THE ALPINE RUN PROJECT
HOW A REFORMED CRIMINAL IS HELPING YOUNG PEOPLE FIND A NEW PATH THROUGH TRAIL RUNNING
JOHN McAVOY’S FIRST RACE WAS FOR HIS LIFE, AND IT ENDED IN A TELEPHONE BOX IN SOUTH-EAST LONDON.
Having been chased off of the motorway, McAvoy and his accomplice had dumped the car and weapons and gone their separate ways. He stripped down to his shorts and T-shirt, a £20 note tucked into his sock, as he tried to lose his tail. ‘I was always told to wear shorts, because if you’re ever in a chase, no one will think you stand out,’ says McAvoy.
McAvoy had jumped several garden fences and sprinted through the streets and alleys of Dartford when he came to a street with a telephone box. With no sign of his pursuers and gasping for air, he picked up the phone and started to dial a friend he knew would come to collect him.
As the phone started to ring, he was interrupted by the sound of screeching tyres on tarmac. ‘I looked around and there was this massive bald guy. He had a Glock handgun pointed right at me,’ says McAvoy. ‘I thought that was it.’
Within seconds, the telephone box was swarming with other heavily armed men in flak jackets. Stunned, McAvoy was dragged out of the telephone box, pulled to the ground and handcuffed. A voice from above him said, ‘I’m arresting you for conspiracy to commit armed robbery.’
John McAvoy was just 18 years old when he first saw the inside of a prison cell. As for many young offenders in the UK, this would only be the beginning of his criminal career. In all he spent 10 years inside.
A world away
More than 16 years after that first arrest, this same man, again wearing a T-shirt and shorts, is standing on a dirt track in the Peak District. Again he’s surrounded, but this time by a group of young people, some the same age as he was when he was pulled from that phone box. All are adorned in trail running gear and hanging on his every word. ‘Loads of people gave up on me when I was in prison,’ he says. ‘They thought I was a piece of s***. I had to believe in myself. I’d say to every single one of you, you’re limitless in what you can achieve.’
It’s messages like this that McAvoy has spent the past decade giving to young people all over the UK and Europe. As the story of his criminal past and incredible transformation spread, he has been invited to speak in schools, colleges and young offenders’ institutions. But this particular group of young people have been brought together not by an institution or school, but by McAvoy himself.
Supported by Nike, McAvoy conceived The Alpine Run Project, in which 12 young people from disadvantaged backgrounds from across the UK have been selected to take part in a six-month training programme to get th
