The race plan & race report templates I use for every ultra

By Raph · August 10, 2026

Over the last three weeks, the Runsense cohort ran 576 miles across 111 runs and traded 628 messages with their coach.

Two and a half weeks ago, I DNFed at mile 32 of the Never Summer 100k. It's a hard race: technical trails, a lot of climbing, high altitude. Race day was hot with barely any cloud cover, but that's not why I stopped. I had a solid race plan. I just hadn't put in the training to make that plan feasible. I wrote up the full story, and what two finishes and two DNFs have taught me about what actually counts as enough, over on my personal site: Satis Perficere.

A DNF isn't the end of the learning, it's data. Before every race, I write a plan: fueling targets, splits between aid stations, what's in each drop bag, when I need poles or dry socks. After, I write a race report: what actually happened, leg by leg, what worked, what I'd change. I've done this since my first Never Summer 60k in 2024. In 2025 I ran that same course fifty minutes faster, not because I got dramatically fitter in a year, but because the 2024 report told me exactly what to fix: drink more, use poles for longer, keep aid station stops short. Even this year's DNF report already has its own deltas logged: I was undertrained for a 100k, and the fueling rate that worked fine at a lower training load gave me gut trouble at a higher one. The plan doesn't guarantee the outcome. The plan and the report together are what make your next attempt smarter than this one.

If you want to build your own and don't want to start from a blank page, here are the actual templates I use, cleaned up so anyone can adapt them: a race plan template and a race report template. Copy them, fill in your race, make them yours.

For more on the pieces that go into a race plan, our guides cover the A/B/C goal framework, race day fueling, and setting up your crew and drop bags.

— Raph