Ultra Race Guides: Aid Stations and Cutoffs¶

The race you want is in a PDF somewhere.

Maybe you have been reading about ultras for a year and have not told anyone. You have a few races open in tabs: a 50K a few hours' drive away, a 50 miler with a kinder time limit, a 100K that keeps turning up in race reports. The question under all of them is the same. Could I finish this? The answer is on page eleven of a runner's guide, in a table that may or may not be this year's.

I keep a catalog of ultras at navrun.app/ultras so that question has somewhere to start. It is free, it needs no account, and it says so when it does not know something.

Why an ultra is harder to read than a road race¶

A road marathon fits on one page: a start time, a course limit, water every couple of miles. An ultra hands you rules that shape your whole day.

A few words first. An aid station is a stop on the course with food, water and volunteers. A cutoff is the time by which you have to reach or leave a station; miss it and your race ends there, and most ultras have them along the way, not only at the finish. Your crew is whoever meets you with your own food, dry socks and a chair, and they can only go where the race allows. A drop bag is a bag you pack before the start that the race carries to a station for you. A pacer runs part of the course beside you, usually from a named station onward.

Where your crew can stand, where your drop bags go and when the cutoffs fall decide whether a race is doable for you. Race directors set those limits for real reasons. The Human Potential Running Series explains that permits require them to "specify the exact period of time we intend to use the resource/property." The limits are fair. Finding them has never been easy.

What a race page shows you¶

Web. Free, no account.

Every race in the catalog has its own page:

• The aid stations in order, with the mile of each and its cutoff where the race has published one.
• Crew access, drop bags and pacers. For every stop: can your crew get there, can a drop bag, and where a pacer picks you up.
• Driving directions for your crew, where the race published them, each drive measured from the stop before.
• The climb and a course map, with the stops your crew can reach drawn differently from the ones they cannot.
• Course previews, films and race reports on some races, playing on the page. A table says a climb is four miles long. Watching somebody walk it says more.
• Cancelled and postponed notices in plain words, and a cancelled race stops counting down to a day it is not being run.

You can filter the catalog by distance, from under 50K to 100 miles and beyond, and by month and state. Each page carries its facts in a form search engines and AI assistants can read.

"Not checked yet" is not a no¶

When nobody has confirmed a fact, the page says "not checked yet". It never turns a blank into an answer.

That matters most for crew. A blank next to crew access does not mean your crew is shut out. It means nobody has looked. The page says so above the table: "Anything marked 'not checked yet' is a gap in what we hold, never a no from the race." When a question has no answer by design, like an overall cutoff at a backyard ultra, the page says "does not apply to this race", because that is an answer.

Tell the next runner¶

At the foot of every page is a form that asks, "What do you wish someone had told you?" You can also send a correction, a course film, or the link to the race's GPX file (the course line a watch or phone can follow). A person reads everything before the page changes.

Adding a race brings its course with it¶

Web and iPhone.

When you have picked a race, put it on your NavRun calendar. The add-a-race search looks through the catalog first. On iPhone it is the plus on the Races tab.

Tapping a result adds nothing. A race that runs several distances shows them side by side, with the miles, the climb and how many aid stations we hold for each, and you pick yours. Then you read what would come across: the stops, the cutoffs we hold, what the race has said about crew and drop bags, and which facts nobody has checked. Only your yes puts it on your races.

On the web, your race page then says what arrived in one line: "Your course arrived: 22 aid stations, 21 with a cutoff." If no stop carries a cutoff yet, it says "Nobody has said a cutoff for any of them yet" instead of a number.

Most races in the catalog do not have their aid stations written down yet. When yours is one of them, the page says so instead of showing an empty list, and you can add the stops yourself. If your race is not there at all, "My race is not in the catalog" sits under the search results.

Adding your first race starts 30 days of the Crew, NavRun's paid plan, with no credit card. The catalog, the race pages, the course coming across and the cutoff times are free either way.

What it does not do yet¶

• It is not every race. Just under 900 races had pages when I wrote this. A race gets a page once someone has researched it, and the catalog grows in batches.
• Most courses have no aid stations on file, and many have no measured distance. Those save as "Distance not set yet" instead of a guess.
• Timed races are a different shape. A backyard, a 24 hour or a 48 hour has no distance, so the aid station and cutoff tools do not fit them well yet. Their pages are still there to read.
• It will not tell you whether you can make a cutoff. The page prints the race's own times. How much time you have in hand comes from your own training.

Reading a race by hand¶

Worth doing for any race you are weighing, account or not.

1. Find the runner's guide. Check the year on it. Old and new versions can sit on the same site.
2. Make one table. A row per aid station: mile, cutoff, crew, drop bag, pacers. Where the guide says nothing, write "ask", never "no".
3. Do the cutoff math. Divide the minutes until each cutoff by the miles to reach it. A station 20 miles in with a cutoff six hours after the start is 18 minutes a mile, stops included. Compare that with how you move on similar ground, walking the climbs.
4. Find the longest gap. It decides how much water and food you carry. CTS puts it plainly: "Know your action plan precisely so you won't be distracted once you arrive."
5. Email the race. Directors answer "can crew reach mile 31?" all the time.

For the rest, see using aid stations well, the crew and pacer guide, and training for a first 50K.

Common Questions¶

Is the NavRun race catalog free?¶

Yes. Every race page at navrun.app/ultras is free to read with no account.

What does "not checked yet" mean on a race page?¶

Nobody has confirmed that fact for this race yet. It is never a no, so a crew stop marked "not checked yet" may well be open to crews.

Does every race have its aid stations on file?¶

No, most do not yet. The page and the add-a-race flow both say so, and you can add the stops to your own race by hand.

Can I add a race that is not in the catalog?¶

Yes. Press "My race is not in the catalog" under the search results and fill it in yourself.

Does the catalog cover backyard and 24 hour races?¶

Yes. They have no set distance, so the aid station and cutoff tools do not fit them well yet.

The short version¶

Before you enter anything, the facts that decide whether a race is doable belong on one page. The catalog gives each race that page for free, and adding the race brings its course with it when we have one.

Start free. navrun.app