Creating Ultra Crew Guides

Overview

A crew guide is a field document read at 3 a.m., on no sleep, with no internet — not a research report. Optimize for flip to the aid station you're driving to and know exactly what to do.

Core principle: the crew chief is the team's information hub. Every section must answer: what do I set up, what do I tell the runner and pacer, and what's next?

When to Use

• Building crew/pacer materials for any ultra with crew-accessible aid stations
• Ingesting race sources (official site, race guide PDF/Doc, third-party profiles, podcasts, YouTube) into a usable plan
• Race logistics: leapfrog driving, drop bags, pacer legs, cutoffs, offline navigation

Not for: the runner's own training/pacing plan (that's a different artifact — consume it, don't write it).

Deliverables

Per-Station Section Template

## <Station> — Mile X (Y km)
📊 Leg ahead — stations up to the NEXT CREW stop (mi/km + cutoff + ETA)
📍 Quick facts — ETA · cutoff · crew/pacer/drop-bag · drive · parking
🅿️ Setup — turn-by-turn, where to park, what to stage before arrival
🏃 When runner arrives — start break timer · log cal/fluid/pee · give/tell/check
📣 Direct the team — brief the pacer, assign jobs, say the numbers out loud
🧭 Course ahead — terrain, water, dark/cold/heat, what to warn them about

Data Rules

Extraction Techniques

• Google Doc race guide: curl -sL ".../export?format=txt" (WebFetch dies on the redirect).
• Charts that are images (aid-station tables often are): export the same Doc as format=pdf, then read those pages — this is usually the only way to get authoritative cutoffs.
• Podcast/video: ffmpeg -vn -ac 1 -ar 16000 → whisper (seed the initial prompt with aid-station and place names so proper nouns transcribe correctly). Produce transcript + distilled notes as separate files.
• Google Maps links: /maps/dir/ URLs contain lat/lon — extract them. Short maps.app.goo.gl links usually don't resolve to coordinates.

Offline-First

Assume no cell service. Therefore:

• Everything must be printable; nothing critical lives only in an app.
• Include GPS coordinates (aid stations often have no street address).
• Include a fill-in sheet for what only the team knows: bib #, allergies/meds, emergency contact, nutrition targets, drop-bag contents, teammate phones/inReach, RD emergency number.
• Warn where routing apps suggest non-roads; give the correct route explicitly.
• Note gas towns and dead stretches; compute sunrise/sunset for headlamp timing.

Common Mistakes

Plans Change — Rebuild Cleanly

Crew stops, pacer legs, and routes will change mid-build. When they do: recompute every derived number (to-next-crew-AS distances especially), then grep the whole doc set for the old assumption — stale mentions in a briefing script or drop-bag table are the failure mode. Verify with a search, not memory.