// Blog
Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.
// Arthur Ashe
I sat in a bathhouse, hunched over one of those commercial-size rubber gray trash cans, one arm still hanging out of my tight-fitting base layer. I had just finished three loops of the Barkley Marathons – a monumental achievement for a first-time participant. But the race required five loops, a distance only 14 people had ever completed in the event’s 30-year history.
Finishing loop 3
A small group of experienced ultramarathon runners bustled about as if this were all normal. Meanwhile, my family debated whether to take me to the hospital. They had never seen anything like this – people voluntarily pushing themselves to their absolute limits and somehow bouncing back from agonizing lows. I was in no position to take a side. My legs and stubbornness had carried me this far, but I had no idea what I was doing. Months earlier, a letter had arrived, leading me here and altering the trajectory of my life.
An “unfortunate” invitation
I was fully jolted awake during my typically lethargic morning routine as I read the “condolences” email accepting me into the Barkley Marathons. Excitement and terror surged throughout my body, pressure building from unused adrenaline as I sat frozen on the line between fight and flight. The race covers 125 miles (~200 km) with 65K feet (~20K meters) of elevation gain – the equivalent to summiting Everest from sea level. Twice. There are no course markings, and GPS devices aren’t allowed. There’s just an approximate hand-drawn line on a map, some ambiguous written directions, and a compass.
Before Barkley, the hardest race I had completed was a mostly flat road marathon. I expected it would take years of applying and gaining more experience before I would get in. I wasn’t battling imposter syndrome; I was objectively unqualified. Today, with far more applicants, someone with the credentials I had at the time wouldn’t even be considered.
Panicked preparation
What do I do now?! Hills. I needed to run hills. All of them, all the time. Living near Washington, D.C., I scoured Google Earth for the steepest inclines in the area. My options looked dismal. I didn’t live in the Rockies and I had a full-time job and a family. I had to make the best of my circumstances.
I began running to and from work, swapping between sweaty clothes and a full suit and tie in a small locker room, hoping I wouldn’t bump into a company bigwig on the wrong side of the swap. I followed that each evening with repeats on whatever hills I could find: 85 feet of elevation gain per trip up my street, 25 repeats at a nearby playground for 200 feet in a mile. Early on weekend mornings I logged steep, monotonous miles on my treadmill.
I was thrilled when I found a nearby off-trail hill in the woods with a 40% grade, similar to Barkley terrain – the same way that a model car is similar to the real thing. Instead of spanning miles and rising thousands of feet, the hill climbed just 95 feet in 0.05 miles. I worked my way up to 130 repeats – using most of my Saturday to cover just 13 miles with over 12K feet of elevation gain.
The trail formed from my hill repeats
Giving up before I begin
After hours, days, and months of relentless training, I still felt unprepared. My pulse quickened and I grew light-headed just thinking about the race. Maybe I should take the offer to quietly withdraw. No one would ever know and I could still avoid impending failure and embarrassment. I could prepare more, wait for another time, and try again.
That’s what the rational part of me wanted to do – the part that constantly calculates odds and searches for the best expected outcome. But something deeper inside me refused. This wasn’t about probability; it was about possibility. I had to see what I could do. If I let this chance slip away, it might never return.
Too often, we abandon big goals before even starting. In our view of what’s possible, they hide far beyond the horizon. Or we wait for perfect conditions that will never come. The path always starts where we are now, not where we hoped to be. We can’t reach a goal by pretending we’re somewhere else any more than we can drive from California to New York using directions that start in Pennsylvania.
Game time
One of the sayings at Barkley is that you arrive with the training you have, not the training you wish you had. So I took what I had and headed to Frozen Head State Park in Tennessee, to the infamous yellow gate where the race begins. The race can start any time between midnight and noon, with only an hour’s notice. After I nervously lay awake most of the night, we set off into the rough Tennessee backwoods at 11:22 AM on a clear, beautiful spring day.
My calves cramped up on the first climb. I wasn’t ready; after all of that I was still going to blow my chance, and in the most embarrassing way possible! I had two choices: ease up and guarantee a safe, mediocre finish, or push forward, risking total failure for a shot at success. I chose the latter. My calves eventually loosened and I completed three loops, known as a “Fun Run” at Barkley. That year, only one other runner made it that far.
Failure with purpose
Eventually, I figured out how to put my shirt on and left the bathhouse. I chose not to continue onto a fourth loop. A small part of me still regrets not pressing on, just to see if maybe… maybe I could have climbed one more hill. Traditionally, a bugler plays Taps for every runner who drops out. In one final act, just to try to prove I still controlled my fate, I played Taps for myself.
That ‘failure’ not only earned me another attempt, it became the foundation for my eventual finish. In 2016, I completed four loops. In 2017, I became the 15th person to finish all five loops of the Barkley Marathons. Since then, I’ve experienced adventures and accomplishments I never could have imagined. Those first two years served as waypoints, guiding me toward my true potential. Even if I had never finished, I would have achieved far more than I once believed possible.
John Kelly is the original architect and developer of Envelop Risk’s core technology, CyberTooth. After spending a few years in the UK building the team, he now lives back in the US with his family. John is also an internationally recognized ultra marathon runner, one of only three people to complete the Barkley Marathons more than once and the record holder on many well-known routes, including the Pennine Way. The thoughts and views in these posts are his own reflections from experiences as an accomplished athlete and entrepreneur, and do not necessarily reflect the views of others at Envelop Risk.
