What TrailGoat does
and how to use it

TrailGoat is built around one idea: load a course, and the whole run plans itself on one screen. Open the Run Planner and either pick a race from the library (search by name, state or country) or drop your own GPX or GeoJSON file. Everything downstream — the map, the elevation profile, weather, pacing, fueling, gear and crew — builds from that course.

• No account, no fuss. Every tool on this page works signed out. Signing in (free, Google) adds saving plans to your account and opening them on any device — nothing else is gated.
• Your plan follows you. The active course and every input persist in your browser for a day, so a reload or an accidental tab-close never loses work. Clear course starts fresh.
• Units are yours. Miles/feet or km/metres, °F or °C — flip once in the settings gear and every table, chart and printout follows.
• Themes. Five palettes (Forest, Emerald, Alpenglow, Aurora, First Light) under the same settings gear.

TrailGoat maintains a growing catalog of 220+ real race courses — imported from official GPX files, checked against published distances, and each with its own public page: map, elevation profile, surface mix, aid stations, effective oxygen at altitude, and the race's date.

• Race courses A–Z — the searchable index, with distance-band colours so the 100-milers jump out from the 50Ks.
• Discover — the same catalog on a map, for "what races are near me" browsing.
• Course pages (e.g. Leadville Trail 100) — shareable, indexable, and one click from "Plan this race" with everything pre-loaded.
• ✓ Verified by the race — when a race director has confirmed a course, it carries a verification badge everywhere it appears. Runners: there's a one-tap way to ask your RD on every course page.
• Multi-lap races are stitched to full distance, and out-and-backs label each pass of a repeated station — "Twin Lakes (outbound)" vs "(return)" — so nobody plans around the wrong visit.

Missing a race? The Course Creator (below) lets you build it — or email kris@trailgoat.run and we'll hunt the file.

Every course renders on a real topographic map (USGS in the US, Esri Terrain elsewhere) beside a full elevation profile. The two are linked: hover either one and a marker traces the same spot on the other.

• 3D & flythrough. The 3D button tilts the terrain; the play button flies the route end-to-end at adjustable speed, or drag the playback puck anywhere on the course.
• Overlay pills under the profile toggle what you see — on the map and the chart together: Aid stations, Climbs, Descents, Night (the stretches you'll run in darkness, as bands on the profile and a dark casing on the route), Altitude (elevation zones with the effective-oxygen figure), Distance markers (numbered mile/km pins), and Surface (trail/gravel/paved, coloured onto the route and a ribbon under the profile).
• Night is computed, not guessed — from your start date, start time and goal duration against real sunrise/sunset at the course's location. Plan rows crossing darkness get a moon mark and the plan tells you where the headlamp comes out.
• Altitude, honestly framed. Courses topping 1,500 m show elevation zones and the effective-oxygen percentage — a fact about the air, not a prediction about you. The math is on the methodology page.
• Climbs and descents are detected automatically and listed with grade, length and vert in the Major climbs card — hover a row to light that stretch up on the map and profile.

Set a start date and time and the plan pulls an hourly forecast along the course (Open-Meteo) — not the weather at the start line all day, but the conditions where the plan expects you to be, hour by hour.

• The Conditions card shows the day's story — temps, precipitation, wind, and an hourly temperature chart.
• Each leg of the run plan carries the temperature you'll actually feel on it, and hot stretches tint their rows so they're visible at a glance.
• The fueling targets react: heat raises the fluid and sodium the plan tells you to carry.
• Race more than 16 days out? You'll get climatology until the real forecast window opens — and a Live Crew Sheet re-forecasts automatically as race day approaches.

Give the plan a goal time and it spreads your effort over the course the way a real race unfolds — grade-adjusted (climbing miles get more clock) with a fade fitted on real 100-mile checkpoint splits, so the back half slows the way back halves actually do. Full math with receipts on the methodology page.

• Splits your way. Per-mile/km splits, coarser chunks, or custom cut points — the pacing table, aid-station arrivals, crew sheet and printout all come from the same model, so they always agree.
• Official cutoffs, with your buffer. Set a cutoff on any aid station — or on the finish line itself — and the plan shows the margin between your planned arrival and the cutoff clock at every stop. Cutoff times are entered as clock times ("2:15 PM", "+1d" for the next day), the way races publish them.
• Altitude-adjusted pacing (beta) weights the spread for thin air on courses that go high — labelled beta in the product until it's validated with the same rigor as the fade.
• Surface-aware context — the plan knows how much of each leg is trail, gravel or pavement.

The fueling plan computes what to drink and eat from your body and conditions — weight, sweat rate and saltiness, heat acclimation, experience level, the day's forecast, and how long you'll be out. Targets follow what ultrarunners actually consume (carb ranges around 20–60 g/hr, adequate — not maximum — hydration), and the philosophy is spelled out on the methodology page.

• Per-hour and total targets for fluid, sodium, carbs and calories.
• Per-leg carries. The run plan table splits everything by aid-station leg — carry this much out of this stop — and the plan summary calls out the biggest carries to pack for.
• The food pack. Build the actual pack you'll carry from a food library (gels, chews, drink mixes, real food) and see live coverage — how much of your carb, sodium, calorie and caffeine needs the pack covers.
• Heat reacts. Hot legs raise fluid and sodium on exactly the legs the forecast says will cook.

A race-kit checklist built for trail running: tap suggestions into your kit (packs, layers, lights, poles, first aid…), add your own items, and keep a separate drop-bag list per aid station.

• Drop bags attach to specific aid stations, and the run plan table marks the stops where a bag waits.
• Copy list exports a checkbox list for notes apps or the kitchen table print-out.
• Gear and drop bags ride along with saved plans and the crew sheet — your crew sees which bag is where.

Add your people to the plan — who's crewing, who's pacing which section, who's driving between stops — and the run plan table marks every stop with who'll be there. Then one tap turns the whole thing into the Live Crew Sheet: a single link for your whole crew. No app, no accounts, works on any phone.

• It re-forecasts on race day. Anyone with the link taps a check-in when you leave an aid station, and every later arrival time re-computes from how the day is actually going — including each stop's live cutoff buffer ("projected Twin Lakes buffer: +41 min").
• One link, always current. The URL is stable — update the plan in the planner and the sheet updates; nobody re-shares anything.
• Everything a crew needs on one page: arrival windows, the course map and profile, per-stop crew and pacer hand-offs, drop-bag marks, weather, shared crew notes (live, visible to everyone with the link), and checklists.
• Works at trailheads. The sheet installs as an app and keeps working offline — check-ins sync when signal returns.
• Print wizard. A paper backup with the map, ETAs and crew plan, formatted to actually print well.
• See a live example on the Crew Sheet page.

Plans are made on screens; races happen on wrists and in ziplock bags. Two exports close the gap:

• Watch file (.fit). One button exports a Garmin/Coros course file with your paced splits baked in — the watch's ahead/behind runs against your actual plan (grade-adjusted, fade and all), not a flat average, and aid stations come along as course points that alert on approach. Import via Garmin Connect (Training → Courses) or the Coros app.
• Print / PDF. The plan formats itself for paper — the run plan table, pacing, fueling and crew — for the kitchen-table briefing and the just-in-case copy in the drop bag.

After the race: Plan vs actual. Upload your watch's activity file and see the overlay — where the plan held, where the wheels wobbled, and what to tell the pacing model next time. Find it in the planner once a plan exists.

Capra is TrailGoat's mountain-goat coach, and it is grounded in your actual plan — it reads your course, terrain, weather, pacing, fueling targets and the food pack you've built, and answers about your race, not racing in general.

• Ask it anything from the planner's AI coach card: "review my food pack", "how should I handle the Hope Pass double", "what would you change about my first 50K?"
• Its fueling advice follows the same philosophy as the calculator (real-world carb ranges, adequate hydration, deficits are normal), so the chat never contradicts the plan.
• In Training, Capra writes the week-by-week workouts for your plan.
• It will tell you what it is: general guidance, not medical advice.

Training builds a week-by-week block from today to your start line — shaped by your race's real distance and vert, the terrain you can actually reach, and the week you actually have.

• The wizard asks what matters: your race (or just a goal), your recent running, which days you can run, your biggest local climb, how you like effort described.
• Shape first, then workouts. A deterministic periodization engine shows the plan's shape — phases, volume curve, cutback weeks, long-run progression — before Capra writes a single workout, so you approve the skeleton before spending a generation.
• Start from your watch. Drop a Garmin/Coros/Strava export and the fitness analyzer reads your real training history into the wizard — no guessing your weekly mileage.
• Check off workouts from any device; plans live on your (free) account. One plan at a time, on purpose.
• From any race's course page, "Train for this race" opens the wizard pre-filled.

Training is the one tool that needs sign-in (your plan has to live somewhere) — the page shows you a full sample plan shape before asking.

The course workshop. Draw a new route that snaps to real trails, or open any library course and edit it — aid stations, direction, start time, name — then save it back to the library for everyone.

• Click-to-route along actual trail networks; drag to adjust.
• Add aid stations by clicking the map or typing a distance; they flow to every planner feature automatically.
• Courses without elevation get it filled in from terrain data.
• Bulk GPX upload for multiple courses at once.

Everything works signed out. A free account (Google sign-in, one tap) adds the cross-device layer:

• Saved plans — save a race plan on your laptop, open it on your phone at the trailhead; gear, food pack and crew ride along.
• Your athlete profile (weight, sweat profile, experience) syncs, so every device computes the same plan.
• My dashboard — your run & race plans and training plans in one place, under your name in the top bar.
• Training plans live on the account (see above).
• Deleting your account is self-serve on the privacy page, and takes your data with it.

Two things, both free:

• The embed. Your course's full interactive map — 3D flythrough, elevation profile, aid stations, surface mix, live weather — on your own race website with one iframe tag. The kind of map that costs $599/yr elsewhere. Build yours on the race directors page.
• Verification. A look from your side is worth more than any import gate: confirm (or correct) your course's data and it carries a ✓ verified by the race badge everywhere it appears — course page, planner, crew sheets, embed.

Start at trailgoat.run/for-race-directors or email kris@trailgoat.run.