Moment 184: I Was Kidnapped Whilst Running The Entire Length Of Africa: Russ Cook

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00:11Just drop in some details about yourself and see if you are eligible to save money when you bundle your home and auto policies. The process only takes minutes, and it could mean hundreds more in your pocket. Visit progressive.com after this episode to see if you could save.

00:23Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary; not available in all states.

00:29Hi there. No, it's not Steven. So, who is it? Well, I'm pretty into running and I've just come back from a little jog across Africa. Yep, it's me, Russ Cook, aka the Hardest Geezer.

00:43At 22, I became the first person to run from Asia to London, and earlier this year, I became the first person to run the length of Africa—10,000 miles across 16 countries in 352 days.

00:54I ran 386 consecutive marathons through mountains and deserts, survived armed robberies, and even escaped kidnapping. But the craziest part? After all those miles, I realized what I'd been running from and had to face it head-on.

01:07Now I'm buzzed to say I've teamed up with Steven and Flight Books to turn all of that into my first book: *Hardest Geezer: Mind Over Miles*. It's for anyone facing their fears, questioning their path, or trying to break free from what's been holding them back, because that was me too. If you're ready to embrace discomfort, grab your copy at the link below.

01:25Day 102. When I say Day 102, does it bring back any memories?

01:31A couple. Congo. DRC. Yeah, that was one hell of an experience, that.

01:40You described this as probably the hardest part of the whole trip?

01:45Probably the hardest part of my whole life.

01:48Really? You've not talked about this much in detail either, for some reason.

01:53We made a YouTube series online which followed the whole thing. It’s the only YouTube video that I didn't release because it was quite... I mean, it was quite a difficult one at the time as well.

02:08It was the hardest time for us as a team. We—there were 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.

02:22What happened? You're emotional about this.

02:30Yeah, I mean, that whole thing was mad. So we got to DRC, I think Day 100 we got to DRC. It was hostile from the start. We'd been warned loads about it, about the country. It's one of the poorest countries in the world. It’s quite known for corruption and we'd been sent videos of the craziest things happening there.

02:59I think we were all a bit apprehensive. My experience was very subjective. It’s a massive country with loads of people, loads of great people, but my personal experience of the small amount of time I spent there was a bit rough.

03:32We landed in the country, crossed the border, and 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 exploit us for money. Officials, all this kind of stuff trying to get money out of us.

03:55It really created a kind of atmosphere that was difficult and challenging. The day before Day 102, we had a guy come up to me with a rock—spikes in the rock—and he was like, "I'm going to smash your head in with this."

04:12He was speaking French, so I didn't really get it, but Harry spoke French. He was basically threatening us with this big spiky rock he had in his hand, saying, "Give me three quid," or the equivalent of three quid, "or I'm going to start smashing you all up."

04:32I gave him a quid in the end because I'm not getting my head smashed in over three quid, but also I didn't want to get word around that there was a bunch of people just throwing money around to anyone that would threaten them.

04:52Woke up Day 102. I was running 100k that day and I felt very anxious from the get-go. Really finding it difficult already. I left the boys in the morning like I normally do, ran 20k, then ran another 20k.

05:14We took a turn off onto a dirt road. The boys had planned this route. We went down this dirt road, then the van—this support van—basically couldn't get to me. So the boys sent a guy on a motorbike.

05:31So I'm running along this dirt track and this guy on a motorbike keeps trying to stop me. I was so scatty already that I didn't want to stop. I'd had it the day before with people trying to stop me on motorbikes and it all didn't feel great. I was quite anxious about the whole thing.

05:57Eventually, I did stop. He gave me a note that basically said the boys can't get around to where we were going to meet, but they're going to go to this other place and meet there. It was about 20k through the jungle. No roads, barely even a path. I was just kind of whacking my way through bushes to get to this meeting point where I was going to try and find the boys.

06:17I ran out of water. My phone had no signal. I’m going through these bushes and I stumble into this village. Because of the experience I'd already had in the first couple of days of DRC, I was very much like, "I just want to get my head down and get through these places as quickly as possible with as little fuss as possible."

06:40I'm running through this village and people are shouting at me and stuff. I thought, "Okay, this is happening all the time now, just keep going." But I think I upset quite a lot of the village by doing that.

06:51Then the chief of the village comes over and, before you know it, I'm surrounded by half the village. They're all very upset. They don't get who I am, what I'm doing, why I'm there. They start saying that I need to give them money. I didn't have anything on me.

07:09So then the chief of the village got some people away and he got two blokes to take me out into the bush with machetes. I was bricking it. I was absolutely bricking it. My mind's totally racing at this point. I'm like, "What is going on here? Why am I going out to the bush? This doesn't make any sense."

07:33"Is this a shakedown? What is the worst that could happen?" I didn't know. Got out into the bush, I basically emptied my bag. I had some biscuits, gave them the biscuits, and then just darted.

07:49I was like, "beeline for this meeting spot." My mind's totally frazzled at this point. I'm hearing motorbikes coming, I'm hearing people, I'm jumping in bushes, totally just kind of off it here.

08:06I get through this jungle bit, get to this meeting spot, and the boys aren't there. Now I'm really like, "Oh, this is bad." 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.

08:29I know that I've upset a lot of people in the local area and I've just run away from them all. I figured out that the tarmac—the last known bit of tarmac—was about 15 or 20k away. I thought, "Alright, I reckon I can just about make it there. If I make it there, it makes sense that the boys—that's the last bit they could get to."

08:56So you had just sprinted away from the guys with the machetes?

09:00Pretty much, yeah. They walked me out into the bush and I didn't know what was happening, but I was just so like—this is bad. Gave them biscuits and just darted.

09:16I've run off and I can just hear loads of commotion going on. I'm running through this jungle, adrenaline going through the roof.

09:33Were you scared?

09:35Yeah, I was petrified. I was absolutely petrified. I think what didn't help is that I didn't understand any of the language—Lingala, the local language. I didn't know any French either, which would have helped.

09:51I didn't have a very good understanding of the culture or anything. I think if I went through 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, I just assumed the worst of everything.

10:20I see the bit of tarmac and think, "Let’s head there." It’s about two hours away. As I'm going there down this dirt path, another two blokes on a motorbike pull up. I just don't want any part of this. They're trying to stop me, and my mind's totally gone.

10:48I think they were trying to communicate to me like, "Oh, we're going to take you to your friends," but I'm thinking, "Who are these guys sent from? Are 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 us, go and get him' kind of thing?"

11:11I'm like, "Nah, not doing it." The boys normally send a note with the driver if it's from them, and these guys had no note. It was getting later and later. I've got no water, no signal, and no way of knowing where the boys are.

11:31They're probably no further than 10 or 20k away. I thought, "If I get on this bike and I'm on the bike for longer than half an hour or an hour, then I know this is bad news." So I just thought, "Forget it, get on the bike."

11:44How long were those two men on the bike following you and asking you to get on the bike?

11:50A while. Probably about 20 minutes. 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 the language barrier is just—no one understands a word anyone's saying.

12:13Then, yeah, ended up spending seven hours on that motorbike going into the jungle, which was terrible.

12:20Seven hours. What goes through your mind in those seven hours?

12:25I assumed after about an hour and a half, "Okay, well I am getting kidnapped then." I was thinking rationally, I had such limited knowledge about DRC, I thought they probably just want money. But then you also start thinking, "Well, maybe they're just going to kill you."

12:53The stories that I'd heard about DRC—that wasn't the craziest thing. People get stabbed for a fiver. Literally, a couple of quid, people get stabbed. People get killed for a watch. So I was really trying to be rational about the situation, but I was quite emotional as well.

13:22For the last few hours, I was just like, "Whatever God has for me, He has for me." I was just trying to be like, "It's out of my hands." But it was very scary. I was so nervous, just shaking.

13:43They 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. Got me off the bike, took me into this little hut. Then loads of the men of the village came into the hut. They were all arguing about money and this kind of stuff.

14:08Then the second chief of the village walks in and says to me, "You speak to me in English very slowly." He understood a few words and I said to him, "This is a big mistake. Call my friend. He speaks French and then he can come and we've got money and we can sort it out."

14:29They spoke on the phone and then basically we agreed the boys would come. We've got the money. It took the boys about 36 to 48 hours to get there because it was so rural. There were no roads going there, it was all dirt paths. They tried to rent some motorbikes and got scammed. Then they ended up trying to borrow a police chief's 4x4, who also scammed us.

15:00So then the boys got there eventually. We gave everyone some money and then I was free to go.

15:09I was just looking as you were talking about how far seven hours is. For people in the UK, seven hours is London to Edinburgh.

15:21Yeah, just not in DRC. We were 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, I was absolutely done in by the end of it.

15:43And you got to that village and they wanted money. Did they explain anything? Did they say anything to you about who they were?

15:52I think they were actually just—they were more scared about who I was and why I was there. After the phone call with the team, things seemed quite settled. They were pretty alright with me. I was just in a state of totally being totally whacked. I mean exhausted, but petrified. Very nervous around everything, twitchy.

16:37Have you suffered with anxiety before?

16:40I don't know. I don't think so, but I'm human; I do know what anxiety feels like and I do get it sometimes. But I was anxious then for sure.

16:51You're speaking to Emily back home, your partner, throughout the journey on most days, but for this period of time, it sounds like you were out of communication with her. She seemed like she was very, very worried about you. In fact, she told us on a research call that she thought you had died.

17:12I mean, I thought I was going to die as well.

17:16Did you actually? Genuinely thought you were going to die?

17:20Yeah.

17:21And how do you sort of rationalize that thought? How do you deal with that thought when it comes to mind? If you really believe, "I think I'm going to die here."

17:32For me, I was just like, "If this is the way that God wants it, then I guess that's it." And there's more for me elsewhere. That's how I was trying to make sense of it in my brain.

17:52The Diary of a CEO is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever think about switching insurance companies to see if you can save some cash? Progressive makes it easy.

18:03Just drop in some details about yourself and see if you are eligible to save money when you bundle your home and auto policies. The process only takes minutes, and it could mean hundreds more in your pocket. Visit progressive.com after this episode to see if you could save.

18:15Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary; not available in all states.