Guide

Every setting, how the numbers are worked out, the plan code, and what the research behind ULTRA RACE found. Change settings in the Connect IQ app (ULTRA RACE › Settings).

ULTRA RACE setup: the planner turns a race GPX into a plan code, which goes into the field's settings; the watch's ready screen confirms the aid stations and cutoffs it loaded.

ULTRA RACE's fuel settings: carbs per hour and per gel, first fuel, fluid, salt and logging, next to an aid-station view and a fuel prompt.

Your numbers beat any default. If you have a coach, a sweat test or a fuelling plan you trained with, use those.

Plan

Setting	Default	Guidance
Aid-station plan, parts 1 to 8	Empty	The code from the planner, pasted part by part. Most races fit in two to four parts; parts 5 to 8 are for long 200-mile plans. Without it the field shows distance, climb, effort and fuel.
Gun time	Empty (the watch start)	The race start as a clock time, e.g. `05:00`. Set it if you start the watch late, or for a wave start, so elapsed cutoffs keep their minutes.
Planned minutes at each aid station	4	Counted against every leave-by cutoff, and the “MOVE ON” nudge fires when it’s up. Experienced 100-milers spend 2–5 minutes at small stations and 5–8 at big ones. A station’s own planned stop in the plan (a sleep stop) replaces it there.
Slow-down after the next aid station	10%	Everything after the next aid station is projected this much slower than you’re moving now. Fields slow 18–33% over a 100-miler; raise it for your first.
Continue after a restart	On	When the watch dies or saves the activity 6 hours or more into the race, short of the finish, a new activity within 12 hours carries the race on (press LAP at the next aid station to sync). Turn it off after a DNF if you run again within 12 hours.
Sync with the navigated course	On	On watches with navigation, when your course’s next point has the aid station’s name, ULTRA RACE uses its exact distance and marks arrival there.
HR cap	Off	A buzz after a minute over it, at most every 10 minutes. Many coaches use about 5 bpm under aerobic threshold on climbs early on.
Night view	After sunset	Brighter labels and a light pulse with every prompt, between sunset and sunrise. Or always, or off.

Fuel

Setting	Default	Guidance
Carbs per hour	60 g	The only ultra position stand (ISSN) says 30–50 g/h; finishers in field studies eat more, 60–90 g/h with a trained gut. Use what you trained with.
Carbs per gel or portion	25 g	What one prompt means. 25 g at 60 g/h is a prompt every 25 minutes.
First fuel	20 min into the race	Start early; the hole you dig in the first hours is the one you can’t climb out of.
Fluid per hour	500 ml	450–750 ml/h for most runners, more in heat. Drink to thirst around that: overdrinking, not too little salt, is what causes low sodium.
Drink per prompt	150 ml	A few mouthfuls; the interval follows from your fluid per hour.
Salt every	Off	Minutes between electrolyte prompts, if you take capsules.
Fuel logging	Prompts count as taken	Or tap the field on touch watches that pass taps to fields; untapped prompts repeat.
Heat mode	Off	Fluid +25% (capped at 1 L/h), carbs −15%.

The plan code

The planner writes it; you can also write it by hand. One station per |, up to six fields separated by commas: name,km from the start,climb from the start in m,cutoff,planned arrival,planned stop. Only the name and the distance are required, and the finish comes last.

Pine Ridge,16.4,1150,9:40,+2:40|High Lake,48.3,2760,15:50,+8:30|Finish,161,5600,+30:00,+28:30

Ridge Camp,97.6,4300,+31:00,+25:00,1:30|Lodge Camp,170.4,7100,D3 14:00,+45:30,2:30|Finish,321.9,11800,+105:00,+91:00

Cutoffs and arrivals: 15:50 is a clock time, +9:50 is from the gun. Clock times run in order, so a cutoff at 03:30 after one at 22:00 is the next morning. For cutoffs more than a day apart (200-milers often have them only at sleep stations), give the race day: D3 14:00 is 14:00 on the third day, day 1 being the start day.
Planned stop: minutes (90) or hours and minutes (2:30), at most 12 hours. Empty uses “Planned minutes at each aid station”. It counts against the cutoffs and the finish, and sets the stop timer and the “MOVE ON” nudge there.
Names: up to 14 characters, no commas or bars. Up to 60 stations, split over eight settings of 250 characters.
The ready screen counts what it read; “unreadable” there means a station was skipped.

How the numbers are worked out

Race clock	Time since the gun (the gun time setting) or since you started the activity.
Course distance	The watch’s distance, corrected to each station’s official distance when you press LAP there or reach its course point.
Effort	Distance + climb × 10: 100 m of climb counts as 1 km. Climb is the watch’s own total ascent, so it matches Garmin’s numbers.
Effort rate	60% your last hour, 40% your race so far, both without time in aid stations. Before 15 minutes: your plan’s pace for the leg, or 7 km/h.
ETA	Effort left to the next aid station ÷ rate. Beyond it: slowed by the fade setting, plus your planned minutes at each station between.
Cutoff margin	The next station with a cutoff, minus when you’d leave it (the rest of the stop you’re in, the ETA and its planned stop). The finish cutoff is an arrival time.
Ahead / behind plan	Your ETA at the next station with a planned arrival, against it.
Leave with	The next leg’s ETA × your fluid and carbs per hour, rounded.
Battery	The drop over the last hour against the hours to your projected finish.

Prompts and warnings

Arrival (LAP or the course point): the station, the margin, the next leg and what to take.
Cutoff close: once per station when the margin drops under 15 minutes, with a double buzz. Cutoff risk: every 15 minutes while it’s negative.
Move on: once per aid station, when your planned minutes are up.
Fuel (EAT, DRINK, SALT): at least 75 seconds apart, never in an aid station.
HR cap and battery: at most every 10 minutes and every hour.
Enable ULTRA RACE under the activity’s Alerts › Connect IQ to see them full screen.

If the field gets a smaller slot

In a layout with more than one field, ULTRA RACE shows the margin (or the stop timer) and the next aid station with the race clock. Use the one-field layout for the full view.

The research behind it

Before building ULTRA RACE we read coaching guidance, race rules, sports-nutrition studies, Garmin’s manuals and forums, and the Connect IQ developer documentation. In short:

Coaches plan ultras as time between checkpoints, because GPS and course distances disagree; runners still carry paper split charts for that reason.
Most races enforce leave-by cutoffs at aid stations. Margins shrink late: on Western States’ 30-hour pace the buffer is about an hour for most of the race and 22 minutes near the end.
The second half is slower for almost everyone: 33% across 16,518 finishes at UTMB, CCC and Javelina, 18–22% for elites.
Garmin’s own ETAs use current pace and ignore elevation; Course Planner cutoffs (2026) count down only near a checkpoint and don’t reach every watch. Connect IQ fields can’t read the course profile, so the plan has to come with the field.
Fuel targets: 30–50 g/h in the ISSN position stand, more among finishers; 450–750 ml/h of fluid; avoid overdrinking.

General guidance, not medical advice. Sources include the ISSN position stand on ultra-marathon nutrition (2019), Western States Endurance Research, Jason Koop and CTS, David Roche, iRunFar, DC Rainmaker and the Garmin forums.