Hardest Geezer Russ Cook’s new problem to see him swim 500 miles over freezing ocean

Real life Forrest Gump – who completed a run from Cape Town to Tunisia – now plans to hot foot it all the way from Antarctica to the northern tip of the Arctic

Hardest Geezer Russ Cook’s next challenge is a 12,437-mile Earth-high aquathon from pole-to-pole.

The real life Forrest Gump – who wore out 30 pairs of trainers completing a 10,130-mile run from Cape Town to Tunisia in April (2024) – now plans to hot foot it all the way from Antarctica in the south to the northern tip of the Arctic.

Unlike his previous Africa-long adventure – which took 352 days as he crossed 16 countries to raise over £1 million for charity – this epic trek will also involve a 500-mile swim.

In order to complete the journey mission the 27-year-old Brit – who was inspired to start running by an 11-mile jog home from a nightclub at 3am – will have to navigate one of the toughest stretches of ocean in the world.

Russ plans to swim across the Drake Passage – the body of water connecting South America’s Cape Horn and the South Shetland islands of Antarctica. It is where the Pacific, Atlantic and Southern oceans converge in notoriously winds with no landmass to offer any resistance to what can be mountainous seas.

But Russ is unfazed by the challenge.

“You start at the most southern point, then run all the way to the Antarctic peninsula,’’ he said. “Then, yes, there’s about 500 miles of ocean. You swim that and then run up through Latin America.

“No-one’s done it before, but that doesn’t mean you can’t. It’s potentially doable, I think, with some modern technology, heated wetsuit, good weather window.”

Russ, from Worthing, West Sussex, plans to run his way up The Darién Gap – the remote inhospitable 60-mile region between Colombia and Panama that connects Central and South America.

Then he will leg it up the US and Canada before making his way to the ‘North Pole over the ice’.

When it was suggested his plan was ‘mad’ and ‘can’t be done’ Russ replied: “That’s what they said about Africa. Africa gave me perspective and I saw that the suffering of running is a suffering I choose. Running helps me zoom out, get the big picture.

“I saw that if I carry on going this pain of the moment will end eventually. But if I quit the pain of not doing what I set out to do will never go away. I’d rather get through the temporary pain.”

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