SANFORD — Considering the circumstances, Barclay Oudersluys looks remarkably well rested.

For the last 95 days, Oudersluys has been doing something that even well-trained athletes might consider a tad extreme.

Barclay Oudersluys says his cross-country run for charity, called Project Gump, has been a mental test. Gregory Rec/Staff Photographer

Since early May, Oudersluys, 23, has been running across the United States, in scorching heat and through rain and wind, logging more than 30 miles per day.

Called “project Gump” after the iconic cross-country run depicted in the 1994 Tom Hanks classic “Forrest Gump,” Oudersluys has used the herculean effort to raise $10,225, so far, to drill a well in Africa.

“Really, I was just trying to come up with something big and exciting to do,” he said. “I figured if (Forrest Gump) can run across the country, I could run across the country.”

The proceeds are going to the Hall Steps Foundation, a charity founded by a husband-and-wife team of professional runners, that promotes fitness and raises money to help impoverished people around the world.

So with five pairs of running shoes and a whole lot of confidence, Oudersluys set off from the Santa Monica pier May 9.

When he completes his journey Saturday at the Marshall Point Light House in Port Clyde, he will have covered about 3,150 miles in 100 days.

More than a simple charity drive, Project Gump has been a mental test for Oudersluys, he said.

As a child and as a teenager growing up in Birmingham, Michigan, outside Detroit, Oudersluys said he always played multiple sports, including soccer and rugby, as well as wrestling. Before he began the project, Oudersluys was in the kind of shape few people achieve, having run 50- and 100-mile foot races, known as ultra-marathons, and completed an iron man triathlon, consisting of a 2.4-mile swim, a 112-mile bike ride and a full 26.2-mile marathon.

To him, the challenge is less about physical prowess – he has run consistently at about nine minutes per mile, an easy pace for an experienced runner like himself.

“I think it’s all mental,” he said. “It’s just, do you want to do it and stay focused and put the work in?”

Each day he rises about 5:30 a.m. and hits the road by about 6 a.m., finishing his 30 or more miles by about 1 p.m., he said.

To keep up the pace, he must eat about 4,000 to 5,000 calories each day, he said.

Since he began his run, Oudersluys has suffered no substantial injuries. He was clipped once by a passing car, but suffered only a small cut on his wrist, he said.

Running-related aches have been minimal, he said, with only infrequent bouts of tendinitis and blisters, and a recent but minor calf strain.

Helping him along the way have been countless people who have given him places to stay, arrangements that were often cobbled together a day or two before he would arrive in someone’s town.

With him is a support van, which has been driven by about a half-dozen people for a few weeks at a time, arranging a place to meet halfway through each day’s run.

Oudersluys, who earned his master’s degree in nuclear engineering from the University of Michigan in May, said that once he reaches Port Clyde, he will traverse the country again – behind the wheel, returning to California, where he will start law school next week at the University of California Berkeley.

Asked why he chose to study law, his answer would make Forrest Gump proud.

“I don’t know, it just seemed like a good thing to do, I guess,” he said.

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