Real-life Forrest Gump: Birmingham native is running

It's moving toward nightfall and Barclay Oudersluys is camped about 100 miles outside Flagstaff, Arizona.

He ran there from California.

"I'm about 400 miles into the run," said Oudersluys, a 2010 Birmingham Seaholm High School graduate. "So far, so good."

Oudersluys, 23, is planning to run about 3,200 miles from California's Santa Monica Yacht Harbor and Pier to the Marshall Point Lighthouse in Maine. He's a huge fan of the movie, "Forrest Gump," and is essentially retracing the same route his fictional character ran in the 1994 blockbuster film.

He's not in it for the money. There's no book deal or promise of a reality show when he crosses the finish line. No documentary for Barclay Oudersluys.

He's just a young man looking for some adventure.

"I was at the University of Michigan and I was on a run there one day, bored, and I tried to come up with something big to do and decided to run across the country," he said in a phone interview Wednesday. "I'm out here just having fun."

His friend, Carly Lasagna of Brighton, is helping him along the way. They're sleeping in a van, eating lots of peanut butter, granola bars and pop tarts. During the day, they meet up every 10 miles so he can snack, refill his water bottles and slug down some Gatorade.

His weirdest day occurred in the Mojave Desert when he overshot his meeting point with Lasagna and the van.

"I was running down a dirt road in the desert and went a little farther than I planned," he said. "I ran out of water and that was kind of rough."

His worst day was when he forgot to bring along some sunscreen.

His goal is to complete the trip in 100 days and reach Maine in mid-August. He started out May 9 and is averaging about 30 miles a day. His routine is to wake up at dawn, enjoy a light breakfast and run about 20 miles.

He'll then take a mid-afternoon siesta, and run another 10 miles or so before calling it a day.

"We might do a crossword puzzle in the evening, but usually I'm asleep at eight so there's not a lot of nightlife," he said.

He sends out photos of his journey each day on his Twitter account @ProjectGump, and he's hoping the publicity from the run will help raise money for the Hall STEPS Foundation (www.thestepsfoundation.org). The nonprofit organization was founded in 2009 by a pair of distance runners, Ryan and Sara Hall, to fight global poverty by improving health.

His journey will take him across 15 states – 16 if he decides to step into Utah at the Four Corners. He started training in 2013 by running two marathons, in Ann Arbor and Chicago. Plus, he once biked from Michigan to his grandmother's house in North Carolina.

For the most part, he's running alone. A friend ran with him the first day in Los Angeles, and some running groups are planning to join him when he reaches near the East Coast.

"I just let my my mind wander wherever it wants to go when I'm running," he said. "I see a lot of stuff out here ... a lot of animals."

Why the fascination with Forrest Gump?

"I think it was all the things he did," said Oudersluys. "He had a really interesting life and I'm trying to copy that."

Unlike Forrest, Oudersluys graduated with a master's in nuclear engineering from U-M and is planning to attend law school at the University of California-Berkeley in the fall. After that, maybe he'll captain a shrimp boat.

If life really is a box of chocolates, Oudersluys is enjoying every bite. And yes, he would love it if Tom Hanks hears about his journey and reaches out to him.

"I'm hoping he'll see something," said Oudersluys. That would be cool."

Hometown Life reporter Jay Grossman can be reached at jgrossman@hometownlife.com, 586-826-7030 or on Twitter: @BhmEccentric.