I first attempted the Dragons Back Race back on 2022. On that occasion, I was 5 weeks post an event that saw me run over 1000 miles in 35 days across the length of the UK. I thought that would be great training for the “world’s toughest mountain race” - turns out it just left me exhausted both physically and emotionally and was the worst idea I could have possibly had. I wrote a blog about it here – I was timed out on day two. I was devastated.

I was just over a year sober and healing from a heartbreak the likes of which I had hoped I would never, ever feel again. Turns out I was wrong on that, too. If I am totally honest I was desperate to prove to myself and other people I was better – that I was a fairytale sober person, getting my life together and achieving amazing things in the process. In reality I was very delicate – almost glass like, vulnerable and a bit lost. My effort on LEJOG was nothing short of herculean and I felt invincible. I felt like I could do anything and I was wrong.

Allie Bailey 2022 edition. Less tattoos, more naivety.

There are stages of getting sober that feel like being reborn. After the initial Trainspotting horrorshow of actually getting off the stuff, it can start to feel really exciting. You start to see possibilities stretching out as far as the eye can see - sparks of colour in what was a black and white world. But the shadows loom large. Being sober doesn’t make any of your problems go away and one of the many false narratives about sobriety that the internet likes to pedal is that everything gets better, and your problems vanish. If you put in the work, things do get better, but be in no doubt that your fucked up bits (emotional, mental, financial, practical) are still there, only now they are bigger, more real and have teeth. Oh and you can’t numb them - you have to fucking deal with them. Take it from me that trying to run them into the ground up some big mountains tends not to work. It’s a distraction rather than a fix. I did once say Running Won’t Save You and I was right. Running will change you, mould you and help you, but it wont fucking save you.

A person who experiences addiction tends to want everything now. And that’s what I wanted – to be totally better right fucking now. But you can’t have everything now. There is no hack. You have to be patient, kind and caring towards yourself and the illness. Three years later I am still learning how to deal with my mental health, my emotions and my trauma and fuck me does it hurt. It is so fucking hard and it fhurts so much. I think about killing myself more in sobriety than I ever did when I was drinking – I’m sure of it. It’s just now I can respond to those thoughts with kindness and patience and understand for the most part they are just thoughts. Horrible, visceral thoughts. When they become an actual option for me rather than just a thought, I know to ask for help. And in the last three weeks they have been a very viable option. On some days they continue to be. That’s just how it is at the moment. I have people around me and I will not stop talking about it, no matter how uncomfortable it makes you feel.

This time, the Dragons Back Race was supposed to be different. This time I was going into it really fucking fit – three years of training under my belt, countless trips to Wales, huge races and recees across the Bannau Brycheiniog, big days out in Eryri, 200 milers here there and everywhere, wins and podiums. I had been strength training for almost two years – hours and hours in the gym, my time an energy given to 45 min stint on the fucking stairstepper. I had done so much work on my own fucked up mind – and I continue to do it. Five weeks ago ,I was stable, full of love and thought I had support from someone I loved and respected. This was my time – this was the culmination of all that work. I was so focused on blossoming on this race. It meant so, so much to me. I had invested years in it. And then it all fell down.

I won’t go into the details of why or what happened with regards to my relationship, but it started to fall apart in the weeks prior to the race. I will always try and be honest – it’s one of my values – but so is kindness and despite the anger, the deepest sadness, grief and utter loss of something maybe I never actually had, it’s nobody’s business but mine and the other persons, and I will try and respect that. The things I thought would happen didn’t, the support I thought I had wasn’t there and I started to panic. The panic turned into despair. “It’s happening again” was all I could think of and then I really started to fall apart. Then I lost myself. I had to make a contingency plan.

I have an incredible ability to mask this stuff. I have had years of practice (read the book). To look at me you wouldn’t know – the only people that do know are the ones I tell or the ones I know really, really well. My eyes changed colour. My heart ached. I fucking told you so, Allie, you worthless cunt. They only like you when you’re fun.

I smiled and talked to people at registration. I went out for coffee and cake. I pretended. I hoped it would be different, I hoped I would feel different, I hoped there would be a magic fix, but there wasn’t. I started that race with half a heart, scared, disappointed and in a state of total anhedonia – a place where I could feel no pleasure, interest or enjoyment from anything. It’s a survival state. Text messages meant nothing, kindness meant nothing, it all just meant nothing, I could not feel anything but a dull pain and the nagging need to get this done. To start a race that may well eat you alive in a survival state is a fucking awful place to be. To start in a castle with flares, music and people willing you on to do something extraordinary feeling nothing is a shit place to be. I am gutted that it started like this. Thank you to my sister and Mel Sykes for getting me to the start. I couldn’t have done that alone.

2025 Bailey en route to the start. More tattoos, stronger legs. Photo Mel Sykes

I thought about doing a day by day, blow by blow account of the race here, but I’m not sure how helpful that will be for anyone, and you can read loads of those all over the internet. I’ll summarise it the best I can, but it’s really a case of if you’ve not done the race, been to these places or experienced this weather or terrain day after day after day then it’s very, very hard to explain how hard this event is. In a way I am glad I went into it calloused – maybe it protected me from what was about to happen.

Day one is a 33-mile day with almost 13,000ft of vert running from Conwy Castle to the first camp at the foot of the Yr Wydffa Massif. We had been informed about the weather the day before – we wouldn’t be traversing the Crib Goch ridge because of the high winds and rain, which surprised me because the RD isn’t one to reroute often. Once the weather came in it became obvious why that decision had been taken. Whilst the climb out of Conwy was fine, the 18-mile stretch across the Carneddau bought high winds, heavy persistent rain and no shelter. We were completely at the mercy of the hill - all wet weather kit deployed, soaked to the skin and forced to keep moving in order to stay warm. At the top of the drop into the Ogwyn checkpoint, the rain stopped for long enough to see the valley and the roaring waterfalls that had flooded the mountain slopes below. Two of the safety team had been deployed with ropes to get us across new fast flowing rivers that had developed on the hill. I’d never seen the valley like this – it was magical and terrifying. It took me out of my own head and I was incredibly grateful for that.

After a very quick turnaround at the Ogwyn checkpoint I made my way up (and down) Tryfan (the steps up were a river - see above, the rocks down greasy and hard to manage) and crossed the Glyderau – our passage hampered once again by squalling showers and low visibility. As I slid down the waterlogged hill into Pen-Y-Pass I felt a sense of real calm envelope me. I needed to do this – I needed the focus. This is the best place I can be when I feel this way. The fact I was well ahead of cut off gave me great hope.

In all honesty I don’t think missing Crib Goch made that much difference on the day – the Pyg track can take just as long -it windy and there are people on it - and the heavy wind and rain made it excruciatingly difficult to get up. Once at the top you have to navigate the Watkins path down to camp. This route takes in the rest of the Snowdon Massif including the West and East peaks followed by The Worst Descent in Wales ™ into camp. Theres no point in me trying to explain this to people who haven’t done it – believe me it’s fucking awful. It’s like a bog ridden slip and slide designed by the dude from Squid Game. Sharp rocks, spikey tress, and a clock ticking at the bottom. I was thrilled to get into camp in the daylight almost 2 hours ahead of my 2021 time. I felt like the work I had done was erm….working. But once the running stopped the thoughts started. I realised I was going to have to button my thoughts down to get through the next five days. I couldn’t cry in camp, I couldn’t break in camp, I couldn’t be vulnerable in camp. I HAD to pretend to be OK and that in itself was fucking exhausting.

You have to be good at an awful lot of things to get a good result at this race. You have to be amazing at admin, you have to be super organised, you have to be able to ignore the fact you are cold and wet, you have to repack your bag exactly as you need it for the morning as soon as you get in, you have to sort yourself out with no privacy or showers, get some food down you even if you don’t want it. Carry your own bowl, plate, spoon. Was it up after (this seems small but by day 4 it’s a fucking chore to remember) Food options are limited to what the caterers have cooked – usually one or possibly two vegetarian options. Protein is hard to come by. If you don’t like it, tough shit – there are no shops, no support and no people to help. All you have is what’s in your 15kg bag. Everyone has the same. Nobody is special.

By Monday evening almost everything I owned was wet and I had to accept that. It would be wet for the rest of the week. Your managing all this on top of massive mountain days, spending “social” time with strangers and you’re tired. I was also masking – pretending I didn’t feel totally dead inside. There were six of us in our tent and at the end of day one two people had already been timed out. Anna (who I knew from the previous attempt) was one of those and I felt fucking awful for her. She had set my airbed and sleeping bag up for me because she’s a kind, wonderful human. She did that every single night. A simple act of love that won’t be forgotten at a time when I needed love and thought more than anything else.

Sleep never really came to me. I managed 90 mins to 3 hours a night, the darkest part of my brain working overtime in tandem with my body, which was not happy about laying flat, still or resting. When I was drinking, I would have night terrors. As the nights progressed on this event, I could feel them creeping towards me again. Thoughts of hurting myself, scratching my own skin off, wanting desperately for someone to hold onto me and tell me they loved me - and knowing that couldn’t happen. The strength it takes to steady yourself in those situations, at 2am when the outside world is still but your inside world is on fire is exhausting. Those nights will haunt me – they just got worse and worse as the event went on. I felt like I was going mad and came to expect them to be nothing more that a few hours of me trying not to pull my own hair out or fixate on how awful I was. The worst night was night four when I didn’t sleep at all, but just laid in my pod, cycling through terrors, freezing cold, hot, sweaty, dirty wondering how to get clean until it go too much and I had to go and lock myself in one of the Portaloo’s where I was sick and then just sat for 45 mins until something drew me back to the tent. Another 90 mins of self-cuntery until the alarm went off. How will I do this? I thought. You just will. You will just do it. You’ve been through worse. Have I, though?

You don’t want to complain about it or talk about these things at the time – everyone’s going through their own shit. You’re not special.

Another amazing breakfast that didn’t really get eaten.

Every morning I was up between 4.30-4.45 to get ready to leave at 6am. It was a relief to be honest. If I was in the living world I couldn’t be in the hellish one I’d created in that pod. Every day I left camp at 6am on the dot. Every morning I sucked down as much food as I could – which wasn’t a lot because who does want to eat anything at 5am? Every day I thought “well you can’t feel worse than you already do” and every day the sheer brutality of the course took over and I became so focussed I couldn’t feel anything. Every day I looked at the messages I was getting from my partner and filed them in the “I don’t believe you” pile. Despite printing it off every night, I couldn’t look at my Dragon Mail. I still haven’t looked at it because I don’t believe the things people have written – it made me feel angry to be inside myself, not loved. That’s a shit place to be. How can anyone love something that is so fucking unloveable? Mask, mask, mask – deal with this later.

There were times I was woken up from the anhedonia – whether that was on the hill or in camp. Every day between 8-9am I would cry and think I couldn’t do it, while still doing it. A big wobble for me was Cnicht on day two. I just felt so fucking low and the weather was killing all of us. Getting to the point at which I had been timed out in 2022 with 90 mins on the cut off both thrilled and terrified me, and I was lucky enough to have good company across the Rhinogydd – a range of mountains that needs to be seen to be believed, this year with added midges. Talking to other people helped the mask stay firmly in place. I am hardwired to help people – to try and fix them, help them or get the best out of them, so when I feel like I can support somone else, when I feel like I have a purpose, I excel. Writing this has helped me to see that there may have been times where I actually did enjoy myself – albeit type two enjoying myself with midges in my mouth. Shout out to Sally and Ben who I spent some really great time with across the week.

The Wednesday bought a weather warning and the deployment of full winter kit for everyone. We ascended and passed over Cadir Idris in some of the worst hill conditions that I have ever been in – I was genuinely fearful. You just have to move forwards, Allie no matter how slow. Just keep moving forward even when there are tears running down your face and you have lost sight of everyone and you feel like the last person on the course. Even when everyone else is over taking you and you are the weakest. Even when you know you will end up alone at the end of this and nobody will give a single fuck. Just keep moving forwards. It will all be worth it, people kept telling me. Will it? Was it?

A moment of joy on Cadir post apocalypse. Took my trousers of for all of 30 mins.

I knew day four well, but by this stage what was going on in my brain and central nervous system combined with the lack of sleep was starting to effect my body and I had started to not be able to hold food down. I was sick a couple of times on day four and with limited supplies of nutrition I knew I needed to be careful. I could no longer hold down my beloved buttermilk bars and they were my main source of calories. I was limited to just gels and chews now, with the occasional tube of polos thrown in. On top of this I had started to get heartburn and acid reflux whenever I ate anything at all. I felt like an old man. A lack of shops meant begging Gaviscon from medics until I could get to Llandovery the next day. I also did a deal with another runner for some Solpadine Max in camp. Anything to numb everything. Just like the old days.

Day five was the day I will probably return to when I am well again as one of my proudest and most important days. I’ll probably hang a whole fucking speaking tour off it. It was the hardest day running or otherwise, I have ever had on event. I felt like The Dragon woke up, turned round, and breathed the hellfire of hades into all of our faces. “Fuck you lot if you think you’re going to finish this” was the message. Loud and clear.

At 46 miles and 11,000ft of ascent, it’s a savage day for that late stage in the game. My sister talks about me passing through a portal on this race - I think I am still stuck in the neck of the portal, but if there is a portal, it is on day five and it is somewhere between the layby on the A4067 and the Storey Arms Car Park. I spent the day running scared. This was performance avoidance at it’s very best. I was scared of myself, I was scared of the cut offs, I was scared of what was going to happen when I finally stopped running, I was fucking scared of everything.

When I had planned out this race, day five was my day – my beloved Bannau Brycheiniog lay before me, with a climb up to the top of the Carmarthen Fans – the place I want my ashes scattered and the scene of so many happy times, now tainted by my absolute lack of ability to have a grown up relationship because I’m such a fucking failure of a human being. In my plan, I would stake my claim to this race that day. I would be free, happy and confident. I was none of those things. I was weak, fearful and slow. I cried a lot, I infected the air around me with bad vibes. I feel like I need to go and sage Fan Brycheiniog. I am sorry to the people I was near, I am sorry to the supporters and sorry to the volunteers. It wasn’t what I wanted it to be.

By the time I go to the Storey Arms (and made that feared cut off with an hour to spare) I was a mess. Crying, wobbly, I was so fucking tired – of everything. Tired of the race, tired of myself, tired from little to no sleep and sub -par nutrition. The thought of doing another three big hills (Pen-Y Fan, Cribyn, Fan-Y Big) was insane and in my head just not possible. But it wasn’t three big hills, it was five. Followed by a descent that I’d never done before and one which took me so long that my friend Jon later informed me he had “prepared and eaten my dinner in the time it took you to do 1km”. Cheers Jon.

Nothing behind the eyes. Nothing in the legs. Day Five.

The less said about that section the better, but I am hoping it will serve me later in life to know I can do anything. There was a lot of vomiting more out of sadness and anxiety than anything else. I got in with 45 mins to spare on the cut off, in the dark, with a load of admin to do and no time to do it. But the feeling was that I had made it. I had finished the Dragons Back Race. Just one more run into Cardiff – how hard could that be? It was only 40 miles and practically flat at 4,0000ft. Look at the madness in that sentence. “Only”.

Another nightmarish sleepless few hours followed. I was now the last remaining runner in the tent – everyone else had been timed out or was on the hatchling or had gone home. Anna tried to fix my feet which were moderate to good. The blister (one) that I did have was under another blister so wasn’t going anywhere despite repeated attempts with a scalpel. The reality was dawning on me that tomorrow was the end and all these feelings I had pressed down would have to come out somehow. They felt like a thick black tar lining every vein in my body.

Day six was obviously hard. Why I thought it would be easy I don’t know – I kept calling it “the glory lap”. My feet had swollen to completely fill my shoes and were ridiculously painful. There was a shop. I bought more Solpadine. I couldn’t eat without gagging. I saw loads of people I knew as there was a Pegasus race running in the other direction. That was really wonderful. My coach Holly came out to see me – a gesture so touching that I makes me well up to think about it now. It was a day of joy and sadness – the two can live next to each other. I knew that I was going to have to make some very hard decisions when I got home and I knew that there would be depression and horrendous self-reflection waiting for me just past that gantry. “It will all be worth it” he said. Will it? Did I feel proud? No. Did I feel scared? Yes.

My sister and partner were due to meet me at the end of the race. I had visions of how this would pan out. But it didn’t pan out like that at all, because it wasn’t me that crossed the finish line. It was a version of me that I don’t really recognise – a person existing as they think the world wants to see them. A calloused, practiced version of a person cloaked in an armour, fawning, protecting themselves from breaking. A stand in. How people want it to be. That wasn’t the me I wanted to be. I was going against my own values. And although I will regret that forever, I couldn’t do anything else. I don’t know how it could have been different. I was terrified. I was broken. It wanted a proper cuddle that enveloped the whole of me – the broken bits, the scared bits and the weak bits and I wanted that cuddle so badly. I wanted to be told I was loved and it was OK. My sister did that.

I hovered above myself, watching this shell of a thing that looked a bit like me perform in the grounds of Cardiff Castle – having conversations that I don’t remember, drinking zero beers and not doing the things that I wish I’d done like having my photo taken with the backdrop, like buying a fucking hoodie, like crying every last tear I had out instead of storing them up for the weeks to come. I felt like a problem, a burden, and whether they wanted to or not, I felt like the people that were there didn’t want to be there and that they wanted to leave so I didn’t wait for the prize giving, I got my dragon and went home with my sister and it was her that had to deal with the tidal wave of emotion for the next week and a half.

My relationship ended proper - I cut myself loose. I felt angry, ashamed, embarrassed and heartbroken. I still do. Grief is a thing with feathers. Once again, me being me had been too much. Dealing with this shit on its own is one thing, but dealing with it when you are physically and mentally stripped is something else altogether, and I fell very, very hard. I am forever indebted to my sister, my niece, Pickle and my very good friend Kirsty Reade for scooping me up and keeping me safe. The last week I have slept, worked, written, cried a fucking lot, walked, cuddled and loved Pickle, screamed at the wind on Penwyllt walks, deleted all social media (at least for a few weeks) from my life but most importantly TALKED with my sister and with Kirsty about how I feel. Even when I want to die, I have talked to them about wanting to die and they have listened and not tried to fix me. They have been calm, kind and understanding. When I talk about dying, I don’t want to die in that moment. It’s like releasing a pressure from inside.

I think that maybe race companies should have more of a duty of care when these races are done – it is so much to deal with even without the other stuff. You are basically repeatedly thrown through the washer on races that they themselves call brutal/savage/toughest etc and then when you come out the other side you’re just dropped back into reality. There is no guarantee that you will be looked after, or that someone will help you. I live alone – if I’d have gone home alone there is a very real possibility I wouldn’t be sat here typing this now. I needed care and love and help. But I know to ask for it – many people won’t. Many people won’t understand why they don’t feel epic – why, in the weeks after that race they feel empty, numb and like what they have just done doesn’t matter. That in itself matters, and you should be able to talk about it. I haven’t been able to discuss my race with anyone because I have been too busy trying not to kill myself and dealing with these fucking thoughts telling me that all of this is my fucking fault for being a depressed, recovering alcoholic. I am working every day to turn these thoughts around. I am trying to be brave.

I should now be typing how proud I am – that this is an illustration of years of hard work and passion – that I never ever gave up on that race even when some of those days were (literally) the hardest thing I have ever done. I still don’t feel proud – I still feel weak, pathetic and like I have failed in some way. In a way it is comforting to know this, and I hope comforting to read it. What the experts say is fucking true - it’s not about the result – it’s about who you become in the process, and fuck me was that a process. I still cannot believe I got through it feeling like that and stil shudder when I really think about some of those days. I feel like I should join the SAS (have tried, am too old and tattooed)

What I went through on the Dragons Back Race will never, ever leave me and while I can’t think about it clearly with pride now, I am sure that I will draw on it again in the future. Something did change on that journey, and change often hurts. I really hope that this helps to show people that suffering deeply with your mental health doesn’t mean taking to your bed – it can mean smashing it over mountains, going to work every day, teaching kids, being a doctor or fixing lorries. Living a normal life and wanting to die can exist together and you can’t solve it by just ‘doing things’. You don’t know what’s going on with people unless they tell you and most of them are too scared to do that, probably because of your reaction to it. Don’t try and fix them, listen, talk and love them.

PEOPLE DON’T WANT TO BE FIXED, THEY WANT TO BE LOVED AND HEARD AND HELD AS THEY ARE IN SAFETY WITHOUT JUDGEMENT.

This is why I talk about it. I want to be an example of what is possible. I will not hide, mute or tailor who I am or what I am thinking to suit anyone else’s agenda.

I do feel like I am starting to feel better – the suicidal thoughts are less (today) and I am reading and writing a lot in an effort to once again get myself back, get some sort of self-love and pride in place and to try and crack on with the things I think are important – giving Pickle the best life she can have, helping my athletes achieve amazing things and finally moving to that dream house in South Wales.

This blog isn’t here to put you off The Dragons Back race – it’s here to tell you it will force change within you should you dare to dream it possible. You need to be made of something really special to even think about standing at the start line. Do not underestimate it and what comes with it. You need to be prepared – to have support from people who genuinely love you, who won’t let you down and who will be there even when the messy part of you is all that can operate.

Huge thanks to my sister Janey, my niece Seren to Mel and Kirsty for everything they did. I hope I can pay it back one day.