For men like Olly, a run with friends is more than just a run

Olly Woolrych is dreading turning up today. Still, some 6000 people across Australia, New Zealand, the UK and the US are participating in [mo]re than a run, an event created by Woolrych and his good mate, physiotherapist Alex Bell.

They will run 10 kilometres (for the one in 10 men around the world living with an anxiety disorder), 30 kilometres (for the 30 per cent rise in the number of Australian men dying by suicide over the last decade) or 60 kilometres (for the 60 men we lose to suicide each hour, every hour around the world).

The event has become one of men’s health charity Movember’s biggest fundraisers, generating over $2 million since its inception in 2021.

Olly Woolrych is the co-founder of [mo]re than a run.Credit: Eddie Jim

The reason 36-year-old Woolrych is dreading it is the same reason he wanted to start it: he was suffering and struggling to reconcile his identity with the man he felt pressured to become.

Running and, later, building a community around running, allowed him to step off the treadmill of expectation – to achieve more, earn more and maintain the appearance of having it all together whatever the cost.

“I had a seriously rough trot with mental health and suicide attempts … mainly in early 20s when I came into manhood,” says Woolrych. “I really battled.”

Conforming to traditional masculine ideology costs men in various ways.

One new study of more than 4000 men found that those who adhere to masculinity norms – self-reliance, stoicism and competitiveness, while avoiding displays of vulnerability or weakness – may be more likely to develop cardiovascular disease. They are less likely to seek diagnoses for risk factors such as hypertension or diabetes and also less likely to take medication if they are diagnosed.

Separate research, published in July, found that the same ideology makes men less likely to seek mental health support when they need it and more likely to discontinue it prematurely. Men who ascribe to traditional male norms are 2.4 times more likely to die by suicide.

After moving back home, when Woolrych felt unable to leave his room, his father told him to go for a run around a nearby oval on Sydney’s lower north shore.

It felt like an emotionally safe activity, he recalls. There was no one relying on him, he didn’t need to talk to anyone, and he could finish whenever he wanted.

So in February 2009, he laced up his running shoes, put his earphones in and started with one lap. The next day, he did another lap. And then he kept on running.

“It’s a zero skill activity,” Woolrych says. “Running is just effort, so as long as you keep showing up, you’re almost guaranteed to get better.”

Being the last man standing in the pub on a Thursday night and continuing on the “bullet train” of male competition had become unappealing, and he wondered if others might feel the same.

“I was always a social person, I was just socialising in a way that wasn’t serving me,” says Woolrych, who no longer drinks alcohol. “I had this idea that if [running] feels this good for me, it must feel good to other people.”

Participants at last year’s [mo]re than a run.

In 2018, alongside running coach and friend Matty Abel, Woolrych started the Vipers Run Club in Manly. Five mates showed up.

He used his own anxieties to inform how the club operated. For instance, new members were never left standing on their own, but were buddied up with a regular.

Slowly, by word of mouth, it grew to 220 members.

The aim was to build a community where there was no competition or judgement. It didn’t matter whether you were an executive or a uni student, an accomplished runner or a first-timer, they ran for the same time, not for distance or speed.

“Its such a pressure release to step into an environment, where we’re all just a bunch of blokes running around an oval or trying to run up a hill,” says Woolrych. “It flattens the hierarchy.”

Men, he adds, “aren’t good” at being in an environment where they feel forced to connect.

“They need a distraction,” Woolrych suspects. “Men connect better shoulder to shoulder - they’re running together, but they’re connecting.”

He started to feel as though he could truly be himself. “You are valued as the person you want to be today, not the person you were in the past or the person you feel the pressure to be in the future. I think that’s really powerful.”

It didn’t relieve his anxiety and depression. Driving down to lead Vipers’ sessions on some mornings, he still felt “petrified” at the thought of speaking in front of others and being considered a “d-ck”.

“Then I would drive back up the hill an hour and 10 minutes later feeling so different about myself,” says Woolrych, who works as a community manager during the day. “I’d remember: these people are my community. They’re there because they want to be there.”

Alex Bell and Olly Woolrych.

The idea for [mo]re than a run was an extension of the belief that running communities can influence a man’s mental health. He and Bell, who had lost a close friend to suicide, saw that individual run clubs were fundraising for Movember separately.

“We thought there had to be an opportunity for them to come together in collaboration, not competition,” says Woolrych, who has recently moved to Victoria’s Dandenong Ranges and no longer runs Vipers.

He feels happy with this “current chapter” of his journey. “The thing that used to keep me down is now the same thing that can lift me up,” he says.

“I’ve used what that feels like, to feel shitty, to proactively create environments where people can feel good.”

Turning up and talking in front of people – like some of those participating today – still terrifies him. But he will show up.

Why?

“I know how good it’ll feel driving home.”

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