Breaking news! The Forrest Gump of Brooklyn — who apparently had abandoned his quest to run every single inch of Brooklyn — now says he’ll be back on the road as early as next month.
Gary Jarvis, whose 1,599-mile marathon has garnered attention from Greenpoint to Coney Island, has gone public to deny reports that said he had hung up his worn-out shoes.
Jarvis now says that he will hit the road at the end of the six-week break he began after hitting the halfway mark nearly three weeks ago.
“I still plan on resuming this whole running thing,” he posted on his blog, runsbrooklyn, after The Brooklyn Paper reported that he would not finish because he had underestimated the size of Brooklyn.
Jarvis did admit that he may have given The Paper the impression that he was spent.
“True enough, the first half took its toll both mentally and physically,” he wrote on the blog, which is sometimes written in Latin.
“But I’m going to take a few more weeks off, and if everything heals up properly, I’ll pick up the running right where I left off — hopefully sometime in early March.”
He’s optimistic, certainly. And he also vows to complete his other main marathon, writing his doctoral thesis — which he’s been working on for almost a decade.
The Running Man had other problems with The Paper’s article, which likened him to “the Forrest Gump of Brooklyn.”
“Between the ‘Forest Gump’ comparisons [and] aforementioned ‘Iowa native’ references…it’s understandable how a reader might [think] I’m some kind of Midwestern rube standing at the edge of Brooklyn, rubbing his eyes in disbelief at the sheer vastness of the Big City.”
Point of information: Who doesn’t love Forrest Gump? The guy may be fictional, but he did run across the country — which is a lot bigger than Brooklyn.
And another point of information: Jarvis is not a Midwestern rube. The Paper did say he was “an Iowa native,” but he’s actually from New Jersey (we thought we were doing him a favor).
Overall, Jarvis wondered on his blog “whether the casual treatments of the facts is due to specific editorial policy or a young reporter’s inexperience.”
Point of information: We’ll be the first people at the finish line with a bottle of Champagne if Jarvis finishes.
