IMAGE: MARIUS GUŠČIA
SMART TRAVELLER
ME ET THE ADVENTU R E R Louis Alexander
THE 24-YEAR-OLD BRITISH EXPLORER AND ENDURANCE ATHLETE RAN A MARATHON ON EVERY CONTINENT TO RAISE AWARENESS OF DEMENTIA
I chose places that interested me, too. I’d dreamed
of seeing the Amazon Rainforest for a long time, and Ecuador’s Quechua community kindly invited me to visit. I often work with locals because no one knows the land better, and it’s a huge privilege to be guided through someone’s homeland. It took three months of negotiations to make the trip happen, and when I arrived, it turned out they’d never heard of a marathon; exercising for the sake of exercising isn’t part of their culture.
Why was meeting local communities important? I wanted a global challenge to highlight a global cause. I wanted to show dementia is everywhere and impacts communities across the world and that’s what my travels proved. I spoke to the Bedouins in the desert, the people of Alaska and the Outback, and everyone knew about it in some way. They didn’t always know what the disease was, but they knew the symptoms.
Is there one memory that stands out? Antarctica was the most incredible and intimidating place I’ve ever experienced. The snow was so sharp at times that it was like sand; it was so painful that at one point during a blizzard, I looked down to check whether I was bleeding. But when I think about this project, the wildlife is one
Where does your passion for adventure come from? I owe it to my grandfather, Captain Rick Taylor. He served in the British Army for 38 years, but it was his battle against dementia [an umbrella term associated with diseases that affect brain function, including Alzheimer’s] that ended his life. He dreamed of taking on Mount Kilimanjaro, and after finishing school, I decided to go out there in his honour. I climbed for him and Alzheimer’s Research UK, which is a charity I’ve supported ever since, but I also returned home with something for myself — a love for adventure.
You ran seven marathons, one on each continent, to raise awareness of dementia — a challenge you completed in December 2023. Where did the project take you? To many of the most remote corners of the world. I ran through the deserts of Morocco and Jordan, as well as a nature reserve in Alaska, the Australian Outback, the Amazon Rainforest, the Arctic Circle in Norway and Antarctica. There was a huge contrast in the wildlife, the communities, the weather — I started in Morocco’s Agafay Desert, where temperatures are around 40C, and finished on Union Glacier, Antarctica, where it’s -25C. It was the greatest 14 months of my life.
How did you decide where to go? Five of the seven runs were self-organised, so I picked destinations close to my family’s heart. My mum is fascinated by destinations like Alaska and Australia’s Outback; she may never visit but I did, and hopefully put a smile on her face.
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of the first things that comes to mind. During the North American leg, I saw brown bears, wolves and moose, and I ran through the Alaskan Wildlife Conservation Center in the midst of these incredible animals.
What happens next? I published an open letter to the UK government addressing dementia diagnostics on 21 September 2023, World Alzheimer’s Day, and carried it on the last three legs of my marathon challenge. Currently, one in three people in England with dementia never receive a formal diagnosis, which is simply not good enough. I’m calling on the government to invest £16m into improving this statistic and have received an invite from 10 Downing Street to discuss the letter. This is the pinnacle of the project: running seven continents will have meant nothing unless this letter is delivered and the issue is acknowledged.
What’s next for your travels? For these first couple of years, my career has been all about momentum. But the goal now is to take another professional step: pioneering adventures that have never been done before. I’m still planning, but it may involve swimming. I’ve only done two major swims — the Alcatraz and the Dardanelles Strait from Europe to Asia — but swimming is something I really enjoy. It gives me a freedom I’ve never experienced with anything else. INTERVIEW: ANGELA LOCATELLI
Louis Alexander is an explorer and endurance athlete.
louisalexander.org @louisalexanderexplorer
READ THE FULL INTERVIEW ONLINE AT NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC. COM/TRAVEL
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