The first clue that Allie Bailey’s book isn’t going to be your conventional running read is that she is photographed smoking a fag on the cover. The second is that, although the title is ‘There is No Wall’, which sounds suitably inspiring and empowering, she’s also sitting beside a chalk board that says ‘RUNNING WON’T SAVE YOU’.
Hang on – isn’t running supposed to fix us, both physically and mentally? The 42-year-old ultrarunner and coach’s tales of her earlier years feature long-term depression and alcoholism so severe that there were breakdowns, time spent in crisis care, and a short-lived marriage. She once went to work covered in blood after falling into a mirror and going to sleep with shards of glass still stuck in her body. Another time, Police found her unconcious on a night bus. Readers making their way through these horrors might be waiting for the moment when she takes up running and solves everything. It’s nowhere near that simple, which is her message.
‘The thing to remember is that running is a massive part of the wellness industry, and they want you to believe that if you start running, you will be happy,’ she says. ‘In order to be happy you need to buy shoes, buy gels, get a coach, buy Runner’s World. But nothing we do will make us happy, because it’s up to us how we define happiness, how we define contentment, how we define success. There’s only one human on Earth that can make you happy, and that’s yourself.’
In fact, Allie’s running, drinking and depression lived alongside each other for years. Between 2013 and 2018 she finished an incredible 71 marathons or ultramarathons, and was writing on her popular blog about wanting to die. If anything, she says, all the running was enabling her drinking. ‘I believed everyone thought I was f***ing awesome because I could drink on the run. I used the running to prove to people that there was nothing wrong with me. But there was something very deeply wrong with me. What I want people to understand from the book is that unless you want to change yourself, then an external hobby, or job, or relationship, or dog, will not change you. Only you can sort your s*** out.’ Running is therapeutic, but it’s not therapy, she repeats.
Her reputation for being up for anything did lead to some incredible adventures. In 2018 she ran 100 miles across the largest frozen lake in Mongolia. She had a glass of wine at 7.30am before going on Lorraine Kelly’s show to talk about it. Later the same year she crossed the 135-mile Namibian desert and ran/trekked from one end of Panama to the other through the jungle. It almost broke her.
Heavily tattooed, and having spent years working in the fast living culture of a major music company, she knew how to put on a front. In the book, she is so shockingly honest that much of it must have been incredibly hard to put down for publication. ‘I call the book “The man repellent,”’ she jokes. ‘There is nothing I won’t tell people. If it helps you not to feel like that, I will tell you every gross detail.’
It isn’t the book she originally intended. When she started writing it, she was still drinking, and planned a lively tale that would inspire more women to go out and try big challenges. ‘It was just going to be about “My Fun-time Adventures”. Look at me! I smoke cigarettes and drink loads of wine and still go out and do these things.’ But as she wrote, she realised there was a more serious message to convey. ‘Things got really bad, but I don’t mean I was living in a box under a bridge. I was living in nice houses, doing nice things, and that’s the thing about alcoholism and depression: we walk among you. You just don’t see us.’
Today she no longer drinks or smokes, and running has gone from being a big part of her life to her entire career. When we speak, in quick succession she’s travelled to remote parts of the Pennine Way to help on the safety team for the Spine Race, hosted her own workshop area at the National Running Show in Birmingham, and competed for the third time in the 100-mile Arc of Attrition race around the Cornish Coastpath. She has also set up a coaching company, Ultra Awesome, where her plain-speaking style is a welcome antidote to forced-smile self-help babble (one subheading on her website reads ‘What the f*** is an endurance and mindset coach?’).
If I talk to her for much longer I feel like she’ll motivate me to sign up to my first 100-miler. The permission that she gives to be less than perfect feels valuable. ‘None of us are ever going to be fixed. Accept it. That’s totally okay. But we are capable of so much cool stuff with the bodies we’ve been given. To be able to cross the country on your feet: what an amazing privilege. And you don’t have to be perfect to do that. That’s the whole point.’
There is No Wall is out now through Vertebrate Publishing.
