How far would you go for your favorite cause? For some, this can be measured in physical distance, like Shane Waldrop who made his way across Arkansas this summer by running 233 miles and biking 69 more to fundraise $18,000 for Camp Corral.

Waldrop is general manager of Golden Corral in Rogers, and Camp Corral is the restaurant company’s summer camp for the children of wounded, fallen or ill soldiers. While you won’t find one in Arkansas — the nearest one is in Oklahoma — Camp Corral is available in 17 states and free of charge for families, including the travel expense to get to there.

But “they have advocacy in every state,” Shane Waldrop said by Zoom. The camp itself “teaches life skills, fishing and typical fun camp stuff as well.”

Waldrop likes being a part of Golden Corral because of their dedication to soldiers. The two major fundraising projects they have each year assist children and disabled soldiers. It’s important to him because he’s a veteran himself and a father of six.

“I’d hope they’d do more for my kids if I wasn’t here any more,” he said. Shane got inspired by seeing other people fundraise for the causes they champion, such as people on YouTube touting followers to support a charity and his brother, who has a golf tournament fundraiser. “I thought ‘Why can’t I use what I like to do and get involved in the same way these guys are?”

Shane Waldrop had pulled some long distances before he decided to run through the entire state, like the 100k race (more than 62 miles) that he completed with his son. Races, though, are easier than training or going out solo like he did for this fundraiser, he said.

“Your adrenaline gets up,” at a race, Waldrop said. While he’s never won any, he’s placed in his age bracket a few times. Competing gives him a chance to go “out with someone else, rub shoulders, pass that guy. I like the challenge of it.”

The 100k was exceptionally hard, especially that first day, which was hot. Waldrop had trained in the cold. He and his son kept challenging each other though, despite how tough it was, to finish by a certain time and ultimately to just keep moving.

Being in the military was Shane Waldrop’s first experience with running. But it wasn’t until later that he picked it back up as an outlet.

“I don’t get a runner’s high, but (for me) it’s the clarity of thought you can have, the ideas coming to you or to understand something you’re working on better. You can get it out of your system and be level headed,” Waldrop said. In 2008, he began running around his neighborhood, and then went progressively farther from it, exceeding his mileage again and again. “It went from clarity of thought to a mental game of completing a task. I gave up the thought of fixing the world’s problems and just tried to survive.”

Running across Arkansas was a distance Shane hadn’t topped before. When he told his wife what he wanted to do, it bowled her over. But once she’d had a chance to process it, she went into support mode and began arranging what Shane would need on the road: a support vehicle to follow him and ensuring he’d have the hydration, calories and electrolytes necessary to keep going from day to day.

Waldrop had seven days to span the state.

He had imagined doing the run over a longer period of time, but due to the schedule of his volunteers who managed the support vehicle (a camper van wrapped in Camp Corral info), that’s the time he was given.

“It was a tight window,” he said. But he’d do his best. On Mother’s Day they drove to east Arkansas and stayed at an RV park along the Mississippi River. “We came in at night, you could maybe see (a little), but when we woke up, the river was right there,” he was stunned by its majestic presence, “and it was raining.”

The plan was to lace up his running shoes at 8 a.m., but that didn’t work out. Waldrop wanted to get to the state line to make it official, this running from end to end. The state of Arkansas sign wasn’t an exact pinpoint on their map, and there was a bunch of construction in the area. That quickly added three or four miles.

On day one, he ran 42 miles.

“What we know about fitness is that it’s probably not the best path to be rigid or the body will break down,” Waldrop said. Paired with not having gotten a sponsorship for recovery products, he opted to listen to his body and promptly ditched his goal of starting at 8 a.m. He opted to wake up naturally and hit the ground running when he was fueled and ready. Sleeping in a camper van meant he wasn’t getting quality sleep, anyway.

Each day presented a new challenge. Not just the difficulty of running 38-40 miles daily and the wear and tear on your body, but all manner of things.

“I expected every policeman I passed to ask me what I was doing, but not one in 300 miles asked me a question,” Waldrop said. “The biggest problem was dogs.”

Thanks in part to that wrapped camper van, he didn’t get many questions from anyone. The advertising for the nonprofit did the talking for him. Many folks were unfamiliar with Camp Corral, but perhaps more surprising was that the further he ran into the country, the fewer people knew even of Golden Corral.

The most pleasant surprise was “that my body could hold up,” he said. “I knew I could do it.”

When pushing the body to extremes, or what Waldrop calls “ignore override,” it’s easy to land in the hospital with serious health problems, but he, his team and his wife, who is a nurse, were all keeping an eye on that. At night, his wife would give him an IV to boost hydration.

No strangers joined him for any length of the journey, but his daughter, who was the main driver of the van for the trip, and son both ran stints with him. Some days they’d get to the place they’d marked as a stopping point and realize that it shouldn’t be, so they kept going. Other times the lack of cell service made it difficult to stay in contact with each other. In places with two lanes, Shane had to run against traffic so people could spot him better.

On Sunday morning, the final day, Waldrop woke up and thought he had a stress fracture. He had to hold the walls to walk and felt he’d put too much pressure on his shins. Rather than call it quits, he bought a bike and used it to log the final 69 miles over the next 12 hours.

Seeing so much of the Natural State as it prepared for Memorial Day made for a unique path.

“What stuck out to me was the dedication to the country and its soldiers,” Waldrop said, especially in rural areas. Most towns had some kind of military memorial, and one small community in the Conway area had a series of soldiers’ pictures, flags and laminated information every quarter mile for a 10 mile stretch. It was patriotic and tugged the heartstrings. He took pictures of many of those special moments. It would be “a different town … the list was different, different soldiers for different reasons and years, but people felt the same way.”

Waldrop hopes his actions will inspire people to come to the aid of the “children of fallen wounded warriors.”

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FYI

Camp Corral is a national nonprofit organization with a mission to reach children ages 8-15 of wounded, ill, injured or fallen military members by providing camp, advocacy and enrichment programs. Restaurant Golden Corral is a founding partner of the nonprofit that works alongside the Disabled American Veterans organization to help campers connect with other children who have similar experiences.

Camp services are in 17 states, but advocacy is provided in all. Travel expenses are covered for families bringing their children in from out of state.

Information: Donate in person at a Golden Corral restaurant or online at campcorral.org. Find Shane Waldrop on Instagram @themayoroffitness.