Endurance of the Mind: How UTMB Shaped Lewis Robling

Retired pro rugby player Lewis Robling shares how UTMB tested not just his physical endurance but also his mental resilience, shedding light on how running has become a crucial tool for managing his mental health.

“I never want to run a 100 miler ever again.”

This was the first comment Lewis Robling shared with his crew at mile 18 / kilometer 30 of the Ultra-Trail du Mont-Blanc (UTMB) in Chamonix this past August. Five hours into his 109-mile / 176-kilometer journey, he still had over 30,000 feet / 9,000 meters of climbing ahead of him. And yet, at such an early point in the race, he already felt overwhelmed by what lay ahead, and his revelations didn’t stop there.

“I despised the hiking, it was brutal,” Lewis admitted.

“Trail running in the dark is sh*t.”

Despite being surrounded by thousands of runners, he confessed, “No one talked to each other. I felt lonely surrounded by thousands of runners. I love trail running for so many reasons, but none of those reasons were present.”

👉 FOLLOW Lewis Robling on Strava

In the early stages of this iconic race, Lewis had pushed himself too hard, carried along by the excitement of the crowd. The heat had also taken its toll. "Before the race had even started, my gas tank was running on empty,” he recalled.

“As I moved forward through the next 100 km / 62 miles and 20+ hours, I had the fight of my life. Wrestling with my values, talking myself in and out of this experience. At what point is it a strong and brave decision to quit? Where could I find my honorable way out?”, he wondered.

“At times, I literally wept, I thought a lot about what was really important to me.”

RELATED: In Pictures: The Challenge & Charm of UTMB

The Psychological Side of Ultras

Many athletes who have faced ultra-endurance races experience similar mental battles. Spending hours on trails, with only your thoughts as company will do that to you. Lewis, a retired professional rugby player, was well accustomed to physical pain and grit, but it took him years to grapple with the psychological side of it all.

When Lewis started running in 2020, it became a tool that helped him “turn down the volume in [his] mind,” he explained. After his rugby career ended, he struggled with his identity. Running races and raising money for charity gave him a purpose, but the sense of achievement was fleeting. Even after completing his first ultra, a 77.6-mile / 125-kilometer race in the UK’s Peak District, he was at a loss, unsure of his direction in life.

“I felt myself get lower and lower, and I realized I needed some help,” Lewis said. Instead of suffering alone, he turned to a friend who put him in touch with a mental health charity called ‘bigmoose’, which linked him to a therapist. “The therapy helped me reframe how I used running. Instead of running away with no awareness as to why I was doing what I was doing, I learned to run towards these feelings and challenges in an informed fashion knowing more about how I was and what I was looking to achieve.”

RELATED: First Person: Reflections on My First UTMB

That shift in mindset was transformative. Lewis began to understand who he was beyond rugby. Today, he is an ultrarunner and coach, and the co-founder of the charitable multistage ultra-race in the UK called Why We Run. “I feel a sense of purpose and meaning that I’ve never had before, and I get to do it by doing something I love and helping others achieve the same thing - with the focus on understanding why and becoming more themselves in the process. That is how powerful running or endurance sport and therapy can be,” Lewis explained candidly.

Ultras are ‘Mental’

Lewis brought this newfound psychological resilience to his UTMB race. The mental strategies he had honed kept him going through the toughest moments. They kept him moving and gave him clarity. “Clarity in terms of acceptance, knowing I had to persevere with this. I had to let go of my ego, I knew this was exactly what I needed at the time, I knew there was nothing else I could do but to face this head-on,” he shared.

As the race wore on, that clarity evolved. Lewis began to reflect on deeper questions about life, himself and the lessons embedded in this grueling experience. After all, ultrarunners often enter these races not just for physical achievement but for self-discovery, to find out who they are when every comfort is stripped away.

RELATED: The Alpine Run Project: Transforming Young Lives through Trail Running

When Lewis’ internal drive faltered, he looked for the positives around him. “I used external cues like the beauty of the place and told myself how lucky I was to be there. I also noticed that even when I had nothing left, I was still the kind of person to ask others if they were ok, or to say well done.”

This helped him “feel a strange sense of peace and clarity as to what [his] values were, who [he] was and how [he’d] like to move forward in life after this experience was up.”

‘How Low Can You Go?’

But it wasn’t ‘up’ just yet.

Lewis’ lowest moment and his turning point came between miles 62 and 68 / kilometers 100 and 110. “They say the night is darkest before the dawn… it was the opposite for me,” he recalled.

He’d been awake for over 30 hours by this point. “I started to feel disconnected to my body, like my brain was on autopilot not understanding how I was moving. It felt like I was observing my body in motion. Disconnected with the act of moving. This was disconcerting and I was afraid. Afraid of falling asleep, losing my balance and making a costly error,” he shared.

MORE ATHLETE STORIES: Mind Over Matter in My First Triathlon

This is when Lewis had to dig deep. Two thoughts kept him going.

The first was the belief in himself: He had chosen this challenge and wasn’t going to let himself down.

The second was the love he had for his friends. Seeing his crew at checkpoints lifted his spirits and he wouldn’t let them down either. “We are so much stronger together, and we can draw so much more from ourselves when we work as a team,” Lewis explained. “This is what ultrarunning is – a team sport. When one person succeeds, we all do. It’s beautiful.”

Ultimately, it was ‘his people’ that pushed Lewis onwards. “What happened after seeing my super crew at 80.7 miles / 130 km still doesn’t make sense to me now. I started to get stronger,” he explained his turning point.

“I left the checkpoint at 80.7 miles / 130 km with a spring in my step. Headed into the night with a completely different mentality. I started to believe I could do this. Maybe I needed to suffer for the first 2/3 of the race to unlock this version of me? Maybe it was a reward for not giving up. Maybe all I needed was people to help me rise. Either way, I had changed.”

MORE ATHLETE STORIES: Keira D’Amato: Rewriting Records and Redefining ‘Runner’s Prime’

The Magic Begins

After 37 hours on the course, with less than 18 miles / 30 km to go, something magical happened, Lewis finally found his flow. For the first time in the race, everything he’d worked for snapped into place.

“My head torch lit the way on a narrow single track downhill section that was technical enough to keep you honest and instill a splash of fear, but runnable enough for you to run fast - the perfect terrain,” Lewis beamed. Instinct took over, “I went for it. Pure adrenaline. I felt nothing and everything all at once. Pure clarity on the trails, with the trees moving in a blur side by side to me. I overtook runner after runner after runner until I lost count. I felt like I’d been restricted or trapped by the terrain all race, my body was exhausted but now, how was this happening? This feeling was everything I needed it to be and more.”

“I felt like my own hero on the final descent into Chamonix. My chin quivering uncontrollably, my eyes were flooded with tears of joy, elation, relief and pride for what I had just overcome.”

The lessons Lewis learned about managing adversity, and the confidence he gained from knowing he could do hard things, reminded him why he tackled ultras. The energy of Chamonix, the crowds and his friends were the final push he needed. “I prepared to run through the heart of Chamonix, with the energy of the people and my friends to carry me instead and I will never ever forget the feeling,” he shared.

“I hit the blue carpet, the energy of the crowd was electric and I could see all my crew and friends at the finish line waiting for me. I looked to the sky and shut my eyes for a second as I sprinted down that carpet as a way of thanking myself, and then focused my attention on that arch. The same arch I’d started from 41 hours and 26 minutes ago.”

“I’d done it. It was over. I was a UTMB finisher.”