John Kelly’s Appalachian Trail FKT attempt is over – but the bigger goal is within sight

John Kelly‘s Appalachian Trail bid has come to an early end after 1,882 miles – with ‘just’ 315 miles remaining and what had looked a realistic shot at the fastest known time.

Tackling the 2,197.4-mile trail had been a long-held ambition for the ultrarunning legend, who has three Barkley Marathon finishes to his name alongside a whole host of other achievements, and this was the year when the opportunity really presented itself.

All had seemed on track up to and including day 34 as he averaged 55 miles a day, a fraction ahead of schedule if he was to overhaul fellow American Tara Dower’s time from last year (in the opposite direction) when she covered it in 40 days, 18 hours and five minutes.

That achievement was described by Kelly as: “Possibly the most impressive FKT ever.“

‘It’s like my ankle is paralysed’

Kelly’s route went from Springer Mountain in Georgia to Mount Katahdin in Maine, passing through 14 states, but at the weekend he revealed on Instagram that the dream was now over.

He explained: “Unfortunately, after roughly five weeks, my time on the Appalachian Trail is at an end. This was obviously a really tough decision, but also not a decision at all.

“This wasn’t a matter of toughing it out or taping it up or, pushing through the pain. I have done that for over 30 days, really every day since I came out of the Smokies, there was an ache or a pain or blisters of some sort, some combination somewhere, that I was dealing with.

“And today actually was really the least amount of pain that I’ve been in since then. But the issue was still that I simply cannot flex my left ankle.

“Alec Long, one of my support team, was able to work some magic yesterday and get like a tiny bit of motion back in it. But that quickly progressed as I started today, and I went back up to where I left the trail yesterday, enjoyed the view and came back down essentially.

“Going up and on flats, I can kind of hobble on it like it’s a peg leg, and I can do that with minimal pain and I can make forward progress. Going, down, where it’s forced to flex, is pretty excruciating.

“Any sort of technical descent, and I still had many more remaining, was effectively impossible.

“My brain sends the signal and nothing happens. It’s like my ankle is paralysed. And so, it seems to be something called compartment syndrome.

“And if it continues to get worse, which it was continuing to get worse day, by day and mile by mile, it can lead to something called necrosis, which is as bad as it sounds.

“The, oxygen and blood flow to the muscle are completely shut off and the muscle dies and it causes permanent damage.”

Helene fundraiser close to target

Effectively that left Kelly with no real choice other than to call it a day, but he continued: “My options, if there was a choice, were to continue hobbling along at an extremely slow pace and risking permanent damage and eventually, I guess, maybe getting to Katahdin which wasn’t fair to my support team, who had already given so much, to ask them to follow along for that and, you know, I still would have felt well short of my goal there.

“So the other choice was to fall short of my goal, actually fully recover and heal and spend time enjoying this beautiful place with my family which, other than saying hi at road crossings, I haven’t seen for five weeks.

“The trail will always be there. I’ll be able to finish the trail, I’ll be able to enjoy it, I’ll be able to recover and be healthy and do that at some point in time. And you know I’m at peace with it, but I know there will be days where there will be an overwhelming amount of disappointment and my brain second guessing itself and saying, no, you could have actually continued, it wasn’t as bad as you thought it was.

“But I couldn’t. And that is what it is. And that’s not something I can control at the moment. It’s just a trail and in the grand scheme of things, it’s perfectly fine.

“And it’s not something that I should be worrying about or whining about really. I was given an extraordinary opportunity to even attempt this, to be able to go out there and do this. And really, what I’ll remember most is the support that I had in doing this.

“Whether people here with me or people supporting me virtually, or even the donations for Helene which have been extraordinary, and I’ll leave those open [Kelly organised a fundraiser following the devastating damage caused by Hurricane Helene on the Appalachian Trail last September].

“Do please consider continuing to help there. I think once I add the offline donations and my 30% match, we will actually have reached that goal at least.

“And that’s the bigger one really.”

Class words from a class act and one of the first to comment on the post was none other than Tara Dower.

She said: “Phenomenal 5 weeks John! Heal up. You are incredible.”