Relentless runner completes 31 marathons in 31 days to raise mental health awareness
This incredible story will inspire you
This incredible story will inspire you
This incredible story will inspire you
On Friday, May 25, a group of seven men was seen running west along Shotwell Street in Bainbridge, Georgia, in the searing midafternoon heat. Out front and chattering away nonstop was 36-year-old Harold Allen, easy to spot at 6 feet 2 inches and a muscular 215 pounds. Allen was accompanied by half a dozen members of the Athens Road Runners, all of whom had traveled 250 miles from the northeast corner of the state specifically to run 10 miles with him that day. The pace was a touch over 10 minutes per mile. At 92 degrees, 57 percent humidity and a real-feel of 102, no one was itching for faster.
An hour and 40 minutes later, the group arrived back at the starting point, a parking lot adjacent to Memorial Hospital where Allen works a full-time, minimum-wage job as a surgical orderly. A few subdued high-fives and sweaty embraces were exchanged, and the six visitors eased into the comfort of air-conditioned vehicles, welcoming the prospect of a four-hour drive home.
As the cars pulled away, Allen could be seen running north along Gordon Avenue, already back at it. He wasn’t even halfway into a planned 26.2-mile journey on the hot pavement of his hometown. This is the same routine he’d followed each of the previous 24 days, and on May 31, he hit a grand total of 812.8 miles for the month: 31 consecutive , nearly all solo and self-motivated.
Harold Allen wasn’t always such a dedicated, tenacious runner. A native to Baker County, Georgia, his life was upended in 1998. Allen was convicted as an accessory to an armed robbery, a crime he has always said he did not commit. Though he’d never before been in trouble with the law, the 17-year-old suddenly found himself in Decatur County Jail with a 10-year sentence.
“It was being in the wrong place at the wrong time,” Allen says when asked what had happened and why he had been wrongly convicted. “In some smaller areas, like Bainbridge, they just pick somebody to fit with the crime, regardless.”
Initially filled with anger and despair, Allen eventually resigned himself to serving his time and making the best of a fearful situation.
“It was very hard on me,” he says. “But a lot of good came out of it. I became a man in prison. And I gained a lot of respect for myself and for other people.”
Allen was released in 2008 and, because the conviction had come while he was still a minor, his record was cleared. He found a job at the local Taco Bell and soon fathered the first of four daughters. Life on the outside was certainly better than that behind bars, but it wasn’t necessarily easier, and Allen gradually slipped into destructive behaviors, namely excessive drinking. While he'd become devoted to in jail and continued the pursuit as a free man, an otherwise unhealthy lifestyle edged his weight up toward 250 pounds. It was hard to be optimistic that the future held something different than the past.
But then, in 2014, a seemingly inconsequential opportunity arose: Allen was recruited to run a local 5K as part of a team of Taco Bell employees. Race day arrived and none of his co-workers showed up, so Allen ran on his own — and it felt good. Allen soon became enamored with the sport. Within a few months he was training for his first marathon, which he completed in Tallahassee, Florida, in February 2015 in 4:35. Proud to finish, he was still hungry for faster times.
“I always knew I had the ability to run fast,” Allen says, “but I didn’t know much about running mile after mile after mile or how to get better.”
A little coaching was in order, and he was about to find just the right mentor to provide it.
Upon arriving at Taco Bell for his shift early one morning the following summer, Allen noticed a group of high school cross-country runners and their volunteer coach, Greg Waddell, running by. He called out, “Hey, Bainbridge runners! I want to run with y’all!”
Waddell yelled back that Allen should meet the group at 6 o’clock the next morning, at the Flint River trailhead.
“And there he was,” Waddell recalls, “wearing a pair of shorts down past his knees and basketball shoes. He completed the run with us and immediately told me he wanted to help out with the team.”
Allen began attending every cross-country practice and assisting Waddell with meets. To return the favor Waddell coached Allen as he prepared for his second marathon — another shot at Tallahassee, where he trimmed 71 minutes off his debut time with a 3:24. Allen went on to run three more marathons in 2016 and finished the year with a 50-miler at Wakulla Springs, Florida.
Speedier times and longer distances kept coming. On March 4 of last year, Allen lowered his marathon PR to 3:19 in Albany, then three weeks later successfully completed his first 100-miler at Fort Clinch, on Florida’s Amelia Island. Feeling the ultra bug, Allen ran three more 100-mile events during the subsequent 11 months. His best time was 22:07 at the Daytona 100, and his top placing was third overall at the Iron Horse 100 in Florahome, Florida.
Allen’s series of long races paled in comparison to the announcement he made this March: He would tackle a marathon a day for the month of May to bring attention to Mental Health Awareness month. During the past 10 years, Allen says he's come in contact with quite a few people, especially teenagers and young adults, who are troubled by various types of mental disorders and behavioral problems; he believes these issues are especially bad in the South.
"Even myself sometimes, I've gone through depression, struggled with it, and I know what that's like," he says.
Allen launched his campaign May 1, setting up a with the goal of raising $2,000 (a mark he's hit and then some). He plans to donate the majority of the money to and set back enough to hold a special event in Bainbridge for children and parents to have a free day of food and outdoor activities, including a 1-mile run.
“Every time I think he can’t do something, he comes through,” says Waddell. “But I really don’t know how he’s managing to keep going this month.”
Waddell moved to Athens, Georgia, two years ago, a four hour drive from Bainbridge. But he says that most nights, his phone will ring around 11:30, and it’ll be Harold; he’ll have just finished his marathon for that day.
“I’ll tell him ‘Harold, it’s nearly midnight. You’ve got to go to bed and get some sleep.’ I doubt he’s averaging more than three, four hours a night with these marathons on top of everything else,” said Waddell.
Allen’s daily routine in May was nothing short of dumbfounding. He worked at the hospital weekdays from 6 a.m. to 3 p.m., covering 8 to 10 miles of walking while he transported patients in and out of surgery and around the facility. Once off work, he returned home to eat, spend time with his family — his youngest daughter, Faith Allen, was born just two weeks before her father began the month of marathons — and prepare for his daily 26.2 miler, generally hitting the road in the late afternoon or early evening. Finishing anywhere from 8:30 p.m. to nearly midnight, Allen refueled again and caught a few hours' sleep before reporting to work the following morning. Weekends were easier and allowed more time for his wife, Kimberly, and family, as well as a little extra rest. But real recovery, of course, was out of the question.
As the month progressed, Waddell became increasingly dismayed at the lack of support Allen was receiving in Bainbridge. So, as current president of the , he banded together a group of club members for a road trip. Bringing shoes and gear from the Athens Running Company and Fleet Feet Sports, the crew arrived in Bainbridge on the 25th.
The previous day, ARR member Cory Love ran a 13-miler alongside Allen to keep him company.
“A downpour started right when I quit,” Love says. “It got really bad – lightning, thunder — but Harold pushed right through it.”
No storms popped up the following afternoon, but the heat and humidity were oppressive as the five additional ARR club members joined Harold for 10 of his 26.2 miles.
“Thursday night it wasn’t so bad,” Love says, “but Friday afternoon was disastrous. After 30 minutes my skin was stinging; it was just painful.”
Four of the six Athenians managed to complete the 10 miles with Allen. All headed home with boundless admiration for Harold Allen and his monthlong journey.
“He’s got a big heart; big compassion, and has a big drive,” says Love. “And he’s sacrificing a lot of his time and his family’s time for a cause I think is very much needed. His path has been a bit rough, and to go from that to where he’s at now is beyond words.”
After Memorial Hospital gave him the day off, Allen began his final May marathon at 6:04 a.m. on the 31st, finishing in 4:11:37. The city of Bainbridge blocked off the roads from traffic for his last mile, and the local police escorted him through the finish. The moment "was just mind blowing," Allen wrote in a .
And now that the May challenge is over, what happens in June?
“I’d like to take a long recovery … but the mindset of the ultra-marathon runner is, ‘Well, I think I might take two weeks off,’ then I might take three days and I’ll be back out running," Allen jokes.
The experience has changed him, however.
“I feel that I’ve gained redemption,” he says, “but I want to keep going; keep digging for more. My life has changed so much. I’ve got four girls; a beautiful family. I’m a full-time employee at the hospital. It’s still a struggle. But it’s quite an accomplishment, coming from where I’ve been.”