This article was originally published in the September print edition of The Bark, distributed at the University of Minnesota Duluth campus.

Mark Dowdle has made a name for himself over the last 28 years as a Duluth-based Instagram fitness influencer with almost thirty thousand followers. Dowdle, known to many as the “beer mile guy”, opens up about life struggles and using fitness to overcome and grow.

What is your mission with your running career?

“My mission in running is to confront the person that I think I am, with the person I actually am. And I get to meet that person in these really extreme ultra distance races and challenges because when you get to a point of sleep deprivation, your body’s hurting, you’ve gone further than you’ve ever before here is this mirror that's reflected back at you where you have all this ego going into this race or this competition or this challenge of ‘I’m going to accomplish this,’ and then,‘why did I even think that I could even attempt this?’ That conversation that I get to have with myself has been the most fruitful thing in my life in terms of self-improvement, development and getting a better understanding of who I am and how I relate with the world.”

What is the Idea behind the online video series ”beer mile”?

“This college series that I’m doing now with Beer Mile, it’s more lighthearted, it’s fun, it’s competitive, but it’s also a way to connect with college athletes that I once was, and hope to give them a platform to share a message or for me to hopefully resonate with them on a level where I can be of service in whatever capacity that is for them.”

What is the goal with the beer mile challenge?

“After graduating from Saint Thomas, I coached football as the quarterback coach. I learned after one year that I hated football. I liked playing football … But when I was no longer the person on the field … you really have to love the game and I just didn’t love the game. The other thing is I had a number of run-ins with pub safety due to alcohol or weed in my four years at Saint Thomas. I struggled with social life and overconsumption of alcohol. I struggled with really finding who I was … Hopefully the things I’ve learned through running over the last five years will rub off on the guys around me. Now I’m coming back full circle and running has brought me the opportunity to do what I wanted to do in coaching, which was to help me in college that struggled with all of those things.”

What has been the most difficult race in your running career?

“I think the most difficult race – like distance challenge – that I've done is the Arrowhead 135 that I did back in January. It starts in International Falls, Minnesota and ends in Tower, Minnesota. It is a 135 mile foot race where you’re pulling a sled in the snow, in the middle of January, and there's three AID stations. When I thought I was watching this whole image of myself just crumble completely to the ground, it was an eye opening experience.”

What would you like the public to know about you?

“I think what people think when they look at the stuff that I post is that things come easy to me in terms of being so motivated to go run. The Duluth run started as a charity run for Love Like Laurie Legacy, and it was just something fun to do for me and a friend. We’ve been doing the Duluth run for five years now. The big stuff, like the Duluth run, only happens because of the little stuff I do each and every day. 90% of the time I don’t want to do it. If I only lifted or ran or freaking did my several jobs I’m working right now. If I did any of that only when I wanted to, I would never do anything. But when you start to go and take action, even when you don’t feel like it, you start to get more used to what that feels like… you start to become more aware of how you can show up in a better way.”

Q and A with Mark Dowdle - Running, Growing, and Duluth