Forrest Gump fan to run across US in 100 days

Barclay Oudersluys had competed in triathlons and ultramarathons but he wanted to do something bigger, so the Michigan native took a cue from his favourite movie.

Inspired by Forrest Gump, played by actor Tom Hanks in the 1994 Academy Award-winning movie of the same name, Oudersluys decided to run across America and set out to do it in 100 days.

“I decided if Forrest Gump could run across the country, I could do it too,” he said after he had completed his 61st day of running in Mount Pulaski, Illinois.

Rising every morning around 6am, the 23-year-old from Birmingham, Michigan, has kept a daily pace of 30 to 33 miles (48-53km), a distance greater than a marathon.

Like Gump, he is running from the Santa Monica Pier in California to the Marshall Point Lighthouse in Port Clyde, Maine, a route already taken by an undocumented number of runners.

Oudersluys’ plan, dubbed Project Gump, will take him through 14 states and over 3,150 miles (5,070 km), ending on August 16, shortly before the University of Michigan graduate with bachelor’s and master’s degrees in nuclear engineering starts law school at the University of California, Berkeley.

In the movie, Gump’s repeated cross-country jogs inspire people to join him. Oudersluys is in turn trying to raise $10,000 for the Hall Steps Foundation, a charity started in 2009 by two professional distance runners to fight global poverty.