I don’t really know how to start this blog except to say I set out to try and complete one of the hardest multi-day races in the world and, on the face of it, failed on such an epic scale that at the time of failure, I wasn’t even sure if it even warranted a blog. I was timed out on day two at the support point just before the Rhinogs at Cwn Buchan – mile 22. I was 15 mins late. No more race for me. Game over.

Up until that point. everything had been going sort of OK, running wise at least. The long and the short of it is that I just did not have the speed over the terrain to meet that cut off on day two – I was just too slow. I had known it was probably the hardest day on the course both distance and vert wise, taken it too easy in the earlier stages and fucked it up. The first part of day two was not something I’d recee’d – and I absolutely should have done that. I thought Cnicht was a little mountain. It was actually one of three little mountains. Three little mountains with three total bastard descents. I thought I’d make up the time in the section between checkpoint 5 and checkpoint 7, but I couldn’t. The bogs were ruthless. On paper it’s a pretty simple but fatal pacing and preparation led to the most almighty of fuck ups.

My plan was to continue non-competitive – that is to do as much of the route as I could for the rest of the week. That was Plan B. That had been Plan B from the start, and for a while I stuck with it. I did the second half of day three from Macynlleth to Credigion and the whole of day four. But on the morning of day five my brain won the fight. Having waited until 11.45am to start part two of that day, in lashing rain, in a layby in the Breacons, I decided that enough was enough and I was going home. And I pulled out voluntarily.

The reasons for this are many and varied and I’ll go into that later. Despite the best efforts of the volunteers to get me to carry on, I quit. I couldn’t see the point anymore. My why had vanished and my brain was exhausted. At the time I had spent days feeling like I was a fucking loser and I wanted to disappear – something I used to do a lot when things weren’t going my way. I’d fought it, I had really tried. Although I was convinced it was the right thing for me to do at the time, writing about this brings with it an enormous amount of shame and of course little sparks of regret and what ifs. I quit voluntarily. There was nothing wrong with me, I was tired, my shin was being a bastard but really I just didn’t want to do it anymore. At the time my thoughts were ‘I am not the person people seem to think I am. Maybe I am not the person I thought I was. Maybe I have never been that person at all.’ Now of course, they are a little different.

It is nobody’s fault but mine that I was timed out on day two, and it’s a lesson learnt. I should have recced that first part of the day. I need to spend more time mountain running, more time on that route, more time strength training and more time generally living in the Spiky Kingdom if I am to become the master of it. “The Spiky Kingdom” is what Snowdonia shall now be known as forever. All hail The Spiky Kingdom. Fuck that place. I love that place. There is, however, more to this than the fact I wasn’t a good enough mountain runner. A lot more.

This race messed with me in ways that I didn’t really know it was possible for a race to do. It was a tour de what the fuck from the minute I registered to the minute I got back to my house, Dragonless. It’s ripples will be felt for a while. The thoughts and feelings this race stirred up were not new - they were old favourites, old favourites that in the past have attempted to ruin me.

What Dragons Back showed me about myself and my perceived abilities cut so fucking deep that I can only compare the feelings to how I felt at the darkest times of my drinking. Feelings of shame, confusion, fear and anger (at myself) abounded. That’s not what I got into this for, and I didn’t prepare myself for the depth of those feelings. I couldn’t. You can only understand those feelings when you experience them in real time. You tell yourself it won’t happen, you tell yourself you are responsible for how you think, but in the moment when you are tired and fearful, controlling them becomes borderline impossible. Maybe that is why we do this. I got an email from my (non-running) coach when I got back, and she summed it up pretty well.

“Putting yourself in a situation where you might not get the result you want takes unbelievable courage. This is when we learn the most about ourselves - when we push ourselves to the limit of our current capabilities. Yes, sometimes we don't get the outcome we wanted, yes it feels like shit, but this gives us the full experience of being alive - doing hard shit and putting ourselves in harm's way on purpose - because doing these things shapes us and makes us more of who we are. THIS is what life is about.”

I love her for that email, I just don’t yet fully believe it. I have done hard races – lots and lots of them. I have faced myself down time after time and got to the finish lines. I have buckets and buckets of experience when it comes to multi-day races AND multi day drinking benders AND muti day depressive episodes. I thought I was more equipped than most. So why was this so different? I knew that it would be a physically brutal endeavour, but I didn’t bargain for the annihilation of my mental toolbox which was pretty much torched by the Dragon from day one. And without that, I was a bit fucked.

Part of the reason I found it so hard is, well, me. It’s me and the way I have made and managed myself over the last 30 years. I am 41 now. I’m someone that as regular readers will know, is partial to a bit of the old mega fucked mental health, dark feelings and an award winning ability to be fucking awful to myself. The last 18 months have been pretty savage in that respect, but they have marked the start of what I call my ‘real’ recovery – the blogs are here detailing all this.

Know that this blog, the one you are reading now, is not a poor me letter. I’m not asking for sympathy or seeking approval or validation from anyone. It is a record for me and hopefully a useful tool for you the reader. If you’re reading this, I imagine you have either done the race or are thinking about it. There was a lot that surprised me about how I dealt with Dragons Back and how it dealt with me. I wanted to share that. It may well be very different for you, but it is my story.

Over the last 18 months I have worked super hard to overcome the bits of my brain that drag me backwards – to learn to live with those thoughts and understand them, to hear them out and move on, to work on retelling the story so it’s more helpful and less destructive, to get stuff done – hard stuff, you know, like running the length of the UK in 35 days and giving up alcohol after living as a functioning alcoholic for the last 25 years. But even with all this work and overcoming and making new neural pathways in my brain, and acceptance and commitment, the most ingrained stories remain. I still have the same narrative going round and round in my head. It’s been there for 30 odd years. It doesn’t just vanish overnight and when it is awoken, unless I have all the right tools at my disposal, the ‘you’re not good enough‘ story goes into overdrive. Being tired, being exhausted, being scared does not help this situation. The brain jumps for joy at the thought of collecting all the evidence to support this statement, and does this very successfully. And that statement ‘you are not good enough’ - I just could not get away from it. It was proved in my head the minute I timed out. The evidence was there. You have timed out. You are not good enough. Let’s spend the next few days being an utter cunt to yourself but pretending not to, shall we? That’s where you’re most comfortable Allie, so that is where we shall go…..

This is my experience, and this is what I have learnt from spending just five days at the mercy of the Dragon. I really hope it’s helpful not just to future me, but to all future Dragons. I am not saying this race is awful. I mean it IS awful in many ways. It’s one of the hardest thing I’ve ever done, but it is also utterly beautiful, savage and unforgiving in the best way. The organisation, the volunteers, the camps, the food, the safety, the whole travelling circus is extremely impressive and I can’t fault it. I’ve never seen race organisation like it - a military operation with no flaws whatsoever. It is not, however, set up to help you make it to the finish line, it is set up to test every single part of you. It is set up to facilitate you in every way it can, but not to hold your hand while you do it. If you can understand that, and if you can prepare your mind for the onslaught, I believe that you have a better chance of finishing. I believe having gone through it once and failed, that I now have a better chance of finishing when I return in 2024. Here is what I learnt.

Morning breaks on Day 1 of the Dragons Back 2022

1: YOU CANNOT RUN THIS RACE ‘WITH YOUR FRIENDS’. DON’T TRY.

I had a friend running this with me – Ali Martynez. She’s brilliant and I love her. She lives in Flagstaff, Arizona so our training runs together comprised of one weekend in Wales in February where weather prevented our recee plans from being anything more than bimbles up Tryfan and round the horseshoe in the snow. The rest of the support and training chats were done over zoom. We are both competent runners and had planned to try and stick together from the start for as long as we could. This was a mistake.

I was invested in Ali and her wellbeing because she is my friend and she had come a long way to do this. So when she felt like shit from the minute we left Conwy castle, I was worried about her. I am a people pleaser. It’s something I am trying to distance myself from. It has fucked up my races in the past, it has fucked up my life in the past. It has made me compromise myself to the point of breakdown. From a running perspective, at the Arc of Attrition in January, I spent too much time worrying about how cold and wet my crew were and so didn’t stick to my plan – that resulted in exactly the same mistake I made here – a DNF because I didn’t sit down and eat my dinner. From a life perspective it has resulted in me putting my needs last on the list of everything and indulging other people to the point of the detriment of my own mental and physical health. It has to stop. There is a difference between kindness and empathy and people pleasing. I am learning that slowly. I need to put myself first in these endeavours and not worry about upsetting people. Maybe I need to be clearer in my communication with them from day one. That makes me sound like a fucking sociopath. Anyway I did not do that on this race. I was worried about other people the whole time.

This race is an individual endeavour and should be treated as such. You cannot worry about or wait for your mates. When Ali became sick and dropped behind me, I waited for her when I could, but this didn’t last for long because I was so scared of the cut offs, so I pressed on from about 2 miles in. I felt awful about this – like I’d left her out there. I felt awful about it for the whole of day one, and when I came in that night she wasn’t there. The organisers had put her in a different tent in case she was contagious. So I had a stranger in my little pod in the tent – something I hadn’t expected. The stranger was Ally J and she was ace. Three Allie/Ali/Ally’s in one tent. Handy. I didn’t know where Ali M was or how she was and anyway it was 11pm and I needed to go to sleep. This made me worried. I should have known she was being taken care of, but I didn’t see her until late the next day after I had timed out. I spent a lot of the Tuesday morning worrying about how she was, if she was angry with me for leaving her or if she was even still around. That saps energy. This is NOT Ali’s fault and I wouldn’t have changed being there with her for the world, but it was a factor that I hadn’t thought about. You cannot worry about anyone else’s wellbeing to the detriment of your own race – you have to be your number one focus and to me that is quite an alien concept. If you’re going into this as a group or with a friend have this conversation – know that although you love your mates and you want the best for them, this event is all about you. While its super important to be kind, supportive and respectful, keep some of that for yourself. You will fucking need it. I knew Ali was having a shit time, I knew that she wanted to go home – she told me. And I tried to keep that positivity going, but I felt terrible that she had come all the way from the US and wasn’t enjoying it – and so I made myself feel bad. Me – I did that. Not Ali M, not anyone else, me. I wanted her to be OK, I wanted to be with her to make sure that she was OK but I also wanted to get this race done.

This race is a totally individual thing. To anyone reading be prepared to be that little bit more selfish than you might otherwise be. It saves a lot of energy and a lot of heartache. Myself and Ali will return to this race together, but we will do it apart.

The Spiky Kingdom, day one Dragons Back 2022

2: YOU ARE NEVER ALONE BUT YOU MAY FEEL MORE ALONE THAN YOU EVER HAVE.

There’s a lot of talk about the camaraderie in camp on this race, and it’s there for sure, but only if you have time to be a part of it. Only if you are quick enough to get into camp to get involved with it, eat, wash, recover and get to bed before 9. Then you can fit some camaraderie in. Otherwise, you’re on your own.

In theory, there are people to talk to over dinner, you make new friends along the way and of course you have the people in your tents. The truth is, if you are a much slower runner, the likelihood of you making best friends with other people in your tent – or even having more than a two-sentence conversation with them - is low. On day one I got into camp at 9.17pm, soaking wet and freezing, I went and got dinner and then got into the tent at about 10.30pm. It was dark and wet and already full of people trying to sleep. I attempted to quietly sort my shit out and go to sleep ready for my 4.30am alarm call the next morning. This was the first time I had ‘met’ any of my tent mates.

My pod mate that night – with Ali M in solitary confinement – was Ally J. She was amazing – she helped sort me out. Ally J, Ali M and myself became the squad but in reality we hardly saw each other. The next morning I didn’t see any of my tent mates for more than a second – some had gone and a few were already on the half days so still asleep. Nobody really wants to make friends over breakfast at 5am. They are all too busy sorting their own heads out – as are you. You are never alone, but you can get very, very lonely.

I was never ever out on the route alone. I never got lost because I could always see people ahead of me – even in camp on the toilet there is someone in the cubicle next to you. But I experienced a loneliness on this event that I had only ever felt when out on the big stuff – the Namibia or Mongolia adventures where I would spend hours and hours in the middle of nowhere trekking across some unknown tundra. There is a lot of time with yourself in your own head worrying about the stuff that makes you scared – like cut-offs and the you’re not good enough story. I had somewhat naively thought that I would be with Ali for a good portion of this event. In reality, we ran for about 3 hours together on day three.

Some people want to chat, some people don’t, but none of them want to know what is REALLY going on in your head because it may well wake up what is going on in theirs. At times like these I usually listen to music, but I didn’t want to distract myself from the route or my watch, so I didn’t. I think that was a big mistake on my part. Not just getting lost in The National and having a nice time. Dammit!

Sharing my fears about not being good enough and how tough it was became a no no because everytime someone asked how I was (and I replied pretty much every time with a cheery “I’m fucked”), it was met with a jolly “you can do it” or “just think about something else – you’re brilliant” or another piece of advice that I just didn’t really want. What I wanted was a massive cuddle. I lament the lack of cuddles I got that week. There was an enormous lack of cuddles. Note to Ourea Events – you need a cuddle station. Your cuddle game is weak. (Apart from your Stu Smith - your cuddle game is strong).

When I did speak to other people over dinner or breakfast, my brain found evidence that were all doing much, much better than me, and that made me feel even more shit, even more of an outsider and even more like I was failing. This is all on me, not on other people and I am documenting it here so that you if you decide you want to do this race, you can plan for you brain being an utter dick to you. This was ALL on me. My toolbox for not feeling like this was on fire – by this point it was actually just smouldering ashes - and my brain was gathering all the evidence it needed to prove I was not good enough. Everyone else is better than you, Allie. Look at them. All better than you.

It was making me panic that I looked like a fucking idiot in front of these amazing athletes. The truth is nobody thought anything about me – they were too busy thinking about themselves. Probably thinking the same thing to themselves. But my brain was having a whale of a time gathering evidence, proving my theory. It was ME that thought I was a fucking idiot, not them. I wish I’d taken a notebook to write some of this stuff down in – I wish I had been able to process it better.

I became quite good at just hiding the fact that I felt so, so shit about myself by pretending that I didn’t, making a joke of it and putting on a front to people I didn’t know well and giving them the Allie I thought they wanted. That’s not served me particularly well in the past but I felt a pressure to do it. I find that people sometimes think they know me because they follow me on instagram. That means I try and perform the way I think they want me to. Christ that’s embarrassing to write. People pleasing. It’s not like I am actually a totally different person in real life, I’m very much me all the time, but I did have a wall up - a little positive pete wall up. DO NOT BURST INTO TEARS IN FRONT OF THIS PERSON was the mantra for the week. I didn’t want to say how I really felt to most people because I didn’t want to be seen as a whiny brat. I dont say I feel like a piece of shit because I wnat people to tell me I am great. I say it because I feel like a piece of shit. I just wanted a cuddle. I knew it would be hard, I really did but I am so used to having people around me I can talk to this shit about and I really didn't have anyone there that I could trust to hold it in the way it needed to he held. It was fucking hard. I so wish I’d bought that notebook with me.

The only people I was really honest with were Ali M and Ally J and that meant putting my shit on them which I felt super bad about so I really tried not to. I cried a lot, I just didn’t let people see me do it.

Once ‘you’re not good enough’ has turned up, comparison comes along – those two thoughts are best mates. I was comparing myself to people I had literally NO idea about as well as people I did who are completely out of my league running wise. I became embarrassed of myself and the fact I was even there and stuck to eating either just with Ali M and Ally J or on my own. Sometimes people I had met during the day would come over and I would be very good at hiding the fact I felt like crying all the time. This may well surprise some of the people that I sat at those tables with or ran with, but I felt like a massive imposter 90% of the time that I was there. I was starting to wish that I wasn’t actually there. I wasn’t ready for it.

People sent me such lovely messages via Dragon Mail. I couldn’t read them. They were talking about someone else in my eyes, not this pathetic twat, sat here wanting to cry into her rice pudding. They made me feel like a fraud. I made me feel like a fraud.

What would I have done better? I would have had a few calm conversations with myself. I would have written more stuff down at the time. In the time I spent looking round and telling myself everyone was better than me, I could have been writing it down and changing those thoughts. But I didn’t. I let the fucked up part of my brain run away with itself to gather that evidence. And gather it it did. In buckets and buckets and buckets. Buckets of evidence telling me I was not good enough for this race.

Before the lightening, day one, Dragons Back Race 2022

3: FROM THE MINUTE YOU REGISTER, YOU RELINQUISH CONTROL TO THE DRAGON. FEAR IS REAL.

This is very much a hindsight thing that could be argued and probably will be, but for me, for this event, I felt like I had little to no control over what I was doing and when I could do it.

Everything is timetabled in Dragon land. You are told when to do everything, from the minute you register to the minute you DNF or finish. There are strict rules that every single person must adhere to. These are both written event rules and unwritten camp rules. It is not unlike a cult, all be it one you are free to leave at anytime. You sort of want to leave but you sort of don’t. Like I say, a cult. You are more or less told what to do and when to do it and you have no real choice. You either do it or you leave.

Some people have argued that this is the way it is on all multi-day events, but Dragons Back is different because of the cut offs. Time becomes the number one enemy here, and no matter how organised you think you are, time will fuck you over. There seems to be none of it, yet it drags and it is at the forefront of your mind 20 hours a day. You must be ready at this time, you can have breakfast at this time, you can leave camp at this time (6am is the earliest and is recommended if you want to make the most of the day), you must reach the support points by this time, you must leave them by this time, you must be in before 10pm. If you are timed out and continue as non-competitive you must meet at this time to get the bus. Once you arrive at the insertion point you must wait until this time to start. On half days, you must be at the end by 10pm or your choice to do a full day the next day will be taken from you. Your bag must weigh this amount, you must have this kit, you must not do this, you must do that. It is recommended you do this and do that. All relatively standard fare for an event but it just felt different here. More threatening, more scary, more serious – again that is on me. My experience of being told what to do and not meeting expectations, my push to go against the grain and my fear of being found out as inadequate did not lend themselves well to this environment. I am super organised and I know what I am doing, but I like to do it on my terms and in my own time.

The overwhelming feeling I had that week was fear. I was scared of cut offs and scared of breaking the rules, I was scared of letting myself down, letting my friend down and being told off for something. It’s just how I felt. And that is totally on me. I was scared from the moment I started. I told people I wasn’t – but I fucking was. I told myself and everyone that I respected the race but was not scared of it. But I was scared of it. This is a historical thing – I’m sure it is. It reminded me of the fear that I lived in when I was growing up and in the early parts of my adulthood and career. Fear that I would be told off for something, fear I would be late home and that would result in severe consequences, or fear that I would fail to meet expectations. The fear was, at times, paralysing.

What would I have done differently? I am still working this one out. It’s a work in progress. I hated feeling scared and I didn’t expect to be feeling scared of the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present that is time. I expected to be scared of the terrain. I wasn’t. I actually loved the terrain, albeit it was a bastard to get across. It was time that was the enemy. I spent so much time being scared of time that I absolutely failed to enjoy myself – and that was one of the aims of the game.

I had planned to continue as non-competitive and be OK with that should I be timed out, but even when this plan was put into place, I was still terrified of time – that if I didn’t make it to the end by 10pm I would be forced into half days - so instead of TRYING to do full days and TRYING to do my best, I transferred down to a half day on the Wednesday, already admitting defeat, trying to save myself the pain of my hand being forced. That, ironically, meant more time to sit around and think, to be scared, to be stuck in my own head and to gather evidence for why I wasn’t good enough. It was a horrendous cycle and one that wore me down. As I sit here typing this, I wish it could have been different, but the demons took over and I just lost it.

This is the reality of races like this. They strip you right fucking down, all the way. They make you realise there is so much more work to do. The work will probably never be done. But despite it all I am willing to do it. It will just take, well, time. That fucking word. Time.

I did the full day on the Thursday, buoyed by the fact it was a lower elevation day and the terrain was more me, and I did a good job. At the halfway point I gave a pretty perky interview to Lowri and Matt – I was genuinely having a nice time at that point - but I was forced to walk the last 10 miles which was road – BLOODY ROAD! because my quads resembled uncooked spaghetti and felt like they might snap at any given point. The action of having to walk that road killed me. Why couldn’t I run it? It’s a fucking downhill road! Dickhead.

By this point I was failing to feed myself properly because I just couldn’t be bothered. I was failing to inspire myself, failing to look after myself. I really didn’t like myself at all. All I was thinking in those last ten miles was how shit a runner I was, thoughts that maybe, with that calm conversation and a pen and paper, I could have turned around. But I didn’t. I didn’t eat properly that night. I was failing to recover and look after myself at all really. I should have called someone. I didn’t. I was embarrassed. I decided to not attempt the full day Friday but to drop to the half day. I now know that it was then that I really made the decision to stop altogether, I just didn’t know it yet. I got into camp and found out the Queen was dead.

A limited selection of day two photos…..in case you’re in any doubt, this is the runable path, not just nice pictures of mountains.

4: YOU HAVE TO BE SUPER HONEST WITH YOURSELF

Post timing out, I wasn’t being honest with myself at all. I kept making plans and changing them. Full day to half day, wear this, change this, do that. What I wanted to do more than anything was to go home. But that was weak, I couldn’t do that. That was a weak thing to do. A weak thing that weak people did. I was not following Bailey protocol anymore with food, admin or anything else. I was surviving, or trying to, and I was NOT having a nice time. Not even a type two nice time. I was quietly hitting the self-destruct button, indulging the stories in my head and I couldn’t see a way out. My recovery was non-existent. I was breaking all my own rules about looking after myself. I was becoming very tired of trying to reset a brain that had been burnt out from overthinking. I’d lost it. I hadn’t stopped the cycle and it was all tumbling down. I had thought about drinking a LOT. On the night of day four there was a pub at the end of the road. I thought about drinking a lot. But I didn’t drink.

Ali M wanted to go home. She had told me this a few days before. I wanted her to be OK. I had said I would support her in getting out if she wanted to, but she said she would stay. We were staying for each other. On the morning of day five we got into the vehicle to take us to the insertion point to do the second half of the day. We had to wait until 11.45 to start but we had to leave camp at 8.30 to allow for packdown of the tents. We stopped in a café on the road and had a coffee and snacks. I wanted to go home. It was raining. It had rained pretty much on and off all day for three days. I was wet, tired and running on empty. I wanted to go home. I had done a couple of Instagram stories saying I was continuing with the half days so I felt like I had to. I wanted to go home.

We got in the vehicles and drove to the insertion point. It was a 30-minute drive from my sisters house in South Wales. A get out. I could call my sister. A get out. When I got out of the vehicle to start running, I noticed that part of my kit had broken. An integral part of my kit. And that was it. I wasn’t doing it anymore. I wanted to go home. The pack that broke the camels back.

The crew fixed my kit and encouraged me to go on, but I just did not want to. This was me saying stop. It was over. There was no point. What was I doing this for? I hated it. I wanted to go home. I wanted to hide. One of the crew members told me I needed to get up onto the hill to help inspire people to keep going and I lost my shit a bit. I want to apologise to him for that. I started to cry and told him that I couldn’t do that anymore because I had run out of fuel to inspire myself so how the fuck was I supposed to inspire others when I felt so empty ? That is how I felt. I couldn’t be the person that crew member wanted me to be. I couldn’t be the person I wanted to be. I couldn’t stick to my own plan. I had fucking failed monumentally. More evidence. You are not as strong as people think you are. You are not ready for this. You are not enough. Go home.

Ali M and I pulled out there at the roadside just before everyone else left. She wanted to go as well. We encouraged each other to stop. Maybe if we hadn’t have done that, we would have both continued. I don’t know. We were told not to tell anyone else that we were leaving – and I understand why – they didn’t want us giving ideas to the more sturdy Dragons that were continuing with their day, but it was hard not being able to say goodbye to people. We just vanished. We were just scrubbed from the event. And that was fine with me.

I wanted to get away as soon as I could – to run away without anyone seeing, to just hide. That’s not what happened – a three hour wait in a van and a lift back to camp to get our stuff and two hours of waiting later and my absolute hero of a sister turned up to pick me and Ali up and take us back to the safety of her house just after 5pm. Gratitude is not the word. I owe you one, Janey. Thank you for extracting us.

So, honesty with myself. That moment where the decision hit me, where people tried to stop me and I overrode it. Was that honesty or cowardice? Was that self-respect and self care or was that backing down? I still don’t know, but it was what I needed to do in that moment. It was my limit. It was not my physical limit, but my mental one. It surprised me. It didn’t happen out of physical exhaustion; it happened out of mental exhaustion that was causing me to break physically. My stomach was all over the place, I had a constant headache, my legs felt like concrete, the shin injury that had been prevalent on Run Brit was back, my ankles were swollen. But could I have physically kept going if my life had depended on it? Yes, I probably could have. I just didn’t want to. Sometimes I think my recovery has made me weak - that I am actually nicer to myself than I have been before in these moments where I am like “STOP”. Would I have done that pre-recovery or would I have flayed myself until I couldn’t stand up? I don’t know.

The voluntary withdrawal is there to be learnt from. Maybe I will be proud of it in the future, maybe I will respect that decision in the future. Maybe stopping was resilient? Maybe I was preventing myself from hurting anymore. How would I have felt crossing that line in Cardiff knowing I hadn’t actually done the race I set out to do? I have a feeling I would have actually felt worse. I have a feeling I would have felt more like a fraud. For every well done I got after the time out, I felt awful. I think people clapping me over a finish line I hadn’t actually finished would have had the same effect. Or maybe it wouldn’t. We will never know.

That decision was the result of a number of dominoes toppling. My friend Kate calls it the Lemon effect – how many lemons are you holding Allie? How many lemons CAN you hold? I was holding loads, too many to carry. They were rolling all over the floor. I had started to truly believe very early on that I wasn't good enough. (Lemon) I had evidence for it in the timing out (Lemon), I wasn’t making the effort to even try and get through whole days (Lemon) I stopped eating and recovering properly (Lemon) I was exhausting myself with this thought cycle and not enjoying what I had come to do (Lemon). Bloody Lemons everywhere. And was I making Lemonade? Was I fuck.

One of the afternoons I actually got to run with Ali M!

5: REMEMBER PLAN B. REMEMBER WHY YOU ARE THERE. DO NOT LOSE SIGHT OF YOUR WHY. DO NOT LET THE LIES WIN.

I didn't remember Plan B. Plan B was to just enjoy the adventure. To go non-competitive and enjoy it. I did not enjoy it. I forgot why I was there and I let the lies I was telling myself win. I deeply regret this, yet at the time I felt like I didn't have the power to change my thinking. I didn’t think there was another way of thinking. I let myself wallow in the you’re not enough story. I let it present the evidence. I believed the evidence, I found more. I didn’t remember how much I love being outside in the bogs and the mountains and I was not grateful. All I cared about was time, all I could think about was cut offs, even AFTER I had been cut off. I didn't enjoy myself. Looking back at the pictures I have used in this blog that is a tragedy. I am sorry Wales, I should have been more grateful. I will not let this happen again. I was too caught up in my own sorry fucking head to appreciate was was in front of me every day. I will go back and rectify this. Even in the wind and rain, you were beautiful. I will return to run around the Spiky Kingdom next summer, I promise.

I forgot to enjoy it. How could I do that?

6: UNPACK THE FACTS

I should have done this on event. Instead it waited until I go home. The facts are this. I did not make the cut off. That does not make me shit. That does not define my worth as a person. I had done the best I could with the knowledge I had up to that point. I let the nature of the idea of being timed about consume me. I became obsessed with the idea that a cut off had proved that I was not a good enough person. That isn’t the case at all. That is a thought. The real issues was that I was not quick enough to continue as competitive in a race I was doing. NOT that I am a bad person. Those are the facts. I can change not being quick enough to be competitive in a race I was doing. I can train better, live in the Spiky Kingdom for a bit, get strong AF and so get quicker. It wasn’t a flaw in my personality that led me to miss that cut off. It was a flaw in my experience, fitness and training. Those things do not define me as a human being. They never will. They are all changeable. They can all be worked on. That easy to write isn’t it? Now try believing it.

On those days, during that week, I didn't zoom out and look at it like this. Even though I know better, I let the story win. I let all the bad thoughts run wild and I found the evidence to support them. And having taken the time to think about it and to acknowledge it, I now understand that the experience I had last week is absolute gold. You cannot buy it, you cannot fake it, you cannot practice it. I witnessed clearly, first-hand how I can fuck myself over. And I will do my best to not let that happen to this extent again. I have no doubt that it will try and happen again – because it will. I am a human that likes to be a dick to myself - I am good at it - I’ve been doing it for 30 years!

I choose to do hard things and the very nature of that is that sometimes you don’t get the result you want. I am not the same as other people, I am not better than them and I am not worse than them. I am me. I have a broken and battered brain that works in pretty fucking odd ways – some people have that and some people don’t – but I will never stop trying to understand how I can make that brain a bit better and this was the ultimate learning experience for that. There is a plan in place for when I have finished licking my wounds, when I have finished unpacking what happened, when I don’t feel so fucking empty. That’s how it is right now and that’s OK too. The plan will be set in motion when I am ready. I did not behave like I maybe would have done two years ago. I did not have a drink. I did not have a fucking screaming mental breakdown and I left when it was time to leave. That is a win in it’s own way. What happened, happened. It cannot be changed. I need to accept it.

Day four was a good day. I loved day four.

7: IF IT’S GOING TITS UP, WRITE A COMPASSIONATE LETTER TO YOURSELF.

This is another thing that I should have done on event. I should have taken myself away and written myself a little letter. Fuck that, I should have written something like this before I did the event and allowed myself to read it. It’s an incredible tool for timing the demons to the mast when they are running riot. This is the letter I should have written after that time out, maybe sooner. These are the words I should have calmly listened to.

Allie.

You must understand that your worth is not and will never be linked to the races, adventures or events you take on. Your worth is separate. You are worthy regardless of the outcome of these things.

The thoughts that you believe other people have about you are actually the ones you have about yourself. Only you can change this. I know it’s hard, but understand that the reason you think other people think you’re a piece of shit, is because you still believe you are a piece of shit. Only you can change that. This is your story, you write it. Do not pretend. Be vulnerable. Be real. Be honest about how you feel with the people that love you. You’re not a burden. Read that again. You’re not a burden. Do not expect everything to be fixed in your head because you’ve spent 18 months fixing it – you’ve spent 30 years writing your story and doing the damage, it won’t be undone in over a few months. Be kind and patient with yourself. You tested yourself on purpose and this is how it's ended – or maybe this is how it’s begun. Either way, that is OK.

Take time, take courage, put the pieces together and stick with the work. The work IS working, it just needs a bit more time. You’ve done so fucking well getting to the start line. What difference will it REALLY make if you’d have finished this event? Really? Would you have thought you were the bees knees? That you had won in the Bailey Vs Bailey game of life? Or would you have picked apart how you could have done it better? I think we both know the answer to this. This is where you’re at right now and that is OK. The next steps are down to you. What do you want to do? What is best for you?

Regardless of what you choose, you are doing fucking great. You really are. Rest your body – it’s served you well this year. Rest your mind and be kind to yourself. Then crack on if you need to. Crack on with the event, crack on with the book, crack on with the coaching, crack on with the plan and crack on with getting to that start line in 2024 if you need to. You haven’t failed anyone. By learning and being honest and kind with yourself you are doing everything right.

Do the things you love doing – the things that enrich you. Take the pressure off. Help other people through this shit – you have enough experience to do that, experience you cannot buy. Help people understand that it is OK to not be number 1 or even number 10,0000. It is OK to just be you. You know what you have to do now. Go and do it. But above all be kind to yourself. You are worthy. You are doing so well. You are loved.

A

Day four bogs - there were lots of bogs.

SO WHAT NOW?

I’m taking some time off running. This year I have run over 3000 miles. It’s a lot. My body has served me well in the last 9 months and now it’s time to give it a break. It’s only a little break. I have a nice race in November (Wendover Woods 50) to keep me away from the “never again” train and I’ll do some low key local jobs to keep me ticking over and stop me going mad, but no more pressure. It’s time to be kind to my body and kind to my brain.

I feel like shit. I feel depressed, lethargic, tired and aimless. That’s the truth of it. I am sleeping a lot and writing a lot. I want to be the best I can for my clients, and I am - I’m a professional and none of this takes away from what I can give them. When I am not working I am lost. This is part of the process, it’s OK to feel lost. It’s Ok to notice the warning signs that denote this is more than post event low. I’ve cancelled a few social things, I’ve kept away from people. I am keeping my eye on that. It’s not always a good sign but I’m allowing it for now. I’m not thrashing myself for acting like I am depressed - because I feel depressed. And it will pass if I am kind to myself. Pickle is helping immensely but she REALLY wants to go for a run.

I want to shift focus from my personal running goals which have dominated this year to my business – I love coaching, I love doing workshops, I love the podcasting and the presenting and I want to do loads more of it. I want to help other people to do amazing things, I want to share my experiences and encourage people to be open and vulnerable about what stops them trying to do the hard stuff and help them to get there. I want to help them when they feel like I felt last week. I want to prevent them feeling like that. I want them to be heard. I am good at that because I get it. I get what it is to fail. I get what it is to not fail and I get all the feelings in between. Any potential clients out there will be thrilled to know I’m about 200% better at helping other people than I am at helping myself.

I need to keep in my head that this event was a fucking huge ask. 7 weeks ago I finished running 1000 miles in 35 days from Lands End to JOG. I may have been a little tired at that start line. I may not have admitted that.

I wasn’t the only person to not finish by a long way. A couple of years ago I wouldn’t have believed I would even start an event like Dragons Back Race, I need to remember that and not be sucked into the Ultra myth that ‘everyone does it'. I have a lot of friends achieving a lot of incredible things because of the circles I mix in. Expecting to be amazing at every single race is like going to karaoke and expecting to be Adele. I mix with a lot of Adeles. I am not Adele. I would never want to be Adele.

In 2024 I will take this race on again. I won’t be up for next year. I don’t want to do that to myself. I want to spend two years building up my mountain skills, my physical strength and my knowledge of the Spiky Kingdom and then go back and slay that Dragon. I want to be quick and strong over that terrain. I want to know myself better. I’m still getting to know sober me and as we have seen, she can be a right dick, even off the sauce. I am 41 years old, I need to give myself a fucking break. I am on this journey with my brain that needs time – I can’t rush it. I want to do some big stuff next year, stuff I enjoy and stuff that will help build my confidence. I want adventures, time with my dog and time with people I love. I live alone, I am single and as much as a love that, I do find it fucking difficult at times like these. It might be time to sort that out. It’s all about time. That fucking word. TIME.

Above everything else is this need to help people in any way I can – people that want to do hard things, people that struggle to be understood, people that feel like I do or like I have done about themselves. I want to help people understand that there is no shame in vulnerability, not achieving what you set out to do or just saying fuck it I have had enough. Fighting it gets you nowhere (as I hope this blog proves). I was defeated by the Dragon this time but fuck me I learnt a lot – you can’t fake a head wacking, face smashing, brain melting experience like that. To put yourself in a place to be able to experience it is brave. To come out the other end with perspective and learning is incredible, and I’ll give myself that. Please do reach out if you want to chat about anything raised in this blog. You. I am talking to you. I am happy to chat to anyone abut this stuff. It helps me navigate it as much as it helps you talk about it. You can email me here.

Just wanted to add a quick thank you to all the lovely people I did meet last week – especially Alex who I teamed up with to get across Crib Goch and round the Horseshoe in the dark – you and your mates were lovely and I wouldn’t have made it out of that field without you. I would probably still be in it. And to every single person who worked on the event thank you. (especially THE Right Reverend Stu Smith for my cuddle and chat on that day, and Kate Worthington for all her amazing advice and help in the run up) You were absolutely incredible.

Here’s to 2024 and the adventures to come before then.

Diolch cymru. Mae wedi bod yn chwyth.