Fresh from sprinting to avoid sniper fire in Syria‚ Sky News war reporter Alex Crawford celebrated her 55th birthday on Saturday by running the Two Oceans half-marathon in Cape Town.
Crawford‚ who has lived in Johannesburg for five years‚ did the race to raise money for the charity ActionAid‚ which helps disadvantaged young women escape poverty on the Cape Flats and in Johannesburg.
Crawford looked fresh at the finish line and shared photographs of herself with a birthday banner and with Professor Vusi Gumede‚ head of the Thabo Mbeki African Leadership Institute‚ who also ran the half-marathon.
- Gongqa breaks Cape Town's Two Oceans droughtLungile Gongqa broke a drought that has endured for 44 years when he won the 2017 Two Oceans Ultra Marathon in Cape Town on Saturday.
Training for the mother of four amounted to a 16km run through Erbil in Iraq — and many intense sprints between buildings in the Syrian city of Mosul‚ where she has been covering the civil war.
She appealed to her 100‚000 Twitter followers to contribute to ActionAid.
“One of my fellow runners has managed to get out of poverty and when she went back to her Cape Flats family and friends this week and explained she was doing a charity run her unemployed auntie gave her R20. That’s R20 she does not have. If she can afford that then I’m sure half of my salaried Twitter followers can‚” said Crawford.
“As part of ActionAid South Africa’s mission is to empower people with rights and resilience‚ we are working with 1‚000 young women in Cape Town and Johannesburg providing support and training through the Young Urban Women programme to change the choices young women in our country have to make every day.”
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