These days, Jaime Mantari finally has time to run.

 Since giving up two of his three jobs five years ago, the 34-year-old member of the Clifton Roadrunners Club has been a frequent participant on the area's running circuit, competing in distances ranging from the mile to the 50-kilometer ultramarathon.

 The former Passaic resident, who emigrated from Peru in 1990, has trimmed his 5K time from 23:45 in 1998 to 19:34 last year, has clocked a 5:05 in the mile and has finished the marathon in 3 hours, 57 minutes, 37 seconds. He has run a dozen races so far in 2002, with his latest major effort coming at the Jersey Shore Marathon on April 28, when he braved strong headwinds and drenching rains to finish in 4:05:16.

 In the weeks leading up to the marathon, Mantari competed in a series of 5K races, running under 21 minutes four times as he tried to build leg speed for the Jersey Shore. His 20:43 clocking in the Run for Rachael 5K a week before the marathon was good enough for second place in his age group. Since the marathon, he has raced at several different distances; on June 9 he earned another runner-up trophy in his age group by finishing in 20:04 in the West Essex YMCA 5K, his best 5K time this year.

 On July 7, Mantari will travel a little farther than he ever has for a race - Ecuador, to be exact. During a trip to visit his family in Peru, he and his youngest brother, Jose, will take a 10-hour bus ride to compete in a half marathon, where Jaime hopes to break his personal record of 1:36 set in the Rockland Half Marathon last September.

 While Mantari has enough time nowadays to pursue his passion, it wasn't always that way. As a teenager, in Peru, it was all but impossible to run. Instead of attending high school and participating in extracurricular activities, he was working full-time in a Lima printing shop and going to technical school at night. As the oldest of seven siblings, the 14-year-old Mantari was counted on to help support his family, so he swept floors during the day and learned the printing trade in the evening.

  His schedule left little time for running, although he tried to get in a workout two or three times a week. But with few places to run in Lima and virtually no organized running programs - "Nobody cares; there's no future for running there," he says bluntly - the teenager's competitive running career would have to wait.

 The decision to leave Peru was influenced by the owner of the printing shop, who told him, "If you want a better life, you have to go to the U.S.," Mantari said. Although he knew just two words of English, the Peruvian, then in his early 20's, realized that coming to America would enable him to make more money for his family. Mantari embarked on a 10 day boat ride to New Jersey, an experience he says he'll never forget.

 "It was very hard," he said. "For 10 days I was eating tuna fish and crackers. I was sick of eating the same thing. The boat was bouncing around 24 hours a day, and I was sitting in a little room."

 Mantari went to live with an aunt, Isela, in Passaic and looked for work. He found a job making sandwiches at Tony's Deli in town, serving customers six days a week. At night, he washed dishes at a diner on Passaic Avenue. As if that weren't enough, he supplemented his income by taking garbage out and breaking up cardboard three nights a week. In between, he found time to take English classes at Passaic High School.

 Working seven days a week, often until two in the morning, left Mantari exhausted, with little time for leisure and certainly no time for running. He missed his family back in Peru, and from time to time he pondered whether it would be better to return to his homeland. Life seemed very uncertain - and then he met his future wife.

 He was out with a couple of buddies at Zana, a Peruvian restaurant in Paterson. After dinner and a few beers, Mantari, then 27, spotted a young woman named Karen near the dance hall.

 "I saw this girl and I asked her mother if I could dance with her daughter. The next day we started dating, and she told me she was 21. I said I was 24. After two months, she told me she was 18."

 After the two had fessed up to their true ages, it wasn't long before they were married. Marriage, as it turned out, spurred Mantari's return to fitness.

  "When you get married, I heard people gain a lot of weight and lose control," he says with a chuckle. "I started going to the gym, lifting weights, biking. But I wasn't getting anything back from the lifting and the biking. I tried to play soccer, but there was no challenge, no competitions."

 That's when he decided to run again. Soon, he reduced his workload to one job - driving a delivery truck for Verona Leather of Newark. His running was slowly improving, "but no one was helping me with speed work." In 1998, he ran his first race, a 5K in Paramus, where he finished in 23:45. Later in the year, he signed up for the Clifton Stampede, a 5K race during which he met a member of the Clifton Roadrunners Club - a group of recreational and competitive runners - who was handing out membership fliers. He joined the club a few months later.

 Though a contented family man now - he and Karen live in Elmwood Park with their 6-year-old daughter, Lauren - Mantari has never forgotten his parents and siblings back in Peru. He has helped finance a new house for them in Lima, a four-bedroom dwelling for $10,000 that was completed last year.

When he returns to Peru in a few weeks, he will be seeing his native land for only the fifth time since he emigrated to the states. While he has been running 40 miles a week in New Jersey, brother Jose, 19, has been logging plenty of miles in Lima, and recently ran a 12K race in 52 minutes. To support his brother's running efforts, Jaime has been sending him running shoes and calls him almost every week. The brothers would like nothing better than to run together in the 2003 New York City Marathon, by which time Jaime expects to attain his U.S. citizenship.

 Mantari's more immediate goal is to train for this year's New York marathon, where he'd like to run under 3:40. He's also shooting to break 19 minutes in the 5K, and at some point he wants to tackle the grueling Ironman Triathlon in Hawaii.