ALISON LITTLE AND WENDY DALE – multi-day ultrarunners – Runner’s World, April 2026 issue

While many of us are busy chasing PBs, buying shoes that promise to make us faster and finishing races in a state of abject exhaustion, Alison Little and Wendy Dale make the back of the pack sound like a brilliant place to be. Now 58 and 63 respectively, the friends from Devon have been taking on some of ultrarunning’s biggest multi-day challenges and definitely getting their money’s worth.

‘We did the Ice Ultra in Lapland and the Northern Lights were out every single night. It was just amazing, but the front runners probably didn’t see them because they were already back and asleep,’ says Alison, a healthcare assistant for a mobile lung clinic. ‘In the jungle, people are out with their heads down trying to get a fast time and we’re going: “Ooh, did you see that snake?” It’s nice to be able to go to all these beautiful places and do these runs, but not feel any pressure.’

Alison befriended Wendy, an intensive care nurse, at a local women’s running group when Alison was approaching 40 and looking to get fitter after quitting smoking. ‘We discovered we were the only two who quite liked doing longer distances and it escalated from there. I think we egg each other on,’ says Wendy.

Although they don’t worry about speed when they’re in a race, they wasted no time in getting up to the big challenges. Their first race together was the Dublin Marathon, and soon after that, in 2013, they completed a 50-mile event. They have done half marathons, but say the last one was so long ago that they can’t remember. Neither of them has ever taken part in a parkrun.

With children who were growing older and needed less looking after, they had the freedom to get into the branch of the sport that they love most: multi-day events where competitors camp at night. In the UK there was the three-day Druid’s Challenge along the ancient Ridgeway footpath in the North Wessex Downs. Then in 2017 they did probably the world’s best known multi-day race, the Marathon des Sables – seven days with sand in your socks in the Sahara Desert. ‘I think women are not very good at being selfish,’ says Alison. ‘We always put everyone else first – kids, husband – and we’ve started to learn that that isn’t really the way it should be.’

Because they are of a similar pace and always stick together, their husbands don’t worry too much about them even when they’re in frozen wastes or the Amazon rainforest. In 2022 they did Beyond the Ultimate’s Ice Ultra, five stages totalling 230km in the Arctic Circle in Swedish Lapland, with daytime temperatures of minus 40C. Last year they took on its very different sister event, the Jungle Ultra in Manu National Park, Peru. Beyond the Ultimate’s ‘Global Race Series’ quadrilogy also features desert in Namibia, ice in Sweden, and mountains in Kyrgyzstan, so when the organisers say their Jungle Ultra is ‘our hardest’, it’s reasonable to feel a little daunted.

In a land of snakes, monkeys and creepy crawlies, the scariest living thing they encountered was actually a man. ‘We were crossing a river and heard a noise, looked over and there was this little man with no teeth holding a machete. Thankfully he disappeared back into the jungle,’ says Alison.

‘But the thing about Beyond the Ultimate is you know you’re looked after,’ Wendy adds. ‘They’ve got a good team and you feel safe with them.’

Nevertheless, this one was definitely a struggle. The terrain was sometimes far from runnable. ‘There was a lot of climbing over and under logs, and a lot of mud,’ says Wendy. Plus the humidity meant they were constantly wet. ‘Your clothes wouldn’t dry off overnight, and it’s not nice putting a wet bra back on in the morning. The moisture makes your hammock heavier, so your backpack is heavier too.’

Wendy liked it more than Alison though. ‘It was not me at all. There were ants the size of dinosaurs! Everything bit you. And I kept falling over, which I now know is part of altitude sickness.’ A few days before the race began, the pair had been on an excursion to Vinicunca, the multicoloured ‘Rainbow Mountain’ in the Andes, ascending quickly from the city of Cusco in a minibus. ‘That’s what did me in. I was sick on the bus. It was a disaster, and I didn’t have time to recover before the race.’

Despite everything they pushed on and kept going for the full five days. They probably wouldn’t do it again, but only because they have other plans. There’s another desert race in the diary, the Ultra X Jordan, plus another multi-day race in Tanzania. When we speak, they haven’t yet decided between Romania and Finland for May.

While they know they don’t look like typical ultrarunners, and say they can occasionally feel a bit patronised, they have found that most other people at these races are ‘so lovely and helpful. They see us out there day after day, and say: “Alison and Wendy are such troopers.”’

What about people back at home? ‘Everyone thinks we’re mad!’ says Alison. ‘But they love hearing about our adventures.’

The Ice Ultra and Jungle Ultra are part of the Global Race Series by Beyond The Ultimate – beyondtheultimate.co.uk