After a workout at Gold’s Gym in Warwick, Jason Pisano does his running with assistance from his friend Avi Tzadok, who keeps his racing chair in line.

The Providence Journal / Kathy Borchers

WEST WARWICK — When Jason Pisano entered his first marathon, 14 years ago, no one thought he would finish.

After all, he was competing in a wheelchair. And, he had to travel the entire course backwards, with only his left foot to propel him.

It was the Ocean State Marathon, from Narragansett to Warwick. It took 12 hours, from early morning until after dark, but Pisano made it.

He has never allowed cerebral palsy to keep him from going the distance.

Nor has the disorder stopped him from doing anything else he put his mind to: learning to type with his toe, going to college, carrying the 1996 Olympic torch on its trip through Rhode Island, working as a freelance journalist.

Today, the West Warwick resident will tackle the 26.2 miles of the Boston Marathon. It will be his 14th time competing there. He is doing it, in part, to raise money for the Ronald McDonald House in Providence, a place where relatives can stay while a sick child is hospitalized.

Besides trying to beat his personal record of 6 hours and 32 minutes, finishing this race will nudge him a little closer to his ultimate goal of completing 51 marathons. The goal used to be 50, the same number of fights his hero Vinny Paz, a Rhode Island native and five-time world boxing champ, competed in before retiring.

“I want to outdo Vinny by one,” Pisano, 37, says.

Pisano was born with profound cerebral palsy, a neurological disorder that makes it nearly impossible to control the movement of his arms and legs, or to speak clearly. The damage occurred when the umbilical cord, wrapped around his neck, cut off oxygen to his brain.

While the average person may find a 5K race or even a jog around the block challenging, Pisano has finished 41 marathons. Pisano is a world-class athlete, participating in the highest level of competition for disabled athletes. He has won numerous awards and accolades, including two gold medals from the Cerebral Palsy-International Sports and Recreation World Championships.

Pisano said he is driven to compete in marathons because “I can.”

Close friend and college roommate, Richard A. Spellman, known to Jason as Randy, said there are two phrases he would use to describe Pisano: “One more,” and, “Tell me I can’t do it.”

“Jason follows the principle of ‘one more,’ ” no matter the task, Spellman said. “On the track, it’s one more lap. At the gym, one more set or rep. ‘One more’ often turns into many more. Do you really think he is only going to do 51 marathons?”

Every time Pisano is told he can’t do something, it will come to pass, Spellman said. He cites some examples, such as Pisano’s first marathon, or the time he struggled with a summer algebra class, the least of his interests, but ultimately completed the class earning a B.

“Even if it’s the last thing on earth he really wants to do, he can find the will power when he wants to,” Spellman said.

On a recent trip to Gold’s Gym in Warwick, Pisano works out in preparation for today’s race. Avi Tzadok, Pisano’s aide and friend for 10 years, pushes Pisano’s wheelchair across the shiny floor, weaving through a maze of exercise machines, bench presses and treadmills.

They stop at a corner near a weight machine. Tzadok scoops his friend up into his arms and hoists him onto the apparatus, strapping him in. To keep Pisano’s arms from flailing, Tzadok pulls them behind his back and secures his wrists.

The chiseled muscles in his arms and around his pectorals show Pisano’s dedication to bodybuilding. Pisano works specifically on his abdominals, his arms and his legs to prepare for the grueling Boston race.

Pisano grunts as he lifts about 45 pounds to start, using mainly his feet and his abdominals to elevate a padded bar that lifts the weights. Eventually, Tzadok adds more weights, about 30 pounds per round, until Pisano is lifting 120 pounds. Next Pisano reclines on the weight machine and Tzadok, using his body weight, leans on Pisano’s upper thighs. Pisano raises his upper body toward Tzadok, doing abdominal crunches –– about 250. Bicep curls come next.

Fine-tuning his muscles is one thing, but Pisano’s primary training for marathons is running. And running for Pisano is building stamina and speed using a three-wheeled wheelchair. He scoots backwards and has a team of aides who guide the chair using a rope.

“He’s doing a lot of running and running double what he would [usually] run,” Tzadok said. “He runs 8 miles or 9 miles a day.”

That said, Pisano and Tzadok hightail it for the Rhode Island Mall. The mall’s corridors are lined with vacated stores and other unoccupied spaces and as far as shoppers are concerned, it might as well be a ghost town. It is, however, the site of choice for many people who want to walk laps and the perfect place for Pisano to work out.

Tzadok hoists Pisano out of his regular wheelchair and into the specially designed three-wheeled racing chair. Again, Tzadok secures Pisano’s arms against his body, wrapping his right arm in a black sleeve to keep the arm from banging against his sides.

Tzadok starts to trot, tugging a rope tied to Pisano’s racing wheelchair, as the marathoner gives an ample shove-off with his left foot. While he pursues the course, Pisano appears solidly focused on his rhythm, his speed, his race. For the day, he completed 24 laps around the mall’s second-floor hallway, about 4 miles, Tzadok said.

Later that afternoon, at the two-story ranch in West Warwick that he shares with his mother, Michelle Burdick, Pisano offers a few things about his other passion –– writing.

Learning how to communicate with the world was an important goal for Pisano. He learned how to type with his toe, and that helps him to earn money as a freelance journalist. He types mainly with the toe on his left foot, which is nearly as agile as a hand.

In addition to writing for some local publications, he is working on a children’s book, complete with colorful illustrations, called Travis on Wheels. The story is about a fourth-grade boy who is disabled and in a wheelchair and his adventures after he begins attending a regular public school for the first time. Pisano left the Meeting Street School, then in East Providence, to attend school in West Warwick when he was in the fourth grade.

Pisano acknowledged, “It’s really about me,” though he said it is not entirely autobiographical. Later, in an e-mail, Pisano added, “I write about all the things that [Travis] has to go through in the first day and how the other kids reacted to him.”

He hopes to turn the book into a series.

Pisano graduated from the University of Connecticut at Storrs, with a bachelor’s degree in journalism. He he hopes to launch a career as a motivational speaker, particularly visiting high schools around the state and New England area that have a high drop-out rate. Pisano said that though he has a speech impediment, he connects “with people of all ages.” His plan is to prepare a speech and have an aide read it to the students. He said he also plans to show videos of himself in races, his medals, the Olympic torch and his racing chair.

“And answer questions,” Pisano said, via e-mail. He wants to show by example that these students can achieve. “If you have all your faculties, just think what you can do,” he said.

lsparks@projo.com