Ultramarathon Aid Station Tips: What Actually Works When You're Out There

TL;DR

Most aid station problems come from poor planning weeks before the race, not from the stations themselves. The key is knowing the course layout beforehand, arriving with a specific written plan for what you'll grab at each station, managing your time without rushing through genuine needs, and learning your body's signals—especially the difference between normal fatigue and actual depletion that needs addressing.

Kilometre 58 of a 100k, a fold-up table with warm Coke, bananas gone brown at the edges, and a volunteer in a rain poncho asking if you want broth. You say yes before your brain has processed the question. That's an aid station working the way it should: fast decisions, no wasted motion, body getting what it needs before the next climb eats it alive. Most of what goes wrong at aid stations has nothing to do with the stations themselves. It's planning that happened, or didn't happen, weeks earlier.

Table of Contents

• Know Your Aid Station Layout Before You Arrive
• Arrive With a Pocket Inventory, Not Improvisation
• Manage Time at the Station Without Rushing
• Read Your Body's Signals at the Station
• Mental Resets at Later Stations
• Practice Aid Station Discipline in Long Training Runs
• FAQ
• External References

Know Your Aid Station Layout Before You Arrive

If you can drive or walk the course beforehand, do it, even if it's just the three aid stations closest to home. Stand where the volunteers stand. Look at what's underfoot, because a gravel car park aid station at kilometre 20 feels nothing like a muddy field crossing at kilometre 70 when your ankles are tired and your balance is gone. Note whether there's a tent, a gazebo, or nothing at all between you and the wind.

Pull up the race briefing and course map and mark which aid stations sit right after a long descent versus which ones come at the top of a climb. Your stomach behaves differently depending on what just happened to your legs. An aid station at the exit of a 400-metre climb often means riders arrive overheated and undertrained for eating; one in a valley after flat kilometres usually sees people ready to take on more food. Races rarely explain this, but the pattern holds across most mountain ultras.

Check what each station actually stocks. Some races run lean: water, electrolyte powder, maybe a banana. Others set up like a buffet with hot broth, boiled potatoes, and cola at every stop. UTMB-style races and most French and Swiss mountain ultras tend toward the latter; smaller, volunteer-run German trail races often stick to basics. Read the race's aid station list in the briefing document instead of assuming. If gels and salt caps aren't guaranteed, that decides what goes in your vest.

Last thing: look at how you leave each station, not just how you arrive. Some aid stations dump runners back onto a course with a confusing turn fifty metres later, especially in multi-loop formats where the route splits. Losing two minutes to a wrong turn at kilometre 15 is annoying. Losing them at kilometre 85, in the dark, after you've just sat down to eat, costs you more than time. It costs you momentum you don't get back easily.

Arrive With a Pocket Inventory, Not Improvisation

Write down, before the race, what you plan to grab at each specific aid station. Not "food and water" as a general idea, but "station 4: refill both bottles, two cups of broth, grab salt tabs if visible." When you're 14 hours in and your thinking has gone soft, a list removes the need to decide anything. You just execute what past-you, who was clearheaded and had slept, already worked out.

Don't assume the race carries what you train with. A station might offer only one brand of gel, or none at all, just real food. If your gut has a working relationship with a specific electrolyte mix or a particular bar, carry enough of it yourself and treat race supplies as backup, not your main plan. This matters more on smaller races and anything outside the big-budget international circuit, where sponsor-stocked tables full of familiar gels aren't guaranteed.

Practise eating and drinking without stopping. If you're racing solo and not using a crew, standing still to unwrap a bar costs time that adds up across twenty or thirty stops over a hundred miles. Learn to tear gel packets with your teeth, drink from a soft flask while jogging, and chew while moving on flat or gently rolling ground. Save actual sitting for the stations where you need it, not every one.

Pack a small bag, ziplock or otherwise, with chafe cream, your trusted salt tablets, and whatever painkiller your doctor has approved for you to use during exertion (this is a question for your GP or sports physician, not a running forum). Aid stations stock the basics. They almost never stock the specific thing that saves your race, which is usually something personal: a particular tape, a particular cream, a particular tablet.

Manage Time at the Station Without Rushing

If your legs have gone hollow or your stomach feels off, sit down for thirty seconds. That sounds like nothing, but thirty seconds of actual stillness, weight off your feet, resets more than it seems like it should. The alternative, pushing through a sour stomach because you don't want to lose time, usually costs you five kilometres later when you're walking a section you could have run.

Fill bottles and bladders completely, every time, even if you think you have enough. Running dry between stations forces a longer, more stressful refill later, often at a point where you're more depleted and less patient. This is one of those rules that's obvious when you say it out loud and still gets ignored constantly, usually by runners trying to shave fifteen seconds off a stop.

Warm or savoury food matters more than people expect, especially past the eight or ten-hour mark or once it's dark. Pure sugar works early. By hour twelve, most stomachs start rejecting sweet food outright, and broth, boiled potatoes with salt, or even plain noodles go down easier and stay down better. If a station offers something hot, take it, even in summer. A warm cup of broth at 2am does more for morale than a fifth gel ever will.

Ask the volunteers what's coming. They've usually seen two hundred runners pass through that day and know the next section better than your GPX file does. "Is the next climb steep?" "Is the river crossing still passable?" costs you five seconds and can save you from a nasty surprise, particularly on courses with recent weather damage or river levels that change through the day.

Read Your Body's Signals at the Station

Dizzy, nauseous, or suddenly heavy-legged: these are signals to stop and eat something with salt and carbohydrate, not signals to grit your teeth and keep moving. A lot of runners treat aid stations as a place to push through discomfort because stopping feels like losing ground. That instinct is backwards. The ground you lose sitting for two minutes and fixing a blood sugar crash is nothing compared to what you lose bonking outright three kilometres later with no aid station in sight.

Blisters and chafe get worse at aid stations, not better, because you stop moving and your skin cools against wet or sweaty fabric. If you feel a hot spot forming, deal with it now, with tape or cream, rather than telling yourself you'll handle it at the next stop. The next stop is often ten kilometres away, and ten kilometres on an open blister changes your whole race.

Wet socks and shoes stop being a minor annoyance somewhere around kilometre 40 and start being a real problem: skin maceration, blisters, cold feet that drag your pace down without you noticing why. If a station has a basket of dry socks, or if you've dropped a pair in a drop bag, change them. Ninety seconds spent here buys you comfort for the next two or three hours.

If you're shivering in July, that's not a weather problem, that's a fuel and hydration problem. It means you're underfed or dehydrated enough that your body can't regulate its own temperature properly. Sit in the sun if there is any, drink something with calories in it, and give yourself a few minutes before deciding you're fine to keep moving.

Mental Resets at Later Stations

Past kilometre 80, or once you're deep into a night section, an aid station stops being purely about fuel and starts being about your head. This is where a lot of DNFs get decided, not on some brutal climb but at a folding table with bad lighting and a volunteer asking if you're okay. Talk to that volunteer. Change the playlist. Sit for two minutes and look at nothing in particular. These small resets do more for your mental state than another gel will.

A big part of what feels like unbearable fatigue late in an ultra is psychological rather than physical, and a small change, new music, a different volunteer's joke, a few minutes off your feet, shifts your mood more than the actual rest justifies. This isn't a motivational claim, it's just how these races tend to go once you've done a few of them.

If you're thinking about quitting, don't decide at the aid station where the thought first hits you. Eat something substantial first, sit for a few minutes, and make the call after that. Hunger and depletion dress themselves up as hopelessness more often than people admit, and a surprising number of near-DNFs get reversed by a cup of broth and ten minutes off your feet.

If you know darkness, rain, or a temperature drop is coming, lay out the gear you'll need at the aid station you'll pass right before that transition, rather than carrying a headlamp or an extra layer for ten unnecessary kilometres. A drop bag at the right station, planned in advance, saves you weight and decision fatigue exactly when you have the least capacity for either.

Practice Aid Station Discipline in Long Training Runs

Run 30 kilometres or more and build a mock aid station into the middle of it. Leave water, food, and whatever supplies you'd use mid-race at your usual spot, a car boot, a bench, a mate's porch, and run the actual routine: stop, refill, eat, move. It feels slightly ridiculous the first time. It's also the only way to find out your plan has holes before race day does it for you.

Your stomach on tired legs in a hard training run won't match your stomach at kilometre 30 of a hundred-miler exactly, the fatigue and hormonal load are different, but the baseline habits transfer: what you can eat moving, what needs sitting, what you tolerate early versus what you don't. That baseline is worth building even if it's imperfect.

Time your stops. If a normal aid station visit takes you four or five minutes, that's forty minutes gone over a race with eight stops, more if you're not injured or bonking and just taking your time out of habit. Aim for 60 to 120 seconds for a routine stop, longer only when your body is actually telling you to slow down. Longer stops also let your legs stiffen, which you'll feel in the first hundred metres back on the trail.

Test food at different points deliberately rather than by accident. Some runners handle salty, carb-heavy food fine early and need to drop to plain water and electrolytes by hour ten. Others are the opposite. Figure this out across a few long runs, not during the race itself, where the only option when something goes wrong is to suffer through it or stop. This kind of self-testing pairs well with whatever recovery routine you already run through after a long day out.

FAQ

How long should I spend at each aid station during an ultramarathon?

For a routine stop with no issues, 60 to 120 seconds covers refilling bottles and grabbing food. If you're cold, dizzy, or your stomach has turned, extend that to whatever it takes to actually fix the problem, usually two to five minutes, because a short rest now beats a forced long stop later. The one thing to avoid is lingering out of habit once your bottles are full and you feel fine; that's where races get lost in small increments. Longer stops also cause your legs to stiffen, which adds significant effort to the first stretch of trail after you leave the station.

What should I do if I feel sick or dizzy at an aid station?

Stop moving, sit if a seat is available, and take in something with salt and carbohydrate, like broth or a salted boiled potato, rather than pushing on and hoping it passes. Most cases of nausea in ultras are driven by low blood sugar or electrolyte imbalance, both of which respond quickly to real food and sitting still. If dizziness or nausea doesn't improve within a few minutes, or gets worse, tell the aid station staff; most ultra races have medical volunteers on site precisely for this, and it's their call to make, not something to self-diagnose on the trail.

Should I carry my own food or rely on what the race provides at aid stations?

Carry your own as the backup to whatever the race offers, especially for anything you know your stomach tolerates well. Smaller or more remote races, particularly outside the big commercial circuit, sometimes stock only basics like water and bananas, so relying entirely on aid station supply is a gamble you don't need to take when a few gels or a bar weigh almost nothing in your vest. Check the official race briefing and aid station inventory; if anything critical to your plan isn't listed, pack it yourself rather than hoping.

Is it normal to struggle with eating solid food late in an ultramarathon, and how do I prepare for it?

Yes, and it's one of the most common patterns in races past the ten or twelve-hour mark: sweet food stops appealing and solid food feels harder to process. This shift happens because your digestive system slows under sustained exertion and hormonal changes that come with prolonged effort. Preparing for it means testing broth, potatoes, and plain carbohydrate sources in long training runs beforehand, so you already know what your gut accepts late instead of discovering it for the first time during a race, when there's no good way to recover from getting it wrong.

How do I know if I need to sit down and rest at an aid station or keep moving?

If you feel hollow-legged, your stomach is off, or you're hit by a wave of fatigue that wasn't there ten minutes ago, sit for a short, deliberate stretch and eat something before deciding your race is over. If you're simply tired in the normal, expected way that comes with running eighty kilometres, keep moving; the fix there is pace and patience, not a chair. The line between the two gets easier to read the more long runs you've logged; runners who've done several ultras develop an instinctive sense for whether a station stop will help or just steal momentum.

What does it mean if I'm shivering or feeling very cold at an aid station, even in warm weather?

Shivering or sudden chills in warm conditions almost always point to under-fuelling or dehydration, not actual cold. Your body can't regulate its core temperature properly without adequate calories and fluids on board, so it misfires and generates chills as a distress signal. Sit in sunlight if available, eat something with both salt and carbohydrate, drink steadily, and wait a few minutes; the shivering usually stops within five to ten minutes once you've taken on calories. If it doesn't, that's a sign to tell the medical staff at the station.

External References

For more information on ultramarathon nutrition and aid station practice, see:

• Ultramarathon running guidance from World Athletics
• Sports nutrition for endurance athletes at the International Society of Sports Nutrition
• Electrolyte and hydration research from the Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition

This article was drafted with the help of AI and reviewed and approved by a human editor before publication.