Marathon Mandate

The comment Tom Jones gets from anyone who crosses the path of his well-worn Nikes is almost always the same: Are you nuts?

The question is not unreasonable. For more than three months, the Huntington Beach resident has been on a Forrest Gump-like footrace across the United States. Each day, he has run 26.2 miles--the distance of a marathon--and he doesn’t plan to cross his imaginary finish line for three more weeks.

“People think I’m out of my tree but in a good way,” the 37-year-old said last week from his motor home parked in the snow just outside Pittsburgh.

Jones hopes his 120-day journey will raise $250,000 for needy children, though he has received only about $40,000 to date.

“These things tend to snowball,” Jones said. “I’m going to stick with that $250,000 number.”

His journey over America’s purple mountains and across its fruited plains--not to mention the 111-degree deserts and ice-slicked, truck-clogged roads--began July 4 when he ran the Independence Day parade route through his hometown and “just kept running.” He completed his 105th consecutive 26.2-mile day Monday in Aberdeen, Md., outside Baltimore.

Jones has worn out nine pair of shoes, used 200 bandages, and--turn your head if you’re squeamish--had all 10 toenails fall off twice, and then he “stopped counting.” Even hard-core marathoners can’t figure out how Jones does it.

“Once I ran 26 miles for 13 days in my own training,” said Amby Burfoot, executive editor of Runner’s World and winner of the 1968 Boston Marathon. “On the 14th day, I couldn’t get my body out of bed.”

Burfoot paused for a moment before asking: “Why’s he doing this?”

That is another common question to Jones.

“God told me to run an extreme distance,” Jones said.

Three years ago, the born-again Christian who sleeps with a Bible in his bed prayed that he would find a way to raise money for children in need.

Jones spent 10 years of his childhood, from age 8 to 18, in a state-run boys’ home in Covina. After getting out, he didn’t adjust well to life on his own, despite a successful career as a professional kick boxer.

“I had significant problems,” said Jones, a 10th-grade dropout.

Among them: problems with his temper, with cocaine, with the police. He was jailed briefly in connection with a traffic ticket. But he acknowledges it could have been worse.

“I didn’t get caught for a lot of the stuff I did,” Jones said.

About five years ago, he said, he had had enough of a life that had “beat me to smithereens both physically and emotionally.”

“I finally looked up in the sky and said, ‘Help me!’ That was the point things changed for me,” he said.

He kicked his drug habit, went to church, met Brandi, who is now his wife and six months’ pregnant.

A top-ranked kick boxer despite his problems, Jones became world champion in 1996 and 1997 after his conversion.

“I have a different approach now,” he said. “I ask God each day, ‘What can I do for you today?’ ”

With his best kick-boxing days behind him, he said, he sensed God telling him to run long distances.

Though he had never done a marathon, he went out to get sponsors for his endeavor, only to find that corporate America was not ready for him. “That was really hard,” Jones said. “A few kicked me out, a few laughed at me, and most of them said I was out of my mind.”

An old friend agreed to give Jones money for living expenses for his runs, enabling him to give 100% of any other donations to charity. He also got a handful of sports-related sponsors who gave him food and clothes.

No one believed he could run across the United States, so “I kind of had to spoon-feed it to them,” he said.

He started by running the length of California--1,500 miles--in each of the last two years, raising more than $120,000.

Those two jaunts were merely a warmup for the run this year that will ultimately cover 3,144 miles in 120 days. After a four-day rest, Jones plans to put an exclamation point on his quest by running the New York City Marathon on Nov. 5.

Jones, whose expenses will be less than $35,000, travels with two men--a driver and a physical therapist-cook who has to try to get 6,000 calories into the marathoner each day. Still, the 5-foot, 8-inch Jones has lost 20 pounds from his pre-race weight of 160.

He splits his mileage into two 13-mile segments, one in the morning and one in the afternoon. When he crossed the Mojave Desert, he started his day at 3 a.m. If it snows, Jones will run on a health club’s treadmill or around a high school track. It takes him about four hours to finish 26 miles, a good time for an average marathoner.

“People don’t believe you can do it upfront, and they don’t believe it when you did it,” said Jones, who videotapes his runs and has witnesses for every mile he pounds out in case anyone challenges his achievement.

He also gives progress reports for “Extreme Run 2000” on a Web site--https://www.run4kids.org--that his wife operates.

“He’s not crazy,” said fellow kick boxer John “The Iceman” Adams. “He’s just extremely dedicated to his beliefs.”

Jones worked hard to get sponsors, Adams said, “and uses what he has--his physicality--to make money for children.”

Jones gives the money to organizations that help neglected and abused children, including Orangewood Children’s Home and the Masonic Home for Children, where he grew up.

A lot of people have asked Jones, What’s next?

“I don’t know,” he said. “I’ll have to go back and pray about it.”