When the noise falls away
- Feb 27
- 6 min read
Words by Hannah Tapping | Images by Tom Wharton
Pushing mind and body beyond the limits.
Widely regarded as one of the toughest winter ultra-marathons in the UK, the Arc of Attrition 100 follows a gruelling route along the South West Coast Path from Coverack to Portreath. Testing athletes to their limits as they cover difficult terrain in tough and unpredictable winter conditions, the race sees runners battling with the elements, the darkness, body and mind. Mike Samuels ran his first Arc 100 in 2023, finishing in the top 50 within an elite field of 332 runners with a time of 27hrs 31mins and 16 seconds. Some endurance feats announce themselves loudly. Others arrive almost by accident, stitched together from curiosity and stubbornness. Refusing to let go of an idea once it had taken hold, Mike Samuels decided to return to Cornwall and run the Arc 100 again, breaking the 24-hour barrier. However, the story doesn’t end there, what follows is a tale of building a life that supports extreme ideas and about why, sometimes, the most radical thing you can do is simply keep going.
Before we get into the Arc itself, can you take me back a bit. Where does your story begin?
I was born and raised in Southampton and lived there most of my life. I’m an only child, and had what I would call a very normal childhood really. I followed the traditional route, school then college, but I knew pretty early on I didn’t want a conventional job. I’ve always described myself as a very mild-mannered rebel. I wasn’t disruptive, I didn’t cause trouble, but I also didn’t really like following rules or taking direction from other people. So instead of going to university, I signed up to become a personal trainer and moved to London at the age of 18. I had this idea that if you qualified as a PT in London, people would queue up to pay you £100 an hour just to chat while they worked out. In reality, I was shy, introverted, and terrible at walking up to strangers in a gym to sell myself and so, after 18 months, I moved back to Southampton.
That sounds like an early lesson in self-awareness…
Definitely. Back in Southampton, I built a mobile personal training business instead and that’s actually where writing came into my life. I realised I wasn’t good at networking or cold conversations, so I thought, I’ll learn a bit of SEO, build a website, write some blogs. It worked and within a year I was fully booked, doing 50–55 PT sessions a week. Which is great, until you realise that a 4:30am alarm and getting home at 9pm every night isn’t sustainable. So I started writing more. Fitness articles, ebooks, online products, coaching tips. Then other people in the fitness industry started asking if I could help them build an online presence. That slowly turned into copywriting and by around 2016 I went all-in on that instead. Looking back, a lot of what I do now – running included – comes from that same place: finding ways to work with my nature rather than fighting it.
And running enters the picture during lockdown?
Yes, like a lot of people, I just got bored of doing burpees in the garden. I’d run a few 10Ks years earlier, but I realised pretty quickly that while I wasn’t fast, I liked going further. The idea of distance over speed really stuck, and it felt more honest somehow, less performative. My first ultra-race was Race to the King in 2021, an epic ultramarathon taking in the South coast, South Downs Way, and Monarch’s Way. I’d run a half marathon and was planning a marathon, but I heard Ross Edgley on a podcast saying that an ultra is ‘only a bit longer’ than a marathon and, let’s face it, an ultra just sounds cooler. Race to the King was about 53 miles and at the time it was the hardest thing I’d ever done. But the feeling at the end was unlike anything else and that was the hook. From there it just escalated: 100 milers, then 200-mile races such as Race Across Scotland. I learned pretty quickly that my strength wasn’t speed it was being able to break things into chunks and keep moving, even when it felt awful.
How do you even beging to train for distances up to 200 miles?
You can’t train the full distance, you would destroy yourself. The goal is to simulate fatigue without breaking down. So, instead of one huge long run, you stack tiredness. You might do two hours of hard running on a Friday, then five hours on Saturday, then another three on Sunday, all on already tired legs. Before Scotland, my biggest training weekend was maybe 70 miles total. That’s a small percentage of the race distance, but it teaches your body and your head what fatigue feels like.
Speaking of your head, ultra-running is deeply solitary. What are you coping strategies?
I think being an only child helped. I’m naturally introverted and comfortable in my own head so I like travelling alone, I like the quiet. Mentally, I break everything down. You’re never running 200 miles, you’re running to the next checkpoint and then the next, resetting each time. Importantly, you have to accept that low points will come, but know that they also go. You might have six terrible hours and then the sun comes up, you eat something and suddenly you feel human again. It becomes really quite simple: your job is simply to get to the end. You can moan about it afterwards, but for now, you have to silence your inner demons and just do the work.
Tell me about the Arc of Attrition. Why that race in particular?
I first did the Arc 100 in 2023 because my cousin lives in Cornwall and her husband’s an ultra-runner. He suggested it as something “a bit different.” It certainly was and I massively underestimated quite how different it was. The South West Coast Path is brutal, steep, technical, relentless. Navigation is harder than people think and winter conditions mean long hours of darkness, slick rocks and a lot of mud! I was genuinely terrified before that first race. But I enjoyed it. Then in 2024 I went back to try and break 24 hours mainly because you get a black buckle if you do. I finished in just over 23 hours and thought I was done…but then I started wondering if anyone had ever run it out and back. A little research told me they hadn’t and so the idea lodged itself. I couldn’t let it go.
So, the Arc 100 out and back was born?
Exactly. The plan was simple in theory: run the Arc 100, turn around at the finish and run it again. In reality, it took 67 hours and 3 minutes; about 26 hours on the way out, and a much slower return. The terrain doesn’t soften just because you’re tired. If anything, it feels sharper. Physically, I got through mostly unscathed, My ankles were fine but my feet were destroyed. Waterproof socks turned out to be a mistake in dry, warm conditions and I ended up with infected blisters and on antibiotics afterwards. But that’s all part of it. You prepare as best you can, but some things just happen.
How did the resultant film come about?
I posted in a Facebook group just in case anyone wanted to come out and help crew or run a section and a guy called Tom Wharton messaged me. He’s both an ultra-runner and a filmmaker with a television background. He had always wanted to make an ultra-documentary and asked if he could follow the run. I assumed he was about to tell me it would cost a fortune, but instead, he said he couldn’t pay me, he just wanted to make something honest. His team were incredible, with the four of them out on the trail at 2am, filming, running sections, leapfrogging checkpoints. Far from being a distraction, they were an absolute lift. Fuelled by grit, caffeine and a brilliant support crew, what unfolded was a test of physical endurance and a raw, intimate look at friendship, suffering and the unrelenting pursuit of something extraordinary. The film is a story of pain, of persistence and of unbreakable will: run to the end, turn around and see what’s left when the noise falls away.
Fastest Known Time: Arc of Attrition premiered at The Cornwall Running Show in late 2025 and is available to rent at fktfilm.com.
