What is the Arctic Spine Race?
About ten years ago, I first heard about the Spine Race, a brutal 260-mile trail race that follows the Pennine Way through the north of England, finishing at the Scottish border. Even back then, it had a reputation for being one of the toughest endurance races in the UK.
Three years ago, I completed the North Spine, a 160-mile section of that course (you can read about that adventure here). At the time, it felt like a massive challenge, but little did I know there was an even more extreme version of the race waiting much further north.
The Arctic Spine Race is a self-sufficient, self-navigating foot race held in Swedish Lapland, deep inside the Arctic Circle. The route follows the Kungsleden Trail, covering approximately 463 kilometres of remote Arctic wilderness.
This isn’t just a long run; this race throws everything at you: deep powder snow, frozen rivers and lakes that must be crossed on foot, relentless climbs, and temperatures that can drop far as -40°C. In short, it’s properly wild. So wild, in fact, that until 2026 only five people had ever completed the race, with the last successful finish occurring in 2025.
Getting to the start line isn’t as simple as signing up and turning up. Entry requirements include proof of previous ultra-endurance events, along with practical assessments before the race begins. Competitors must demonstrate that they can operate safely in Arctic conditions, setting up their tent, firing up their stove, and navigating with a map and compass.
The day before the 0900 race start, there’s a full kit inspection. Every item on the mandatory list is categorised using a traffic-light system. Red items are essential, and if you don’t have them, you simply don’t start. These essentials include enough food for each day of racing (around 4,000 calories per day), multiple layers of cold-weather clothing, a GPS device, and the critical survival equipment: tent, stove, compass, and maps, and when I say maps, I mean it. The course is covered by nine separate 1:150,000 scale map sheets.
Once the race begins, you are entirely responsible for yourself, your navigation, your shelter, your food, and your progress. Out there in the Arctic, there’s no one coming to save you if you get it wrong.
What a mare, even before the start!
There were a few mishaps along the way, and the first one started before I’d even checked in at Changi Airport. Halfway through the taxi ride, I realised I’d forgotten my custom insoles. These insoles had been a major part of managing my Achilles pain, which had only recently started improving after more than a year of aggravation. Without them I knew I’d struggle, I needed the heel lift and arch support or my feet were going to be in serious trouble. Fuck! Luckily, by pure chance, when I arrived in Frankfurt Airport I managed to find some off-the-shelf insoles from Birkenstock. Not ideal, but the best I could do under the circumstances.
Next problem...
At customs in Frankfurt, my lighter was confiscated. I pleaded with them to let me keep it, explaining that I needed it to light my stove for the race, but they weren’t having it. Fuck. Fuck.
Late on Thursday night, I finally arrived at my hotel in Stockholm, exhausted and ready to collapse into bed… only to discover I couldn’t check in. For fuuuck sake. I’d managed to cock up the booking and reserved the room from Friday night instead of Thursday, having completely confused the days, times, and time zones. Not a disaster, I just had to book an extra night, but things weren’t exactly going smoothly so far.
Pre-Race Assessments
The day before the race we had to complete three practical assessments:
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Put up your tent
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Light your stove
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Take a navigation bearing
Let’s start with the tent.
I’d decided to go with a budget tent, mainly because I didn’t really intend to sleep in it. It wasn’t exactly going to keep me warm in Arctic conditions anyway. I only needed it to tick the mandatory kit requirement.
I’d only half-assembled it once before, and that was in the lovely 30°C heat of Singapore, where the poles bent easily, and the fabric stretched nicely. At –30°C, however… different story. At first, I couldn’t understand what the fuck was going on, I started to look like a right twat in front of the assessor. The poles wouldn’t flex, the fabric was stiff as a board, and the whole thing refused to cooperate. Eventually, the race director explained that this was a common problem in extreme cold.
Later, we warmed the poles on a radiator and tried again. Much easier, but by that point I’d already bent the hell out of them, and they were permanently warped, and ultimately, how the fuck was that useful, as there wasn't going be a radiator out 'there'. Lovely.
Natigation...Sort of
After that little clusterfuck, it was time for my navigation assessment. This should have been a piece of piss. I’d done plenty of map reading in the military. Except my compass wasn’t calibrated. It had come straight out of the packet, and while magnetic north was pointing north, the bearing dial was effectively reversed. Magnetic north and the bearing indicator didn’t align, which, out in the Arctic wilderness, could have been a fairly serious problem if things went wrong. In short, I could have been confidently marching in the completely wrong direction. Fortunately, I managed to figure it out and adjust it before it became an actual disaster.
The Stove incident
Right then, third assessment: light the stove. Now, I hadn’t actually tested my brand-new stove before travelling. I didn’t want it smelling of fuel when I packed it, because technically you’re not supposed to transport camping stoves on flights. My thinking was that if it smelled clean, there’d be less chance of it being confiscated. The logic made sense. The execution… less so.
I set the stove up just fine, but when it came to lighting the bloody thing, I suddenly remembered something important: I didn’t have a fucking lighter anymore. Frankfurt had sorted me out there.
Arrrgh. Fucking hell.
At this point, I was doing a fantastic job of making myself look like a complete dickhead, 'the bloke' who’d flown all the way from Singapore to the Arctic Circle for what looked increasingly like a poorly planned “fun run”.
You could almost see the race staff slowly losing confidence in this silly twat. With a little bit of faith restored after finding a lighter and then some lighter fuel, which they didn't sell in the same shop (which was helpful, not!), I was surprisingly cleared to race. Fantastic, I'm ready. Right time to get my fat head down and get the last bit of warm cozy sleep for a while.
Annnd they're off...(apart from the silly sod from Singapore)
Come race day, I was actually well squared away for once. I’d fuelled up with a massive breakfast and was feeling ready to go. The race start time was 0900, and at about 0830, I began putting my gear on. Then I stopped. “Wait a minute… where the fuck are my gaiters?”
If you’re unfamiliar, gaiters go over your boots and extend up to around the knee. Their job is to stop debris, in this case, snow, from getting into the top of your boots, and I really needed them.
In previous winter races, I’d learned the hard way what happens when snow gets inside your boots. It sticks to the fabric, more snow sticks to that, and eventually it compresses into solid ice. Over time, that ice rubs against your skin and can literally cut into it.
So yes, gaiters were pretty-fucking-important. At this point, I was losing my shit. After the tent fiasco, the compass issue, and the stove drama, this was starting to look like the final confirmation that I was a properly incompetent twat.
I later found out that some of the race staff were actually taking bets on which day I’d pull out or get pulled from the race. Most of the money was apparently on Day 2. Brilliant.
Meanwhile, I was frantically searching everywhere for the sodding gaiters, but they were nowhere to be found. Time was running out. Fuck it, I had to start.
Fortunately, the race organisers allowed me to start slightly later and gave me the corresponding time allowance further down the line. Still, setting off late meant I was immediately behind the entire field, which was the last place I wanted to be while settling into the race. After a while, I managed to catch people up and get back into the mix. From that point onwards, something strange started happening. The days began to blur together. Time lost all meaning. Hours merged into each other, nights blended into days, and before long, I had completely lost track of where I was in the timeline of the race. It was just about moving forward.
C'mon, give me break
Not even an hour into the race, I noticed I was limping slightly to one side. “What the fuck?” Every time I planted my left pole into the snow, I’d start collapsing in that direction. Something clearly wasn’t right. I looked down and realised I’d already lost one of the baskets.
If you’re not familiar, the basket is the circular disc at the bottom of a trekking pole that distributes the load and stops it from sinking into the snow. Without it, the pole just punches straight through the surface.
Which is exactly what was happening. The pole was piercing the snow like a hot needle through butter. As a result, my movement pattern was completely off, and before long, I could feel my left hip flexor tightening up from compensating.
A random bloke on the trail walked past and said, “Oh yeah, I saw that back there.” Thanks, mate. Helpful.
Then I looked at the other pole and realised something else, I’d fucked up again. The baskets I had were clearly not designed for deep snow, they were far too small. For fuck’s sake!
Not long after that, I tripped. I managed to catch myself with the poles and stay upright, in doing so, I bent one of the bloody poles. “I don’t fucking believe this. Will you just fuck right off!” At this point, the race felt less like an ultra and more like a slow-motion equipment failure demonstration.
Cabin roulette
Somehow, and I’m still not entirely sure how, I think I might even managed to take the lead briefly at one point. This probably had less to do with athletic brilliance and more to do with the fact that I was jet-lagged to hell and hadn't slept for nearly 30 hours. By the morning of day 2, though, I was absolutely knackered, and I needed to stop for a rest.
Along the trail there are small wilderness cabins that you can use for shelter. Sometimes they appear in small clusters, but you never know which ones are unlocked, so you often have to wander around checking doors. When you find one open, it’s magic. Inside, there might be simple beds with mattresses, a wood-burning stove, and somewhere to sit down out of the wind. Nothing fancy, but when you’ve been trudging through snow for hours, it feels like a slight reprieve.
Seeing one marked on the map gives you a little mental boost, a tiny hit of morale that helps keep you moving forward. Until you get there… and none of the bastards are open. Which happened more than once, and it absolutely destroys you. You build the whole next section of the race around that break, imagining the warmth, the rest, the chance to sit down, only to arrive and realise the next possible shelter might be four hours away. In a strange way, it’s almost a dark comedy.
The people you meet
One of the best things about races like this is the people you meet along the way. Out there on the trail, you start chatting to other competitors, and you realise the race has attracted some genuinely fascinating characters. One of them was Dan Holder, who eventually finished second overall. Dan is a Royal Marine Commando veteran, a proper gent, and an absolute legend. Later in the race, he even rescued me a bit by sharing some food when I was crashing hard.
That’s something I really love about races like this, and ultras in general. There’s a real sense of camaraderie. People aren’t climbing over each other to get ahead. Everyone checks in with each other as they pass: “You alright?”, “Yeah, you good?”
When conditions are that tough, the competition takes a bit of a back seat. Out there, you’re all just trying to survive the same madness, and if you think you're only one that's a bit fucked up, do an ultra, there's a load of you.
A bit of trail karma
Earlier, I mentioned the basket on the trekking pole. Well, when I passed a guy called Luke, I mentioned that I’d lost one. As luck would have it, he happened to have a spare one and gave it to me.
That’s exactly what I mean about the spirit of these races, people helping each other out when they can. This one was a proper snow basket, much larger than the one I’d been using, and I couldn’t believe the difference it made. Suddenly, the pole was actually doing its job, especially on the deep powder climbs that were coming up.
The difference was night and day. Of course, the right pole still felt pretty useless, but at least I was halfway functional again. Then, a couple of days later, I got incredibly lucky. I actually found another basket lying in one of the safety huts along the trail. What a result.
Typical though, when I first tried to screw it onto the pole, it wouldn’t go on. The thread was completely packed with ice. So I had to wait until later when I had the stove running to melt the ice out of it.
But once that was sorted, both poles finally had proper baskets, and straight away I could feel the difference. My movement felt smoother and more efficient, like I’d finally stopped fighting the equipment and could actually get back to focusing on the race.
Keep moving forward
As I mentioned earlier, the days started to merge into one another. Time stopped having much meaning, and I simply focused on one thing: Keep moving forward.
I developed a very simple system to keep myself going. I would count 100 steps in my head. If I had to stop halfway up a hill, I’d pause, take a breath, and then start again from zero. When I hit 100 steps, I’d quietly say to myself, “Well done, mate,” and start again. Another hundred. And another. It kept things simple and manageable.
I found myself becoming incredibly present in the moment. I wasn’t really thinking about much else, and whenever my mind started drifting, the counting would almost override whatever distraction was creeping in.
Now look, I’m not going to pretend I don’t have demons. Part of doing races like this is about facing them. In the past, I’ve used them as fuel, and it’s worked before. But this time it was different. I was almost completely zoned out. At one point, I even said to myself, “Well… you’d better think about that thing while you’ve got the time.” But I couldn’t. Or at least, not for very long.
My mind just kept coming back to the rhythm: step… step… step… count… repeat. As the days went by and the number of racers gradually dropped, I started feeling more confident. I remember one moment thinking: “Fuck me… I’ve actually got this.” I imagined the conversations with those demons, basically telling them to fuck off.
I imagined putting the finisher’s medal around my son’s neck, because I’d already seen what it looked like. And I imagined the first glass of champagne on my business-class flight back to Singapore, my reward for finishing the race and completing my MBA.
Perhaps a little too confident.
The checkpoint
Up until then, things were going fairly well. Alright, I did manage to take a slight 20-minute detour about a kilometre away from one checkpoint, but nothing catastrophic. Eventually, I arrived at the checkpoint itself, a massive lodge, and fuck me… it was glorious. Warm. Running hot water. A proper indoor shower. And an actual toilet. Absolute bliss. This was going to be my first proper sleep in about five days. Except there was one small catch. I still had to sleep outside. “You are fucking joking.”
Good people
One of the guys I’d been moving along the trail with was Paul, an ex-Paratrooper. Unfortunately, the medics ended up pulling him from the race due to frostbite. I was absolutely gutted for him, and selfishly a bit gutted for myself too, because he was great for morale.
Before leaving though, the legend handed me a load of chocolate and snacks to keep me going. Which, to be fair, turned out to be a massive win. It more than made up for the chocolate-covered liquorice someone had donated earlier in the race. I mean seriously…what the fuck is that? Who actually eats that shit?
Camp Life
Another guy I got friendly with was Lewis, an ex–Royal Marine Commando. Proper sound bloke. We ended up loosely buddying up, agreeing we’d set off at the same time the following morning.
That night we slept outside in our pulks (the sleds we were dragging behind us), and surprisingly it was actually quite cosy. Originally, I’d planned to set my alarm for 0400, but then I thought: “Fuck it. You’re well ahead, have an extra hour.”
The truth was, I didn’t actually know where I stood in the race anymore. I’d completely stopped tracking the timings or the cut-offs. I just assumed I was moving well and somewhere near the front of those still left in the race.
We woke up, packed everything away, and I was just about to set off when another thought crossed my mind. “You know what… I’ll squeeze out one more luxury poo.” Better to deal with that now than in the freezing cold a couple of hours later. Between that and the later start, it meant I set off an hour and a-bit behind Lewis. Still, I was completely blasé about the timings and the cut-offs. No stress, so off I trotted.
When things started going wrong
Everything was going fairly smoothly. About 15 km in, I reached a small hut and decided to stop to refill water and get some food in. It felt a bit early, but thankfully I did, because, as at that point I didn't know I wouldn't properly eat again for more than 30 hours.
Shortly after leaving the hut I ran into a problem. A group of what looked like kids on snowmobiles had been tearing up the trail. They’d churned the snow into soft powder, and suddenly the track I’d been following was destroyed. Every step I took, I started falling through the surface. This went on for kilometer after kilometer, including up another huge fuck-off powder hill. Bastards.
The toboggon incident
When I reached the top of the hill, I thought: “Fuck this.” I had what seemed like a brilliant idea at the time. Why not jump onto the pulk and ride it down the hill like a toboggan? Now, objectively speaking, this was quite a stupid idea. I could have injured myself, destroyed the pulk, or taken myself out of the race entirely. But I was frustrated and needed to make up some time back. Besides, some of the other racers had skis.
So I climbed onto the pulk. At first, it was wobbly and unstable, but I quickly worked out how to balance, using my core and poles for stability, with my feet in front acting as brakes and steering me. Steady. Steaaady. Oh fuck. Oh fuck. Oh fuuuck. SMASH. Straight into a tree. Thankfully, I was fine, just covered in snow, and there was still plenty of hill left to descend. I set off again, and suddenly I had it dialled in; I was flying. Honestly, it was brilliant fun. I was probably smiling ear to ear behind two buffs and a pair of massive ski goggles.
Two snowmobilers rode past going uphill, turned around, and watched me shoot past. They must’ve been thinking: “What the fuck is this idiot doing?” I made it to the bottom mostly unscathed, although I did lose a water bottle along the way. Not that it mattered much. The water in those bottles froze solid within an hour anyway, so they were about as useful as tits on a fish.
Cold, hungry and alone
Eventually, the fun wore off, and I started getting really cold. I needed shelter so I could brew up, boil water, and get some food down. According to the map, there should have been a church and some huts nearby. But I couldn’t find a single one that was open.
To make matters worse, I got stuck in deep snow, burning energy and getting colder by the minute. “Stop wasting time, knob-head. Just keep moving.” At one point, I thought I saw Lewis’s headlamp in the distance and shouted out, but no reply. Now, I was starting to hallucinate. So I carried on, crossing a frozen lake. Eventually, the cold became too much. “Fuck this. This is getting serious, you need to get in your dossbag mate, sharpish.”
A bad place
Getting into a sleeping bag in those conditions is logistically brutal. When you take your hands out of your outer gloves, the warm vapour inside them freezes within about 45 seconds. Everything has to be done carefully and quickly with just your thin inner gloves. I even took my boots off, which is risky, because once you stop moving, they start freezing solid.
Over time, the ice builds up inside them until they actually crush your feet when you walk. I managed to pull on extra layers: a thick ski suit, sleeping bag boots, fresh dry mitts, hat, two buffs. Then I climbed into the bag inside the pulk, and I was still fucking freezing. I set my alarm… but it never went off, the fucking battery had died because of the drop in temperature. I had expected it to last longer, as it had been fine in the days before, so I hadn’t packed the charger cable. TWAT!
Eventually it hit me: "You’re in trouble here Snowy". Then the obvious dawned on me, I was trying to sleep on a frozen lake. A giant sheet of ice, and I was completely exposed to the wind. “Nice one, dickhead.”
You gotta move mate
By now, I was shaking like a shitting dog. I mentally rehearsed how I’d get out of the bag, change layers, and how to get moving again. Every second exposed to the cold was dangerous. Everything went to plan… until I reached my boots, the fuckers were frozen solid. Fucking hell!
I couldn’t get my feet inside them and meanwhile, I was rapidly losing feeling in my fingers. “FUUUCK.” Until this point, the 'C bomb' had been reserved for big fuck-off hills, but now the boots were getting it. Eventually, after a lot of stamping and “c*nting”, I managed to force them on, but it took a lot of effort, and now, my fucking toes were worryingly freezing. I started doing star jumps, squats, running on the spot, anything to get blood flowing. Nothing worked, so I did the only thing left, and I started walking again.
Surviving til Daylight
I was exhausted, hanging out of my arse and I'd barely warmed up. I was hungry, thirsty, and so fucking tired. My eyeballs felt like they were rolling around in my head. At one point, I was walking with my eyes closed, counting steps just to steal tiny moments of rest. The plan was simple: just survive until daylight.
Eventually morning came, but I was moving painfully slow. Fresh snowfall had dumped another layer of powder, making every step harder. Then I started seeing signs of Lewis ahead of me, mostly in the form of yellow piss holes in the snow. Judging by the fluorescent colour, he looked pretty dehydrated too. Still, I was relieved; at least I wasn’t completely alone.
I just want some food
Eventually, it warmed enough that I felt safe stopping to light the stove. For anyone who hasn’t done this in winter conditions, melting snow takes forever. Snow is mostly air. A full pan of snow melts into barely a mouthful of water. Then there was the lighter, the fucker wouldn’t light, because, of course, it was too fucking cold.
The solution? Rub it in your hands…or stick it down your arse crack for a few minutes to warm it up. Eventually, I got water warm enough to rehydrate my ration pack meal, although it ended up lukewarm and pretty grim. I didn’t care, I fucking was starving.
The realisation
Later, while crossing another frozen lake, the race staff caught up with me to change my tracker, which had stopped working, because...yup, it was so cold. I also let them know my watch battery had died, so I had no comprehension of time, (although I had an idea, as the midday sun was roughly in the southern direction). Then they gave me an update:
“28 km to the next checkpoint.”
“Sweet. What time is it?”
“13:30.”
“Great. I’ve still got about twelve hours then.”
“No. Seven and a half. Cut-off is 20:00.”
My arse dropped.
“What?! I thought it was midnight.”
“Nope. 20:00.”
Fuuuuck. Fucking-fuck! I’d completely lost track of time in my complacency.
Whatever it takes
I had to pull my finger out and move-sharp. I roughly calculated the numbers. If I pushed hard, it was just possible, plus I had my extra allowance for the clusterfuck at the beginning of the race. So I increased my pace from around 2 kph to about 5 kph and throw in some running. 5kph was the 'training pace' I'd been working on on the beaches of Singapore, and that was when I was fresh; but I'm now fucking hanging, it took a lot.
Also, I hadn’t actually run in months because of my Achilles injury, but if I missed the checkpoint, the race was over anyway, so that was a 'tomorrow problem'. So I started doing intervals. Walk. Run. Walk. Run.
Eventually, I could see the town lights in the distance, but in the pitch-black Arctic night, they looked like a mirage, they never seemed to get any closer. I pulled out my emergency gels, fucking frozen solid, weren't they. Of course. I stuffed one under my armpit, one down my arse crack, and one under my hat. Eventually, they thawed enough to chew and waited for them to kick in to give me a boost. C'mon. C'monnn. I must've been too fucked for that to happen, because I didn't get a nudge, let alone a kick.
The moment it ended
Finally, I checked my phone again, and I was still four kilometres away. time: 20:30. I was going to miss my cut-off.
I dropped to my knees in the snow. “How the fuck did I let this happen?” I couldn't believe it, but I knew I couldn't give up. What was I supposed to do, tell my son I quit? Fuck no! I stood up, I rationalised that if I could show them I was still strong, maybe-maybe they’ll let me continue, and there's only four of us left anyway. So, I kept walking.
The finish...That wasn't
When I finally reached the checkpoint, some of the staff clapped and cheered. I asked if I’d made it...I hadn’t. I’d missed the cut-off by about 35-fucking-minutes. 313km, seven days of suffering, and I’d thrown it away. Not because of the weather, not because I didn’t have skis, not because of an old injury, but because I got complacent, and that’s a tough pill to swallow.
The aftermath
When I got into the lodge, and the adrenaline vanished, my body completely collapsed and seized. Everything suddenly hurt ten times more. It took two of the staff to remove my boots, as they had frozen around my feet. They got hot food into me quickly, homemade chili, now, the best I'd ever eaten. I couldn’t stop eating. After that, I hobbled to the shower, and trying to undress became my next challenge. Butt-naked, I caught sight of myself in the mirror for the first time in a week. There was nothing left of me. I was absolutely shredded-proper 'dick-skin lean'.
I stood under that hot water for nearly half an hour, partly because it felt incredible, partly because my legs were now so stiff I could barely move. Eventually, I dragged myself to bed, a real bed, with a mattress, a quilt, a pillow and, in a heated room. It felt like heaven, and strangely alien becuase I didn't have force myself to get out of bed and get moving again, because now my race was officially over.
Now what?
Even three weeks later, my body is still pretty fucked. My nervous system feels completely fried. I’m weak, my heels and toes are in constant pain, and I’ve had persistent pins and needles running through my feet. The toes that turned black, are only now just starting to get back to a normal colour, and I'm just getting the feeling back in my fingertips, as the dead skin slowly sheds away. My body cannot regulate its temperature, and I was pissing sweat during the night for two weeks. In short, the body has taken a proper battering, like never before.
But honestly? As painful as the physical aftermath has been, it still doesn’t compare to the pain of not crossing that finish line; that one hurts far more. I’m absolutely gutted, and do you know what the worst part is…?
I’ve got to do it all again. But next time there’ll be no excuses, only experience.
Unfinished business.
Ka powww. 👊
In part two of this blog, I'll go into more details about my preparation (training and equipment), as well as the lessons I learned along the way, so stay tuned.
