Monday, October 4th, 2021
Around the world in 120 Ironman
German “Forrest Gump” receives police protection
Jonas Deichmann is an adventurer and story collector. He wants to circumnavigate the world in 120 triathlons. After more than a year, he has only 3,500 kilometers left on the bike. He ran the last marathon in Mexico. There he achieved cult status. That might save his life.
Forrest Gump decided one day to take a walk. It didn’t stop again until three years, two months, 14 days and 16 hours later. For Jonas Deichmann, it took a little more planning. The “German Forrest Gump” is about to circumnavigate the world with a 120-time Ironman triathlon. According to his own statements, he would set world records for the first triathlon around the world and the – by far – longest. It wouldn’t be his first.
The 34-year-old extreme athlete, who grew up in the Black Forest, is now pretty close to his goal after a year – albeit not geographically. With daily marathons for more than three months, he ran from Tijuana across Mexico and should arrive at the beach in the holiday resort of Cancun on Monday. He then wants to travel to Portugal by boat, if possible, and from there complete the remaining 3500 kilometers by bike that are still missing. In Munich – where it all began on September 26, 2020 – it should also come to an end.
Deichmann reports that he is struggling with massive weight loss and the heat. After all that swimming and cycling, the first few weeks of running in Mexico were tough. But the body adapts. “I have to say: I’m getting stronger from week to week.”
By bike to Vladivostok
The pandemic threw Deichmann a few times a stick in the spokes. He was stuck in Turkey for weeks in December and January until he finally got a visa for Russia. Among other things, because cargo ships are not allowed to take passengers due to the corona virus, he had to put the make-up on himself to circumnavigate the world without any airplanes. He had decided to do this for environmental reasons and because, as he says, it would be a bigger adventure.
The distances of a single Ironman triathlon are already unbelievable for most people: swimming around 3.9 kilometers, cycling 180 kilometers and running 42 kilometers. Deichmann does all this 120 times within a year. Among other things, he swam 456 kilometers in the Adriatic Sea, most of which he completed in Russia. He had to fly from Vladivostok. Mexico was chosen as the destination because the other two North American countries were out of the question: Deichmann could not easily enter the USA because of previous trips to Iran and Sudan, and Canada’s borders were tight.
In Mexico there are an average of almost 100 murders every day, three years ago two bicycle travelers from Germany and Poland were killed in the south of the country – Deichmann passed the place. In many places he got a police escort without having asked for it.
Mexico’s gangsters know him too
Sometimes the policemen also ran with them. Once it was a whole department of around 30 officers who sang marching songs, as Deichmann relates. Security forces are heavily armed in Mexico. “It’s strange when two policemen with submachine guns run right next to you,” he says. The other day the barrel of an officer’s gun kept touching his leg while he was running.
It’s not just cops with him. Deichmann has supporters in Mexico. He is better known than a national soccer player, he says. Numerous Mexican media have reported on the “German Forrest Gump”, and mayors welcome him. Often dozens or even hundreds of people run with him at times. Very different people were there – recently also a “one-legged man on crutches who hobbled along ten kilometers.”
Deichmann experienced a potentially dangerous situation when he was traveling in the mountains of Sinaloa – the cradle of the cartel of the ex-drug boss Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, where it controls certain areas. Men with machine guns came up to him there, as he describes. The gangsters would have recognized him and said: “Jonas, welcome”. You would take care of him.
Nourished on locusts and worms
The nickname “German Forrest Gump” is intentional. Deichmann calls himself that on Instagram, has grown a long beard and wears the same Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. baseball cap from the 1994 film that Tom Hanks wears as a bearded, walking Gump. “” Forrest Gump “was my favorite film as a child,” says Deichmann. “That’s why I always knew: If I ever walk through a country or a continent, I’ll do it with the Bubba Gump hat and a long beard.”
The latter, however, should leave immediately when Deichmann is back in Munich. A book by him and a documentary about him will be released in December and March. In between, he wants to go on vacation – in Mexico. “I like it here,” he says. The northwestern peninsula of Baja California has done it to him. Likewise the southern state of Oaxaca, where he also enjoyed local specialties such as grasshoppers and worms. “Very rich in protein,” he emphasizes.
Asked by a bunch of reporters why he was running, Forrest Gump says in the film that he just wanted to do it. Deichmann’s motivation is adventure, as he says. He also raises donations – to give bicycles to children in Africa who have traveled to school, and for Oxfam’s environmental protection projects. For several years now, Deichmann has been an adventurer and motivational speaker by profession. “When I get old, I have a lot of stories to tell,” he says. “And that’s what it’s all about.”