some of the, I think the darkest thoughts that 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. I think actually a massive thing was like things like listening to podcasts. I remember listening to like Joe Rogan a lot back in the day. And I remember the Jordan Peterson. There was a i remember the jordan peterson there was a jordan peterson episode ages ago and it was a classic thing but that really kind of hit me and that's what i like i love listening to him now and i know he's a bit controversial these days and people have xyz say about 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're 19 years old yeah you're searching for 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 that probably not no probably not i i i reckon like i don't know i reckon my mom's probably thought about it to be fair

but i don't know they don't know the ins and outs what are the ins and outs that I don't know I reckon my mum's probably thought about it to be fair but I don't know 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 and

I don't I don't I get I'm quite like I keep a lot of things to myself a lot of the time anyway so like no I'm really not Like I keep a lot of things to myself a lot of the time anyway.

So like, no, I'm really not. 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 sit with a lot of people. so 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 and then you get your little escapes someone will say something

you can fuck off yeah or some people expresses 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 running the length africa um so they had no idea no if you could go back and have a word with him when he's woke 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 for that guy i think the thing 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

situation here 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 i was 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 it's 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 going to come and save me it just had to be me and you talk about this um 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're it seems like you had a little bit of a dance floor epiphany moment yeah at 2 3 a.m in the morning yeah so I think it had been leading up to this because I would I've 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 i need to sort my life out here like what am i doing a proper one of them like mirror bit pissed looking the mirror moments going fucking hell and then ran home about 11 12 miles took me ages i was so unfit sorry youit. Sorry, you ran home from the nightclub? Ran home from the nightclub.

Why? I don't know, really. It was a bit Forrest Gump-y in the way. It was just like, I just felt like running kind of vibes. At what time, sorry? Like 3am, 2, 3am, something like this. You ran 12 miles at 3am? Yeah.

It took me ages. Drunk? Yeah, yeah. I was totally off it, yeah. Sleeping on the side of the road? Yeah. Took a little power nap in Shoreham on the pavement. But yeah, I mean, so I ran that marathon,

well, I ran that little bit and then a mate of mine that I'd been mates with for a long time had just started getting into running properly and he'd signed up for a half marathon and he said to me, like, come and run it. Like, let's do it. I'll train with you, blah, 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 training um 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 met 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 coming week by week by week and it I think that's why I love running so much like because 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 yeah and i accomplished something yeah that's a that's a pretty strong transferable idea for the rest of your like for everyone's life to learn exactly that's kind of what happened for me i managed to save up some money off the back of ran these marathons and then

it's like stop drinking as much stop i wasn't gambling anymore and saved up a bit of money for the first time and then a few months later i decided right just being off all these cleaning jobs i'm gonna go and travel the world with my few grand that i'd managed to save up and where did you go 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 uh kipchoge's from there 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 try and do something like that. And I was pretty good at running by now. So then I first kind of conceived the idea of running from Istanbul to London. And 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 for 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, do you know he, he like ran, he was the first person to run from Asia to London. And people were 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 um 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 yeah 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 because that would be the first big most of them were like yeah you're like you're gonna you're gonna die or like that's not gonna happen i remember pretty much everyone being like that i could probably count on one hand the amount of people actually thought i was going to do that what did your parents think i 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's like yeah he's the only one i remember being like yeah he's deaf he's gonna do it what was that like you know because you're on your own it's different was that like? You know, because you're on your own. It's different to the Africa run. But this time you're on your own for that whole journey across Asia to Europe. Yeah. What's that like? It was an amazing adventure, man.

It really was. It was tough, though. Like, really tough being by myself the whole time i would literally run a marathon i had a little bag with a hammock and toothbrush toothpaste phone i just find a couple of trees at the end of the day sling the hammock up and go again the next day so yeah did you not need like friends or something like why why i think the that a lot of people said this to me at the start they're like well you're gonna need this you're gonna need that like yeah but why actually why why can't you just sleep in a hammock every day

and then go and run a marathon did you speak were you speaking to anybody back home around that time you must look at that objectively and go that is not normal behavior and then from that i ask i go so what is it that's abnormal about you because you're performing unnormal 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

But I think I love that you're 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 his 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 kind of people just made me realise like, what is normal? Who even cares about normal? I don't care.

I just like, 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 in 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 mode of 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 like i don't need it why do i need to do any of this you know 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 asian one was the first time i was just like just give it a go what's the worst gonna 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. And I remember that hitting because like he didn't say it often,

but when he says it, you know, 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 proud of you, son. Even that makes me emotional just saying it, like thinking about it, I'm like, wow. So yeah, that was nice.

And he ran the last day with you? He ran like the last 5K, I think. Yeah, the last 5K. 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 there was nothing yeah most people don't even know it happened

yeah frankly because you went on your own and you didn't do all the social media stuff yeah 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 a 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 uh uh got back into the country i was skint because i'd done all my dough on this ages london run and then my dad was like i remember i'm freaking him does like what are you doing you lazy like get a job or something so dad was like, I remember I was freaking my dad's like, what are you doing? You're lazy, like get a job or something. So I was like, oh fuck, all right. And then when it got up. How did you feel when you heard that? It was hard at the time.

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 slapping me in the face again but yeah you pissed off yeah i was yeah when he told you to get a job yeah i was fuming yeah why 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 being like i'm so proud of you you've achieved more in your life already than i ever have blah blah blah 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 was capable of doing something um that he thought was good. You hadn't felt that before? Not in that way. 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? I like probably just disappointed.

Yeah. Disappointed disappointed bit of a loser you eventually end up burying yourself alive which is really fucking bizarre yeah 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 back to normality pretty much like i finished the asia's learning 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've chucked a few photos up on Instagram just really for my boys to see be like I'm out here in Serbia camping or whatever. But yeah, then, you know, did the H line around, figured out if we make some content and that's how we're going to do it. Buried myself alive,

pulled a car for a marathon. 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. 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 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 shocked 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. And 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 know you're speculative 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

really when you sent me a message or i replied to you on may the 5th as well but you emailed 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 this is your sales background yeah i'm gonna now i've removed some parts because no no no no just you, I'm an endurance athlete. In 2019, 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. 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 yeah and when i saw that the most shocking part was that you'd 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 because it was a very like long message and you really it was a really thorough message you explained that this time would be different people would actually know because you'd figured out content yeah 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 yeah 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's not very travel like 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 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 end took 352 days long time but 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 yeah um 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 we got there eventually 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 two tickets so i was like well you could like you could take me okay and then um yeah so then that's that's when we first started dating but this africa thing was already in the work so it was quite complicated but then before i left we were like right let's do it and we kind of like we spoke on the phone every day and mate 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 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 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 like 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 this mother and this father didn't seem like they always had the best time a 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 um an avoidant oh yeah because you hadn't learned you didn't have the tools to be affectionate and to be open totally avoidant still am a bit but but when you met her yeah you hadn't done had those deep conversations nah i think uh it's her credit to her more than me she she kind of brang that out uh i didn't have the 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, 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 no it's funny because um i've actually listened i remember messaging you actually about it i think i listened to you had a podcast with some relationship person esther perrell i remember and um yeah like the way you were talking about i was like oh this is like this is hit over and we both we do that a lot sometimes we listen to podcasts and talk about and i do this i'll do this i'm gonna play this oh god this is gonna be awkward for you but but listen, it's word for word me.

Yeah, I think 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 um 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. Yeah. Support is leave me alone. It's my love language is just acts of service and leave me alone.

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 were used to independence. Yeah.

Um, God, she's smart. Let me just, he's not used to having somebody there like, um, who he respects like so it's definitely been hard and he has like changed and he's changed so much since i first met him when i first met him i was not thinking oh i could actually seriously date you 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 the sort of intimacy related relationship love related stuff 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 it's all i think for me it was like 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 to make that happen was like 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 you later whatever whereas with emily it reminds me with emily i was like oh like she's special i really want to make this work and i'm i'm gonna have to there's 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 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 want to let anyone over the fucking nah nah is that how it's been for you as well then 100 yeah i met i met a person who i cared about so much yeah it's what exactly what you said that i was finally willing to compromise on things before then it was like as you say my way or the highway like yeah 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 it's i think that's good news for a lot of people that are avoidance because it offers us all hope that you know we'll meet someone and they'll be worth it um 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 you landed in south africa with 10k which is four percent of the money that you would need to make it the whole way i mean there's so many other things here you you knew that you couldn't get through i think it was angola algeria 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 yeah and they don't issue visas when you're not in the country

we'd already left so so you thought i'll 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, you know, wait, really. We were running out of money.

It was now and ever, you know know make it work with what you've got or don't do it basically and i was like i think we could 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 he's got a percentage of like everything we make off the back end so he's done all right it was a risky 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 you know he was a fellow working boy a 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 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 um but we ended up burning through a lot of the money before we were supposed to be on start line with like 50k and we ended up months rolled by we wasted money on xyz 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 gonna have to delay your wages etc just really tightened up and then i got a message from some some bloke from dragons then like two weeks in yeah no so mate 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 that 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 rang Emily up I was like you're never gonna 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's 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 but 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 yeah but the second thing is you went and did some so you planted a seed there then you went and 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 um 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 i i'm an investor in i'm a part owner in various companies um and there was two companies that i am very close to perfect ted and huel 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. And they're all about positive energy. And the founders are very much like you. And then obviously Huel 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 WhatsApps. I said, there's this guy, he's running the length of Africa. He's so cool. He's really, he's like going to do it. And both brands were like down in one message. I messaged them, both the founders on WhatsApp and they were 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 dm i guess i'll describe it like i was knocking on the door but i needed someone to open it you opened it so like it's a kind of a jewel thing i think you planted a lot of seeds yeah yeah i was knocking on a few doors yeah yeah yeah and i'm sure there's lots of messages you sent that were never replied to yeah 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 that gives you a little nudge forward those two incredible brands um 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. You had 20, 30, 40,000 followers. Yeah. It kind of grew. It grew a lot quite quickly. Early doors. But we started, started the mission with, I think 20 K on Insta,

6 K on Twitter, 10 K 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. No. I knew it was bad. You're running out of money.

Yeah. A couple 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 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. That was two guys came up to me whilst I was running at night one one came in front of me one came behind me and i kind of instantly knew this was a bit shaky and i um i just went a bit mad just like weighed up situation just started acting a bit crazy started like beating my chest and shouting and stuff to try and like put them off because i could i've got the feeling like okay they're gonna this is an attempt but they haven't gone straight in with the robbery they're kind of feeling it out so i was like trying

to give them enough of a 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 i was they because they just joined i was mid-run and they joined me running like one in front one behind they were running it like they i think they it was a situation where they were trying to feel me out you know like should we rob this guy okay this kind of thing 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, boy! Like, just going totally a bit, just to make them think like, oh, this guy's a bit, you know, he's a bit off it. Maybe we'll 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 because 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 that situation so what happens then you start beating your chest acting like i start beating my chest and like loon sit the one got the run the guy running behind me ended up dropping off so then it was

just the guy in front of me he was he was quite a small guy anyway and i was like i don't reckon he's about it and then um did you tell him you're the hardest geezer 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 um 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 in a township next, 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, sweet. You fed the robber? Yeah. So then the boys came and then we ended up giving him a lift back. What a nice story. Yeah. It's going to be a movie one day that. This whole thing's's gonna be a movie one day that this whole thing's gonna be amazing you get to um angola and then you get robbed at gunpoint yeah robbed at gunpoint angola that was um day 50 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 support team

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 door open gun in all our faces started speaking portuguese um then they took a bunch of stuff yeah that was a nightmare to be honest they got passports money cameras drone phones was long have you processed this stuff i don't know i don't think so man like the the thing is is that these things happen you're on the road again the next day so you know because you say it's such a casual sort of blasé way but if someone had a gun pointed at them most people would would be in therapy trying to resolve the 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 it's not as blasé as you you sometimes make out is it i don't know man i guess it just is what it is uh 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 re-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 as probably the hardest part of the whole trip. Probably the hardest part of my whole life. Really? 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 there was a lot of arguments, a lot of fallouts around that. And I didn't think that the video that we 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, was mad. The, so we got to DRC, I think day 100,

we got to DRC. It was hostile from the start. We'd, we'd been warned loads about it, about the country country it's one of the poorest countries in the world it's quite known for corruption and we've 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 crazy like people getting shot chopped up all kinds of stuff um yeah it was it definitely 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 was a bit rough but yeah we I mean we landed in the country crossed the border it was a very chaotic border town we had people from the get-go very not not very happy to see us at all shouting at me whilst I was running trying to like exploit us for money officials all this kind of stuff get 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 was it really created a kind of atmosphere that was difficult challenging um yeah i mean the day before day 102 we had a guy come up to a guy came up to me with a rock spikes in the rock and he was like i'm gonna like smash

your head in with this when you speak in french i don't really get it but harry spoke french so he's basically threatening us with this big spiky rock that he had in his hand, saying, like, give me three quid, the equivalent of three quid, or I'm going to, like, start smashing you all up. And so we gave him a quid in the end, because I'm not getting my head smashed in over three quid balls. I didn't want to, like, 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 like really finding it difficult already ran left my left the boys in the morning like i normally do run 20k then run another 20k start we took a turn off onto a dirt road so the boys are playing this route took to went down this dirt road then the van basically this port van couldn't get to me so the boys sent a guy on a motorbike and so I'm running along this dirt bike and this guy on a motorbike 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 um 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 phone's got no signal and I'm going through these bushes, stumble into this village. And I think because of the experience that I'd 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 people are shouting at me and stuff, and I'm like, okay, this is happening all the time now, just carry on going, carry on 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 I'm like surrounded by half the village they're all like very upset they don't get what they don't get who I am what I'm doing why I'm there and they start trying to like 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, my mind's totally racing at this point. I'm like, what is going on here? Why? Why am I going out to the bush? Like, this doesn't make any sense.

Like, is this a shakedown? 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,

I'm jumping in bushes, like totally just kind of off it here. Kind of get through this jungle bit, 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 I'm 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 them all I'm like oh 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 to the boys. That's the last bit they could get to. So had you just sprinted away from the guys with the machetes? Pretty much, yeah. 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 like this is bad i gave them biscuits and just died and then

like i've 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 it's all quite it's there i mean it's all quite mad i'm like adrenaline going through the roof um 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 languages like local lingala local language i didn't know any french the languages, like Lingala, the local language. I 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 DRC 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 scatty um but yeah I mean I find I find this I go see the bit of tarmac. I'm like, right, let's head there. It's about two hours away. I could probably make it there. And as I'm going there, I'm going down this dirt path, another two blokes on a motorbike pull up. And I was like, I just don't want any part of this.

They're trying to stop me. Mine's totally gone and they they were trying i think they were trying to communicate to me like oh we're going to take you to your friends blah blah blah and i'm 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 if it's from them and it's got these guys had no note and i was like there's you know getting later and later

i was like i've got no water i, 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 knowing where the boys are. They're probably no further than 10 or 20K away. So if I get on this bike and I'm on the bike for longer than half an hour or an hour, then I know 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 about 20 minutes. So yeah, got on the bike, half an hour went by. Then an hour went by, I start kicking off. I'm getting off the bike, i'm having a go at them but like the language barrier is just with no one understands a word anyone's saying and then yeah ended up spending seven hours on a 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'd probably just want money. But then you also start thinking, well, maybe they're just going to kill you. And the stories that I'd heard about DRC and that wasn't the craziest thing. You know, you like people get stabbed for fiver. Literally, like a couple of quid, people get stabbed. People get killed for the you know a watch so i was really trying to what like i was really trying to be rational about the situation but just like very quite quite emotional as well and then i mean at for the last few hours i was just like you know what god has for me has he has

for me you know whatever it is and that's fine and i was just trying to be like you know it's out of my hands um but it was very scary i was like so nervous like just shaking they took me to this village in the jungle late at 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 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 and i said to him like this is big mistake you know like call my friend and he speaks french and like and and then he can come and like, we've got money and 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 going there. It was all dirt paths. They tried to rent some motorbikes got scammed then they 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 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 nowhere. We're literally going through the jungle. So it's like little tiny paths that are going up and down through rivers, through over mountains.

For seven hours? Seven hours, yeah. I was like gripping on this. I was absolutely done in by the end of it. And you got to that village they wanted they wanted money did they explain anything did they say anything to you about who they were and i think i think they were i think they were actually just they were more scared about who i was why i was there and all the rest of it and the i mean after, 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 i don't think so but like i do obviously i'm 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 um the journey on most days but for this period of time sounds like you were out of communication with her yeah 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 yeah i mean i thought i was gonna die as well did you actually yeah genuinely thought you were gonna die yeah and how did you how do you sort of rationalize that thought how do you deal with that thought when you what comes to mind like what are you deal with that thought when you... What comes to mind?

Like, what are you thinking? If you really believe, you know, I think I'm going to die here. I mean, 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 trying to make sense of it in my brain. Were you thinking about i think about like uh all the things that i wish i had the chance to repair that I haven't, like my relationship with my parents. I was thinking about all the things that I wanted to do with my life that I wouldn't be able to do. I was thinking about what it would do to everyone

that got myself killed in the Congo for just trying to run the length of Africa. I felt stupid because I was like, you know, these were like mistakes that had been made it should have been quite easily preventable that we didn't do and you know that's openly 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 going to 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 on to things that weren't necessary you know for reasons and like life's too short for that what have you been holding on to like resentment and pride and you know not not trying to understand all that avoiding things and not trying to connect with people that that love me and these kind 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 into intimacy and all the 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 having kids together and all these things that just felt like they were just... And how it just felt like I was just and how like 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

everything's going to be alright like don't worry about you know all of these dangers no it's going to be fine babe and yeah I think it's going to be all right. Like, don't worry about, you know, all of 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. I mean, especially I'm in the thick of it, you know. I'm in the thick in the thick of it she's like at home just 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 uh 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 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 they're all getting on it's all fine oh it's pissing blood again haha funny but when i when i did those

research calls and spoke to members of your team and spoke to you know people around you and even members of the team that were out there with you this was really a a falling out amongst 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 like i'd hired so heavily on content side because i knew that you know we started with no money 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 for a core documentary this kind of thing i completely blindsided the logistics and

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 4x4 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 um we actually we had a big argument me and harry had a big argument on just after this congo thing we were traveling back through these villages he'd obviously had a rough time as well trying he'd been scammed for motorbikes had this these dealings with the police chief and as we were coming back he was buying like fags and 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 malnourished bellies can't even feed themselves and you know as europeans if we bowl through these villages

drinking and smoking blah blah blah then it's giving off the sign we've got a lot of money to spare and that's why we're getting scammed so much for extortionist 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, I'm tightly strong already.

So is he. And then we get back to the other, the other boys. These guys had no idea what just happened and they were all struggling themselves. So they were very much, everyone was just concentrating on themselves and they were all kind of like,

everyone was a bit pissed off for each other. And then we had a meeting and i just blew up just blew up started shouting everyone throwing chairs about completely lost my cool which is not not obviously not the way to act um and yeah i mean it was it was awkward it was awkward a few days after that I was I just went straight back to running wanted to get out of DRC

as quickly as possible it was everyone was in 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 at some point i think at that point i'd realized that for me i'm running every day 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 because then it just leaves me in a totally fucked spot so I tried to kind of put some reorganize reshuffle things so

that wouldn't happen by sending everyone holiday hired Gus hired Jamie another editor to take some workload off Stan because the geezer was working like 18 hours a day trying to get two YouTube videos out a week whilst recording and producing it I was like right we 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. I'm going to let you in on a little secret.

What is in the diary of a CEO cup? This cup that sits in front of me when I interview these people, sometimes for three hours and sometimes three people a day. And the answer is this. Perfect Ted. I invested in the company on Dragon's Den. And since then, they've gone from an idea to the fastest growing energy drink in the UK. It is a matcha energy drink,

and it is absolutely delicious. But that's not why I choose to drink it on this podcast. The reason I choose to drink it is because it gives me what I call all day energy. I don't get the same crashes that I used to get with other energy drinks. If you're in the middle of a conversation or you're in the middle of a talk on stage or in the boardroom, the last thing you want to do is have a crash. You don't want jitters and you need focus. And that is why they now sponsor this podcast. Not only is it delicious,

but it gives me a significant competitive advantage. If you haven't tried it, go down to a Tesco, go to a waitrose or go online and use the code diary10 at checkout and you'll get 10 off and when you do try it let me know how you get on but it's not all 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 uh around two day 205 and 206 you completely stopped because you had back issues. 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. I wouldn't be able to move. Or yeah, I mean mean god knows what happened there i mean there's a chance that you've done permanent damage to your back probably yeah 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 six 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 um i was in a lot of pain like every day so i really just wanted it to be over at that point and i still have 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 what day was the closest to quitting the closest where you thought you know what maybe the thought the only the only time i ever really had the thought was in the congo really on the on the motorbike yeah like that was the only time i actually ever actually thought like why am i doing this this is stupid you know like why am i gonna

get myself killed by this and it was a fleeting thought came in and then i thought i ain't got a fucking choice i gotta do it now anyway december time which is day two for one you're you're in um i think the ivory coast and uh the ivory coast think you're a spy so 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 her, 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 I wasn't any suspect individual. January comes around the new year. How do you celebrate Christmas out there and all that stuff? It was a back to basics kind of christmas we had um chickens on the fire and it got a bit pissed mr family yeah christmas would have been a bit of a weird one for my family anyway but yeah like um i mean it was business as usual I was I think it was pretty much focused on the job and had a couple drinks and that was that one uh a day shortly after that um 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 um as we said as 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 a it's such an interesting thing because very few people

would have a country say we're not going to 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 it was we were we were strategizing for a couple weeks before that like right this you know we are backs against the wall here what are we going to do and we kind of you know gus and stan had were putting together these kind 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 I just got to a point where I said, like, boys, let's just Hail Mary it.

Let's just blast it on socials because it's going to take someone right at the top to say yes, you know, swing for defences. 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 yeah basically saying that this is what this platform's for yeah what he loves about the platform that's sick and then Algeria tweet you basically saying we'll give you a visa on the spot which is mad isn't that mad actually mad when you think about where you came from yeah you've got Elon Musk tweeting and the like Algeria's Twitter account yeah you're A tweet at you going, come on in.

We're going to change our laws. Yeah. So that you can come through here. And Elon Musk's tweet. It's 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's part of your team on the research call, he says that you weren't really concerned because everyone just assumed that 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 sex 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 like the end yeah and it could just be like jenny at work sat in our seat 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 even four day mate 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 we 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 yeah and you'll have evidence yeah and even if you you know go through some difficult shit and it doesn't work out then you've got a few lessons in there right so at least you survived right yeah that's a lesson um 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 definitely 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 really it was following you you know this surely your girlfriend and stuff must have told you it was fucking pandemonium it's every social you know i'd go on social media and anyone that i i knew was was

posting about you um running that last leg driving money to those charities that mean a whole lot to you um as you come into that last leg that last day crowds of people like hundreds of people flew out there it's nuts absolutely nuts and they're running with you a lot of them i was heard from some of your team i think stan that was saying to me a lot of people flew out there but they were keeling over and like collapsing on the side of the road because i don't think they anticipated that this isn't London, mate. It was so funny. Tunisia at that time wasn't even that hot. 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 i met my dad came and ran like he could only bang a two or three car these days but he came around and um like put his arm around me and that and you know it was special your relationship with him started to pick up um as you got closer to the finish line it seems yeah i've heard that from a few people yeah uh 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 um yeah we ran a little bit couple tears just like what were the tears for? I don't know like I guess it was like a signal that it was like this is actually over now you know like my dad's here

and like you know everything everything that I've been through but also like everything he'd been through everything his dad's been through felt like it just felt like a moment you know everything everything that i've been through but also like everything he'd been through everything his dad's been through felt like it just felt like a moment you know he was proud of you very very 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 i 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. It's my son, you know, crossing the line, and it was sort of like not real sort of thing. You know, it's like, you know,

but it took a while to sink in. It's still 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 like 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 um you walked over to the edge of the water and you reached the northernmost 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 i've proven i think maybe the what have you proven i guess i've um 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 that end moment with your family was because i heard you describe that the best feeling of the whole journey that that end moment with your family was because i heard you describe 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 are there and 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 over 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 you 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 he's when no one's there yeah 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 300 352 days i was out there for 14 months so 14 months you get back to the uk your land the weather's different obviously society is completely different yeah now everybody knows who you are here so wherever you go someone's going oh hi this guy have a fucking picture lad like how how is that um still think i'm kind of working that out at the moment don't really know it's it's definitely different

but everyone's so nice and i think like the like the stories of people that like they come up to me and they're like you know adam i was running the marathon on sunday and people were like you're the reason i'm here and stuff and i'm like that's kind of mad but that's sick as well you know so are you feeling overwhelmed yeah definitely how do you know because i'm i'm trying to distance myself from everyone and everything at the moment yeah like uh yeah just i think um 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 done 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 marathon sorry does anymore i can't like it's all right you know when you were running that marathon you ran the london marathon like a couple like two days ago or something yeah that's a very public place to be yeah i didn't quite anticipate anticipate that i am that way i had some people that saw you down there and they were a little bit concerned really yeah because you looked a little bit overwhelmed yeah i was a little bit there. Really? Yeah, because you looked a little bit overwhelmed. Yeah, I 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 like stimulation. You know what I mean? I was like, I'm not used to this. 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.

Yeah. And then done, done zero, like stop. how's that um my body needed it yeah it's absolutely you know bashed in but it is also it was it's been quite difficult to i had the 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 wildly different.

It's like, okay, wake up, interview here, or go and do this and then this, and meet this person, chat to that person. And I'm kind of missing that routine of exercising all the time kind of want to start that back up again pretty soon maybe 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 because it's so this is what everyone asks when everyone doesn't when anyone does anything interesting yeah like what's next they want 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're, 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 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 russ because you're someone that quite clearly through your story once likes being alone and like low-key under the radar do their own thing spend time in my own head and then exactly that doing exactly that in in you running the length of africa being alone out there in the sahara desert alone has built this massive fucking audience yeah 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 love the most which is you running from london to asia alone asia to london alone um on your own with the hammock. It's never quite going to be the same, if you know what I'm saying.

You can't even walk down the street in London. You were like a really distinctive, recognisable guy as well, because of the ginger beard and stuff. Yeah. Well, I think it will, like, it will die down, like, eventually. So I think it's going to be all right. It's's gonna be all right it's just different yeah it's just yeah it's just different just different new set of problems i guess yeah to manage and stuff yeah you did all of this you know 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, what was the goal? Fundraising goal. Yeah, what's your fundraising goal? A million. 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 guy. 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 i did the ages london run for the running charity as well so i've been involved for four or five years well i have to say russ you um you inspired millions of people you don't know this but like when i'm in the gym yeah and i start thinking about quitting the whole time you're in africa i was like fucking russ is running three marathons today what the hell am I doing thinking about quitting and 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 going to be up today running another 20 well 60k or 100k yeah so it was it was even like at 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, a 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 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 um 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 so i called julian hearn at huel and i 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 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 Dairies of of us here thank you so much is emily here there she is coming in oh sweet thank you so much man no man thank you absolutely incredible and i know the the team at

perfect ted here they've could you chuck me me the daiquiri thing on here? This one. This one, yeah. Again, I'm an investor in this company and we have a partnership together. Hardest Energy. They've also produced the Hardest Energy, which is a limited edition strawberry daiquiri flavoured Perfect Ted,

which will be on sale. And I think much of the proceeds of this will be donated towards this campaign as well. It begs the question, why strawberry daiquiri for 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 eh and they're 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. It's not usually how they end. Where the last guest leaves a question for the next guest not knowing who they're going to be leaving it for. So I think 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 romweezy 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 it's 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 I know that there's so many people out there that feel the same way and you've made 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 pursue 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 the 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, Ross.

Mate, thanks for everything you've done, man. Honestly, I can't thank you enough. You made it happen as well. So amazing. he made it happen as well so amazing