Running a marathon a day does not keep the doctor away. In fact, it might land you in the hospital. But that’s exactly what 26-year-old Russell Cook is planning to do every day until Christmas.

The British runner, known in his home country of England as Worthing’s “Hardest Geezer,” is less than two weeks and 568 kilometres into his challenge — running the entire length of Africa, from the tip of South Africa to the northern coast of Tunisia, a distance of more than 15,000 kilometres.

He plans to cross 16 countries on foot without taking a single rest day.

Cook began his fitness journey and started running when he was 21, “out of an insecurity about how I looked and felt in myself,” he said in an interview with The Glasgow Standard. He went on to earn his “Hardest Geezer” sobriquet by taking on extreme endurance challenges. In 2019, he ran 71 marathons in 66 days from Asia to London, and in 2020, he ran a seafront marathon dragging a Suzuki Alto behind him.

His journey through Africa is both an attempt to set a record — he believes no one else has attempted the feat before — and an opportunity to raise money for a good cause. He plans to donate half of his proceeds to The Running Charity, which helps unhoused people, and half to WaterAid, which provides clean water and sanitation to countries in need all over the world.

READ MORE ON: africa Russell Cook Trans Africa