Personally, running for any reason other than to not be a serial killer’s next victim or a bear’s next meal is not my idea of a good time. It might be necessary to maintaining a semblance of cardiovascular health, but that doesn’t make it any fun.
But hey, maybe if I dressed up like a movie hero while I did it, it would be more fun. Just look at Rob Pope — he’s adopted Forrest Gump’s bushy-bearded, inspiring-others-while-running-away-from-your-problems look, and it works for him. In fact, Rob’s actually pretty inspirational on his own.
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Rob has been doing the Forrest Gump thing for a while now.
The Liverpool native started donning the little red shorts and the knee-high socks for his long distance runs back in 2001, raising money and awareness for the World Wildlife Fund and Peace Direct along the way.
And it’s not all silliness for Rob — he even won the Australian Marathon Championship in 2015 and the Liverpool Rock n’ Roll Marathon in 2015 and 2016.
Why Forrest Gump? Well, just like he was to all those followers in the film, Forrest is an inspiration to Rob.
“I think Forrest Gump — and specifically the character of Forrest Gump — is a beautiful tale of life and how we should treat one another,” he said. “Forrest didn’t judge anyone, not on the color of their skin, background, intelligence or anything else. If everyone could be a bit more like Forrest, the world would be a better place.”
Rob is probably best known not just for re-creating Forrest Gump on the road, but for re-creating Forrest’s epic run in the film.
Yeah, he did that run in real life, spending 422 days crisscrossing America. By the time he decided he was done, he had run an astounding 15,700 miles and crossed the continental U.S. five times.
That run raised $48,000 for charity, and he capped it by proposing to his fiancée at the finish line.
As incredible as that journey was, Rob did have comforts like a support vehicle following him. Not so much for his latest venture, the “hardest marathon in the world.”
For the Marathon Des Sables, competitors spend six days on their own in the wilds of Morocco, crossing 156 miles of the Sahara Desert. They carry their own rations and survival gear, and they run in scorching heat throughout the day. Once again, Rob did it dressed as Forrest Gump.
Even without the short-shorts and the beard, this would have been a daunting task.
“After a six hour coach journey, there was a day of technical checks designed to ensure you had at least 2,000 calories a day to eat, all the necessary kit that you need to survive for a week in the desert including sleeping mat and bag, a knife, emergency signalling kit, a compass, a snake venom extraction kit and a head-torch,” Rob told LadBible .
“My bag weighed 8kg before water and looked like I had a sofa in it.”
Rob also didn’t have as much time to prepare as he would have liked.
Due to an injury, he had a mere month to train for this harrowing ordeal. And as difficult as that must have been, it’s hard to imagine what his stomach went through as, throughout the race, he powered himself on a mixture of “instant mash, pork scratchings and chili oil, designed to give 1200 calories in 200 grams.”
“If truth be told, it tasted great,” he said. Sure.
Rob faced real peril in the Marathon Des Sables, and he even had a moment when he legit feared for his life.
“At some points I was coughing and my chest tightened — my heart rate shot up as I couldn’t get air into my lungs. One chap, Des, recognized the signs of an asthma like attack and gave me two puffs on his inhaler.
“My chest loosened a bit but the coughing got worse and a blood clot jumped into my mouth — soon after a chunk of dry mucus and sand followed it.
“I genuinely begun not to fear just for the race, but also for my life as I know how suddenly things can go wrong here, having seen people airlifted to hospital from the course.”
But Rob persevered and gutted it out, finishing in 14th place out of the 750 competitors, which made him first among runners from the U.K.
“I had huge reasons to continue,” he said, “with my charity goals, and as my previous entry in 2001 was canceled due to a torn muscle. I had also made a promise to my new family that I would run the race for them and do them proud.”
“It was the hardest race I’ve ever done, but it’s a funny and unique one in that it’s as hard as you make it and hard in different ways.”
h/t LadBible
