TrainingGuide

01 — The day you're training for

Read the profile before you read the plan

Everything in this guide is built backwards from this shape. A loop that starts and finishes at 840m, climbs for the first half, tops out at 1,830m just past 32km, and gives every single metre of it back over the second half.

Drag or hover across the profile — read the distance and height at any point

The route from above

The same loop seen from the south-east. Amizmiz sits in the middle; the course runs out into the hills and comes back to where it started.

Taj Atlas Hotelwhere you're staying — start & finish CP19km CP214km CP316km CP418km CP523km CP627km CP732.5km CP835.5km CP941.5km CP1048km CP1154km

Aid stations

Eleven stations, from the 2026 aid station plan. Scrub the profile above and each one names itself as you pass it. Every station that has anything carries the same spread — water, cola, dates, grapes, almonds, peanuts, bananas, oranges and biscuits — with eggs, cheese and potatoes on top at Ait Hamd (23km), Iguer Oulzaz (35.5km) and Tiguenziouin (48km), the three places worth eating properly.

Three carry nothing at all — Talat n’Ihya at 14km, Sidi Hssain at 18km and the summit at 32.5km — so the gaps that matter are between the eight places you can actually refill. The hardest is the 8.5km from Tafegaght at 27km over the summit to Iguer Oulzaz at 35.5km, which is also the steepest part of the day. The longest is the 9km from the start to Tizefrit, though that is the easiest running you will do. Plan your carrying around the gaps, not the dots.

Numbered 1 to 11 in route order. Distances are theirs, rounded to the nearest half kilometre; the elevations shown when you scrub come from the route file. Stations are indicative and not final — treat the two “no food or water” points and the summit as places to arrive already carrying.

Drawn from the actual 2026 route file: 59.7km, 2,429m of ascent and 2,430m of descent, starting and finishing in the same place. Elevation is taken from SRTM terrain data rather than the recording watch’s barometer, sampled every 30m. Other apps may quote a lower climb — elevation gain always depends on how finely you measure, and coarser sampling reports less. Download the GPX to load it into your own watch or planner.

Checkpoint times

We never end anyone’s day because of their pace. Some checkpoints do have closing times, set with our local mountain team in line with local rules for international runners on remote ridges after dark.

The key one: checkpoint 6 (about 27km) closes at 13:00, 5½ hours after the 07:30 start.

• Reach checkpoint 6 by 13:00: carry on and complete the full 60km.
• Reach it after 13:00: we drive you from checkpoint 6 to checkpoint 9, skipping the high mountain section, and you carry on from checkpoint 9 to the finish.

The other checkpoint times will be added here before the event.

02 — What the profile actually asks of you

Four demands, in the order you'll meet them

03 — How the plan works

Sixteen weeks, four phases

If you have less than sixteen weeks, that's fine — skip to "Starting late" at the end. The phases matter more than the calendar.

04 — Running

The running, and what it's for

Your week, in shape

• Two easy runs — 45–70 minutes, conversational, flat or rolling. Most of your week is this.
• One hill session — repeats or a hilly loop. Build toward 600–800m of gain in a single run.
• One long run — the cornerstone. Trail if you can get to it, road if you can't.
• One optional short run or cross-train — bike, swim, hike. Adds aerobic work without adding pounding.

The long run — how far is far enough

You do not need to run 60km before you run 60km. Peak at 32–36km, or four to five hours on your feet, whichever comes first. Beyond that the recovery cost outweighs the benefit for most people.

Better than one enormous run: back-to-back weekends in Phase 3. A three-hour hilly run on Saturday followed by a two-hour run on Sunday teaches your body to work while already tired — which is exactly what 42km onwards asks of it.

Climbing, and power hiking

• Aim to accumulate 1,500–2,500m of ascent per week in peak weeks, however you get it — trails, hilly roads, treadmill on an incline, stairs.
• Practise hiking deliberately. Hands on quads, short steps, strong posture, steady breathing. Time yourself over a known climb hiking versus running — most people are barely slower hiking and far less wrecked at the top.
• If you plan to use poles on Ultra Day, use them in training. Poles you've never trained with are luggage.

Descending — the part people skip

Downhill running is a specific adaptation, and it takes six to eight weeks to build. Skip it and your quads will be gone by 35km regardless of how fit you are.

• From Phase 2, add one downhill-focused session a week. Run the descents rather than easing off them.
• Short steps, quick feet, let the legs stay soft. Braking hard on every step is what does the damage.
• Expect real soreness the first few times. That's the adaptation working. Build gradually.

Heat

October in the Atlas is cooler at altitude and warm in the valley. If you're training through a European autumn, you'll arrive unacclimatised. Two to three sessions a week in the final fortnight wearing an extra layer, or 15–20 minutes in a sauna after easy runs, gives you most of the benefit. Start hydrating properly two days before you fly, not on the morning.

Altitude

The high point is just under 1,850m. That's high enough to notice the air is dry, not high enough to affect performance meaningfully. No altitude training required.

05 — Strength

Two sessions a week, forty minutes each

Strength work is not optional on a course with 2,430m of descent. It is the single highest-return hour in your week, and the one most runners quietly drop.

Session A — legs, heavy and slow

• Rear-foot elevated split squat — 3 × 8 each leg. Single-leg strength is what running actually is.
• Romanian deadlift — 3 × 8. Hamstrings and glutes, the engine for climbing.
• Step-down from a box — 3 × 10 each leg, lowering over three slow seconds. This is your descent insurance.
• Calf raise, straight and bent knee — 3 × 15 each. Calves and Achilles take a beating on steep ground.

Session B — control and durability

• Goblet or back squat — 3 × 10.
• Single-leg glute bridge — 3 × 12 each side.
• Side plank with leg lift — 3 × 30 seconds each side. Lateral stability on uneven ground.
• Dead bug or Pallof press — 3 × 10. A trunk that doesn't collapse in hour nine.
• Ankle and balance work — single-leg stands, eyes closed, on something unstable. Rocky trails punish weak ankles.

How to load it

• Go heavy enough that the last two reps are genuinely hard. Light circuits don't build the strength that stops quad failure.
• Put strength on the same day as a hard run or the day after, never the day before a long run.
• Cut to one maintenance session a week during the taper. Don't stop entirely.
• Nothing new in the final three weeks.

06 — Mindset

The part no training plan covers

Ask anyone who has done this what nearly stopped them, and almost none of them will say fitness.

Bad patches are structural, not personal

You will have at least one stretch — usually somewhere between 35 and 45km — where you feel genuinely awful and start doing arithmetic about how much is left. This happens to everyone, including the fast runners ahead of you. It is not a signal that something has gone wrong. Almost every bad patch is fixable with food, water, salt, and twenty quiet minutes. Eat something and keep moving before you make any decisions.

Shrink the day

Sixty kilometres is an unhelpful number to hold in your head. Run to the next checkpoint. Then the next. On the long climb, run to the next switchback. The people who struggle most are usually the ones carrying the whole distance at once.

Rehearse the discomfort

Do some of your long runs in the rain, early, and alone. Do one when you don't feel like it. Every training session where you were uncomfortable and carried on is evidence you'll be able to draw on in October — and evidence is more useful than motivation.

You'll have run through the villages by then

By Ultra Day you'll have already spent a day with the communities your fundraising supports, and you'll pass through that landscape on the route. Most runners say that's what pulled them through the hard hours — not a mantra, just knowing exactly who and what was on the other side of the climb. Don't underestimate how much that changes the day.

07 — The sixteen weeks

Week by week

Long run figures are a guide, not a target. Adjust to your own starting point — the pattern of build, build, build, ease is what matters.

Week	Long run	Gym	Focus
Phase 1 · Base
1	90 min	A + B	Establish the weekly rhythm. Both strength sessions in from day one.
2	1h 45	A + B	Add the hill session. Keep everything else easy.
3	2h	A + B	First run on proper trail if you can get to it.
4	90 min	A + B	Easy week. Volume down by a third.
Phase 2 · Build
5	2h 15	A + B	Downhill work starts. Keep it short and controlled.
6	2h 45	A + B	Start practising fuelling on the long run. Eat every 30 minutes.
7	3h	A + B	Biggest climbing week so far. Aim for 1,500m of ascent.
8	2h	A + B	Easy week. Everything drops.
9	3h 15	A + B	Long run in full Ultra Day kit, including the pack.
10	3h 45	A + B	Peak climbing. 2,000m+ of ascent across the week.
Phase 3 · Specific
11	4h + 2h	A + B	First back-to-back weekend. Deliberately hilly.
12	2h 30	A + B	Easy week. Recover properly — this one is earned.
13	4h 30 + 2h	A + B	Biggest weekend of the block. Heat prep begins.
Phase 4 · Taper
14	3h	A + B	Volume down a third. Keep one sharp hill session.
15	1h 45	A only	Volume down by half. One strength session only.
16	45 min	—	Travel week. Short and easy. Sleep, eat, arrive rested.

The gym plan, week by week

Two sessions, forty minutes each, run in parallel with the table above. They stay the same all the way through — what changes is the load, not the movements. Session A builds the strength that stops your quads failing on the descent; Session B builds the control that stops your form falling apart late in the day.

Heavy enough that the last two reps are genuinely hard. Never the day before a long run. From week 15 drop to Session A only, and nothing new in the last three weeks. Full detail in Strength.

08 — Fuelling, feet and kit

Rehearse everything

Fuelling

• Aim for 60–90g of carbohydrate per hour once you're past the first hour. That's roughly two gels, or a gel plus real food.
• Practise it on every long run from week 6. Stomachs are trainable. A stomach that has never worked hard for four hours will not cooperate for ten.
• Take salt. Warm weather plus a long day means real sodium loss, and cramp is far more often a salt and fatigue problem than a stretching one.
• Find what you can still eat when you feel sick, because at some point you will. For most people it's something savoury and something plain.
• Bring your own preferred gels and bars from home. Don't plan on finding your brand in Marrakech.
• There is real food on the route, not just gels. Ait Hamd at 23km, Iguer Oulzaz at 35.5km and Tiguenziouin at 48km all have eggs, cheese and potatoes. Practise eating something solid mid-run so your stomach will take it on the day.

Water on the route

• Eight of the eleven stations have water, and the three that don't are at 14km, 18km and the summit at 32.5km. The aid station table lists what is where.
• The carry to plan for is the 8.5km from Tafegaght at 27km over the summit to Iguer Oulzaz at 35.5km. It is the steepest and highest part of the day, and the station at the top of it has nothing. Leave 27km with everything you need to get over the peak.
• Two full soft flasks, or a 1.5–2 litre bladder, covers every gap on this route in normal conditions. Train with that weight on your back, not with a handheld.
• Fill up at 27km even if you aren't thirsty. The easiest mistake on this route is skipping the last station before the climb because it arrives early.

Feet

• Trail shoes with real lugs, not road shoes. The ground is rocky, loose and dry.
• Half a size up. Feet swell over ten hours, and toes hitting the front on a long descent is how you lose toenails.
• Run at least 150km in the exact shoes you'll wear. New shoes on Ultra Day is the most common avoidable mistake there is.
• Practise your blister routine on a long run — tape, lube, sock choice — so it's automatic when it matters.

Kit

• Run your last four or five long runs in the exact pack, shoes, socks and shorts you'll use in Morocco. Nothing on Ultra Day should be new.
• Sun protection is not optional — hat, sunglasses, high-factor sun cream, and a long-sleeve sun layer if you burn.
• It gets cold at altitude and after dark. A light windproof layer is worth carrying all day.
• The required items are listed below. A fuller kit list will follow closer to the event, but nothing on it will replace these four.

What to bring

Carried over from the runner hub so it sits with the rest of your kit planning. Four things are required. Don’t leave the SIM until you land.

09 — Starting late

If you have fewer than sixteen weeks

Plenty of people join this later than they'd like. It's workable — you just have to be honest about which parts you cut.

• 10–12 weeks: skip Phase 1 entirely and start at week 5. Keep every back-to-back weekend and every downhill session.
• 6–8 weeks: start at week 7 and hold the long run at three to three and a half hours. Prioritise, in this order: the long run, the downhill sessions, strength. Drop the easy runs before you drop any of those three.
• Under 6 weeks: speak to us directly before you plan anything. It is still doable with the right approach, and the right approach is not a compressed version of this plan.
• Whatever you cut, never cut the taper. Arriving tired is worse than arriving undertrained.

10 — Under two months

If you have eight weeks or fewer

This is the most common situation on this trip, not the exception. You cannot build sixteen weeks of fitness in eight. What you can do is arrive able to finish, and that is a different training problem with a different answer.

Change the goal first

Stop training to run 60km. Train to move for ten to fourteen hours without breaking down. Nobody is racing you, but the halfway checkpoint closes at 5½ hours, so build enough pace to clear it comfortably. A steady walk-run that gets you to the finish is a finish, and it is the same one everyone else gets.

What actually matters, in order

With limited weeks you have to be ruthless. Anything not on this list is optional:

• Time on feet. One long session a week, every week, building towards four or five hours. Walk the climbs deliberately — you will be walking them on the day.
• Descending. The 2,430m of descent will wreck quads that have never been asked to brake. Two short downhill sessions a week, even twenty minutes each, will change your last 20km more than anything else you could do with the time.
• Power hiking. Practise walking uphill fast, with poles if you will carry them. It is not a fallback for when running fails — it is the technique for a good half of this course.
• Feet and kit. Every blister, every bit of chafing, every stomach problem on the day is something training could have found first. Nothing new on Ultra Day.

The shape of your remaining weeks

• Eight to six weeks out: three or four runs a week. One long (build 2.5 → 4 hours), one hilly, the rest easy. Keep the two strength sessions if they fit; drop them before you drop the long run.
• Five to three weeks out: your biggest weekend sits here. Back-to-back long days — four hours Saturday, two on Sunday — teach your legs to start tired, which is exactly what the last third of the race feels like.
• Two weeks out: stop building. Halve the volume, keep the frequency, keep a little intensity so you do not go flat.
• Final week: two or three short easy runs and nothing else. Eat, sleep, travel.