Man breaks record for running length of Africa

A MAN from Wargrave has broken a Guinness World Record for running the length of Africa.

Keith Boyd, of Willow Lane, ran from Cape Town in South Africa to Cairo in Egypt in 301 days, beating the record of 318 days set in 1998.

He started the 11,000km ultra marathon (6,835miles) in July last year at the V&A Waterfront in Cape Town and finished in May at the Cairo Tower in Egypt, having narrowly avoided being kidnapped in Ethiopia.

The 58-year-old, who has a heart condition, had a support team of a medic, an operations manager and a cameraman and slept in a 4x4 mobile caravan at night. His three children joined him for different legs of the journey.

My Boyd, a social impact investor who grew up in South Africa, said he was relieved to finish but also keen to leave the continent as he was affected by his experience in Ethiopia during the last 500km (310 miles) of his journey.

“That was my definition of hell on earth,” he said. “We were going through a small town called Yetmen in northern Ethiopia when a gunman stopped us. He hit the cameraman and me and we got a bit of a hammering.

“The gunman and his friends wanted me to phone my field office manager and advanced rescue paramedic to ask him to bring the vehicle back with money and equipment and everything in it. I wasn’t willing to do that.

“They wanted us to walk across a field into a forest. I knew that once we were 500 yards from the road, we would be as good as lost for weeks.

“I was telling the cameraman, ‘This is turning into a full-scale kidnapping and we need to slow everything down’. My hope was that the military or police would drive by and the gunman would disappear.

“With me being older, the guys listened and I tried to turn the situation around. I started asking questions, then I made requests and reversed the power dynamic ever so slightly.”

Mr Boyd eventually agreed a deal with the gunman and paid him $1,000 to let him and his crew go. He said: “The whole ordeal lasted about an hour. It was pretty intense and deeply unpleasant.”

Mr Boyd had asked the Ethopian government to allow him to run the final 500km across the country to ensure his run was officially recognised by Guinness World Records.

He said: “It would’ve been really disappointing if, 26 years after the record was set, that was the only thing that tripped us up.”

Mr Boyd, who had spent six months training for the challenge, began by running ran from Cape Town to the border with Botswana.

He then went through Francistown and into the north-west corner of Zimbabwe. He cut through Hwange Game Reserve before crossing into Zambia at Victoria Falls. From there, he ran the length of Zambia, going through the capital, Lusaka.

The fifth country he visited was Tanzania and from there he ran to Kenya, heading through Nairobi and across the equator before he reached Ethiopia and ran through the war-torn northern Amhara region.

He ran more than 1,000 miles in Sudan, where civil war is taking place. This was mainly through the Sahara desert where temperatures reached 48C in the shade.

The journey to Egypt was across desert and agricultural roads that border the Nile.

Mr Boyd said: “The heat was a challenge for most of the journey, with temperatures above 30 degrees most days.

“However, temperatures were at 40C and above in September as we travelled through the Tropic of Capricorn from South Africa into Botswana and then Zambia and then again in Sudan and Egypt and in the Sahara.

“Temperatures were probably well above 50 degrees in the sun. We would start just after 5am in the Sahara so that we avoided the worst of the heat.

“I would consume seven to 10 litres of water on hot days, which was most of the time. I attached a light cloth to the back of my peaked running cap and this afforded some shade on my neck and back as I ran and the cloth flows behind you.

“I also tried to keep my cap wet in the hottest parts of the day. I monitored my fluid intake, which could be as high as 1.5 litres per hour.

“The desert is so dry that my running shirts were never wet as the moisture would evaporate almost immediately.

“In more tropical areas, with high humidity, my shirts would be drenched when I ran in temperatures above 30C as the perspiration did not evaporate.” For energy, Mr Boyd consumed 4,500 calories a day to prevent loss of muscle mass in his legs, including 100g of protein.

He said: “I would consume protein bars, powdered protein shakes, powdered isotonic drinks, coffee, porridge oats, biscuits and chocolates and local breads.

“The other 1,500 calories were made up of cooked foods like bean-based and rice dishes and spicy meat and chicken dishes with bread or rice. The spices helped to kill bacteria.”

He suffered an Achilles tendon injury and pain in his right knee, left ankle, both feet and lower back.

“Everything predictably at some point came and hurt me but I managed to get through it,” he said.

Mr Boyd was joined by his elder son, Callum, 29, for 35 miles a day in Zambia and southern Ethiopia and by his younger son Keegan, 20, for a stretch of the journey in Egypt. His daughter, Shannon, 25, joined him in Zambia.

He said he felt “fine” on his final day of running.

“There was only a 26km run that morning and I got to the end point before 10am,” he said.

“But I was pretty stressed because I knew we still had to drive 180km back to the airport to fly out of the northern Ethiopian region. I knew how dangerous things were.

“People ask me why I am not smiling in the photograph taken at the end and I say I didn’t feel like smiling because I knew we still needed to get back to safety.”

Mr Boyd was raising money for Rainbow Leaders, the charity he founded to encourage young people in South Africa to vote.

He hopes to raise £2 million in the next five years and so far has raised more than £200,000.

He said: “It’s really important that you register to vote in South Africa because if you don’t, the country is going to continue to struggle. South Africa has got some of the highest levels of poverty.”

Mr Boyd beat the record set by Nicholas Bourne in 1998.

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