VOOM Performance Podcast
Welcome to VOOM Performance – the podcast exploring the people, stories, and ideas shaping endurance sport and outdoor adventure.
From nutrition, health, and performance to diversity on the trails, race director insights, and inspiring athlete journeys, we speak to experts, athletes, and industry leaders to uncover what it takes to perform at your best.
Whether you're training for your next event, seeking new challenges, or simply passionate about the outdoors, VOOM Performance delivers practical advice, fresh perspectives, and inspiring conversations to fuel your next adventure.
VOOM Performance Podcast
Running, Sobriety & Mental Health: Allie Bailey's Journey from Addiction to Ultra Running
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
Can running change your life?
For ultra runner, coach and author Allie Bailey, the answer is yes, but not in the way most people think.
In this episode of the VOOM Performance Podcast, Allie shares the remarkable story of how running became the first step on her journey out of alcoholism, depression and addiction, and how sobriety transformed not only her life but also the way she approaches endurance sport and coaching.
This is an open, honest and deeply moving conversation about resilience, recovery and the connection between mental health and performance. Ali explains why running alone couldn't fix the challenges she faced, how accepting her addiction became the turning point in her recovery, and why true performance begins with understanding yourself—not simply training harder.
Today, Allie is an accomplished ultra runner, respected coach and bestselling author, helping athletes build confidence, resilience and balance both on and off the trails. Her coaching philosophy goes far beyond pace, mileage and finish times, placing equal importance on emotional wellbeing, self-awareness and sustainable performance.
Whether you're training for your first marathon, tackling an ultra, navigating your own mental health journey or simply looking for inspiration, this episode offers powerful lessons that extend far beyond running.
In this episode you'll learn:
- How running supported Allie through addiction and depression.
- Why sobriety completely changed her relationship with running.
- The role of acceptance in recovery and personal growth.
- How mental health impacts endurance performance.
- Why resilience is about more than pushing through pain.
- Ali's unique coaching philosophy and why she coaches the whole person, not just the athlete.
- Practical lessons every runner can apply to improve both performance and wellbeing.
Why you should listen
Too often, endurance sport focuses solely on physical performance. This conversation reminds us that the strongest athletes aren't always those who train the hardest, they're often the ones who understand themselves the best.
Allie's story is one of courage, vulnerability and hope. It's a powerful reminder that recovery isn't linear, healing takes time, and running can become an incredible tool for self-discovery when combined with honesty, support and self-compassion.
If you're interested in ultra running, mental health, addiction recovery, resilience, women's endurance sport or performance coaching, this is an episode you won't want to miss.
If you enjoy this episode of the VOOM Performance Podcast, please subscribe, leave us a review and share it with someone who would benefit from hearing Ali's story.
Resources & Links
Learn More About Voom Nutrition
VOOM Nutrition creates science-backed sports nutrition products designed for endurance athletes, helping support energy, hydration, recovery, and performance across training and racing.
Explore the full range of products at:
https://www.voomnutrition.co.uk/
Whether you're training for your next ultra, marathon, sportive or open water swim, Voom Nutrition helps you fuel smarter so you can perform at your best.
About Allie Bailey https://www.alliebailey.co.uk/
Allie Bailey is an award-winning endurance coach, ultra runner, author and speaker. Named Coach of the Year at the 2024 National Running Awards, she is the founder of Ultra Awesome, where she helps runners build confidence, resilience and a healthy relationship with endurance sport.
Drawing on her own journey through addiction, recovery and mental health, Allie's work focuses on coaching the whole person, combining mindset, wellbeing and performance to help athletes achieve sustainable success both on and off the trails.
Order 31 Days https://www.adventurebooks.com/products/31-days-allie-bailey
Listen & Subscribe
If you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to:
⭐ Follow the Voom Performance Podcast
⭐ Leave us a review
⭐ Share this episode with a training partner or teammate
Every review helps us bring more expert conversations to the endurance community.
Connect with VOOM
Website: https://www.voomnutrition.co.uk/
Instagram: @voomnutrition
Facebook: VOOM Nutrition
It was real exercise in, you know, talking yourself down from that I can't do it. Because there were times when I was face down in the van, like, I can't do this. But I was like, you have to do this for yourself. You have to get this done. You've got so much more in you than you think you have. And if you stop putting that pressure on yourself, I've got to run every step. Actually, do you know what? I'm just gonna hike this out today, I'm gonna hike it out, I'm gonna look at the things, I'm gonna take some photos, see how many dogs I can find. What you're seeing on social media, elite athletes performing at the top of their game, you're not seeing Debbie from accounts, you know, run walking over Hell Valley. That's just not what you're seeing, because it's not what the algorithm is serving you. So people think these things are harder than they actually are. That if you do them the way you want to do them, you can achieve incredible things. And we were allowed to do it the way we wanted to do it.
SPEAKER_01Ali Bailey, welcome to the Voom Performance Podcast. Really excited to have you on, but who better to tell everybody about yourself? Just give us a quick background on Ali Bailey and um your background in terms of running and how you got into it.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, who better have you one but me? But I'll give it a go. I am a well am I, I'm an ultrarunner podcaster coach and a coach for the two pickled the dog. And um I got into it I think I got into it like 14 years ago, I was quite late, I'm nearly 45. And um yeah, it's uh been a bit of a strange one. I started running, did the marrow scene like everyone else, was an alcoholic, not like everyone else, for a long, long time. So while I was alcoholic, I thought I'll run it or sort of sort this out, so I started running. Turns out it didn't, and you can quite happily live the life of an alcoholic whilst also being an ultra runner. Um that went on for a long time. I sort of thought that the more running I did, the more well I would get. Uh but actually the more running I did, the worse I got, because it just doesn't work. Like trying to find solace through something external never works when it's something you need to change inside. And then about five years ago I just had a massive um they just all fell to shit and I um couldn't cope anymore and it went wrong and I decided um I need to stop drinking, so I did and sort of had to rebuild the whole thing from there, which is a really interesting journey because it kind of showed me running for what running was and me for what I was, and that I'd been using it wrong, and uh that maybe if I use it right it could be more helpful than it had otherwise been. So I wrote the book, There Is No Wall about the journey from music industry and alcoholism and depression and feeling terrible to feeling us terrible. And yeah, and then I became a coach. I had to become a coach. Um I had no choice. I had lost my job, I'd lost my money, I'd lost my partner, I'd lost my house, I lost everything. So um became a coach and and uh yeah, it's all kind of gone from there. It was it's basically a sort of story about learning about yourself, using the running as a kind of uh whiteboard for you know all that stuff that therapists teach you, but it's running is a really good place to put that into action. And what we're doing at the moment, I've just released the second book for 81 days, which is sort of how-to book. 31 chapters of is there? 31 chapters of um joy about the things I've learned through doing what I'm doing, therapy and coaching and life coaching and business coaching and all the things that I've learned and try to try and like make myself as well as I can be, read and then tested all my athletes. 31 chapters each chapter covers a little uh uh area that that they have found difficult, things like comparison or imposter syndrome or not feeling like you're good enough, or or you know, all the all the usual stuff that people come across as little uh examples and exercises that you can do to try and make yourself feel better. So that's I think I think that covers it. That's where I'm at.
SPEAKER_01It does, and thank you very much. And and sport for you wasn't something that you did from childhood. So you didn't come from a sporty background, you came from a music background. How did you you touched slightly on that how you got into running, but why did running become something that you started doing? Was that escapism or was that just trying to then be able to find something that I think you said there would help you feel better?
SPEAKER_00I think it was anything that would just take me out of my own mind because I was so ill, I was so depressed, and I was so anxious. Like I was working in the music industry in London, I was in a very high pressure environment. I was I was a victim of um a sort of that not those sort of boomer babies, you know, there's one of the right on the edge, the 80s, 90s kids. I was born in 1981, and then I the whole to the whole way up, I was kind of put into a female role role, you know, girls do this, girls do that, don't do this, don't do that, you're not good enough, you're this, you're that. I hated it. And um I went to a girls' grammar school, which was a massive, massive error on on the part of everybody involved in the government for creating girls' grammar schools, and it was awful. And uh I just felt small. The only way I just felt out of like I didn't fit in. I felt um like I was just I could I just felt like I can't even really explain to you what it was, but it was I think of the feeling of not fitting in and having to perform was the major thing. And so I got this job in music, this dream job in music. I thought the external forces would change how I felt about myself. I thought I could change how I felt by getting a really good job or having a really good-looking boyfriend or like owning a leather jacket, but I couldn't. And the the only way I could notice I feel better was by drinking. Running did the same thing that drinking did, but for a shorter period of time. Like you can't be running all the time, but you can be drinking all the time, especially in the job that I was doing. It was an enabler of that job. It was, you know, there was lots of lunches and gigs and after shows and all that sort of thing. So I could hide really easily behind that mask. And the running came in when a doctor suggested I do it because I was like, I'm gonna kill myself. And he was like, Do you ever get any exercise? I was like, No, because at grammar school I wasn't good at it, so like don't do it then. But if you're not good at it, don't do it. And just for those few minutes when I went out that first time, I just didn't think about wanting to kill myself. I actually thought about trying to stay alive because I thought, you know, I'm gonna die on London Bridge, this is so hard. And yeah, I just it just sort of went from there. But because I wasn't achieving the result I wanted, which was to change, you know, I said in all the books that running will save you, says that running's gonna make everything better. I decided to do more and more of it. I don't believe there is such a thing as an addictive personality. There is no such thing. Saying that you've got an addictive personality is basically giving yourself an excuse to be say addicted, or that you're special, or that you can't help it. Whereas we can all help it because addiction is a behaviour. But when I like s I like something, I throw myself into it, and I just thought if I keep doing this thing, maybe I will get better quicker. And uh the other thing is people were impressed. So I was getting external validation, which I wasn't getting before. And I was relying on external validation. I was like lapping that up to make me feel like I was worth something. Um yeah, so that's how that happened. It escalates quickly, doesn't it?
SPEAKER_01That um external validation, and you know, I've enjoyed reading 31 Days, and we'll talk about that shortly. But why Suzy Chan to compare yourself to? That was the person that you thought that you could run faster, run longer, and I did laugh that your mate told you she's running on the flat and you're running on the hill. So why why choose Susie Chan?
SPEAKER_00Why not? There was no one else to choose. Well, it could have been anyone, but it was her. That's it. It was like, I just compare myself to Susie Chan. That's what I did. It was that was quite late down the line, but uh, but I can't give you an answer to that because she was the first person I picked on Instagram. There you go.
SPEAKER_01That's why she was in essence your your inspiration in a way that uh I wouldn't say that.
SPEAKER_00I wouldn't say that. I don't think she was an inspiration. I think it was more, and I love Susie, she's a friend and she's a friend. I can't afford she's lovely, but uh, I think it was more uh I need a level to compare myself to. Literally, open the phone book, put your finger in, the first person that that person will do. So that's what I did.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_00There's no rival reason behind it. It's the same as one of my athletes. One of them said to me this morning, there's a guy in my running club who's 58, and he doesn't really have to do much training. And he goes and you wins these and he just enters a fellow race and he wins it, and he talks about how he doesn't do his training, and uh and I'm like, and he's she's like, Why can't I do that? I'm like, Are you on crack? I was like, Why would you compare yourself to a 58-year-old man from your running club? Oh, he doesn't do any training in this set. I'm like, how do you know? What do you live with him? Do you watch everything he does? What's his background? Does he come from a sporty background? Like, where do you go to school? I said, Do you do understand this man's been told his entire life that he can do things, don't you? You do understand this man has got more confidence than anybody else in your any woman in your running club. I was like, Do you understand this man is a man and you are a woman? He's 20% biologically fitter than you. I was like, do you not think that maybe you're comparing yourself to the wrong person? And she was like, well, no, because it's that and I'm like, honestly, the social the social media thing, if we were living in the 80s, we wouldn't do this. We'd compare ourselves to the person of the club, and maybe we knew more about, but even then, we wouldn't know how fast you were running or what your split times were or what your VA2 max was, what your heart rate was, because we don't have that capability. So me comparing myself to Susie Chan is like me comparing myself to I don't know Genghis Khan, like anyone, anything. It doesn't make sense, but I did. And it was only yeah, it was only my friend pointed out to me that I was living a summer set, she wasn't. So it was ludicrous because there were two completely different sets of runs. But also, what are you doing? Like it's got nothing to do with you, what someone else is doing. It's got literally nothing to do with you. It was absolute madness. And I wouldn't say it was inspirational comparison because it didn't inspire me, it just made me out of a dickhead.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. And and coaching is obviously something you now do and you do very well, but you talk very openly that it's not just about a training plan, it's about the person. And whilst there was an opportunity or you needed to, because as you said that you needed that level of income, why why get into coaching? Surely there were other ways for you to then be able to earn money.
SPEAKER_00I mean, there's always ways to earn money in the 85. And before I before I had that breakdown, I was working with a big race company and I was there. My job was a test pilot. So I went out and tested all their routes. So I went to Namibia, I went to Mongolia, I went to Panama, I went to Dominica, I went to you name it, I went there. And they would say, We've got this route that we want to do, you go and run it first, see if it's doable. So I would. It was the greatest job in the world. It was amazing. But it's not the greatest job in the world when you are a functioning alcoholic and you've got some severe mental health issues that you are just trying to run off and then drink through. And when it all went tits, I lost that job. So I came out of it and I was like, now what am I supposed to do? I'm living in in Yorkshire in the middle of nowhere. I know don't have my music industry contacts, don't want to go back to that. I don't I can't live to the job centre and go, if you've got your test pilot jobs because there aren't any, and everyone thinks I'm a liability. And I think that with the mental health and the alcoholism, there is such a huge amount of shame and fear around it. People do think you're a liability. And the funniest thing is, if you're a woman, they think you're more of a liability. They think you're mad, they think you're crazy, they think there's something really wrong with you, you can't be trusted. Because actually, what I tried to do was be really honest about what happened, and I had been honest over um social media, where for a long time I've been lying about and hiding it, and I said publicly, I'm really ill, and I've got these I've been hiding this stuff from everybody, and I've been like putting f posts up saying, Oh, look at me, I'm like a bastion for mental health, when actually I can't get through the day without two bottles of rose. That was a problem. Who's gonna employ that person? Like, seriously, seriously, Mel, who's gonna employ that person? They're just not gonna employ you because they won't give you a chance. So the only option I had was to start my own business. And a couple of people had said to me, Could you maybe you should be a coach? One of them actually, Danielle, uh, she's brilliant. She still messages me, Danielle, she's absolutely lovely. Danielle Parkinson, he was like, I'd like to be coached by you. And she was just a random person off Instagram. And so I was like, Do you know what? Maybe I'll I'll give it a go. So I did give it a go. And I've never had a coach, so I did it the way that I thought it should be done, which is tell me what's going on in your life. Are you okay? Let's talk about your mental health, let's talk about things that are standing in your way mentally and physically. So, like kids, job, people saying things to you that you believe when they're not true, and we can do it in a really holistic way. And that's different, I think, from every other coach. I really don't think there is another coach that does it like that, and it's been really, really successful. And you know, now I can there's a I can count on one hand the amount of people that are full-time coaches. And I am a full-time coach, it's all I do. I do that, I write the book, I do the podcast, do workshops, and it's amazing because I absolutely love what I do, and I've got and it's such I'm so grateful to have that. Like after I lost everything, it's I'm so grateful to have it. Like it's amazing to be able to be passionate about what you do, isn't it? Not to like get up every morning and dread going to work.
SPEAKER_01And that sobriety piece, you took very openly about it. What was the either the the circumstance or the set of circumstances that you went, I'm not gonna drink and I'm gonna take one day one step at a time. What were the the key things that took you on that journey?
SPEAKER_00It was death, it was death or drink. Like I watched I tried to kill myself a couple of times, but this time I was like, I can't see a way out of this now. No one really knew. I didn't think anyone knew, but I think a lot of people didn't know. I was lucky enough to have uh a friend say to me, go into you'd get go to work, you need to tell them what's going on. I didn't really have any friends, no family where I lived, and also my dog, because I was living in Yorkshire in this flat that you won't have dogs in. My dog had been living at my ex-boyfriend's for six months, so I was really on my own, and COVID had come and gone. And I just went to the venture stage and I was taken home, and I um we'll take her back to my ex-boyfriends, and uh it was somerset, and I just stayed in bed for three days and thought, look, I'd kill myself, that's one vibal option, or I don't, and I stopped drinking. And I didn't in bed for three days, just like feeling nothing. Like you get this feeling before you kill yourself of anhedonia, which is that feeling of it's opposite hedonism. So it's like you don't care about anything, you don't care about anything. If somebody wrung a baby rabbit's neck in front of you, you wouldn't do anything about it. So I didn't have any feelings for the dog or for my friends or for anyone. I just was like stuck in this wall staring situation, and I just thought, there's only one change you can make now that'll make that'll be different from what you've done before, and that is to stop drinking. So I did, and I thought, oh, I'm gonna need doctors, I'm gonna need AA, I'm gonna need this, that, the other. But ultimately, it was just a decision to stop, and I felt awful for like two or three weeks. I felt terrible. And I did get to see a doctor, but they were not that helpful. I found GP's not to be that helpful, which is why I private when I came out. Like, I'm just like, I know they've got a lot of people to see, but it's not helpful. And uh I did it on my own, and I know a lot, there's a lot, a big scholar thought in the sub-world of like you have to go to AA, or you have to do this, or you have to do things by the big book, or you have to like get community. And I did have people looking out for me 100%. So I did it by myself, and I think that is a very, very me thing to do. And since then I have had I've got lots of friends who are also addicts who I rely rely on to like have a laugh with about being an addict because at the end of the day, if you've got laugh about it, then and um I've been to a few AA meetings, I just don't get all of them that well because I want to solve problems and not sit there listening to problems' problems, I want to solve problems, so it's each their own. But one of the people that is brilliant who I love a lot is sober Dave. He's on Instagram with Sober Dave, and he's just a brilliant person to talk to, he's really, really funny, and he's really lovely, and he's like my surrogate dad, and um and I've read a lot of books on it. And I honestly it's like the thing I guard the most because since I got sober, magic has happened absolute magic has happened, and I don't want to be that annoying sober person because I I used to listen to podcasts for sober people and I'd be like, that's vollocks, that is absolute bollocks, but it's not bollocks, it's actually true because I've lived it and it's happened, and now I've you know now I'm debt-free, I've got the car I want, I can buy a house, like I can do all these things I want to do. I'm a worse runner for it, 100% I'm a worse runner for it because I take care of myself a lot more and I have a lot more respectful body, so I don't run as much and I'm not as fast, but I do get better results. So I guess I'm not a worse runner, but if you look at it on a basis of how much and how fast, if you want to gauge it like that, the results are different. But I also have a body that I know has longevity now and can keep going into my sort of 70s and 80s, so yeah, I wouldn't have it any other way, but it was a real, it was a rock bottom moment. And if anyone is listening to this and thinking, I think that maybe I should stop, I don't would not wait, wait for that rock bottom because it's quite a hard negotiation with yourself, and for some people they don't come out the other side of it. I was lucky that I did.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and that's shame piece. And we've I've had a long conversation with Sabrina Pace Humphreys 10 years now, um, from a sobriety point of view. And the question I asked her and ask you, if anyone's listening to this and is struggling with with alcohol, what would your advice be?
SPEAKER_00100% to talk to someone who knows. Like Sober Dave is great because he's you don't know him. Go on his Instagram page and just drop him a message. And he does grey area drinking as well. So if you're not really sure, it's one of those things where if you're if you can't have a drink and you're angry about it, or if you can't, if you're waiting for the next drink, that's a sort of like a big gray area drinking situation, which is kind of just as bad. Talk to someone about it and be honest and talk to someone that's not gonna judge you because lots of people are very judgmental about um about alcoholism. When the irony is we live in a country that is built on alcoholism, it's absolutely every time if you go in the supermarket now, what's the first thing you're gonna see? Tins and tins and tins and tins of beer with England flags on it saying, if you watch the football, you've got a drink. You've got to have a drink to watch football. It's basically like if you don't have a drink watching the football, then what's the point of watching the football? They're not showing the football wellness club retreats, they're not showing the football like in places where there is no alcohol, alright? They're not showing it in cafes, they're showing it in pubs because this country is built on alcoholism. It abs it's an absolute joke. Alcoholism, alcohol is the only thing that people ask you why you're not doing it, it's the only drug where people are like, Why are you not doing that? They don't say that about cocaine or cigarettes. So it it's it's a it it's a fact that there's a lot of people drinking way more than is good for them mentally, let alone physically, but they don't want to admit it because once that's removed, you've got to face reality. And the hardest bit about being sober is facing the reality of who you are. That is hard work. So many people don't do it.
SPEAKER_01And one of the things that you talk a lot about is acceptance. Yeah. For you, in that case, you had to accept that you were an alcoholic. Yeah. And that's the first part for anyone. I had a had a friend who unfortunately lost her life to alcoholism, and I believe from the conversation that I had that she didn't accept who she was, and unfortunately, you know, she lost her life because of it, and that's a big thing, isn't it?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, but if you can't accept if you can't accept or even imagine who you are without it, that is a really big thing. And the funny thing is, I think a lot of members of my own family still don't believe I'm an alcoholic. I don't know why that is.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00But they don't believe it. It's like it's not it's not got anything to do with you, like how I want to pigeonhole it. But I was drinking three or four bottles of wine a day at least, like for a long time. You know, I was drinking I I had to drink to live for like 20 odd years. People are like, I don't really talk to a lot of people about it. I think it's because they're scared. Because saying, like, this is a person that I really am, I don't have any problem with like showing you anything about me because it's who I am, and if you don't like it, get fucked, as far as I'm concerned. Like, you're just not my people if you don't like it. People won't do that. There's a mask, people always have this mask on. There's always an ulterior motive. And I think I honestly think it's mostly to do with the fact that the social media was there, you always feel like you're being watched and judged, and you want to be appear to be the best that you can possibly be. There's no room just to chill, chill out. When you're an alcoholic, you have to relearn so much stuff. I started drinking when I was 16, so really and I've been sober five years, so really I'm only like 21, because the rest of it I didn't develop, so I'm developing it now. So I behave like a fucking child half the time because that's where my development stopped. But I I get that, I understand it, and I'm working my way through it. It's just it's a really difficult thing to to navigate. I think that's where people start again because I just can't accept the person that they are without it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and there's you know, there's there's so much in there, and there's so much you talk about in 31 days. And let's talk about Ali the You've done many, many events, and you talked a little bit about doing goalie, but an event that many people will do. I've done it on a bike and it was a bloody long way, which was Lanz Enjoy Groats. The context is obviously a thousand and fifty-three miles. You did 89,000 um uh feet of five days. Discuss what did that routine look like for 35 days, day in, day out.
SPEAKER_00I was I was sober, nearly sober.
SPEAKER_01Okay. But sober for six.
SPEAKER_00And I've been so for a year, but so for a year, right? So I was like, I was unstoppable. Check me out, I was stoppable. Turns out I was unstoppable, and it was actually really hard. And I was fit for it. I'd run loads and loads of ultramarathons, like loads. I'd done lots of ompty days, like I was really experienced, I helped plan the route, like I was like super psyched about it. Um it was odd. But like now, I'm like, how did I manage to do that? It was it was odd because it just is. It if you say five, 40 miles a day, it doesn't seem like very much to you doing it. I also hang around with a load of other achievers, like people like Sarah Perry who are like, I'll go do the Southwest Coast Path in eight days, or like Lucy, who's like, I'll go do it six. So I'm like, yeah. What I did wasn't that hard, but actually, it was hard, and that relentless it was alright for the first few days, but then it gets relentless. And the worst thing was we were forced to take rest days, and I really would rather we hadn't had rest days. Because the rest day just the first rest day, you know, the first day after a really big race, first day after a hard 10k is alright. The second day is awful, it's really bad because that's when your body goes, Okay, right, we're gonna relax now. So the second day I was like, well, off you go again, off you go again now. And it was yeah, it was hard. But I tell you what, it was the one of the best experiences of my life and the proudest achievements of my life. And it was, yeah, we did half trail, half road, it was a different route to the normal, awful road route, and um it was funny, and those little sort of group of us, we all still talked to each other, it was just super fun, and it was also like a good reclamation of myself because I was quite newly sober, so I was still trying to find myself, and there was a lot of time to think on on that run, and a lot of you know problem solving that needed to be done, and it it had that thing of like sort of proving to yourself that you've got your back, like you had to look after yourself. Um, so yeah, it was a really amazing experience. And by the time I got to the end, I wanted to run back because by five weeks in, you're like, right, I'll condition it now. This is just what I do every day. It was amazing, and I was like the fittest I'd ever been, and I'm like, I've got to stop now. I was absolutely gutted.
SPEAKER_01And if you I I mean, I remember getting out of Devon and Cornwall and was like, holy crap, it's really hilly round here, and I took the good route. And I remember getting to Ross on Y and just thinking, wow, this is just an amazing adventure. For you, that was a key part of it, wasn't it? It was an adventure, it was about being able to not rediscover yourself, but to be able to understand what running could do to you and could help you to discover and I guess just switch off from life, wouldn't it, B?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it was it was it was a switch off from life, a switch on to the shit I needed to sort out because I was with myself a lot. Um there was a lot of problem solving as well because we obviously did South West Coast Path all the way from Cornwall up to um Bristol, and then we went onto Office Dyke, and then we went on to the Seven Way, and I then we went on to like the Y Valley Way, we went through the Lake District. It's not the cleanest route to get up to to Jonathan Boats, like going over like Honnesters. Like, why would you in why would you put High Street in there? But we did. But it was a really good, like I guess, chapter in my life of like being kind to ourselves, I suppose. Like we're just you know, we are just like spiritual beings having human experience in this meat sea that we have. And I've worked that out, and I'm like, you You owe this body, you owe to look after it, you owe to be kind to it. When I say be kind to it, I mean feed it, exercise it, make it as strong as it can possibly be. And I think that was the start of those things happening because you really had to look after yourself. We were eating bowls and eating mess for dinner. We were like, we were being really well looked after by the crew, but it was a real exercise in looking after yourself. And it was a real exercise in you know talking yourself down from that I can't do it. Because there were times when I was face down in the van, like I can't do this. But I was like, you have to do this for yourself, you have to get this done. And it wasn't because I was injured and dying, it's because I was tired and exhausted. But you've got so much more in you than you think you have. And if you stop putting that pressure on yourself, I'm not, I've got to run every step. Actually, do you know what? I'm just gonna hike this out today, I'm gonna hike it out, I'm gonna look at the things, I'm gonna take some photos, see how many dogs I can find. Then you know, you can do this stuff. I think a lot of people have an image of the these endurance events that come from well, again, comes from social media. But what you're seeing on social media, elite athletes performing at the top of their game, you're not seeing Debbie from accounts, you know, run walking over Hellvelin like at the weekend. That's just not what you're seeing, because it's not what the algorithm's serving you. So people think these things are harder than they actually are. That if you do them the way you want to do them, you can achieve incredible things. And we were allowed to do it the way we wanted to do it. So we have the days set in, and we had and we, you know, I think only three of us made it at the end. It's just me, Arsenal and Joe, because everybody else got tendonitis, or Lorna broke her leg and a bog, she fell in a bog. Like three days from the end and broke her leg. Ridiculous. But um, but I think it was just a real like it came at the right time and it was well, it's an amazing achievement, isn't it? It's run down into channel grace. Because of the world I live in, I'm like, oh, everybody does that, they don't do that. Sometimes you forget.
SPEAKER_01But I think one of the couple of things you talk about there, I always say that you are far more capable than you think you are. And I guess so much of that you just you said resonates on that. But fueling, I mean, many people do ultras that are in their hours. This was in their days, and I know you wrote that you hate sweets and gels and you couldn't use them. How did you fuel yourself on real food over that kind of period of time? What was your fueling strategy? What did you need to eat apart from a big three-course meal when you get to the end?
SPEAKER_00My friend Joe, he favoured ice cream on toast for breakfast. The ice cream would always melt, so he would eat the ice cream. Sort of do you know what I used at the time? I don't know if I'm allowed to say this because it won't be a dirty word on a Voon podcast. I was using mountain fuel breakfast fuel, and I was just using it as a shake. At that point, I found shakes and donuts. This is a long time ago. Shakes and donuts really worked for me, so I was eating a lot of donuts, a lot of shakes, a lot of plain cheese sandwiches, a lot crisps, right? And then I just really don't like gels and sweets. But things have come on a long way since then. And I the last thing I did, I ate again, I went back to the cheese sandwiches, just plain white cheap bread, butter cheese and plain hula hoops. Like I must have eaten 20 bags of plain hula hoops in the last race I did. It was a long race. It wasn't 10k, not monster. But I was like, this is brilliant. These hula with the hula hoops, I'd put some schwartz fuel. So I'd eat a hula hoop along with a little bit of like a little square of like cis beta gel, yeah, the blocks, and put that in. But I'm perfect. That's got some carbohydrate in it, lots of carbohydrate in it. It's got a bit of a bit of a kick in it, but it's got the and it's got the crisps. I'm so terrified of upsetting my stomach because I've had a few issues with upsetting my stomach, and it's just a it's just a killer because it's really hard to get over. Nowadays, I'm much better with food, so it doesn't tend to happen, and also I'm much better at pacing myself, so it doesn't tend to happen, and I'm much better at taking salt. I think the biggest thing that athletes fail to do is take enough salt when it comes. I don't know, not really. This isn't to Renee's episode. But I always, if I take s if I feel nauseous, I take some salt, I can get over it pretty quickly, and then I eat some proper food. So, and a lot of fruit, yeah, and a lot of boiled eggs and a lot of spinach because those things fill you up and they're plain, so they might not have the densest calories, but you only really miss green shit when you're on these runs. I remember I did Delta Hebrides around the whole length of Delta Hebrides. There was one shop, uh, because it's obviously the middle of nowhere, and in and everyone's like, What do you want for the shop? What do you want Kit Kat? Do you want doughnut? I was like, I just want a bag of spinach, just a bag of spinach, and they got me this bag of spinach and I just devoured it like crisps because I haven't had anything green for days. So I just wanted spinach and some melon and some berries. I think it's really important to remember when you're doing these things, it's just another day or eight days. So if you're not having breakfast, lunch, and dinner like you normally would, you're gonna really upset your body's algorithms. You're also, you know, you're gonna have the same emotions that you'd have in a week. So you get really pissed off, you might cry, you might get angry, you're gonna have all this everything's 100% higher or 100% lower. And with the eating, trying to keep it as close to normal as possible. I think that's really, really important. But obviously, you get to the point where you don't want to eat anything towards the end, and that's when this sports stuff becomes really handy. But uh, it's all a game, isn't it? It's all like, well, how will it go this time? Like, we just don't know. Like, I don't have the answers to it, but I do remember Rob Britt drinking a lot of shakes.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and it's that training element, isn't it? It's training your mind to have that self-belief. There's training your body, and then there's training your gut. And you've obviously just recently finished uh Wild Horse uh 200 and you did the spine earlier um this year. What does training look like f for you? How do you train?
SPEAKER_00Quite quite uh surprisingly lately. So I've got a coach Holly Stables and her husband Pete does with strength, and she's brilliant, and I'd probably average 50 miles a week, and then when I'm on big training weeks, it'll be at up to 60 or 70. I'd never go over a sort of 80 or 90 miles miles a week. Like that'll be a peak, peak training week where maybe I'll do a three-day recce. There's always an interval session, there's always a threshold session, or interval threshold, there might be a hill session, so there's always speed, there's nice easy runs with the dog, then there's a nice long run on similar terrain to what I would be running on. So it's not like heavy, heavy, heavy mileage, but I'd say I'm happiest at 50 miles a week. Strength is so important. I didn't do strength for a long time, and now I'm in a gym with P. Literally completely changed the game. So coming out of Wild Horse, nothing hurt apart from my feet were very, very sore. Turns out you can't actually train your feet to not be sore. You can't do that. Uh the underfoot conditions are really shit. Did I did not ache, I did not hurt, I could get over styles, I could jump over the styles at the end, I could get over gates, I could get myself over barbed wire fences when I'd gone wrong, uh, I could leap over bogs because of my strength. And I think that it's so underrated strength still, and you know, if you're doing it 100 miles a week, you're not getting strength, you're literally wasting your time because you're not building the muscles that you need to be able to not only carry you across the distance and get you over the stars and get you up the hills, get you down the hills, but also to recover. So when you're laying down, those muscles are what you need to recover. So the other thing I do is drink a lot of huel on races. I don't I never drink huel during the week or at any other time. In peak training, I'll drink it, and almost because they do a 35-gram Huel, I said that is a meal, get that down, and even if you feel sick, you've got something in you, and then I'll have a pot noodle or and a sandwich or some crisps. Um that recovery between sections of those long races is super, super important. But yeah, my training isn't like I'm not a professional athlete. I think a lot of people have started to try and train like professional athletes when they've when they're not professional athletes. You know, when you go skating at the Natural History Museum at Christmas, do you train like for the Olympic skaters? Do you follow them on Instagram and be like, oh, this is what I need to do? No, you just go skating. Why? Because it's your hobby. You just like to go for a skate every now and again, right? With running, I don't understand why people are looking at Tom Evans and Elsie Davis and Courtney DeWalter and going, David Roach. You know, that's what I'm gonna do. It's ridiculous. They are professional athletes. People listening to this, me included, are hobby runners. This is my hobby. Like, I I'm not it's not my job. I don't have money from it. You know, I make money from coaching, coaching is my job. I enjoy it. It's something that like I don't I would hate to have to live without. Like, I just you know, it's things like the World Horse 200, it's 200 miles of mid-Wales. It's beautiful. You get to go over Dingle Way, you get to go on the office dike on the Wide Valley Way. You know, I saw every animal on earth, I saw barn owls, tawny owls, bats, badgers, like loads of sheep. I think I saw seven and a half million sheep, cows, bad cows, good cows, medium cows, like horses, llamas, alpacas, dogs. It was incredible. I saw lots of chapels and obsessed with chapels and want to buy a chapel and live in it. But I'm not a professional athlete. And if you look at my time was nowhere near like someone like Rachel Atkins or someone like that. Like that's like it's not the same. So I think we need to when you're looking at your training, remember it's your hobby. It is not your job, it shouldn't be stressful, and you shouldn't be training like a professional athlete because you're not one.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and and the podcast I did with Rini is it shouldn't define you as well, should it? It's that bad your identity, and um, I think that's so important. You do it because you love it, right? You do it because it's something that makes you feel good, and it's that you talk a lot within the book about intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. It's because it makes you feel, feel, feel good. And back-to-back training, do you do much of that? So, like a a weekend of back-to-back training, or no, why would you do that yourself?
SPEAKER_00Like, I just spent 77 hours running around Wales. Yeah, that's enough. That's the event. I would do a couple of back-to-back days and maybe a three-day recce with the girls. That's the best bit about running, it's getting on the face of the girls and going, right, training for this race. Do you want to come and do some reckies? We'll do three days in the late district, or do three days in Swedonia, or do three days in on the Pillow Way. That'll be a back-to-back, but that's the only back-to-back we're doing for that race, right? And we'll eat well, might do 30 miles a day, might do 20 miles one day, 30 miles another day, 15 miles, cut it short, have outs, and we've got the dogs, if it's too hot, whatever. Like, and it's a laugh. You just go and have a laugh. It's a social run. You're not doing it at race pace. Recce is supposed to be you looking around, where's the gate? Where can I get lost? What's here, what's there, is there a shot, is there an honesty box? Make some notes. What with us do you like in the in the dark? That's where Recce is. No, not loads of back types. Oh, not hill training all the time. No, not stair stepper all the time. So many people getting on the stair stepper of the gym. I'm like, why are you on that? Because I saw Sam doing it, so I saw so and so doing it. It's like, why am I doing it? It's like things like treadmill hills, stair steppers, hill training, hill splits, they are so specific to what you're doing and shouldn't be done any like further out from the base of like sort of six to ten weeks, because you're just going to be exhausted all the time. Whereas, you know, slow running, like nice, easy running, that bit of speed in the middle of the week, those that strength once or twice a week, no more than that. More gym doesn't equal better results, more gym equals muscles that are not recovered. So are so you're not building anything. Like you need to respect your and also if you're at work, you've got kids, you've got other stuff to do, you can't maintain that. But I very much doubt people are following hobby runners on Instagram. I think they're following, you know, people that are at the top of their game and they're trying to do that. It is absolute insanity. And I think we're kind of lost in the thought, you know. You said to me when we got on here, I feel like I know you because I've read the book. I get a lot of people that say they feel like they know me because they're because of my Instagram, don't know me. And even if you look at the media coverage of something like the spy, right? You've got six minutes a day on the long-perform video, four minutes of that is male talking like tea bags, and then two minutes, very well, and two minutes is drone shots and epic footage. From 24 hours of a spy, you're not seeing the shit bits, the hard bits, the awful bits, the crying, the blood, the people throwing up blood, the you're not seeing that. Because they're trying to sell you a race, trying to make it look epic but doable, which it is if you train properly. Also, not showing you the training that people have been doing for years to get to that point, be able to look after themselves like that, right? And it is looking after yourself like that. It's not about how fast you can run all the pen and way, it's about how good you are at looking after yourself. And I think that's the thing that frustrates me the most. That's why I wrote the book, because there's a lot of people that think these things are easier or more doable than they are, and because it's their hobby, if they don't achieve what they want to achieve, goal which is beyond their control, finishing it, because that is a goal that is beyond your control. You can be the fittest person in the world and roll an ankle at the start, and that's the end of it. Yeah, I perservia, fall in a bog, go the wrong way, whatever it is. So you can't have finishing it as a goal because it's not in your control. Like, it's not about that, it's about the journey towards these things, and these things are just markers on the sort of finger post of life. This I see them as just markers like this race, this race, this race, this race. I want to be really, really good at running really, really far. When I say good, I mean able to look after myself so I can can run really, really far. And that's why I do lots of 200s because I'm like, I say lots, I do like one a year, maybe two a year, maybe sometimes three a year if I can get one past Holly. Because the whole time, I'm like, I don't want to win it, I'm interested in where I come. I want to see how what I've learned and if I can put that and put those that problem solving into into uh perspective. And the other the last thing I'll say on this is a really good question that my friend Kirsty actually said on the podcast, or our podcast, she said to me, the question you should ask people is, would you do this if nobody was watching and you couldn't tell anyone? And the answer to that question for a lot of people is no, they wouldn't. No, they wouldn't, because it's just another thing they want to say I'm good at. And it's like, I don't know where this has come from, but it is just having that quiet confidence in yourself is uh is a gift. Just being able to be like, This is what I'm this is what I do, this is what I enjoy doing, I enjoy doing it well, and I can do it and look after myself and have these incredible experiences. That's enough for me. I don't need people telling me I'm brilliant, don't need people saying well done, I don't need people, I don't need medals, as you said, sitting with all the medals on my this is my office, okay? This is my freaking office. This doesn't define me. This is my office. She goes to the rest of my house, this is all my witchy stuff, my dog stuff, pictures of the dogs, like you know, like it's not it's one of the things I do, but it is not who I am.
SPEAKER_01So I love the fact that you talk about success as a moving target. It isn't always the same, you don't always get the same results, and and the not getting to the end destination, or in words of failing, that's a positive. You know, I took on Chaser Sun a bike ride 240 odd miles three months, well, uh post-total hip replacement, and I got to 140 miles, and I learned a hell of a lot because I was a lot bloody fitter than I would have been if I didn't have that that focus. And I think we see failure as a bad thing, but it's a growth opportunity.
SPEAKER_00What is what even yeah, what what why would you call it that? I often I said like it isn't failing, like you're not just at it, that's all it is. But we decide it's failing because I didn't do the thing I said I was gonna do. It's like failing is just such a gross word. Like it's all it's all like a learning, everything is a learning thing, and being able to say this is what the aim is for the day, a really helpful thing to do is say, This is what the aim is for the day, and write down a list. And the list should not have finished the base on it because we all know that you want to finish and we wouldn't start. Also, it's out of your control. It's not to podium, it's not to come first in your age category, it's none of that. Because if Susie Chan turns up turns up, for example, you're fucked, right? Or if according to Walter or Elsie Davis turns up, you're fucked, right? None of that is in your control. So take that out. How many dogs can I pet? How many marshals do I say thank you to? I want to feel strong and healthy the whole way around. I want to feed myself every five, every hour. Don't know what that food's gonna be, but I'm gonna feed myself every hour. I want to listen to at least three girls on our albums. I want to make a new friend, I want to take five pictures that I think are amazing. Like, if you write these things down and if you tick them off one by one, and you get to all and you tick all of them off, your day has been a success. Whether you finish the race or not, because you didn't put finishing the race on that list, you didn't put coming first on that list, you didn't put coming third on that list. You're just doing the things that you're doing. And if you get sick or something happens, and then you go, okay, I've got sick, my next success point is for me to keep going until I feel a little bit better, or to try and overcome this by talking to a medicine get some sickness tablets. Well, that's the changing. That's when you change the route to success. And I think I was always terrified of people being better than me, right? Because I thought that being good at running meant winning, or meant like going the furthest or being the fastest. Now, if I get overtaken in a race, my first thought is my god, that woman is amazing. Because she's trained so she's obviously trained really hard. She's obviously a better athlete than me, and it's actually incredibly humbling to get to share trails with other people who do the same hard work as you, day in, day out, in the wind and the rain and the hail, and to see them like having a great day. That is that's so much of a better attitude than oh my god, I'm the last person on the course. This is awful. Being the last person on the course is a privilege, it means that you've been out longer than everyone else, so you've got more endurance than everybody else, right? It's just a mindset thing, and you can't change it by listening to this podcast and going, oh, okay, dad, just think that. It's like learning a language, it's like listening to this podcast. If this podcast was about French, and then going to France and living in rural France expects to be able to talk French, it doesn't happen. You have to study your French, right? You have to do it all the time. Talk to people in French, read French books, watch French films, go to French movies. It's the same with changing your mindset. I'm not gonna, it's not gonna magically happen. That's why the book's called 31 Days because I want people to spend time reading those chapters and doing that work. And I've already had a few people in the last few months be like, oh, well, I read the book in a week, and I'm like, I don't know what how else to say this to you. It's literally written in the front of the book because I'm doing a book tour, not book tour, I'm doing a speaking tour at the beginning of next year about the book. Well, I'm basically going to try and do like mass 200 people coaching sessions and be like, this is how the book works. Because it does work, Mal. I'm literally sitting here talking to you, and I've used it all on myself, and I've used it on my athletes. It works, but it is a process, a long process, and it's not just about your umings, it's about your life. It's about everything in your life.
SPEAKER_01And it's looking at you in your broad and um obviously side and and the whole mental stuff piece, you know, 90% of that again, that mental importance, and always talk about your mind as your biggest enabler, your biggest in inhibitor. And you use a lot of really good tools, so stop as obviously kind of one, you've lost 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. And listening to that as again very much around a CBT point of view. That what do you see, what do you taste, what can you um, I guess, you know, feel as part of it. It's not the quick fix, is it? It's not gonna suddenly miraculously make you feel better. And and in your audiobooks, you say if you are on chapter X and it's only Y you're not doing it every day, you do the hard work, and in 31 days you may learn something through that process.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I think you have to go back. It says at the end. Last chapter is hey, you're fuck now, because now you've actually got to go back and keep doing it all the time. Like, I am not fixed, I am not like um coming through the sobriety like a child, literally like a child coming out of a wood, going, what is this? What are human relationships? How do I make people like me? Like, how do I like make people love me? Am I even worthy of love? Like, because I've basically poured all my trauma down my throat, like with the booze, trying to drown it. But it's growing its legs and it's everywhere. Every single day, I'm like, right, this is the basics, this is I'm gonna feed myself, drink water, I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna do that, I'm gonna take the dog out, tell her I love her, I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna do this. It's not optimization, it's living and it's learning how to live in your own skin, right? So many people are not living in their own skin, they're living in someone with Instagram skin, or they're pretending to be someone they're not. I did that for a long time as well. It's about being really honest with yourself and going right back to zero and doing this thing that Brad Stolberg and the Buddhists call the wise observer, where you zoom out and you just look at yourself like what is actually going on here. The work never stops, but it's a pleasure to be able to do it. And when things start to come together, and when you start to respond to things better than you have done this time last year, for example, I really did respond a lot better to that than I would have done, you know, a few years ago. That's when you know it's working. When you're on a race, and I was like, My race tends to go start to go tits around hundreds, if it's 200, around 160 mile mark, because I'm like, oh my god, like I'm so tired and exhausted, and I've still got 40 miles to go, that's a long way. And I was waiting for it to happen, and it did happen, but I was fully equipped to deal with it. And I dealt with it so much better. I didn't cry, I didn't make an angry voice, actually, I might have sense of angry voice notes to the girls, but they're all just for comedy's sake, right? Didn't like make I I said to the girls, I need some help. You please come like and OC over 10 miles because if I hit the next 40 miles, because if I don't, I feel like I could talk myself because I haven't spoken to anyone because there's no one to talk to, because there was no one around me. But I knew what to do. So instead of throwing the talent, which three years ago when I did the World Hall South, I had a meltdown where I rang my crew and told them and called them off and told them to go home, so I was gonna quit. And I was and and I got to the safe station at three hours at the end station to eat pot noodles and tuna sandwiches, and then I felt better. And because I've been through that experience, I was like, how am I gonna work this the next time it happens? So I worked on it and I worked on what my brain was telling me, what was fact, what was fiction, what's a more helpful way of seeing it? And a more helpful way of seeing it is Ali, you're tired, you're allowed to be tired, you're doing a really good job. Why don't you just take a minute to have a lay down for 10 minutes in your bivy outside, this is the owls, get up, get to that next A station, have a sandwich. So I'm not saying you're unstoppable, you're infallible, you can do this, brah, brutal. There's none of that. There's just kind talking to yourself, and it worked. Ask for some help for the girls. Some of the girls will always say, next thing you know, the girls are like, sure, we'll meet you here, we'll meet you here. Ask for help, you get it. Right? That's the difference. So that's how you know things are starting to work.
SPEAKER_01And I think that point around asking for help. I had a good friend of mine that said, You got choices. You've got a choice to be happy, you got a choice to be unhappy. Ultimately, is how you build the tools that that you need to. And with for you, if a wild horse, you did it uncrude because you wanted to then be able to understand what that felt like.
SPEAKER_00Spine uncrude. I'd done I've already done them in spine, and I was like, I can't, but I think this is really good practice. I didn't want to have to like rely on people outside, but from Rachel, being angel, who's helping everybody, and then I had Danielle looking after my dog. So I could call them in and come 160 miles. I was like, I'm gonna call them in because I need to talk to somebody. So I got some robber pickle for like seven miles, and then that's a robber uh Danielle, and I got to see Rachel in the van, so I got a family to Levin. So I had the choice, but yeah, I chose to go into it without having a structured crew because I didn't want to have to stop every five minutes to talk to like do all the stuff that you do with the crew, but yeah, at the best of both files at that race, I think. But I knew when to ask for help. I knew when to ask for help. It's not weakness, it's strength. Like on the spine, you cannot do that. It is not possible. So yes, against the rules, and also you just don't do it. You probably don't need to, you have a lot of people around you. Um yeah, it's it's saying, Can you help me? For me, I've never asked for help at any other point in my life ever. I've been a complete lone wolf, left my family, went off on my own, like, but now I'm like, there's nothing wrong with asking for help because people do actually want to help you. They are kind, they do want to help you. I want to help people. I'd hate it if people didn't ask me.
SPEAKER_01And it's a strength, isn't it, to ask for help? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And that's I think the the change of that spine, obviously, January of this year, 2026, 178 miles, and the fork nine way, woman 33rd overall. How was that as an experience? You'd have done other spine races, but that was the full what do you learn about yourself through that process?
SPEAKER_00I feel like I was quite clever because I did Challenger South summer and challenger north summer. So I'd done the whole course in the summer, right? So I was like, yeah, I've like now reckoned it within race condition. As in, like, I know what it's like with the checkpoints, but they're different in summer to winter. They are different. You don't get to spend any summer. Summer's actually really hard. But um, so is winter. But I it was one of the greatest experiences in my life. It was everything I wanted it to be. It was really, really hard. It was it was vile at times and really frightening, but not as frightening as other things have been through. And I absolutely loved every second of it. Honestly, I loved it. It was amazing. So much so that I'm going back to do it in 2027. So I'm like, I'll do it again, but I would like to take maybe 15 hours off my time. I did spend a lot of time fucking about, but I wanted to have the spying experience of like, you know, John Bamber's chili noodles, and like I made some friends. I stopped at every checkpoint, had a really decent sleep. I spent five hours in Ulster and had like eight portions of Lasagna. Like, I wanted to have the full experience, so I just loved it. I'd recommend it to anybody. I think it's knowing you can do that, knowing you've got your own back, knowing that you can take yourself through some of the hardest bits of terrain in the UK at the hardest time of year and come out the other side of it, is absolute magic. It gives you such confidence. Um, and uh yeah, I can't I can't fault it, but it's not it's not a t it's not an undertaking that I would take lightly. I did spend three years training for it, you know, doing the north, doing the south, working on the media team, working on the safety team, like getting to know that race inside out before I did it, and I wouldn't, I would just wouldn't take it lightly. But I've just had a I've had a couple of athletes come through summer, one of them did the full summer spike, and she's absolutely incredible. Like she's a woman in her 50s, she's such it's so inspiring to see these women like do these mental, mental feats of endurance with a smile on their face, quite out the other end, isn't it? Like it's so cool.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and uh you talk a lot about obviously the influence that either you have on others, and I picked up at the the finisher two girls uh seven and five gave you a drawing that you were a superhero and they'd been watching. How humbling is it to know that girls of that age are watching and inspired because two-thirds of girls drop out of sport by the time they're kind of 16. That must have been pretty cool at the end to understand that.
SPEAKER_00I just don't don't understand how I don't understand it. Um like I don't know what to say to you. Children. Look at the dog! I've got dog with me. That is beyond my realm of understanding that that can happen. But it did teach me a lesson that people are watching, people watching you. Having said that, it shouldn't be that shouldn't be a pressure, and it isn't a pressure because I behave the same way as with you, male, as I do with my dog, or with my mum, or with my sister. Like, I'm exactly the same person that the whole way through. So there's nothing really to hide. It is what it is, this is what it is. But those little girls, their mum Heather messaged me the other day actually, she's so so sweet. Like, we talked to each other quite a lot because they're like, When's she gonna come back to the Pen Web? I'm coming back in the winter. They wanted me to go back in summer, but I was in Wales. And I didn't race the other week and I ended up no, I was in Peebles. I was looking, I was doing some witchy stuff in Peebles, and there was they were like, She's in Peebles, Mum, can we go? And I was like, I'm really never doing this. I felt awful about either, but they're so sweet, those two. Um, it's pretty yeah, it's pretty amazing. You know, that thing of girls dropping out of sport, I honestly think it's because they're not it's because they're not encouraged. They're not encouraged, they're they're just shit off teachers. The body thing, the Instagram thing, the all of it is it's just awful. You know, when I saw Jennifer um win the Western States, the Jennifer the I can't remember what his second name is, but she just won the Western States. Her crossing that line, looking the way she looks, was so fucking brilliant. That woman is built like a tank. She's got these really strong legs, these really strong arms. She is an absolute beast, and she beat the course record, and then these photos are incredible. And I hope more women and girls see that and see that as that's what I want to do, especially now we're going back to this like naughty way of being really thin. What is that about? Yeah, like those are the people to look at. Those I suppose my friend Laura, and I said to her, I see myself as a hippo. I've got a tattoo of a hippo here, like this little hippo. That's how I see myself running, the little boat. I'll keep it nice, I'll keep it cool and consistent, and I'm having a lovely time, but I will kill you. I'm not gonna stop and relentless. My friend Laura says I'm like a small armoured vehicle. So I'm not fast, but I'm consistent, and I've got a lot of power in my legs, and I know that, and that makes me feel really confident. That's how I want women and girls to feel. Like confident, wrong, like we can just keep going and keep going and keep going and keep going and keep going. And that is a success, right? That is that is a success. The main thing is that more women take part if they want to, because I also think it's a pressure on women to do things they don't want to do. If you don't want to do it, you'll feel it, and and they take part for the right reasons, which is like they just want to enjoy themselves. It's a hobby, isn't it? I keep saying that, but it is.
SPEAKER_01And it's about the balance that you have in your life. So it's a hobby that you enjoy, it's a hobby that gives you greater confidence, it's something that you build relationships with, you build relationships with yourself, you build relationships with with others through that. But if you're somebody that's listening to this and wants to take on an ultra, wants to take on um any kind of event, what would you say?
SPEAKER_00I think the first is why you want to do it. Like, what do you want to do and why do you want to do it? Like, you know, some people are like, Oh, I want to run the southwest coast path because I love the southwest coast path. Perfect. Like, if that's what you want to do, fun to do it, why do you want to do an event? Is it some is this something that you can go out and do your ventures on your own, or is it the event that you want to do? Being really clear about what you want to get out of this whole thing is really, really important because that way you can mark it off as success. Find the people that are going to support you. So I'm not talking about running clubs, I'm talking about groups of people who support you. So a really good thing to do is find a race. And if you're right at the start of your ultra journey, She Ultra are really great, Pegasus Ultra Running are really great. There's also a women's buying support group, I think it's called Women Women My Ultras, they're really great as well. Join those groups and just observe and listen and see if you can find your people. Find people locally that you can run with. Girls on Hills in Scotland are absolutely amazing for confidence building and for um map reading, navigation, safety, all that sort of stuff. Or get a coach, or just talk to a coach. Like, you're allowed to just talk to a coach, work out what it is she wants to do and why you want to do it, and get the best advice that you can. But I think finding your people is really, really important. Like, because those are the people that are gonna support you, and those are the people that are gonna champion you, and those are the people that you know you're gonna spend your time with. So, yeah, that's really really important as well. And finding those people can be hard. It's taken me years to find my people, years. But now I've got them, I'm like, they get nowhere, they're just not going anywhere. Like, um, and like we have the best time, yeah. I went out for lunch yesterday with Danielle and Mel, and like we're all ultra runners, but we didn't talk about running, we talked about life dogs eating our lunch, we're just normal people because in real life they are brilliant people. It just so happens that we share this hobby of running.
SPEAKER_01And that's because you have a much deeper relationship, isn't it? Because you you enjoy something. And to wrap this up, just a quick uh couple of uh quick fire questions. What's the best thing um that you've eaten in the middle of a race and you can't say hula hoops?
SPEAKER_00John Bamba's chili noodles.
SPEAKER_01Okay, what's the worst thing and had the biggest impact on your gut?
SPEAKER_00Suntown motion.
SPEAKER_01Suntown lotion, great.
SPEAKER_00I thought it was I thought it was actually pernatural fuel, but it wasn't. It was a screw top suntown motion.
SPEAKER_01Mental technique, what's the go-to when it generally gets dark?
SPEAKER_00It's all just a big adventure.
SPEAKER_01And last but not least, if you're listening to this and you're bloody terrified to do your first ultra, what's your advice?
SPEAKER_00Don't do it. If you're terrified, don't do it. What makes you happy and fills your car? If it's parkrun, just do that for now. Go and find some trail running people, go in or go to some courses. There's so many workshops and courses. If you're you shouldn't be terrified. Let's say you're terrified of a climbing or terrified of going to the gym, hobby, boom out. Nothing bad's gonna happen to you on an ultra. Why are you terrified? You're not gonna die. Believe me, it's very unlikely you'll die. People don't die at ultras, so rare. So I've I like to do this thing where I'm like, look at your thoughts, write them down. Put in a column that says fact and a column that says fiction, right? Write down the facts. What are the actual facts that can be proved in a court of law about why you're terrified of this ultra? Things like I'm gonna die, I won't be good enough, I'll be last of the course, I'm too slow, I'm too fat. None of those are facts. None of them. They all go in a fiction bucket. So when you write that out, you can see that your brain is actually just trying to protect you by not allowing you to do this thing. It's easier for your brain to protect you than it is for your brain to change into are we gonna do this mode? Your brain's just being nice to you. So don't be unkind to yourself, but then look at this list of fiction and be like, why am I believing that? When you could believe, I'm gonna train for this, it's gonna be an amazing adventure. I don't care what the result is, I'm just gonna go through the process to see what happens. It's much better to think that, right? Yeah, and I would that takes time and work, believe me, to get to that point.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, very much so. Having read your book, I would highly recommend it to anybody wanting to take on any adventure that they want to. You created lots of great resources in there, didn't you, in terms of workbooks, so you're getting people to not only read or listen, but then actually to take some um action off the off the back of it. Things like the feeling wheel, that's really good.
SPEAKER_00I mean, I do create the feelings wheel, that's been around for a while, but there is a feelings wheel, isn't it?
SPEAKER_01And again, you've got cues in there uh like this one, be uh a basic bitch uh as one of the kind of the cues, but it's about building confidence, isn't it? And ultimately, and to close, it's doing things consistently, and consistency doesn't mean doing the same thing at the same time in the same way, it's just being able to look at what you do that just keeps you generally kind of ticking.
SPEAKER_00Consistency is showing up, consistency is showing up, and confidence is believing yourself, not in yourself, believing yourself, doing what you say you're gonna do. That's why you need to do the work over and over and over again. Because if you don't believe you're gonna do it, it's literally like it's like people are trying to get into Cambridge University when they've not even gone to preschool yet. That's what's happening, and you and that workbook is designed for you to be able to like try start to change your mindset. And if you have any issues with it or any problems with it, or want to ask any questions, just send me an email on the website.
SPEAKER_01It's been a great conversation, definitely didn't disappoint and so much practical and useful information. Anybody that wants to pick up 31 days will put the the book link um in the the kind of the bio. But Ali, thank you. Um it's been a great conversation and keep doing what you're doing. It's bloody brilliant. Keep challenging in the way that you do, and keep enjoying what you do because that's the thing that puts the biggest smile on your face, isn't it? Thanks. Thanks a lot.