Whilst it’s great to see the course, it’s unrealistic to think you’ll remember every twist and turn from seeing it once. Try to focus and remember key junctions and triggers for difficult sections – thinking “make sure I turn left straight after this stile” or “after this big climb I need to remember to turn right at this cairn” can be a great approach. 

Make sure you plan your recces at an appropriate time in the training block. If you go too early then you risk either over stretching yourself or not being able to take full advantage of the time you’ve got on the route. If you go too late then you risk still having the big miles in your legs on race day. Make sure to plan this all carefully. I find recces work well between 3 weeks and 3 months before race day.

Recceing the route can be really useful to help you form your race plan.  Understanding the hills and terrain can help you plan things like when you’re going to walk, how hard you are going to push on certain sections, when you’re going to use poles and other things like where you will find water out on the course.

I find it incredibly useful to be able to envisage the entire course in my mind and imagine how I’ll approach each section and support point. Before a big race, I try to do a mental fly through of the route as I find that this helps vast distances feel a lot more achievable - it somehow “shrinks” the route in my mind.  This can be a massive mental benefit as being able to imagine yourself doing each section helps you believe you’re going to achieve your goal. The value of this confidence can’t be underestimated on race day. One of my favourite sayings is “if you think you can or you think you can’t you’re probably right”!

Try to read some blogs/reports of previous races to identify which are the most difficult bits of the course from both a navigation perspective and/or a terrain perspective.

Also look at maps of the route - which bits look most challenging to you?

Determine which bits of the course (if any) you’ll likely be running in the dark. Recceing these sections will give you confidence that you’ve covered what may be the most mentally challenging bits of the course. However, you’ll find that you may benefit less from any navigational advantage on the night sections (it’s dark so you can’t see much anyway!).

I often like to recce the middle sections of longer ultras as they are the “no mans land” of a race - you’re already exhausted but you’ve got a very long way to go! Knowing this section can give you a big advantage as this can be the toughest section mentally to get through.

Reading as many blogs and reports as you can and trying to put together a mental picture of the route.

Look carefully at the route profile and maps to identify the most challenging sections and key milestones of the route.

Think very carefully about your navigation strategy. A big aspect of this will be whether the course is marked or self navigation. Put these into your race plan and take account of navigation on the basis of not having seen the course in advance.

Search out similar training areas and terrain close to home – it’s amazing what you can find locally.  Keep in mind though you may have to do lots of running on the same hill or on the small amount of technical terrain you’ve found you can easily access!

If there are sections through towns then it’s worth just going to have a look at these even if you can’t run them – I’ve found city navigation to be some of the most challenging moments of races!