After Boston, runner resumes work on 5K

Jacob Wells rolls up the U.S. flag he carried in the 2007 Firecracker Fast 5K in Little Rock.

Jacob Wells rolls up the U.S. flag he carried in the 2007 Firecracker Fast 5K in Little Rock.

Monday, April 22, 2013

Two weeks after running from bombs at the Boston Marathon, Jacob “Marathon Boy” Wells will conduct a 5K footrace in Little Rock’s Clinton Presidential Park.

The second annual Run Before They Can Walk 5K will begin at 8 a.m. Saturday. This is not an event created in response to the April 15 attack in Boston, in which two bombs left near the finish line killed three people and injured more than 180. No, on behalf of the March of Dimes charity in Arkansas, Wells has been planning Saturday’s 3.1-mile race for a year - he began work on it right after his first Run Before They Can Walk 5K last April.

Wells jokes about holding a news conference to tell all his friends and co-workers at one time about his experiences in Boston and what he makes of them. But he’s still sorting through that, so … no news conference today.

Early Wednesday morning he is sitting in his office at JPMS Cox PLLC, an accountancy firm in western Little Rock, handling a bit of publicity for his little 5K before diving into work.

“Maybe another theme for this race, the 5K, is being together and being active and a celebration of humanity,” he says.

He’s not sure how much of humanity to expect at his race. Last year, it drew 174 people. “Bill Torrey told me one time that you get 60 percent of your runners in the last 10 days,” Wells muses. So he’s planning for about 300.

“We’ve put out 7,000 brochures,” he says, adding that the brochure is “so cute and we’ve put so much work into that. Put them out at other races, stores, e-mail, social media. There’s just so much competition for a 5K. It’s fierce.”

Runners and walkers will have options in Little Rock the same day: the ninth annual Rocket 5K at Catholic High School and the Fight for Air Climb at War Memorial Stadium - but given the spirit of running camaraderie he feels intensely this day, he thinks the more competition, the merrier.

“I love the whole line of thinking that there [are] so many races to pick from, and as somebody that is so happy to promote people being active, I kinda don’t care which one you go to - it’s just so good to be there. One of my favorite lines is, ‘Where else would [you] rather be than with a few hundred of your best friends?’”

On this morning, running seems to be all about the human race.

Intense impressions from Boston … explosions five blocks away and not knowing what was going on; the instinct to flee; coincidences of escape; the oddity of observing his own lived memories being replaced by a video replayed on TV … the shock of being applauded at Logan International Airport, of being thanked by Bostonians for coming to their town while feeling that if runners hadn’t come there maybe no one would have been hurt … the being interviewed seven times ….

It’s a lot to think through.“I’m in denial as much as anybody,” he says, but he’s fed up with reports that emphasize carnage. He sees them converting horror into entertainment to distract people from “what they’re really feeling.”

After the huge awfulness of April 15 came a weird ordeal Tuesday as he and two friends, Kim Howard of Mineral Springs and James Bresette of Clinton, were trapped by a system wide shutdown of American Airlines. Their journey home to Arkansas included too much waiting, too much sitting for marathoner legs, followed by rushing, changing airlines, changing connections. As they boarded their plane to leave Boston, strangers applauded them as though they were heroes, which shocked him.

5K PLANS

Some things he loves about the March of Dimes event:

Its downhill finish.

The course (which he designed last year) begins on East Third Street near Heifer International “just so it can go around the Clinton Center,” he says. The parking lot annoys him because runners will have to share the space with cars, but “I’m going to have tons of [traffic] control right there.” And then racers get to cross the Arkansas River using the Clinton Bridge. They’ll take North Little Rock’s River Trail just past the Willow Street entrance, where they will turn around.

After they cross back over the river, cresting the Clinton Bridge and enjoying its ramp headed downhill to the park, racers will make a sharp right to finish on a downhill beside the William E. “Bill” Clark Wetlands.

“That is just a drop and everybody loved it” last year, he says. “It makes a fast and furious finish. People working the finish line were joking about having a runaway truck ramp.”

A map of the 3.1-mile course can be viewed online at tinyurl.com/marchofdimes5K.

Lots of awards.

ArkansasRunner.com of Benton will time the race. At 9:15 a.m., the awards ceremony will honor the three fastest men and women overall and the top three male and female masters (age 40 and older), and the top five male and female winners in five-year age groups up to 75 and older.

Sen. Mark Pryor will help hand out awards, Wells says.

The National Anthem.

Amanda Glover, a junior at Greenbrier High School who is Miss Petit Jean Valley Outstanding Teen, will sing. Wells says she and her sister sang the anthem last year and their voices knocked him over.

Registration costs $20. Race-day registration, which costs $25, will be accepted near the start from 6:30 to 7:30 a.m.

Packet pickup will be available from noon to 6 p.m. Friday at Easy Runner in the Pleasant Ridge Shopping Center, 11525 Cantrell Road, Suite 102.

More information is at (501) 663-3100 and marchofdimes.com/arkansas/events/ events_10340.html.

BRIDGES

Boston was Wells’ 135th marathon.

He runs 26.2-mile events, on the average, once every three weeks.

“Some times of the year it’s two or three in a row, other times of the year [his rest interval might be] six weeks because there’s not that much in the summer,” he says. He and his girlfriend, Jaynie Cannon, don’t fly often to these events. They drive to every marathon they can reach in eight or 10 hours.

Boston was “a guy trip and she didn’t go.” So she wasn’t standing among the spectators when the bombs exploded.

He doesn’t intend to think about that. And he has no intention of giving up marathoning, no intention to avoid hanging out with vast crowds of runners, no intention of quitting.

“About 14 of my friends and I are putting on a marathon,” he says. Oh, yes.

He has a website and almost all the permits he needs for the 3 Bridges Marathon (3BR26) on Dec. 28. The website is 3bridgesmarathon.com.

“You should check this out,” he says. “The course is unbelievable.”

ActiveStyle, Pages 23 on 04/22/2013