Englishman passes through Morgan City on journey across the U.S.; Hopes 20,000-mile run will encourage kids to be more active

Using Forrest Gump’s fictional run across the U.S. as inspiration, Jim Plunkett-Cole is on a journey to run 20,000 miles in three years for the sake of encouraging kids around the country to exercise daily.
Plunkett-Cole, 47, of Bristol, England, ran into Morgan City Tuesday night and headed out Wednesday on his way to his next stop in Franklin, eventually bound for Houston. He must average at least 17 miles per day to accomplish the feat in about three years.
He plans to run across the United States the way Forrest Gump did in the 1994 classic movie starring Tom Hanks. Based on the fictional account, Gump ran 19,024 miles in 1,169 days, according to an article in The Week.
“I’m not trying to be Forrest Gump,” Plunkett-Cole said. “I’m trying to use an epic, famous film and run to raise the profile of what it is that I’m really trying to achieve, which is to get kids active.”
Plunkett-Cole wants to inspire kids to be more active and get “children away from screens,” he said.
The average child in the U.S. spends 7½ hours a day in front of electronic screens of some kind, Plunkett-Cole said.
For the past year in the United Kingdom, he has done “talk and run” visits at elementary schools, reaching 3,000 children. The purpose of the visits is to encourage kids to get outside and exercise.
Plunkett-Cole hopes to visit as many schools and home-school networks as he can in the U.S.
He began his journey Oct. 1 at the USS Alabama Battleship Memo-rial Park in Mobile. People can follow his run on his “JimGump” Facebook page. A support crew travels ahead of Plunkett-Cole in an RV, and he meets up with the crew at the end of each day.
Before starting his current trek, Plunkett-Cole had already run about 10,000 miles since Jan. 1, 2013, having run at least 10K (6.2 miles) every day in that time period.
If Plunkett-Cole completes his seven-year, 30,000-mile run without skipping a day, it will be roughly equivalent to running Earth’s circumference, plus 5,000 miles.
After reaching Houston, Plunkett-Cole is considering going back toward the east coast to deliver his message to more people, instead of traveling through the desert to the west coast as Gump did.
Meeting strangers is the biggest personal challenge of the trip for Plunkett-Cole because he has Asperger’s syndrome, which causes a great fear of strangers, especially of getting negative attention from them.
He wants to challenge his “own social weakness” by meeting lots of people along the way. People in the Morgan City area have been extremely friendly to him, he said.
Asperger’s does give him “tremendous focus,” enabling him to persevere through his journey and stay curious about what’s in store, he said.
He was originally inspired by the 2012 Lon-don Summer Olympics to start his streak of consecutive days running. Plunkett-Cole set up an initiative in 2013 called Kx365 to encourage adults to do “a little bit of physical activity every day,” he said.
In 2014, about 100 people joined him in that initiative. Then, in 2015, he added on a 20K (12.4-mile) bike and 750-meter swim in order to do a triathlon every day for a year, and another 300 people joined that challenge.
By the end of 2015, he had run 10K every day for three years straight.
“I then thought, could I do Forrest Gump’s run for real? I’ve already done the number of days but haven’t done the mileage,” he said.
During his school visits, he tells the story of his Forrest Gump-inspired run across the U.S., and shows kids pictures of what he’s seen along the way and the iconic sites he wants to visit. After his talk, he leads the kids on a run around a playground or field, he said.
“All I’m trying to do is to encourage the children to do a little bit of daily physical activity,” he said. That activity could be running, swimming, cycling or any other sport.
For almost all of human history, people spent their time “hunting and gathering” on a daily basis to survive, Plunkett-Cole said.
But humans have be-come much more sedentary, particularly over the past half-century. To live a healthy life, people should “do as they’re designed,” and be physically active, he said.
“By doing a little bit of daily physical activity, I’m approximating to my design as best as I possibly can within a modern context,” he said.
He grew up running in the Somerset Levels in England’s countryside, an area similar to Louisiana’s swamps but with less heat and humidity. Plunkett-Cole’s mother gave him the freedom to explore outside, and his love of adventure led him to where he is today. His mother died in 2013.
“There’s a lot of her in this,” he said of the journey.
Plunkett-Cole always looks forward to his daily run because it gets him away from his desk job.
He is an economic analyst in England and helps support local economic growth. He was fascinated to see the industry in the Morgan City area.
He hopes to get “to see more of America than most Americans get to see in their lifetimes.”
Plunkett-Cole’s running streak has taken a physical toll on him.
“My body has been tired now for nearly four years so I’m just used to my body being tired.”
While traversing the U.S., he carries an American flag that keeps him visible to motorists on the roadway, causes people to honk in encouragement and piques their curiosity to ask him questions.
Fundraising efforts and inheritance money propelled him to be able to start his 20,000-mile run in the U.S. He can afford to keep going for two to three months. If he doesn’t get more funding or sponsored, he’ll go back to England and continue his run there, he said.
He was featured in the Washington Post at the end of September, and he’s encouraged by the support he has received so far. He accepts donations to fund his journey and school visits at pledgesports.org/projects/jimgump.
Any local schools interested in having Plunkett-Cole visit may contact him by messaging JimGump on Facebook. He’s sometimes able to backtrack while he’s still in a region to visit schools upon request.