‘It’s going to be a spicy one’. So said Russ Cook, otherwise known as the Hardest Geezer, as he announced his latest challenge – to run the length of New Zealand. He earned his nickname after running the length of Africa in just 352 days – a gruelling journey through sixteen countries over mountains and deserts (not to mention being robbed at gunpoint). Struggling at one point with severe back pain but with no damaged bones, he decided ‘to stop mincing about like a little weasel and zombie stomp road again’.

No doubt it will be that brute determination that will propel him along the 3,000km length of Te Araroa Trail when he sets off again in March this year. 

I’m reminded of the apostle Paul who travelled thousands of miles around the middle east telling people about the good news of Jesus. Along the way he was imprisoned, beaten, whipped, shipwrecked and in constant danger from pretty much everyone. But his determination was extraordinary. He wasn’t a man running aimlessly but, like Russ Cook, had his eye on the prize – the joy of offering eternal life to others. In a final letter to a young friend he wrote, ‘I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.’ Perhaps then the very first hardest geezer!

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