Article 17: Resilience in Action: Series 1.1: UTMB: I came within kilometres of my dream: Then everything fell apart!

Introduction

What failing to finish taught me about resilience, hard things and why the finish line is never the whole story

Section 1: Resilience in Action

Stroke Recovery by Rewired Runner began with a simple purpose: to share hope, inspiration and practical lessons from my own experience of rebuilding after stroke.

But increasingly, I’ve heard from people who haven’t experienced stroke telling me that these stories and lessons apply to them too.

Because resilience isn’t only about stroke recovery. We all face setbacks, uncertainty, disappointment and moments when life doesn’t follow the plan.

Resilience in Action is the next part of the Rewired Runner journey, taking the lessons I’ve learned through stroke recovery and deliberately testing them in some of life’s hardest moments and challenges, then sharing what I learn with a wider community.

UTMB became one of those tests.

THIS IS WHAT HAPPENED

Section 2:   The dream before the stroke

There are moments in life when you suddenly understand how far you have travelled.

For me, one of those moments came on a wet Friday evening in Chamonix, France.

I was standing among roughly 2,500 runners. Rain was falling. The streets were packed with spectators. Then the music I had imagined hearing for years began to play:

CONQUEST OF PARADISE

I had dreamed about UTMB long before I had my stroke. I had watched the videos of runners leaving Chamonix and disappearing into the mountains around Mont Blanc. I imagined what it might feel like to stand among them.

Then, in 2019, my life changed.

I had a stroke.

Suddenly, UTMB was irrelevant.

I had much smaller mountains to climb: walking properly, using my left arm and hand, speaking clearly, managing neurological fatigue, thinking and processing information, eventually driving and returning to work.

There were days when something as ordinary as having a shower could leave me needing to sleep.

Running wasn’t the goal.

GETTING MY LIFE BACK WAS

Section 3:  From two kilometres to Chomonix

Recovery didn’t happen in one dramatic breakthrough. It happened through thousands of small ones.

After my PFO closure, my first careful run was around two kilometres. It wasn’t about fitness. For me, running represented freedom and the beginning of building myself again.

Over time, two kilometres became more. Walking became jogging. Jogging became running. Roads became trails. Trails became hills.

Eventually I set myself increasingly difficult challenges: 100-kilometre ultramarathons, then a 100-mile race, and finally the dream of UTMB.

The philosophy was fairly simple: earn the next challenge.

I wasn’t trying to jump from stroke rehabilitation to UTMB. I was asking: Can I do this next thing?

And if I could, perhaps I had earned the right to ask a slightly bigger question.

That approach reflected something I’d learned throughout recovery. You don’t need the entire map. Sometimes you just need the next checkpoint.

Small completed actions create evidence. Evidence helps rebuild belief.

Eventually, that progression led all the way to the race I had dreamed about before my stroke.

Section 4:  The preparation nobody sees

By the time race week arrives, people tend to see the photos: the mountains, the equipment, the race bib.

What they don’t see are all the mornings beforehand.

In the six to twelve months leading into UTMB, many of mine started around 4 a.m. Training before work. Hills in rain, hail and snow. Long sessions at weekends. Then waking up knowing there was another session tomorrow.

There isn’t much glamour in that. But I’ve learned that this is where most progress actually happens, in the repetitive work nobody applauds.

My preparation, however, was far from perfect.

Around March, I developed a significant glute/hamstring tendon problem. I had started doing serious strength training and, true to form, probably became a little too enthusiastic. When the area tightened, I repeatedly tried to stretch my way out of it. Instead, I aggravated it.

At its worst, I could run for only about five minutes. For around a month, walking was largely all I could manage.

That cost me a significant part of the training block I had planned.

With good physiotherapy, progressive strengthening and patience, I began rebuilding: twenty minutes, thirty, an hour, eventually back into the hills.

I had planned to race a 54-kilometre event as part of my preparation, but after discussing it with my coach, Ali, we decided I shouldn’t start. I hated that decision. But sometimes protecting the larger goal means letting go of the smaller one.

Section 5: My first DNF

Then came Mount Difficulty.

The name should probably have warned me.

I underestimated the race badly. I started hard, hadn’t managed my hydration and nutrition particularly well, and cramped at around six kilometres.

Then the terrain became extremely technical. There were enormous climbs, sections where I needed my hands, and a very steep rope-assisted descent. The rope was positioned on my stroke-affected left side, which made controlling the descent significantly more difficult for me.

I still have residual impairment on my left side, particularly fine motor control and coordination. Technical terrain that another runner may negotiate automatically can require more concentration and time from me.

Eventually I reached the top and started running well along the ridge. Then I thought I’d lost the course. I backtracked to the previous marker.

The lost time ultimately contributed to me missing the cutoff.

MY FIRST DNF

I remember being transported back to the finish with other runners and getting out of the vehicle. It was humbling. I hated the feeling.

So now the biggest race of my life was approaching and my preparation looked anything but perfect: one planned race I hadn’t started and another I hadn’t finished.

The confidence I’d carried earlier in the year had taken a decent hit.

ALL I COULD DO WAS KEEP GOING

Section 6: Eighty kilometres alone in the dark

About six weeks before UTMB, I had one final major test.

I ran approximately 80 kilometres solo and self-supported around Lyttelton Harbour, the Port Hills and Banks Peninsula near Christchurch.

I started at around 7 p.m., ran through the night and finished the following morning.

No race crowds. No aid stations full of volunteers. No other runners constantly beside me. Just me.

I actually enjoy solitude, but unsupported running can be psychologically harder than racing because there is nobody else carrying you forward.

That was partly why the run mattered.

I knew there would be a point during UTMB when my brain would start negotiating: Why are you doing this? This hurts. This is ridiculous. You could stop.

I wanted to prepare for those conversations before they arrived.

The 80-kilometre run gave me something I badly needed: evidence

I COULD MOVE THROUGH A NIGHT ALONE

Section 7: A compressed final build

Eventually I got back towards the training volume I’d wanted.

Around the end of June, I reached weeks of roughly 100–120 kilometres, much of it running or tramping in the hills. For several weeks my body handled it reasonably well.

But in hindsight, I had compressed a lot of loading into a relatively short period.

There were warning signs. Some Achilles discomfort appeared. And I can now look back and identify what may have been the first subtle signs of trouble in my shin, particularly descending.

I also moved back into the carbon trail shoes I intended to use for UTMB during this heavy training period. I don’t know exactly what role, if any, that played.

What I do know is that my body had absorbed a lot of work in a short space of time.

Still, I had got myself to the start line.

Sometimes preparation isn’t about arriving perfectly prepared. It’s about doing the best you can with the circumstances you actually have.

Section 8: Chamonix

I travelled through Paris before heading to Chamonix. I spent several hours alone in the Louvre, something I’d wanted to do since visiting years earlier when my children were very young.

Then three trains carried me towards the Alps.

When I arrived at Chamonix station, my accommodation was only about 70 metres away. Suddenly the dream wasn’t something on YouTube anymore. I was there.

The next day I went into the mountains above Chamonix. The intention was a gentle walk. The scenery made sticking completely to that plan difficult.

Mont Blanc. Glaciers. Huge mountains in every direction. Paragliders drifting above the valley.

I remember looking at it all and thinking: I’m going to race through this.

The remaining days were quiet. Short shakeout runs. Netflix. Packing equipment. Preparing food. Sorting drop bags. Trying not to obsess about the race.

Ray and Sharnie Giorgio from Corporate Energy had come to support me and would move between the crew-accessible aid stations during the race.

I had prepared bags of clothing and nutrition for them. But what I would eventually discover was that what they carried mattered much less than the fact that they were there.

Section 9: Race day

The original start was scheduled for 5:45 p.m.

I woke around 7:30 or 8 that morning, knowing that if things went well I would be awake through that day, another entire day, another night and well into the following day.

So I tried to rest. I used Yoga Nidra twice, something that had helped me during stroke recovery. I may have slept for ten minutes.

Then came the weather. Rain.

The start was delayed by two hours to 7:45 p.m.

More waiting. More nerves.

Eventually I met Ray and Sharnie near the start. They had umbrellas and bags and did their best to keep me relatively dry.

Then I moved into the runners.

Roughly 2,500 people compressed together. It felt like a mosh pit.

Then the music started.

Section 10: Conquest of Paradise

This was it.

Conquest of Paradise has an additional meaning for me because I’m from Canterbury and associate it strongly with the Crusaders.

But standing there in Chamonix, it meant something entirely different.

I looked around. Some runners were talking. Some looked incredibly focused. Some were emotional. I remember people crying.

And I was standing among them.

Seven years after stroke. Seven years after having to rebuild basic functions I’d once taken for granted. Seven years after not knowing exactly what recovery would look like.

I had reached the start line of UTMB.

I was elated. I remember pumping my fist.

I deliberately didn’t spend the whole moment filming it. I wanted to look. Listen. Feel it. Be there.

Because something occurred to me:

WHATEVER HAPPENED NEXT, REACHING THIS START LINE WAS ALREADY PART OF THE ACHIEVEMENT

Then the field began moving.

Section 11: Like being a rock star

There wasn’t really a conventional gun-and-go start from where I stood. The mass of runners simply began surging forward.

For perhaps the first kilometer, my main job was not falling over.

Then Chamonix began opening up. And the crowds were extraordinary.

Several people deep. Cowbells. Screaming. Clapping. Children holding their hands out.

Then we moved into villages where people were still outside in the middle of the night. Bands. DJs. Families. People drinking and cheering.

On some climbs the spectators narrowed around us and then parted as we approached, almost like the Tour de France.

I’ve never experienced anything like it.

For the first 20 or 30 kilometres there was so much sensory input that I turned off my Shokz headphones. My stroke-affected brain found that level of stimulation more difficult than I had anticipated.

But I was loving it.

Initially I ran with my Australian friend Stu, who had started UTMB before but DNF’d. We had agreed we’d stay together where practical but wouldn’t compromise our own races.

His pace began feeling slightly quicker than I wanted. The adrenaline makes it incredibly easy to convince yourself you’re fine.

I let him go.

That was the right decision.

There was a very long way to travel.

Section 12: Into the Alps

Eventually the villages became mountains.

One of the early major climbs happened in darkness. There was a requirement to use red light in a particular area to reduce disturbance to wildlife.

The trail became steep, rocky and technical. Near the top, there were places where I needed my hands.

But I was climbing well. Really well.

I felt strong.

My cutoff cushion was healthy. At one point I believe there were hundreds of runners behind me. Looking backwards through the mountains and seeing all those headlamps was extraordinary.

Then came the descents.

And somewhere around 35–40 kilometres, I noticed my left shin.

Nothing catastrophic. Just discomfort.

KEEP MOVING

By perhaps 50–60 kilometres, the message was clearer.

Descending hurt.

Climbing remained relatively strong. So I began leaning more heavily on my poles during descents, trying to reduce the load through the leg.

This created a pattern that would eventually define my race:

GAIN TIME CLIMBING. LISE UT DESCENDING

At that stage, however, I was still very much racing UTMB.

Section 13: The first day

The first night eventually became morning.

And that changes the psychological equation.

You’ve already been moving all night. You’re tired. Your body hurts. And then daylight arrives and reminds you: there is another entire day ahead.

And after that, another night.

My shin was getting worse. But it was manageable.

So I narrowed my attention.

Next climb. Next descent. Next aid station. Keep moving.

Then, somewhere around 20 hours into the race, perhaps 70 or 80 kilometres, although my memory of the exact location isn’t precise, my stomach went.

Section 14: Vomiting

The nausea became significant.

Then I vomited. And vomited again. Two or three times in total.

For several hours, my nutrition strategy effectively disappeared.

I couldn’t keep forcing gels and drink mix into a stomach that didn’t want them. So I simplified: water, watermelon, whatever basic food I thought I could tolerate.

Nutritionally, I knew that wasn’t going to sustain me indefinitely. But solving the next hour mattered more than solving the next 24.

In hindsight, I believe I got my caffeine strategy wrong.

Before the race I’d realised much of the nutrition I’d brought was caffeinated. During the first part of the event I’d taken caffeine from several sources, including some of my sports nutrition and caffeinated pain relief.

I believe that contributed to the nausea. That’s my interpretation of my own race, not a medical conclusion.

So I made another decision: stop the caffeine.

My stomach gradually improved.

Unfortunately, I’d just removed one of the tools I’d expected to use to get through my second night.

Section 15: The goal changes

This was probably the point where the race I had planned ended.

My dream finishing time no longer mattered.

My shin hurt. I’d been vomiting. I’d lost significant time.

Now I needed to know whether I could simply stay in the race.

I used Siri to message my wife. I asked her to calculate what pace I needed to maintain to beat the cutoffs.

And my goal became much smaller:

GET TO THE NEXT AID STATION

That mindset was deeply familiar.

During stroke recovery, I had learned to shrink overwhelming goals into something I could actually act on.

I wasn’t trying to finish UTMB anymore, not mentally.

I was trying to reach the next checkpoint.

Then I’d deal with whatever came after that.

Section 16: The second night

By the second night, sleep deprivation was becoming significant.

Then I started seeing faces.

Faces in the white lines on the road. Faces in trees. Faces in the trail.

Sometimes I’d look again from a different angle and whatever person I thought I’d seen would simply disappear.

Interestingly, I didn’t find it particularly frightening. Mostly, I found it quite amusing.

My brain was clearly doing some strange things.

At one point I decided to try sleeping beside the trail. I lay down with my pack supporting my head and closed my eyes.

Five minutes, perhaps.

Runners kept passing. I couldn’t switch off.

So I got back up.

KEEP MOVING

Section 17: My why became very real

This is where the idea of having a “why” stopped being something nice to talk about.

I was injured. I’d been sick. I was sleep-deprived. I was racing cutoffs.

Every descent was costing me time. Every climb became an opportunity to win some of it back.

And somewhere inside all that discomfort, the obvious question appears:

Why are you still doing this?

For me, the answer became very clear.

MY FAMILY

AND STROKE SURVIVORS

I wanted my children to see what can happen when you continue to work at something difficult.

Messages from my wife and children telling me they were proud of me and believed I could do it meant enormously to me.

And I thought about the stroke survivors following the journey.

I knew that running UTMB wasn’t remotely representative of stroke recovery. But perhaps the willingness to keep trying when something was hard could be.

That purpose helped carry me.

What I didn’t yet understand was that it was also creating pressure I would have to deal with later.

Section 18: The reset

At one of the major checkpoints, with still more than 90 kilometres remaining, I made my first substantial reset.

For the first time, I properly stopped.

I sat down. Changed my clothing and gear. Washed my face. Reorganised myself. Ate. Reset.

I think I spent around 45 minutes there.

Later, after the race, I would inevitably ask whether I could have saved ten minutes. That’s what hindsight does.

But at the time, I needed the reset.

Then I went back into the mountains.

The terrain was relentless: huge climbs, technical descents, rocks, roots, another climb, another descent.

I’d known the elevation profile.

What I hadn’t properly understood, physically or mentally, was the repetition.

Climb around 1,000 metres. Descend it. Climb another 700. Descend. Then do it again.

After more than 100 kilometres, those numbers mean something very different from what they mean on a training plan.

Section 19: Racing the clock

My shin was now determining my race.

I could still climb strongly. So I attacked the climbs. I pushed through the poles with my upper body and tried to earn time.

Then we’d descend. And the pain forced me to slow.

Whatever I’d gained disappeared.

My cutoff cushion became smaller and smaller.

My wife became an important part of the race from the other side of the world.

As the cushion shrank, she kept calculating the numbers for me, how far I had to go, how much time I had left and the pace I needed to maintain.

She stayed with me right through the night, barely sleeping herself, sending updates and encouragement to keep me moving.

When I was exhausted, injured and struggling to think clearly, those messages gave me something concrete to work towards. I didn’t need to calculate the whole race. I just needed to act on the next piece of information she gave me.

It also meant I never really felt as though I was doing it completely alone. Thousands of kilometres away, she was effectively racing through the night with me.

At one of the final checkpoints, I remember having around 13 minutes left.

Thirteen minutes.

After being out there for nearly two days, the entire dream was balancing on minutes.

There was no point being frightened by the whole race anymore.

JUST GET TO THE NEXT CUTOFF

Section 20: My body starts folding

After another major climb, I needed to cover roughly seven kilometres in about two hours to reach the final cutoff.

I knew I had to run.

So I put both poles into my right hand and tried.

And suddenly I discovered another problem.

Without the poles supporting me, my torso folded forward.

I couldn’t properly hold myself upright.

The poles hadn’t simply been helping my legs. They had effectively been supporting my posture.

But the clock didn’t care.

So I ran.

Where the terrain allowed it, I was trying to hold around 10-minute kilometres.

My shin hurt so badly it made me feel sick.

Initially, I thought: I’m going to make this.

Then the final couple of kilometres changed.

Steep. Technical. Tree roots.

My pace dropped towards 15-minute kilometres.

The minutes disappeared.

Section 21: Three minutes

I reached the final aid-station cutoff with roughly three minutes remaining.

A French official was repeatedly yelling that I had three minutes.

I knew. Believe me, I knew.

Ray and Sharnie were there.

There was no time for a proper stop. I took on as much food and fuel as I could.

By then I was exhausted and still seeing things, so despite my earlier stomach problems I tried caffeine again.

And I remember looking at Ray and Sharnie and saying words to the effect of:

“We’ll see you at the finish line. I’ve got this.”

I genuinely believed it.

I had survived the cutoff.

From what I understood, I had roughly seven kilometres of climbing and then seven kilometres down towards the finish.

After everything that had happened, I thought I’d finally done enough.

I left that aid station buoyant.

Section 22: The final climb

Initially, my watch showed what appeared to be a fairly gentle climb.

A woman leaving around the same time told me that compared with what we’d already done, this part wasn’t too bad.

For the first time in many hours, perhaps I relaxed.

My back was becoming extremely painful.

At one point I stopped and lay across a rock to stretch it.

Later, of course, I would think: How many minutes did that cost?

But then we crossed a road.

And the real climb began.

Around 2.7 kilometres. More than 20 percent gradient. Roots. Technical terrain. Up.

I pushed as hard as I could.

Then, perhaps halfway or two-thirds of the way up, my back began to spasm.

That was it.

The straw that broke the camel’s back.

I kept trying to climb.

I believe I got within roughly a kilometre of the next checkpoint. Then the time ran out.

Section 23: I was over

I think it was around 3:30 in the afternoon.

I was lying on a rock in the mountains.

CRYING

ABSOLUTELY DEVASTATED

I had come within kilometres of something I’d spent years dreaming about.

And my immediate thoughts weren’t particularly philosophical.

I thought about everybody who had supported me: my family, Ray and Sharnie, my coach, the stroke survivors following the journey, all the people who had encouraged me.

And I felt like I’d let them down.

I had spent years imagining what it would feel like to finish UTMB.

I had never spent much time imagining what it would feel like to get this close and fail.

Section 24: Then I lost contact with home

Shortly after leaving the final aid station, my watch alerted me that it had lost its connection to my phone.

My first thought was that I might have dropped the phone somewhere on the trail. There was no way I was turning around to look for it. I’d come too far and was racing the clock.

Eventually, I realised the more likely explanation was that the battery had died.

The phone itself wasn’t what mattered.

For hours, it had been my connection to my wife. She had been helping me with cutoff calculations, sending encouragement and helping me make sense of the race when I was becoming increasingly exhausted.

Now, at one of the most critical points of the entire race, that connection was gone.

When I eventually timed out on the final climb, I couldn’t simply contact her to say I was safe. She knew I’d made the previous cutoff, but then I’d effectively disappeared from contact.

Section 25: The runner who fell asleep on a rock

After I’d timed out, another exhausted runner arrived.

He lay down on a nearby rock.

Within about 30 seconds he was snoring.

Properly snoring.

Despite everything, it was one of those surreal moments that makes me smile now.

When he woke, I asked whether I could borrow his phone. I wanted to tell my wife I was okay.

I spent what felt like ten minutes trying to compose a simple text. I couldn’t do it. My brain was too exhausted to work out an unfamiliar phone.

Eventually I gave up and called her.

I told her I was okay.

The extraordinary part was that later, after I had been rescued from the mountain, I couldn’t remember making that call.

Section 26: Mountain rescue

Not long afterwards, the sweepers and mountain rescue team arrived, removing the course markers and making sure everyone still on the mountain was safe.

They assessed me thoroughly: blood pressure, oxygen saturation, orientation, hallucinations, medical history.

I told them I’d previously had a stroke and was racing as an adaptive athlete. I told them about my PFO closure. I told them about the back spasms and previous spinal surgery.

Then they asked whether I had any other injuries.

I mentioned my shin.

I pulled my sock and calf sleeve down.

It was swollen. Red. Noticeably enlarged.

Their reaction was essentially the same as mine: that doesn’t look good.

Initially, we talked about me walking to a lift. Then perhaps walking to somewhere a vehicle could reach.

They asked me to walk to a nearby rock and back to see how I moved.

I thought I’d done reasonably well.

Apparently they disagreed.

Then somebody mentioned a helicopter.

I don’t particularly like heights.

At that point, I wasn’t really in a negotiating position.

Section 27: Leaving the mountain

The helicopter couldn’t land exactly where we were.

So I still had to walk roughly 700 metres to a suitable pickup point.

It felt like an extraordinarily long 700 metres.

The rescue team were exceptional.

They briefed me carefully, protected me from the rotor wash and helped me into the aircraft.

The helicopter landed immediately beside the trail, allowing me to step aboard and lie down.

Then we lifted away from the mountain.

I’d spent years imagining entering Chamonix on foot.

Instead, I was looking down at the valley from a rescue helicopter. Not quite the ending I’d planned.

Section 28: Fifty-five hours awake

I was taken to the UTMB medical facility.

By then, one of the things I wanted most was simply water.

I’d run out during part of that final climb, and the salty broth I’d been given on the mountain had made my already dry mouth feel even drier.

Water tasted extraordinary.

So did Coke.

The medical team assessed me and gave me prescriptions, including pain medication, medication related to clot risk for travel and immobility, and a referral for an X-ray.

Ray and Sharnie were waiting.

They had expected to meet me at the finish.

Instead they met me at medical.

Getting the roughly 100 metres back to my accommodation became another challenge. I ended up with my arms around them while they helped support me.

By then I’d been awake for more than 55 hours.

I was physically wrecked.

But emotionally I was worse.

Every time we talked about the race, I cried.

Section 29: A conversation I couldn’t remember

Eventually I managed a long shower.

Ray and Sharnie brought food.

I ate. I lay on the bed.

And I called my wife.

I wanted to tell her I was safe.

She said something that confused me:

“I know. We’ve already spoken.”

I had no idea what she meant.

She told me we’d spoken while I was still on the mountain.

Nothing.

I couldn’t remember it.

Only later did fragments begin returning.

That probably tells you something about how exhausted I was.

Section 30: The X-ray

Back in New Zealand, I eventually had my shin X-rayed.

STRESS FRACTURE

So for a significant portion of UTMB, I had continued moving on an injury that was more than the “shin splints” I’d initially hoped it might be.

I was put into a moon boot.

And suddenly there was plenty of time to think.

Too much time, perhaps.

Because my brain immediately began its favourite post-race game.

WHAT IF?

What if I’d saved ten minutes at the reset?

What if I hadn’t stopped to stretch my back?

What if I’d trained the climbs differently?

What if I’d handled my nutrition better?

What if I’d prepared my core and back differently?

WHAT IF?

Section 31: I couldn’t see what everyone else could see

Initially, I struggled to feel proud.

I saw the kilometres I hadn’t completed.

My wife saw something different.

She told me how proud she was. How strong she thought I’d been.

My children were proud.

Then messages started arriving from other people.

Some said something I wasn’t expecting.

They told me that watching me not achieve the goal had shown them something about resilience that a perfect race perhaps couldn’t.

That stopped me.

Stroke survivors understand stroke in a way somebody who hasn’t experienced brain injury simply can’t.

But almost everybody understands wanting something desperately and having life refuse to follow the plan.

Injury. Disappointment. Failure. Regret.

The question of what you do next.

Perhaps this imperfect race was more relatable than the triumphant finish I’d imagined.

Section 32: Maybe I had been measuring the wrong thing

Slowly, I started seeing the race differently.

I had stood on the UTMB start line after seven years of rebuilding.

I had navigated the mountains through two nights.

I had dealt with a deteriorating shin.

I had vomited and rebuilt my nutrition.

I had raced shrinking cutoffs.

I had hallucinated from exhaustion.

I had reached the final aid station with three minutes remaining.

And when my back finally spasmed on the last major climb, I had still kept trying until the clock ended the race.

I hadn’t achieved what I came to France to achieve.

But perhaps that didn’t mean there was nothing to be proud of.

Those are different statements.

It took me several days to understand that.

Section 33: A lesson I thought I already knew

Stroke had already taught me about acceptance.

It took me years to stop trying only to rebuild the person I had been before my stroke.

I eventually began thinking about Christchurch after the earthquakes.

When a city is damaged, you don’t necessarily rebuild everything exactly as it was. You understand the new terrain. You design for the reality that exists now.

That’s how I eventually learned to think about myself.

Acceptance wasn’t giving up.

It was acknowledging reality so I could decide what to do next.

And here I was again.

Different mountain.

Same lesson.

I couldn’t change UTMB 2026.

I could learn from it.

Then I had to stop trying to mentally rerun it.

Section 34: Life has no finish line

One idea from David Goggins that has stayed with me is that there is no finish line in life.

UTMB reinforced that for me.

For years, I had treated Chamonix almost as a destination: recover from stroke, keep rebuilding, take on progressively harder challenges, earn my way to UTMB and, hopefully, cross that finish line.

But even if I had finished, what then?

Life doesn’t work like that.

There is always another opportunity to learn, adapt and grow.

And I don’t believe we really learn what resilience means when everything goes according to plan and everything feels easy.

Resilience gets tested when the plan starts falling apart.

When you’re uncomfortable.

When you’re disappointed.

When something you desperately want begins slipping away.

That’s why I believe there is value in deliberately doing hard things, not necessarily ultramarathons, and not recklessly, but challenges that take us beyond what we already know we can do.

If we only attempt things where success is virtually guaranteed, we may never discover where our limits actually are.

To genuinely test the edges of our ability and pursue our biggest dreams, sometimes we have to get close enough to the knife-edge of failure that failure is a real possibility.

I found that edge at UTMB.

And I fell on the wrong side of it.

That hurt.

But perhaps that’s also why I learned so much.

I now know weaknesses I didn’t know existed. I know more about my body, my preparation and my mind. I know what those mountains demand.

That doesn’t make the DNF a victory. I still wanted the finish.

But failure and growth aren’t opposites.

Sometimes failure is where the growth is found.

Section 35: Resilience in action

This is where the story reaches beyond stroke.

None of us needs to manufacture adversity. Life gives us enough of it.

But I do believe we need meaningful challenges, things hard enough to require us to grow.

For one person that may be a physical challenge. For another, speaking in front of a room, changing career, rebuilding after loss, learning something new, confronting a fear or taking another step in rehabilitation.

The challenge itself isn’t the point.

The point is being willing to move beyond the comfortable boundary of what we already know we can do.

Nobody discovers much about their resilience when everything is easy and everything goes to plan.

We discover it when the plan breaks and we have to decide how to respond.

Maybe that’s what Resilience in Action means to me.

Stroke taught me many of these lessons. UTMB made me test them.

UTMB made me test them.

Section 36: Unfinished business

For perhaps three or four days after the race, I was quite clear:

I’m not coming back to this bloody silly race.

I had enough pain stored in my brain to make that seem entirely sensible.

Then something changed.

Maybe.

Then: Actually…

And now there is a growing desire.

2028

UNFINISHED BUSINESS

Not because I need UTMB to prove my recovery. And not because finishing it would suddenly make 2026 worthwhile.

2026 already matters.

But I like difficult challenges. And now I understand this one much better.

I underestimated the sheer repetition of those mountains: a thousand metres up, a thousand down, seven hundred up, down again, technical rocks and roots, then another climb.

I need to prepare differently: stronger, more durable, better able to hold posture late in the race, more technically capable after enormous accumulated vertical load.

First, however, I need to heal.

Then rebuild.

Then, if things go to plan, begin earning the qualification requirements again in 2027.

And perhaps stand in Chamonix again in 2028.

Section 37: The finish line isn’t the whole story

Before UTMB, I had actually wondered what would happen if I finished.

This dream had occupied so much space. What challenge would come next?

It’s strange.

UTMB answered that too.

The challenge is still there.

But something about my relationship with it has changed.

If I return in 2028, the finish cannot be the only measure of whether the journey was worthwhile.

Because 2026 taught me something I should perhaps have understood already:

Resilience isn’t demonstrated only when everything works.

Sometimes it’s much easier to talk about resilience after the successful outcome: the race is finished, the medal is around your neck, the story has a perfect ending.

Real life doesn’t always give us that ending.

Stroke certainly doesn’t.

Sometimes you work incredibly hard and things still go wrong.

Sometimes circumstances change.

Sometimes your body says no.

Sometimes the result hurts.

And then you face a much more important question:

WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO NOW?

That’s where I am.

My shin will heal.

I’ll learn.

I’ll rebuild.

I’ll keep sharing the journey, the successful parts and the messy parts.

And I’ll keep trying to become the best version of me that I can.

UTMB didn’t end the way I dreamed.

But perhaps the dream was never only about reaching one finish line.

Life has no final finish line. We learn, rebuild and go again.

THAT’S WHAT STROKE TAUGHT ME

UTMB MADE ME PROVE IT

And that’s the journey I want to continue sharing through Resilience in Action.

RECOVERY IS POSSIBLE.  KEEP MOVING FORWARD

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References: (simplified, policy-aligned)

This article is primarily a first-person account. Statements about Mark’s experience reflect his own recollection and interpretation. The “no finish line” concept is attributed to David Goggins; Goggins has used the phrase in interviews when discussing life as an ongoing process rather than a single endpoint. No medical mechanism is inferred from Mark’s race experiences in this article.

Reference: David Goggins interview discussion, The School of Greatness (Lewis Howes), transcript passage in which Goggins says he had done many things but “there was no finish line.”

Additional Disclaimer:

Medical Disclaimer

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Personal Experience

Everything shared here stories, drills, opinions, and training methods comes from my personal stroke-recovery journey and individual learnings. Your situation, risks, and capabilities may differ.

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