Where and when should my crew wait?
Only at points the rules allow: elsewhere, taking help can cost you a disqualification. At each of these points your crew needs three things — GPS coordinates, a time window rather than a single time, and the list of what they're preparing.
The rule comes from the race regulations, station by station, and it has three states: crew allowed, crew banned, or crew reserved for pass holders. A life base adds a bag dropped off the day before, which is not the same thing as having your crew there. That's the first thing to check, before nutrition even comes up: a plan that counts on personal resupply where crew is banned simply can't be run, and the runner finds that out on the spot.
Next come your crew's three needs. GPS coordinates, because a hamlet name can't be found at night on a mountain road. A time window, never a single time: a crew that waits two hours too long ends up going off to eat just as you arrive. And a separate list of what they hand over on the spot and what you carry away — two different actions, and you shouldn't have to remember which is which at hour fifteen. These meeting points matter all the more because that is where the withdrawals cluster: at UTMB 2025, three points alone — all of them life bases — account for more than a third of all withdrawals.
On a real race: Mont-Blanc — UTMB®
On Mont-Blanc — UTMB®, a runner with a UTMB® Index of 600 finishes in 37h10 and spends 1h54 stopped. A crew in the wrong place, or there at the wrong time, doesn't save you that time: it makes it longer.
| UTMB® Index | Estimated time | Carbs | Fluid | Sodium |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 500 | 43h01 | 2,581 g | 30.1 L | 21,508 mg |
| 600 | 37h10 | 2,230 g | 26 L | 18,583 mg |
| 800 | 24h36 | 1,476 g | 17.2 L | 12,300 mg |
Temps repris des passages réels des coureurs de chaque tranche de cote sur les éditions précédentes, arrêts aux ravitaillements compris. Besoins calculés à 60 g/h de glucides, 700 mL/h de liquide et 500 mg/h de sodium, par temps tempéré.
Concretely: list the points where crew is allowed, and tell your crew where they're not allowed to be. Give them a GPS point and a time window for each meeting, not a village name. Then prep one bag per point: what they hand over on one side, what you carry on the other.
RAVIT applies this calculation to 2,778 races across 49 countries, with 6,547 aid stations whose contents are taken from the official rulebooks.