Rob Pope’s mother, Cathy, begged him to promise her one thing before she died away in 2002: to do one thing in his life that would make a difference.
For him, this was unprecedented: “Only a few hundred people had before run across the United States, but no one had ever completed the Forrest Gump run. It was something of a “aha!” moment.”
Late in 2016, a 44-year-old man from Liverpool, England, began his mission to run the route that Tom Hanks’ character ran in the 1994 film “Forrest Gump.”
The book, “Becoming Forrest: One Man’s Epic Run Across America” (Harper North), will be released in paperback on March 7.
The expedition spanned 43 states, 422 days, and 15,621 miles, which is equivalent to four times the length of the Amazon River.
In addition, he wore out 33 pairs of running shoes.
Tom Hanks as Forrest Gump Sunset Boulevard
In September 2016, Pope began his journey in Mobile, Alabama, in an effort to collect funds for the World Wide For Nature (WWF) and Peace Direct. Pope is a veterinarian by profession and an accomplished marathon runner.
He donned replicas of the iconic plaid shirt, chinos, and cap worn by Forrest Gump, and, like the character, began clean-shaven but ended up with a beard just as unruly as the protagonist’s.
Unavoidably, there were as many plot twists as a Hollywood screenplay.
A few weeks into the run, Pope tore the left quadriceps muscle. He was averaging 35 to 40 miles every day. By the time he arrived in Memphis, Tennessee, he was moving at a snail’s pace.
Pope joked, “Yes, I was walking in Memphis.”
In addition, he endured all that nature could throw at him, including blizzards and forest fires. There were temperatures above 100 degrees in Alabama. “Per day, I probably changed my shirt four or five times,” he recounted. When I wrung out my shirt, there was half a pint of perspiration flowing out.
Then, it began to snow in Death Valley. “That was insane,” stated Pope. It is the hottest spot in the earth, and I was running across it as snow was falling.
In Idaho there were moose, in Montana’s Glacier National Park there are bears, and in South Carolina there are dolphins.
In Oregon, Pope participated in a 10-kilometer race and won, becoming the state champion. At the Boston Marathon, which he also ran in character, he was met with chants of “Run, Forrest, Run!” and, possibly because to his beard, “Go, Jesus!”
As he passed the 11-mile mark, someone in the crowd even handed him a beer.
“As an experienced runner, I am aware that this is not the optimal hydration strategy, but I still drank it,” said Pope. It was a Bud Light, thus it was more comparable to an isotonic sports drink.
Hanks as Gump Superlative
From horn-honkers to well-wishers, couch-surfing hosts to donut gifts, the Pope was overwhelmed by the warmth he encountered on his journey.
“Social media would have you believe that the United States is a country where you’re either on one side or the other,” he remarked. “I didn’t really find that. I simply discovered folks, ordinary people, who were interested and intriguing and simply desired to assist and, well, be human.
There is simply too much generosity in the United States to fit in a single book.
Pope left the Twin Arrows Trading Post in Arizona in March 2018 to return to England, where his girlfriend Nadine was due to give birth to their daughter Bee.
While at home, he still managed to fit in three more marathons, including one in London in which he broke the Guinness World Record for the fastest marathon by a person wearing a movie costume, clocking 2 hours 36 minutes and 28 seconds.
It was formerly possessed by a man costumed as Elsa from “Frozen.”
Pope then flew back to the United States to complete the fifth and final stage of his marathon, from Beaufort, South Carolina to Monument Valley, Utah, with the support of his fiancee and infant daughter.
They were also present as he reached the conclusion of his adventure.
Pope, wearing a Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. cap identical to Gump’s, got down on one knee and proposed to Nadine, “partly out of exhaustion and partly out of tradition.” She accepted.
Despite numerous attempts, Pope has been unable to reach Tom Hanks to this day.
Today, his beard is a little more tamed than it once was, but it is still present. Pope stated, “My wife enjoys it, but only if it does not exceed a certain length.” She will say things like, “It’s become a bit Texas” or “I liked it better when it was Nevada.”
»It took this man a year to repeat ‘Forrest Gump’s’ 15,000-mile journey«