Inside Sam Skinner's UTS 165

Searing Heat, No Food for 40K and One Powerful Reason Not to Quit

Sam Skinner is no stranger to the dark places that come with long days in the mountains. We caught up with him after a brutal Ultra Trail Snowdonia, where searing heat and fuelling issues threw a curveball into an otherwise rock-solid performance.

He went out hard and was mixing it with the leaders, but a four-hour lull through the night knocked him off pace. Getting overtaken by one of the top women hit harder than expected as he battled through a tough 40K section without food or crew.

Sam clawed his way back, stormed the final descent with six-minute miles, and earned a hard-fought top-10 finish. In this chat, he shares what went right, what didn’t, and how he pulled himself out of the dark - thanks, in no small part, to the strength of his wife when it mattered most.

You said you ran everything that could be run on a not-very-runnable course. Tell us about that.

"The quicker finishers run the runnables. They don't just hike and walk. So any incline that was less than 8%, I was running steadily and using my poles. It's the hardest hundred miler in the world by far, I think. It's so unforgiving that terrain. It's just so technical. There are some horrendous sections where you're literally hanging on trying to get up the cliff face. But everything that was runnable, I was running or trotting. So that indicates where I was at with my conditioning"

You mentioned stomach issues hit around 80–100km. Did that change your fuelling strategy on the fly, or did you have to tough it out?

"By that point, I would come into an aid station and all of the gels that my crew had given me, all the nutrition, were completely intact from 100k. I didn’t touch any of it. The only thing that I was sipping was electrolytes in the water. I just couldn't touch the gels.

I can't run and eat solid food after 100k, but this was a mixture of the heat being so adverse, too.

I could tell that I was running on empty, and there’s a 40k section through the night where you don't see crew at all. I didn't eat for that entire section. That's a long way after exerting yourself, having probably done 20,000 calories before that point already. So I just had nonstop wind. My gut was just trying to digest whatever was there, and it was horrible. If I hadn't had water or electrolytes - that was it - it would have been game over"

How do you distinguish between discomfort that should be pushed through and the kind that signals real trouble?

"Just that I'm still moving. I'm still moving.

Breaking the race up into chunks - that's how you get through those lulls. You know, every step you'll be getting a step closer to that checkpoint where you can see your wife or your crew. And then we reassess there. That's what I was saying to myself. But towards the end of that night session, I wasn't even breaking it down.

You know, I was going to quit, which I've never done before. It’s mad to say that. But that's how the heat must have affected me. That's how it affected those other people who have never DNF’d before. So I think the heat was a big player for everyone"

You’ve talked about rehearsing your DNF at Beddgelert in your head over and over. What do those conversations with yourself look like in the moment, and what helped you rewrite the script?

"Yeah, I think the lack of nutrition altered my mind a little bit, too. And then the icing on the cake came when two or three people passed me in the night. I knew I was travelling slower, but I was trying not to die, do you know what I mean? These aren't normal distances, and you're racing a hundred miles over 10,000 meters of elevation, which is a lot of stress on your body and your heart.

And sometimes you do start thinking, f**k, now what? I've got kids to go home, you know? I've got to be open and honest, I did have a lot of DNF thoughts through the night section.

I started telling myself, “It's okay, because I've reached Beddgelert. That's three-quarters of the way through the race. You've done well, Sam”.

But that wasn't the right thing to do because I still had more in the tank. I just needed to be shown. That's what a decent crew does for you, and that's what my wife, Amanda, did. She's brilliant. Amazing. That's why I married her.

She had other ideas. She said, you can do it. You can get to the end. You are going back out. And I did. Then later on, she rang me and said, you know the guy ahead slowed right down. You're 11th. You can take him and get top 10. Something just clicked, and I smashed it. Before then, I'd completely given up. So it just goes to show the power of the crew on a race like that"

You’ve said your wife was by your side in rehab and still by your side crewing races - how does that shared history affect your mindset during races like this?

"Really easily. It’s why I am where I am now. I've put all of my trust in her, my whole life in her hands. So she would know whether to call me out or not. So I had to listen to her. I've had decisions before that were clouded, and I needed guidance, and that was her. I was looking for her to say, yes, pull out of the race, but she saw something in me, or the colour in my eyes.

You can feel like you're under a bit of a spell in a race like that. It's like a sick game. Your mind can become quite fragile when you've run that distance. So for her to make the decision that no, you're not giving up, I trusted her"

What item of kit became most valuable when things got tough?

"The Helvellyn PRO carbon poles - they were like a comfort blanket when I was going up the mountain. You know, I could lean on them a little bit and use them to keep running on the inclines. Plus, my poles didn't snap. Loads of people snapped their poles. It's such a technical route. 

And iced neck tubes worn as bandanas to keep me cool in the heat"

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You talk about trusting the process and “raising the bar in training.” What did that mean for you?

"Raising the bar means the key training sessions are done right. And the only way to do the key sessions is to raise the bar. This time, I did a lot of work on the stair stepper. I dreaded those sessions for this camp. If I knew they were coming up, I'd leave them until after work. One time, I sat in the car park for 37 minutes. I actually recorded myself. I know it took me 37 minutes to get out of the vehicle to go and do that session.

But basically doing all these things - that's what raising the bar means. And doing them to a decent quality every session"

And what about moving forward, do you think that there's scope for improvement there?

"Physically, there is no difference now between me and the top runners. It’s just a little bit of tweaking that we need to do mentally. I'm obsessed with solving the puzzle. That's how I see it in my head. The journey that helps solve the puzzle is what fascinates me.

The puzzle is the race, and although I'm quite self-critical sometimes, I respect the journey"

You wrote, “Always earned, never given.” What, for you, is the most important thing this race earned you?

"Yeah, it's such a powerful slogan that I try to live by. If I hadn't done all of those sessions, the one that I waited in the car for 37 minutes before, would I have finished that race? It’s all the little half percents in a race, so you have to build up the bits that shape you before you go into it.

Have you earned it enough to finish that race? These are the questions you ask yourself when you're in those really low moments. You have to know that you've earned it, it's not being given to you. Know that you can get back out there.

UTS 165 is always earned, never given. But it also lives up to its own slogan, “Beautiful beyond belief. Savage beyond reason,” and I would recommend it to anyone who wants to test themselves"

Finished: 10th overall

Time: 29:28:10

8th Male, 3rd in category

Out of 145 finishers, and 210 DNFs