Go Big. Go REALLY Big.

How going after big goals like the Spine pushes one Bar Harbor man into new and unexpected places, no matter what the ultimate outcome is

The Bar Harbor Story is generously sponsored by Paradis Ace Hardware.

This post was contributed by Jeremy Dougherty

Jeremy contributed this at our request after we read it online. We’ve had two guests posts this past week as we end 2024, and we hope you find them as full of community and aspiration and inspiration as we do. Many thanks to Jeremy for letting us share this and to Jack Raymond for his post Sunday. The Bar Harbor Story is about news, but it’s also about community, so we’re really honored to be able to share and build that with Jeremy’s post. All photos were contributed by Jeremy.

BAR HARBOR—It was just sitting there on the screen.

A tiny little green box with the word, "WITHDRAWAL," written in black.

I stared at it for so long. The black background with contour lines and the distinctive orange color for all the branding staring back at me. For 346 days I've looked at this very page on this very website.

Now it’s staring right back at me and I have to put the mouse over the word. I have to hit it.

Instead, I just stare back at it.

For almost one year I’ve planned around this one singular goal. Completing the Montane Spine Race Challenger South race. A 108 mile race along the Pennine Way trail.

In January.

A right proper adventure.

The stats were not intimidating. While I haven't run a 100 miler since the Mogollon Monster in 2017, 108 miles didn't scare me. Neither did the 18,000 in climbing. Neither did the weather which would be cold, it would wet, and it would be cold and wet.

Nor the one single aid station at mile 45. That didn't scare me.

Combined though...with an 18 to 20 pound pack filled with mandatory kit gear, it certainly was going to be a challenge.

So, I embarked on a year of training, research, kit purchasing, and adventures. In February we ran the first ever Acadia Round, a 33-mile, 9000-foot in gain loop around Acadia National Park that involved more than a healthy amount of ice shelves, blizzards, freezing temps, and questionable moments. We crossed Mount Desert Island on foot for a 11,500 ft of climbing 31 miler in May, and traversed the Chic Choc Mountains of northern Quebec for almost a full day of mountains in August.

Coming into the fall, I was feeling strong. Mostly.

My right knee started to bother me on runs sometime in the peak foliage period. Suddenly, going downhill felt like I was chipping my patella each stride and soon I dreaded running. I eased up my training and tried a variety of strengthening exercises. As the fall progressed, I put in minimal runs and focused on rowing. I passed on the Bar Harbor Bed Races due to this injury and the following day’s Bold Coast 50K, what was meant to be a key training run in the cold with the full kit list.

"I'll make it up in December" I told myself optimistically at the time.

Then sometime in November, I woke up with a sore left heel. Inexplicably really. Nothing happened worth remembering, just some random injury with no source.

I worked through that for the last six weeks. When it progressed and subsided, I'd try and run. Sometimes it was OK; sometimes it was pain from the car to the parking lot and then for every step until the parking lot to the house. Then, it wouldn't go away at any point. Days after a run I'd sit at my office desk dreading the need to walk to the downstairs lobby because I knew how much it would hurt to walk those 50 feet. I had no cause for an injury and despite having solid medical insurance, I dreaded the thought of going through thousands of dollars of out-of-pocket expenses to effectively not get a solution. So I tried to push through and focused on my age old mantra, "Maybe I just need to run like 50 miles on it to...you know...work out the injury."

For years and years that actually has worked well.

So, three weeks from the race, I thought I'd run another Acadia Round after our recent snow storm. By this point, I'd only managed 100 miles of running in almost four months, which was not exactly what one would call "peak ultra shape," but I was confident with the long cutoff time, being the lone American in the race, and a solid chunk of experience under my belt that I could finish the race if I could get through another Round.

Three miles after leaving the Village Green, I ascended Champlain Mountain in the dark and I couldn't keep pace with the other three guys. I struggled to climb the north ridge and my left heel was already barking. My right knee started wobbling and I pushed on to keep pace. Descending into Beehive, I told myself I just needed more miles to "work out the issues" and it would all smooth itself out.

It always has after all.

Climbing Blackwoods Campground, I literally could not keep up while running on the road to Hunters Brook. My heel felt like a flat tire clobbering down the street—a shell of its former self. I resigned to keep going despite wishing for nothing more than to simply sit.

I was 10 miles in, and I knew it wasn't happening. In my mind I knew it, but I'd make myself suffer another 10 miles to prove it to myself it was real.

That was that.

A few days have gone by and my irrational mind has tried to convince myself that I can still buy my plane ticket and that I'll just hike the 108 miles in the 60 hour cutoff. "Yeah, that'll work. I'll just hike the whole thing. The math works!"

Anything but hitting that little green box with the word: "WITHDRAWAL."

Finally, I just hit it and just like that a full year’s effort gone before it started.

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WHY YOU SHOULD GO AFTER BIG GOALS

It feels odd to care about something so much that ultimately doesn't matter. Running has always been a confusing topic to many people in my life that are not runners. Particularly the "ultra" part of running where things are often taken to the extreme. Yet, I look at things from a perspective of the goal that is being set and the difficulty of achieving it. I want to dive into something that will provide meaningful value to my life by achieving it.

I don't want to subject myself to some arbitrary level of suffering for the sake of suffering, but the suffering is definitely part of the appeal. It’s this idea of telling yourself, no, selling yourself, on something so unreasonable for what you should be capable of but convincing yourself that you can do it.

I love that and I wish more people would try that. Try convincing yourself to do something so unreasonably hard that you end up amazing yourself of what you are capable of. Running provides that in spades and rarely because of anything physical and certainly not because ultra-runners are super human athletes (we are not).

The Spine Race for me was a huge challenge for many reasons and failing to reach the starting line because my body just won't cooperate is certainly frustrating. But that happens and we all go through it from time to time.

What I can take from all of this is what I always do from huge goals I set in my personal, professional, or my running life. If you shoot for an unreasonable goal, even in failure of reaching the unreasonable, you're going to accomplish something amazing. The journey to reach the unreasonable requires a different mindset and you have to plan to accomplish something you haven't before. It forces you to think differently.

It forces you to try.

Had I not tried to do the Spine race, I wouldn't have tried to do a winter Acadia Round. It was a day which will forever be engrained in my mind as one of the most incredible adventures of my life.

Without the training needed for Spine, I wouldn't have attempted it again this week and met Ian MacLellan and Danny and got Tony back out in the mountains again. Even in its difficulty, it was incredibly beautiful in Acadia National Park this weekend under a blanket of fresh snow.

Had I not signed up for the Spine race, then Dylan Brann, Rebeccah Brann, and Anthony Ricardo wouldn't have had to hear about it every single day for the entirety of the 2024 year and how devastating would that have been for them? (Just kidding...)

Right about now, everyone is starting to think about their New Year’s resolutions. I'm sharing this because even in scenarios where you fail in accomplishing the technical goal, you won't entirely fail in accomplishing quite a lot in trying.

It's the trying that really matters.

So when you start to break out the plans for 2025, remember ...

Go big. Go REALLY big.

You'll be surprised what you end up accomplishing when you do.

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The Bar Harbor Story is generously sponsored by Fine Violins by David.

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