How to plan an ultra trail race

UltraTrailPlan is a browser planner for the race-day details: aid stations and cutoffs, pacing, fuel and water, and a printable sheet. It starts from a GPX file or a race in the library.

What a plan has to answer

An ultra plan is mostly a set of constraints. The course decides where the climbs, descents and long stretches fall. Your pace and profile decide how long each leg takes. The cutoffs decide where there is no room to be late, and the aid stations decide what you can resupply and what you have to carry. The start time decides which sections are run in the dark. A finish time on its own answers none of those.

The planner keeps the constraints together. Change the start time and the night sections move; move a station and the legs and the fuel plan change; change the profile and the splits and the cutoff buffers change. The seven steps are the order in which the plan becomes specific, not a checklist to finish.

How the plan comes together

The planner works through those steps in the flow bar. Each one depends on the one before it: the race sets the clock, the stations divide the route, the profile sets the pace, the pace sets the splits, the timeline checks them, the fuel plan uses the leg durations, and the print sheet is the result. You can move between steps at any time; the order is what makes the numbers depend on each other.

Step	What it settles
Race	Set the plan name, the race date and the start time. The start time is what puts the night sections and the arrival clocks in the right place.
Aid	Add aid stations, set cutoffs and services, and add notes. The stations divide the route into legs; the cutoffs are the constraints the pace has to meet. Start and finish are pinned to the ends of the route.
Profile	Set your flat pace, fatigue, surface factors, altitude and night penalties, and your climb and descent scalers. This is what makes the pace yours rather than a generic estimate. Auto-Detect can fill these from a past GPX.
Pace	Choose a flat pace or a target finish time. A target is useful when a cutoff or a crew meet fixes the day; the planner solves the whole model to reach it. The pacing table shows each leg with pace, duration and arrival, and marks night and altitude.
Time	Check arrivals, departures, night sections, aid time and fueling actions on the timeline. This is where the plan is checked against the clock rather than the distance.
Fuel	Check carbs, fluid and salt for each leg, and what to carry or pick up at each station. Fuel follows the leg duration and the next station's services, so it is computed after the pace. The packing list shows what leaves each station.
Print	Export the PDF or open the print dialog. The sheet includes the pacing and fueling tables and a wristband card, for the parts of the day when a phone is awkward.

Checking the plan against the route

Stations can be edited on the map because the course data is where a plan is most likely to need correction. A station may not be where the public data puts it, a service may be missing, or a cutoff may sit at the top of a climb. Correcting the station changes the legs and the fuel plan, so the planner lets you fix the course data instead of planning around an error.

Right-click the route to add a station at that distance. Right-click a station to edit, move or delete it. The aid table has distance, time, totals, segments and services views. Clicking a row moves the map to that leg. The elevation chart and the map share a cursor, and dragging across the chart moves the map with it.

The left and right panels can be resized. On a phone, the planner uses one panel with the same seven tabs, a floating button, and a compact elevation strip in portrait. The app is installable and local plans open offline; the map tiles are not cached, so the map needs a connection.

Keyboard shortcuts:

R Race, A Aid, D Profile, P Pacing, T Timeline, F Fueling
C clock, G grade colours, N night, H altitude, Esc deselect

What is free and what is Premium

Free	Premium
GPX import and route analysis	Cloud sync for plans
Planner, pacing and fueling	Crew sharing
Auto-Detect from a recorded GPX	Full race library
Printable PDF and wristband	Extra map tiles and 3D terrain
Local plans, no account needed	Plan comparison (beta)

An account is needed for cloud sync and sharing. Premium is billed through Paddle; the checkout shows the price in your currency.

What it does not do

It is not an official race tool. The route, aid stations and cutoffs come from public information and your own edits; check them against the organiser's instructions. It does not model weather, heat, mud or how you will feel on the day. It does not track you live.

Start with a GPX file or a race from the library.

Start from a GPX or race

Cite this page: “How to plan an ultra trail race”, UltraTrailPlan, https://ultratrailplan.com/guides/plan-an-ultra-trail-race/.