358 lb man to run Boston Marathon

He hopes 26-mile run will help end 26 years of obesity

America needs a new hero. Why not a 438-pound Wisconsin beekeeper who decided he would run in - or at least behind - the Boston Marathon and raise money for charity?

Yes, Jacob Seilheimer knows he's fat. He has lived that hell for most of his 26 years.

And it's hardly news that he's a non-traditional distance runner. His mom, Sandra, gave me this bold prediction: "He's not going to be up there with the Kenyans."

"I can promise you," Jacob says on the Web site promoting his effort, www.whatwouldjacobdo.com, "that this won't be pretty, and I'll be chronicling my journey for your perverse pleasure."

Don't miss the hilarious training videos he and his friends produced and posted on their site and on YouTube.

Here's the good news for Jacob and for the paramedics working the race on April 16: He has lost 80 pounds since deciding just a few months ago that he didn't want his legacy to be a XXXL casket. This past week he hit 358 pounds.

"I'd like to get down to 290. I haven't seen that since I was 14," he told me.

I reached Jacob at Franklin Pierce Law Center in Concord, N.H., where he's a second-year law student.

He grew up in New Auburn, north of Eau Claire, and played on the high school football team. He went on to play for Colby College in Maine, where he said he packed on the "freshman 70" and soon hit 400 pounds.

Jacob worked in his family's honeybee operation for years, keeping the bees busy pollinating apples, cherries and such, and collecting honey by the 55-gallon drum and bee stings by the thousands.

His English teacher in school, Liz Rehrauer, remembers the TV commercial spoof that Jacob did as an assignment for her class. It was for a guaranteed weight gain program that stressed the importance of eating pie for breakfast.

"He's very, very funny, but he's sensitive, too," she said.

In between Jacob's jokes about a self-described meatball running 26 miles 385 yards is the pain of facing the world every day as a morbidly obese human being.

Children laugh at him on the street, he said. When he sees a TV news report on obesity, he watches for himself in the neck-down file footage. He never stops worrying that the chair he's using will break. Drinking too much at the bar helps him forget that "love obviously isn't finding you tonight or any night for that matter," he said.

Then again, he has figured out ways to laugh at himself.

He was Rosie O'Donnell for Halloween last year. He's making up some T-shirts that say, "People don't kill treadmills . . . I do." His friends call him Bear. One of the FAQs on his Web site asks: "Will you tape your nipples so they don't rub off during the marathon?"

One question Jacob hears all the time is whether he's serious about any of this.

"This is not an Internet farce. It's real," he said. He will run the marathon or die trying, he vows. "I also hope to get some dates out of it, and maybe a summer job."

He has cut most of the beer and fast food from his diet, bringing him down to less than 2,000 calories a day from healthier fare. He's been lifting weights, doing yoga and logging more than 20 hours a week on his exercise bike, which claims to have a weight maximum of 275 pounds but hasn't cracked yet.

Realistically, he plans to tackle Boston with a run/walk combination. Four of his buddies have agreed to run with him. Jacob said the money pledged so far to the American Cancer Society, Special Olympics and other charities has come mostly from family and friends.

Going public with his quest has attracted quite a bit of feedback, not all of it positive.

"Boston represents a sacred goal," wrote one high-minded runner. "Boston should be reserved for top athletes, which is not you." (For the record, Jacob is not enrolled in the race; he will run in the back with the unofficial marathon "bandits" as they're known.)

"I don't think you should die or anything like that, but I bet your knees will give out and you'll collapse long before you ever have a chance of running the marathon," says another.

Jacob is worried about his knees, more so than his heart. To save on his joints, he has minimized his running lately, admittedly not a common strategy leading up to a marathon.

"It's not the best plan, but it's a plan," he said. "I'm actually in a lot better shape than most 350-pound men."

Eight days from now, he'll get to prove it.