I had the chance to chat to Spine Race winner Jack Scott in a varied conversation talking about his 2023 race, but also about his appreciation for some of the sports Pioneers and his whole mindset, that in many ways shapes how he races. It’s not a short chat, so make a cuppa!

Who is Jack Scott?

AS. So, briefly, who is Jack Scott, and where do you live?

JS. Who is Jack Scott? I live in Stone, Staffordshire, between Stoke-on-Trent and Stafford. I am 29 years old and a construction worker, learning how to run long, short, and something in between.

AS. Did you do sport at school? Did you have any talent at school in anything?

JS. I was quite a ruthless leader on the football pitch. I like to take responsibility. It is something I welcome. I don’t shy away from that. I like to do it my way, and I suppose through successful school football teams, although I was not the best player in the team, I was the best mind and best engine. That set me up to lead the good players around me. Apart from that, No. I never did any athletics or anything like that.

AS. It has been well-documented that you had a few problems with gambling. How true is the story that you got into running to help your gambling addiction?

JS Yes. That was true. When I first started running, I was in the middle of a tough period of my life. Running showed itself through a pre-season fitness regime I’d set myself at football. Before I knew it, it started to replace the football. I was still a gambling man then.

I really enjoyed that sort of stripped-down basic layer of endurance running. I thought maybe I could be good at this, and I needed to turn my back on the gambling properly. Running gave me a chance. Now, I like to think that I’ve evolved into a man. I’m still proud of the person I was and even my mistakes, but now I like to think I’ve moved away from that, and the two aren’t on the same level now.

AS I guess it’s what your parents would say, it’s an adolescent phase you’ve grown out of?

JS. I still dip into that obsessive mindset when I need to. I did it on the Spine Race, you know. I think back to the pain and the suffering I used to put myself through. And when I’m doing these long runs like the Spine, the strong mindset is a recipe for success, when in the past, it was a recipe for absolute disaster.

Breaking Mike Hartley’s Southern Upland Way Record.

AS. So your various ultra runs have grown wings. Some would say they have got more extreme over the years. I think the Southern Upland Way FKT was your first real multi-day when you went beyond 48 hours.

JS. It was. And that was a huge, huge step in the right direction. I still look back on that, as one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. Maybe the hardest thing I have done.

I mean, I was so close to Mike’s time throughout the whole 55 hours.  (NOTE, Mike is Mike Hartley, who, for many years, held the FKTs for both the Southern Upland Way and the Penine Way.)  

You know, I only took about 13 or 14 minutes off it. So there was pressure constantly on throughout that run. That really beat me up. I did it the hard way. I did it in October. I did it with a stripped-back team because of COVID. Something was telling me, “Just do it.” And I went with that.  That was the first time I felt I could be an elite runner. As soon as I’d followed in Mike’s footsteps and beaten his time, things all felt different.  I remember speaking to Mike about it before and after. It gave me almost a ruthlessness that I could attack these things. I developed a lot as a person, I think, after that.

AS. When you’re developing, the more you talk to people who have experience in achieving goals encourages you to seek out your own challenges. That’s probably the same for anyone starting. Even stepping up from 5k to 10k because we can’t all be elite athletes, but everyone can find their way of pushing their boundaries.

Learning from the Legends.

JS. Yes. I look back at the old-school approach, and I’m attracted to that. I’ve read Mike’s book.  I’ve read Joss’s book (Joss Naylor).  I’ve looked into what Martin Stone used to do, and I feel like that stripped-back, raw, bare version is so appealing. I see Mike Hartley in his Pennine Way Book, and he’s running in a shirt with two buttons. Something about me is attracted to that old-school simple approach.

What happened at the Spine was similar to that. I didn’t trust the trackers. I didn’t trust people’s opinion on where Damien was, and I managed to sort of slip into it. Slip into a zone where I just went old school and ran as hard as I could.. I agree with that.

AS. Those “old guys!” Well, they’re not really old guys. They were about your age when they were doing their own wonderful adventures.

JS. Mike was a little bit older, I think. Mike lived down the road in Staffordshire, about seven miles down the road from me here.

AS. I had the pleasure of meeting him a couple of times at events. He was a Staffordshire Moorlands guy, wasn’t he? He probably still is.

JS. Now you’ve got advanced kit. Advanced head torches. Advanced watches, but I think your philosophy and how you hold yourself can still be old school. And I’d like to think I have something of that mindset. I love going to short fell races. It may only be four miles, and you meet in a car park or a farm in the middle of nowhere. There might only be about 50 people there, and you pay a guy sitting in a car two or three pounds. Then you go and run around like a lunatic for 40 minutes up and down the local hill. It’s really hard, but you feel great.

Then you have something like the Spine, which is, you know, a huge bubble of complication with all the logistics and the kit list, but it’s fun in a different way.

Spine race 2023 versus Spine race 2024. Lessons Learned.

AS. That’s a great lead into The Spine. In 2023, you were second in 85 hours and change.

JS. Yeah.

AS. Did you feel it went well?

JS. Yes, I did.  I was proud of it. I remember finishing and driving home and having a deep sense of achievement and satisfaction that I’d laid the foundation to grow again as a runner. I suppose, after the Southern Upland Way, at the time, I couldn’t picture going back. Then I realised that the sort of life I want to live and what I want to promote, a sustainable, good, successful life, that you have to go to these events, and you need to perform. You need to get results. My psychologist worked on taking the positives from last year as well as taking the negatives and going back and then shutting the door on it. Go back as a new man with a new plan for 2024, and that’s what I did.

AS. Were there any specific things you worked on? You mentioned you took the positives from the last year’s race. Were there any specific things you took out of the 2023 race you felt you could improve?

JS. The race in 2023 changed after Tan Hill when I saw Kim was out. I was in second behind Damian and I was thinking, “Right, the race is on now.” You know, you’re 126 or 127 miles into the race, and I slotted into the zone of thinking, “Do whatever it takes to get a result here”. You know, the doors are opening, just go for it.

I hadn’t thought about that until that moment at Tan Hill. If I thought about that beforehand, it just opens the door to complacency and mistakes.

This year, as soon as I pressed the button to enter the race, the mindset, straight away, was, “Do whatever it takes to win the race.” I keep a journal on my phone, and I just wrote, “Do whatever it takes, find a way, don’t overcomplicate it. Just whatever comes, whatever decisions come. Be 1% better than the person behind you or in front of you”. It was a really simple approach.

AS. How long after the 2023 race did you decide that you wanted to return in 2024?

JS. Well, I spoke about this on social media. In 2023, when I was trying to pull a lead from Damien after my navigation error, I had to skip a sleep and I lost control of my race.
NOTE. Jack took a wrong turn, shortening his route. This resulted in being given a time penalty by the organisers.)
I remember dropping into Byrness. Damien was probably 50 minutes behind me, so I was eight minutes ahead because of the 42-minute penalty I picked up, and I lost control of my race. Something was telling me in Byrness to take stock and take control. If you can still finish this race safely, there’ll be another chance. So I think subconsciously, it was actually in Byrness in 2023 that I realised I would be coming back sometime. When I got home, probably eight weeks later, I spoke to my wife and I was saying, “I think I’ve got to go back and do it on the biggest stage in 2024”. It seemed the right choice, but it didn’t always seem the right choice last summer.

AS. So you were pretty confident you could do well. You already said you had a goal to win it. You’ve probably been asked this a zillion times already. You have spoken of being with the leaders in this year’s race. With Kim, Damien, Konrad and others, and you felt the race was getting out of control. You perceive your going way too fast for a 268-mile jaunt along the Pennine Way. You talked about just taking control of situations.
How much is this something that you talked about with your psychologist and prepared for, and how much is just “problem-solving on the run”? You’re thinking, “Ok. This is where I am. This is what’s going on. How do I deal with this?”

JS. Coming into Malham Tarn, I was thinking, I am not comfortable going this fast “Find a way and do whatever it takes to be the man who drops back and loses the lead by half an hour.” The pace was so strong that it got to the point where I couldn’t see the positives of what we were doing. I couldn’t see how this connected to “Okay, so does this mean I’m going to be going over Crossfell in the light or the dark? I couldn’t see how it pieced together further down the race. So I just had to run the mile I was in, get back to basics and let those older, wiser gentlemen leave me behind.

AS. I think it was a good decision in hindsight.

JS. I think the state I was in, I mean, I was in a bad way. I wasn’t feeling the effort enough. I’d lost control of the pace, and it was uncomfortable for me, and the calories weren’t feeding me. It was too much. I had a decision to make there. And it meant losing 25 or 30 minutes at that point.
That meant that if I was still to be competitive over the whole race, I would sleep 30 minutes less than someone else further down the trail. That was my calculation.

Putting the Spine race experience into words

AS. Tell me, I have looked since the race, comparing your winning time, Damian’s time and Jasmin’s times. The three fastest times on the Winter Spine

JS. Oh, nice.

AS. It’s not rocket science. You’re all ahead of Jasmin’s record from the start. The whole leading group were ahead of Jasmin’s 2019 pace. In your case, that progressed as the race went on. Damian also can be proud that he also finished inside the previous record.
Aside from that, people can talk about times and records and things, but deep down, like many others, you’re just a guy who loves running. I would look at the splits, and correct me if I’m wrong, but you ran over Pen Y Ghent in the dark. You ran over High Cup Nick and Crossfell in the dark. You ran over the Cheviots pretty much in the dark. Can you describe what it’s like just being in the flow and running effortlessly over these summits? Most people would think of them as remote and challenging places at the best of times, but you’re doing it when it’s pitch dark, snowing some of the time, and the trail is covered in ice?
Maybe there’s a moon out, or maybe there isn’t. Maybe there’s ice on the ground, maybe there’s snow. How do you put it into words? What does that feel like, or is it just something you just experience and go with it?

JS. Mike Hartley talked in his book about always looking for that moment in time when you’re under pressure. You do it. You’re in the right place at the right time. Your body and your mind are connected, and you find peace, and you can push and control that push. I found that on the Cheviots. I’d earned the right to get to that point, and I couldn’t switch off on that one per cent.
Like I said already and I have said in interviews, something was telling me, “This is my time to do something a bit drastic. Earlier in the race, when I was with Damian, I made a move on Crossfell in the dark, and whatever dangers were there, you know, I decided not to stop to put my spikes on. I took risks with certain lines in the snow, and my overwhelming feeling was just wherever you go, whatever you do, whatever pace you’re running is the right choice. So I suppose, after Malham, there wasn’t really any jeopardy. Although there were points in the race where things weren’t going great. They weren’t going amazing, but there was no jeopardy after 85 miles. I just made eight out of 10 decisions correctly. And in the exposed areas on the climbs, or on the descents in the snow, in the ice, I just had to look at those extremities as a chance to be better than Damien. Any extremity in a race is where you make a decision and where the difference is made. For me, that was on Cross Fell in the dark, when I pulled away from Damian, and I managed to sustain that. I think once I had that lead, I couldn’t let it go.

AS. I’ve got a friend who has swum the English Channel a few times. He has this analogy of a lion, a tiger, or a whale coming through the water behind him that he has to stay ahead of. Was Damien that tiger?

JS. It was more a fear within myself of not looking back and realising you made a mistake, or you’ve not optimised something, or you’ve not done enough to come out of it and learn. I was just petrified of not winning that race.
When I had that lead, I just had to hold it. And I was scared for myself. I was elated inside, the performance I managed to put in, but the sorrow that if this went wrong was too much to bear.
You might find this interesting, but I felt so good that I couldn’t risk stopping or sleeping. I was feeling so good that I couldn’t risk settling and waking up after half an hour and totally losing the focus I had. I just had to do it the way I did it to stay in control, and to stay in control meant not stopping and not wanting to sleep.

AS. When you have got that flow, and you just feel that energy inside you, you just go with it.

JS.Yes. Exactly that.

AS. So, did you have any amazing sunrises?  Or Was it just miserable and cold, and it just gradually got light?

JS No, no, it wasn’t miserable. Going over the last stretch in the Cheviots was a special moment. Looking back, like when I got up to just below the Cheviot summit, I wish I could have been at the top and done a victory dance. But I was still so focused and in the zone with six and a half or seven downhill miles to go. I guess that was the point where I just realised everything I had done.

There are some photos online of me near the end. When you have come off the Cheviots at the farm and hit the tarmac lane for about a mile you come up that steep climb with about a mile to go, and you’ve got Kirk Yetholm appearing below you. It had been an amazing, beautiful sunrise with a hard frost. It was so cold. And I just nodded to myself and thought, let’s run these last 800 meters. And that was the most beautiful moment for me, just running on the road at the end. That was special, for sure.

AS. It was good to see you coming in, roared on by crowds of thousands! (Laughter from both as there were maybe 20 people maximum at the finish on the village green at the Border Hotel in Kirk Yetholm, around 9 am on that Wednesday morning.
.
AS. So, this is almost a rhetorical question because I know the answer. How much did you sleep in the race?

JS. There was half an hour at Langdon Beck when we were all together, Damien, me and James. We left there together, so that was 155 miles in. There were four minutes on Hadrian’s Wall. Four minutes on Hadrian’s Wall in the snow. There were ten minutes, definitely ten minutes, on the Cheviots. The alarm assist woke me up. So that would be, let’s say, 44 minutes. And there were another 10 minutes of sporadic two-minute naps, just wherever I dropped.

AS. You just rested for a power nap by the side of the trail? Weren’t you concerned that you might sit down resting against a fence or a tree for a short power nap and wake up five hours later, just crashed out by the side of the track.

JS. Again, this was an extremity that I created running the race. It meant that I could enhance my performance. It is scary, and it is daunting, and it is a bit sadistic, but I wouldn’t have done it any other way. I was onto something, and looking back now, you know, it was a greedy, almost ridiculous way to do what I did. But I’m so proud that no matter how exhausted I was, I still raced that way.
It was a record attempt in the end. I’ve been there, my heart leads, I didn’t have an option. I didn’t give myself a choice there. That’s the way it turned out.

AS. Different people cope differently with sleep deprivation. Do you feel that your metabolism has just adapted to it over the years of training, or have you always had that ability to just keep pushing? When you were a kid, did you always want to get up at four in the morning and go out and play soccer or anything like that?

JS.No, I mean, not really. I mean, most of the time, I want to be in bed off my feet, relaxing as much as I can. I’m not the sort of a guy who stays up till midnight every night and gets up at five to go to work. I like comfort, and I like being warm and safe.  I think it just comes from a longing and a willingness to extract absolutely everything from myself.

AS. You’re just being in the moment and going with that flow? Knowing and understanding what the goal is and just nailing it.

JS. Well, it worked this time like that, but it might not always work like that.

AS. I think your emotions at the end were captured well on the video. (see link at end of post) You broke Jasmin’s record by over 10 hours, right? The times you floated around in your head in your ponderings before the race, did you think that was at all possible?

JS. No. When I was injured in December, and I was looking to build a race plan, I realised that if I moved 0.1 miles an hour faster than in 2023, I’d run 82 hours, which I was aware was under the record. So that was a confidence booster. I knew John had an 80-hour schedule.( John Kelly, the 2020 winner, who sadly had to drop early in the race with an ankle issue) ) He was telling me “Jack, you’re five and a half hours under my 80-hour schedule”, Damien, i knew had an 81-hour schedule.

JS. I think if I had mapped out a schedule, I wouldn’t have run as fast as I did. I think it would have restricted me. I don’t use calculations at all.

Were you at the MAX?

AS. You’ve probably asked yourself this question, or someone, or maybe your psychologist has asked you already.  Do you think with this performance, you were at the max?

JS No! I don’t think I was. I know there were issues. If I’m going through it with a fine tooth comb, I could have, I could have fed better.  I’m not just talking about the issues I had before Malham, where the pace was horrendous, and I had issues getting a handle on my food. I could have fed better at certain stages of this race and given myself more fuel, and more energy and maybe prevented that dip at that stage in the race when I let Kim and Damian get away.

As I said, I do think about looking at the runner’s perfection because if you feel like you’ve reached that level, you shut the door on having that special day again or getting close to that. So I’m not going to look at it like that.  I understand things went very well, and my body backed up my mindset, but I believe that some elite runners, looking at the time I did, will think they can go for it in the future.

Remember, there’s a bit of delusion in this sport. People see what you’ve done and think that’s incredible, but I’m just a normal person who had a great day.  Don’t get me wrong. There were certain things in the race this year that helped. The underfoot conditions helped promote a very fast start. Then, there were 10 or 11 elite runners taking it on and running around in my head. The firmer ground due to the cold helped as well. You know some things might not be like that again, but I’ve opened the door, and I believe that young runners are looking at me thinking, “Every dog has his day. Maybe 72 hours or less hours is possible again.”

AS. I know it’s not quite the same, but when you look at the times that have been done in the summer recently on FKT’  by John Kelly and Damien Hall and what Mike (Hartley) did all those years ago, it get’s you thinking of what might be done?  Note: Jack’s winter time is 72:55:05;  respective summer FKTs: Mike Hartley 65:20:15 (1989); Damian Hall 61:35:15 (2020); John Kelly 58:04:53 (2021)

JS. That’s right. It’s all just a bit of a mind game in some ways. Even though running more hours in daylight is certainly better than running more than half of it in the dark.  The race pack makes a massive difference too, with all the mandatory winter kit. The fact is, you know, a supported record attempt is just the most simplified one you can do, travelling light with support meeting you and carrying most of your needs, which would suit me with an amazing team around me. Yes, there are fast times to be had anytime if you plan well enough.

AS Doing it in the summer, you don’t have the weight of the pack you carry in winter.

JS. I am guessing the kit list is about half of what you’re carrying in the winter.

AS. You had that little blip early on, which you dealt with. Was there ever a point where you thought this was just too hard? Or were you always able to calibrate, and when it got near a potential red line, you just thought, “OK. I’m just going to ease back a little bit?”

JS There was a little bit of that. I was asking myself every 45 minutes to an hour, is this sustainable? I ran to a level that I’d never reached before. So there are risks involved there, but I felt they were relevant and worthy at that time. You know what? I think I was petrified to lose the position I was in, and I wanted to pull away, and I wanted to win the race, and I think the pain and the suffering my body was going through was worth it. It was relevant, and enjoyable because I knew that if I was in this situation, that hundreds of boxes had been ticked. I’d done enough to get to this point, so enjoy it. We all crave those moments. There were maybe fifteen of those moments in the last 90 miles of this run. Apart from my wife and my dog, that’s what I live for now.

AS. Anyone who’s done a run like this, where they’ve gone way beyond what they’ve done before, and it is as relevant to your run as someone way down the field who has totally excelled themselves. You are operating in a zone you haven’t been in before. You’re not quite sure what’s going to happen, or which way it’s going to go.

JS. The Spine’s like that, you know? The Spine race is exactly like that. I try to preach about self-control, and then, don’t blur your picture. Keep your mind as clear as it can be. The race is complicated enough for the kit list and the route, and the elite runners on the start line to think about. Even thinking if you can just get to the finish.  To finish the race, you just need to try and simplify everything you can and make it about “Performance on the day, according to your own capacity.”

AS. So here we are, almost two weeks after you finished. How has recovery been?

JS. I made a joke with my physio last night. The way January went, sorry mid-December to January. I was running in pain, just running to the physio, which is two miles away. Running in manageable pain, but it wasn’t pleasant. It lingered a long time.

Two weeks after the race, I am not running with issues or discomfort, which is really nice. For some of the stuff in the gym, the heart rate spikes a bit erratically. In the sauna, my heart rate the other day was out of control because again, an extremity was added maybe a little bit too soon. My weight has settled down now. I’m sleeping well. The night sweats lasted about eight days, and I can see a way out of it now. I’m just waiting for the mind to calm down.

After the Southern Uplands, I was working in Preston, and I was driving a lot on my own and listening to music. Listening to audiobooks. Listening to podcasts.

The Southern Upland Way was great, but it wasn’t a “big record”.  It wasn’t, you know, if people knew the scene, they knew it happened, but it wasn’t like all over the bloody media like the Spine race is. After the Southern Upland Way, there was a moment of just acceptance and appreciation within myself. It was a random moment as I was driving to work, and I became extremely emotional, and it was amazing. I guess if you have ever had that experience, you know what I am talking about.  I’m waiting for that to happen after this one, and it will, and when that does, I know I am fully recovered in mind and body.

AS. How many big multi-days do you think you can do in a year, or a lifetime even?

JS. I have a philosophy about this, which other people don’t agree with. Or they might not like to appreciate. I think one of these a year is enough if you’ve got the ability to be a varied athlete and not go looking for results, and not go looking to be out of your comfort zone all the time.  Don’t get me wrong, if your comfort zone’s a 200-mile race, that can be a problem. So for me, my next process is adding intensity and training for enjoyment levels and satisfaction. I know what that looks like and I know how that is.

I’ve got a race in the Alps I’d like to do, the Tour de Geants, which gets a lot of coverage, and there’s an option to do that this year, but the age I’m at and the way I want to sort of grow, you know, there’s the 130k option this year, which will be great to look at the course and get a feel for the race. Look at the environment. Look at the way it works, and I’d like to think I’ve got time on my side, so that’s what I’ll do this year because I don’t want to go beyond 48 hours again. I want to take my time and earn my stripes. That’s what I did in 2023 at the Spine. I earned the right to race it. I didn’t race 2023 otherwise in Byrness, I wouldn’t have made those decisions to ease back. You know, I’ve done this over a period of six years. 2023 was the perfect blueprint, and now I went back and raced it, and now I can shut the door on that.

AS. Slightly tangential, but you’ve obviously done quite a bit of media since the race. I’m guessing you had also chosen not to do any media beforehand, and you came off social media as well.

JS. I’d advise anyone to do that the week or two weeks before a race.  Mine was sort of six weeks before the race! I just wanted to be in control. What would Mike Hartley do? What would they do back in the day? How would they behave? They’d have been there anyway because there was no social media.
Take control of what you can, and don’t listen to any outside noise. I didn’t want people telling me how good I was going to run. I didn’t want people telling me how bad I was going to run, and I didn’t need to talk about what I was about to do. I knew what I wanted to do. I didn’t want people to blur my vision.
I didn’t want to come across as someone who didn’t want to engage with anyone. I know what I had to do. I enjoyed what I did, and then I went and ran. That was it.

AS. You did quite a bit of media after the race.  Your sponsors, Inov-8, even took you to the Running Show in Birmingham to be on their stand and chat with people about your experiences.

JS. Yeah.

AS. How bizarre a contrast was that? Going from being way up in the hills just having fun in remote surroundings and then going to what some would say is “a circus of commercialism” in a big warehouse in Birmingham?

JS. I don’t mind that if it’s a by-product of success. I don’t mind that because back in 2019 I think, or 2018, I saw Eoin Keith win the race, and I saw his post-race interview. I noticed his behaviour after, and I went to see him speak at the Kendal Mountain Festival. That really inspired me. So I understand that people will be seeing what I’ve done now, and I want to give a bit back. So that is not a problem. And yeah, it’s a by-product of success.

It’s like the race interviews I did immediately after the race. I know you were around as well. There is that rawness. I don’t know if you’ve seen the one I did with Will, where we are just talking in the backroom at the finish. I think it’s on YouTube. Like I’m just me, and I don’t mind talking off the cuff about things I’m passionate about and things I believe in. I’m passionate about things, whether they are good or bad. If the race had gone bad, I’d do the same.

AS. We’ve talked a little bit about comfort zones.  Do you think comfort zones can be elastic and movable, whatever level you are at. Does that apply to you winning the race just as much as it applies to someone like Dave Milton, who was the last runner to finish the Spine this year just inside the cut-off.

JS. David was Incredible.

AS. He is pushing his comfort zones out the same as you are, but do you think they are movable?

JS I coach a few people. Say I have asked one of them to do, I don’t know, two times 12 minutes on a Tuesday night. If they start that first block of 12 minutes, and they feel they’re onto something, and feel they’re in the flow, I would always encourage them to think, “I’m going to go further and try for a 5K PB”.
I’m going to continue this, because there are plenty of times when the body says no, and the mind says no, and you don’t execute the session or the run or the adventure you want. So, if you think the time is now, you have to take a risk. Don’t get me wrong, as there are repercussions if you run hard on a Tuesday that can catch up with you on Wednesday or Thursday.

And you have to accept that as an athlete. You can’t be preaching to your coach. Your coach will say, if the doors are open, do it. But you’ve got to understand that Wednesday and Thursday might look different if you behave like that on a Tuesday. But there is that famous saying of one of the Gallaghers, Don’t worry about the hangover, enjoy the night you’re having.” And I’d say that about the spine.

That’s my approach to long-distance running. If it doesn’t work and you get served a bad hand, which I have done in the past, bank it, remember it, with even more passion and belief than if you’ve got a decent hand. Just make it your day. And that’s what I believe I did two weeks ago. I think that training and racing can be restrictive and one-dimensional, and if the green light’s there, you go. You’ve got to go.

AS. That is a fascinating perspective.

Future Plans

AS You’ve spoken a little bit about your future plans.  Are you looking over the next two or three years at a long-term plan? Do you have any must-do races you want to tick? For instance, I believe you’ve done UTMB once and had to pull out. Is that right?

JS. Yeah, that’s true,

AS. Do you have any hankerings to go back there? Or did your UTMB experience put you off going back?

JS. I’m not the sort of person who sits here and looks at a DNF as a reason to go back and right the wrong. I like to think that my mindset and my thought pattern are above that. I think that’s relevant to some people if they need to be motivated or get out of the door and feel like a runner or a better person. But for me, that’s not the case.

It’s there, and I could have gone back. I could have gone back this year, but I declined the offer because I had nothing booked.  I’ve got nothing booked. I didn’t want to give myself “an out” after the Spine.  Now I’m in that stage where I do think my elite-ness is in these longer races where it’s dark and sadistic and difficult?

I’d love to take that around the world. You know, I’d love to race in America. There’s that game in the woods that people get invited to every March or April or whenever it is. That might be a thing I can try and process and maybe get into. But I’m also just as keen to run a fast 100 miles.  If that was in a Western States qualifier, that would be amazing. So let’s see what dates are delivered for the Western States qualifiers in Europe or maybe the UK, and then we’ll see what happens. I want to have amazing adventures all over the place, and take loads in.

And I still want to do my local fell races, and be on the start line and put pressure on myself. I’ve had a good run at the Yorkshire Three Peaks Race. Two years ago, I finished 10th behind nine amazing athletes who all have great capacity. Many of them have run for the GB. I’m sure you know a lot of them. I didn’t get the result I wanted, but I look back and think I’m the only one who ran a hundred-mile race in December. So, you can’t have everything. I do want to be versatile.

When I first sat down with Inov-8 three and a half years ago, I said, my running is not going to be a straight line. My running is going to be here, there, down, up, round, and I think I’ve proven that, and I want that to continue.  So, whilst I’ve got time on my side, touch wood, and the age I am now, I want that to continue. So I am just letting the clock do its thing and see what opportunities arise.

Interested in the Big British 24 hour Rounds ?

AS. Three names with a very close relationship with the Pennine Way, Jasmin Paris, Damian Hall, and John Kelly, have all had exceptional runs on the classic British 24-hour rounds. Bob Graham, Paddy Buckley and Ramsay Round. Are you keen to have a good attempt at one of the rounds? Either summer or maybe winter round?

JS. The Paddy Buckley round is a special place and environment for me. I love that route. I did it after the UTMB DNF in 2022. That set me up and made me realise that I do have the fitness, and I can look after myself. I went solo and unsupported in sub 20 hours, which was incredible for me.

There’s a lot of options out there. I’d like to grow a relationship with the Lake District a little bit more and earn my stripes. I’m a big believer in steps and earning things.

When you’re in a bad spell in these races, which you’re going to get, my psyche goes back to telling me, “I’m ready, but do you have the right to drag the support team out to do this? Who do you think you are? I suppose at Malham Tarn, with the issue I had this year, if I hadn’t run last year, that could have really ended my race. But I felt like I’d earned the right to pass through that because of what I did in 2023. And I think behaviour in the mountains, behaviour in the trails, at the extreme end, I think there’s a real place for that.

AS. Backyard Ultra? Something tells me you’ve got Backyard Ultra written all over you if you wanted to do one.

JS. Yeah, I know it sounds like that doesn’t it?  It would have to to intrigue me more than just doing the four and a half miles, or whatever it is an hour. There would have to be something there, like an international scene where I’m representing the country.

Is it the prize money, or is there something different involved that I’d have to associate with doing that? I would have a strong shout at that kind of race though, and I believe I could do it well, but I don’t know why I’d do it right now. Do you know what I mean?

I know Courtney’s competitive over these amazing distances all over the world. She can go and do that because she might fancy a long run. I’m not like that.  If it was a stepping stone to something else, and I could see that it fits then it’s definitely something I’d do. But if it’s just like another event, then it doesn’t interest me.

Keeping things Simple 

AS. We’ve talked about it a little earlier, about stripping everything back to fundamentals and keeping it simple. Probably like myself and yourself, we either get recommended to listen to this podcast or that podcast, read this book or that book. There seem to be so many new ideas all the time.  Do you feel people tend to just overthink things sometimes?

Is everything essentially, as you said, just stripping it back and keeping to fundamentals?

JS. My god YES!, I mean, let’s not even talk about running. Let’s just talk about life Okay? You will understand this. Life is 24/7. 365 days a year, and it isn’t always what you do in your running shoes that matters. I talk about rest, control, patience. Sometimes, it is the run you don’t do that is the one that matters.

I think the world we live in with phones and even the ability to do what we are doing now. To speak to you and see you up in Edinburgh. It’s soft. It’s comfortable, and it promotes amazing things. Technology advances, saving the world or destroying the world, depending on which way you look at it. But sometimes, we can do incredible things, that you don’t think are possible because your watch is telling you you’re too fatigued. There are just too many things out there which can help get you to the next level, but can also actually diminish you. I stay away from those as much as I can.

I know I can keep the intensity in there. I know I can cross-train, and I know I can stay awake when I go into that weird feral zone. I long for that in some ways. I looked at the Spine as four days away from my phone. I actually spoke to my psychologist about that. It might sound crazy, but that’s what I wanted to do.

AS. I think you handled it pretty well, and many people would be rather envious of going off the grid for the best part of a week. ” Go race the Spine and get into your natural world. Go off the grid for a week!

JS. Yes

AS. You seem to work with your psychologist a lot. I’ve had a long interest in meditation and yoga and similar things since I was a teenager as a way of helping explore what is possible and pushing out boundaries. I feel the key to being “good” or “good at whatever level you are”, whether you’re just doing your first ultra or you’re aiming to win something like the Spine, is to develop the art of problem-solving on the run.

The chat tonight sums up that if you haven’t become an expert at it, you’ve figured out how to take a step back and look at yourself in the middle of a race like a form of art almost and find ways of dealing with it and dealing with yourself at the same time.

JS. I mean, you say about looking at yourself. That happened in Scotland. When I broke Mike Hartley’s coast-to-coast Southern Upland Way. Something like that actually happened. But my psychologist talks about the idea that, with the information presented to you at any given time, the decision you make cannot be wrong.

One second after, it can be wrong. But when you make it right then, in one moment, it can’t be wrong.
Again, like I’ve said, two, four, 10 minutes later, you might think, I shouldn’t have gone down that trail. But right then, it’s the right decision. And you can make those micro-decisions in a race of this length, which add up, and they are huge race decisions.

I talk about having to go through five or six of those in a race, and if you get, you know, 80% of those right, and you’re ruthless, you should get what you deserve, and with a bit of luck as well, good things happen.

AS. Final question.  What makes Jack, Jack?  What, above all else, gets you out of bed in the morning to do the stuff you do?

JS. I feel blessed to be in the position I am in from where I was as a young man. And I want to pursue it with every single ounce of energy. Again, that isn’t always hitting the wall as hard as you can. Sometimes that’s being subtle and clever and smart. I just want to build the best life for my family, and running is starting to give me that option.

And, you know when the chips are down, if you can keep that mindset, then you know it’s only three days, or it’s only UTMB, and the doors are there, that’s a great place to be. I just want a good, sustainable, happy life,because when I was deep in, struggling with what I was doing, I couldn’t see a way past 50. I thought I could be in prison and I would lose control of my life. So now I’ve got it back, I just want to look after that and cherish that, and running has helped me.

AS:  On that note, I think we will end.

JS Thanks.I appreciate you showing interest in that ridiculous run!

Authors final note.

Chatting with Jack,I loved hearing his openess and honesty, best summed up perhaps in this line.

“Remember, there’s a bit of delusion in this sport. People see what you’ve done and think that’s incredible, but I’m just a normal person who had a great day.”

You can see the daily updates of the Montane Winter Spine race HERE

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Adrian Tarit Stott.

The author is a former GB 24 hour ultra international with over 100 ultra race completions.  He has also been involved organising ultra distance races for over 30 years.  Still an active recreational runner, he is currently a member of UKA’s Ultra Distance Advisory Group (URAG) and part of the selection and team management for both Scottish and GB ultra teams.He is also a  freelance writer, contributing articles and reports to several websites and magazines including Athletics Weekly and Irunfar.