Field Journal

Stories From the UTMB
Written by Daniel Neilson // Photography by Nathan Phua & SportsShoes
Produced in partnership with SportsShoes

Under the lights of the SportsShoes Hub at Kendal, three UTMB stories came alive. Tom Evans, who built a win from years of work. Josh Wade, who ran on pure desire. And Darren Agnew, revealed through the eyes of the crew who kept him moving through the night.

The Ultra-Trail du Mont Blanc is a community. Fleeting in some sense, but very real, especially in the week of every year when thousands of people come together in Chamonix. Elite athletes, mid-pack runners, supporters, families, crews, and filmmakers all converge to celebrate the sport of trail running like nowhere else.

For those running the full race, there’s a daunting 170km of running with an even more daunting 10,000m of climbing. Runners will visit Italy, Switzerland, and France around the mighty Mont Blanc, the highest peak in the Alps. There are several races under the auspices of the UTMB and more globally, each with a different route appealing to different runners and different mindsets. Each runner will go on a journey that will push them like never before, and the result is a wealth of inspiring and poignant stories.

Around a log fire in the SportsShoes Hub at the 2025 Kendal Mountain Festival, we heard some of those incredible stories. There was Tom Evans, the precision athlete who won this year’s UTMB. We heard from Josh Wade, a Kendal local whose passion for the sport, and this event, saw him finish third overall. And we also spoke to participant Darren Agnew, who ran the 153km TDS (Sur les Traces des Ducs de Savoie). The story told about his race wasn’t from the athlete’s perspective, but from the never-told-before perspective of his support crew – in particular, his partner, Hannah Cawthra. At a screening of The Hidden Race, they were joined on stage by filmmaker James Collins.

In two days, we heard very different angles: Tom Evans, the architect of the win; Josh Wade, the fiery passion whose grit saw him succeed; and then Darren Agnew, with his community, the MCR Outdoors Crew. Together, they make up a story of the UTMB. Lace up.

The long game

‘It’s very easy to look at the finish line picture and see the incredibly happy emotions,’ Tom Evans told host Ben Mounsey on stage at the SportsShoes. ‘For me, the finish line photos are great, but my key memories aren’t from the finish line. They’re from the months and the years leading up to it.

‘It’s cringy to say that it’s all about the journey and not the destination, or process not outcome, but with this win, it couldn’t be more true.’ 

And for Tom, it certainly has been a journey. Above him, those winning photographs, seen by many around the world, scrolled through. What we didn’t see are the earlier attempts. In 2022, he got a surprise third place. Surprising, because he felt underprepared. 

‘I definitely approached it in the wrong way,’ he admitted. ‘Not arrogant, but everything was focused on sports performance. I probably got a little bit too obsessed with data and trying to squeeze out every inch of performance.’

This year was different. ‘The major change was: let us just be happy as much as possible and get the training we need done,’ he says. ‘It doesn’t need to be pretty; you don’t have to have any amazing sessions. Just get to the start line feeling excited.’

He talks about bringing the whole tribe with him. Friends, family, their daughter Phoebe who enjoyed her first trip to the Alps.

‘When you are on your own on an altitude camp, you are bouncing around a small French apartment. The food is bad. You have no company. It is fairly miserable. So we said, let us bring the village. You get back from a run and the first question is, how was it? Great. Cool. It is finished now. Let us get ice cream. Let us take the dogs out. Let us not think about the race. My psychologist said we just need to get you happy.’

That is when he tells the wolf story. ‘With Phoebe, we started howling like a wolf, just being silly. I don’t know how it started. And then at the top of every climb at UTMB, I started howling at night. It put a massive smile on my face. It sounds basic and meaningless, but for me it worked.’

The image behind him changed to the finish line again, this time a close-up of relief and triumph. 

‘There is so much emotion there,’ he says. ‘But for me, that is just the emotion from the previous years and the months and the weeks leading up to the race.’

Winning the battle

In third place at the UTMB was a very different racer with a very different outlook. Josh Wade, from his chair on the Kendal stage at least, was a local boy. Family and friends were in the audience, crowding in at the back. To hear Josh’s story was to show the raw edge of an athlete on his way up. 

‘Yeah, this one was more of a battle than a race. I had to keep lying down.’ He laughed. ‘It felt more like a challenge. I was lying down thinking, what is going on? I kept having to stop to sort everything out.’

Despite that not-so-great beginning of the race, Josh clawed his way back through the field. Ben Mounsey, also interviewing Josh, was tracking him from the base in Chamonix during the race, wondering at his surge back into the top 20. 

Josh relayed how he felt super fit on the start line, and then after the first day, and that dip, it’s almost like he remembered why he was there. ‘I am all in. My passion for that race is through the roof. The next day I was like… “right, I want more”. It has taken me eight years of consistent training to get to this third place at UTMB. It was so good,’ he told the audience. ‘Something I could only have dreamed of.’

But like Josh, his pleasure was in the training. ‘I’m enjoying the training. I love it. I’m waking up every day satisfied. It’s actually the training I enjoy more than the racing. Maybe if I got first place I’d be like… now what do you do?’ 

So the final question was obvious: what about next year? ‘Well, it’s got to be second or first,’ he said, laughing. ‘Any sport where you want to go all the way, you have to be completely obsessed. It’s everything. It’s your whole life.’ 

The Hidden Race

It was an afternoon session at the SportsShoes hub that proved particularly enlightening. SportsShoes unveiled its first documentary film, The Hidden Race, a look at an unseen side of ultra-running: the crew behind the runners. In partnership with HOKA, the film follows runner Darren Agnew and his chief crewer and partner Hannah Cawthra to highlight the emotional, logistical, and physical work that goes into ultra-marathon crewing. 

We watched The Hidden Race (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSARcGRd0sY), a beautifully shot film that takes on such a different angle – it’s insightful, intelligent, and develops a sense of investment into the characters’ journey as you would in a reality TV show where you actually like the participants.

Ben welcomed Darren and Hannah to the stage, alongside filmmaker James Collins. Ben began by laying out the brutal geography of Darren’s race: 153km route, 9,000m of climbing; starting from Courmayeur to Bourg Saint Maurice, Beaufort, and then heading back to Chamonix. It sounds enormous, and it is. In 2024, he did the race in under 35 hours, but had a bit of a ‘sickly spell’ in the middle. 

Ben asked about his mindset this year, especially with the pressure of a film being made about him. Darren replied, ‘In my head, when I knew the film was happening, I basically told myself it is about the crew and I am going to jump in and do a cameo. It was actually quite a nice psychology. It was a therapeutic experience, to be honest.’ He laughed.

This year, though, he had Hannah. ‘I think Hannah demands unwavering positivity,’ he said, smiling toward her. ‘I know I am going to have people there that, even if I am having an off day, will boost me and spur me on.’

And this year, he also had a group of cheerleaders. Hannah said, ‘We’d see him come into the aid stations, and see him go out, and we were just cheering him on.’

It was important for Darren – more than he first realised. ‘Having somebody to look forward to seeing at an aid station is a real boost. You can go through lows and highs, but if you know you are coming into the 90km aid station and all your friends will be there, that gives you an extra boost.’

Hannah’s final words pulled everything together. ‘I wasn’t a runner before I met Darren,’ she said. ‘He introduced me to this whole new world which is my world now. I have met some of my closest friends through that. Hopefully the film inspires people to try crewing or supporting a race, or to join a running club or a running community. Hopefully you will find your own family, because I certainly have. I am very grateful for what this has given me.’

Three athletes. Three angles. One event. At the SportsShoes Hub, their stories met, showing the UTMB as it really is. It’s a race of obsession, of joy and, yes, of community. Nor should we forget the people who stand behind the podium.