The course
The 68 mile race is a point-to-point traverse of the full Backbone Trail through the Santa Monica Mountains. You start at Will Rogers State Park in Brentwood, run east to west across the range, then turn south toward the ocean and finish at the Ray Miller Trail in Point Mugu State Park. It is mostly single track, and you get shaded oak canyons, sage-smelling chaparral, limestone boulders, and long open ridgelines, and you stack up nearly 15,000 feet of climbing getting there.
A nonstop ridgeline sawtooth
This course is not about one or two big climbs. It is the constant sawtooth of short steep ups and downs along the spine of the range, which is the backbone the trail is named after. The vert adds up to nearly 15,000 feet over 68 miles, but it comes at you in dozens of punchy little pitches instead of long graded climbs, so your pace and your effort swing around all day long.
That kind of rhythm rewards one skill: hiking the steep stuff efficiently and then running quick and light on the short runnable bits between climbs. Try to run every rise and you will blow up early. But settle into a hike-run pattern that matches the terrain and you will hang onto the legs you need for the back half.
Exposure, chaparral, and the heat
A lot of the Backbone runs across open, sun-baked chaparral ridgelines with barely any shade, and this is where the Southern California heat gets you. Even when it is not midsummer those exposed sections can get hot and dry, and staying on top of your temperature, your fluids, and your sodium out there will usually decide your day more than your fitness does.
The course bounces between micro-climates too. You drop into cooler shaded canyons near road crossings like Malibu Canyon, then climb right back out into full sun on the next ridge. Treat the hot exposed bits like a discipline thing: keep drinking, keep your electrolytes up, carry enough fluid to cover the gaps between aid, and use the shaded canyons to cool off and eat.
Technical footing and the descents
Parts of the Backbone are rocky and technical, with loose rock, ruts, and uneven tread that make you pay attention, and it gets worse once you are tired and once it is dark. The race finishes near sea level after starting up in the foothills, so the total descent is about as big as the climbing, and all those repeated downhills will shred quads that have not been trained for them.
The climbs are not what get you. The descents are. The people who bomb the early downhills to bank some time usually pay for it later, when every remaining descent turns into a grind on trashed legs. Honestly, quad-specific downhill training is some of the most useful work you can do for this course, and going easy and light on the early descents is what leaves you with working legs at mile 55.
Aid stations, the night, and cutoffs
You get aid stations at the major road crossings and trailheads along the Backbone, with crew access at several of them and the event headquarters over at the La Jolla Canyon area near the Ray Miller finish. Go check the current aid station list, the mileages, and the crew rules on the official race site, because that stuff moves around year to year.
The 68 mile time limit is 28 hours, and most people will be out there for a full night on technical single track. Several of the aid stations have intermediate cutoffs and they are strictly enforced, so you cannot just stroll the front half. Build your plan backward from the posted cutoffs and leave yourself a buffer, because the climbing and the heat and the dark all team up to slow you down late.
Pacing strategy for the Backbone Trail Ultra
A sawtooth, exposed, quad-heavy 68 miler rewards patience and punishes ego. Pace this one by effort and by grade, not by the flat-ground numbers from your easy runs back home.
Pace the climbs by grade, not by clock
With nearly 15,000 feet of gain spread across constant short steep pitches, your moving pace is going to swing all over the place between the climbs and the short runnable links, and that is fine, that is how it should look. Hike the steep stuff efficiently and run the gentler grades. Trying to hold one steady minutes-per-mile number out here is the fastest way to cook the early climbs and have nothing left for the late descents.
Use our free grade-adjusted pace calculator to turn your flat fitness into honest effort targets for the steep Backbone climbs, so you actually know whether you are pacing the vertical in a way you can hold, or burning matches you will want back in the dark.
Protect your quads for the descents
Since the course drops about as much as it climbs and finishes near the ocean, the downhills are the real crux nobody plans for. Hold back on the early descents, run them controlled and light instead of letting gravity pound your legs, and your back half will be a different race. The people who finish strong are almost always the ones who still have working quads at mile 50.
To set a finish goal that actually accounts for all that vertical, use our vert-aware race time calculator. It folds the climbing into your projected finish so you are not stuck on a flat-course number that the Backbone is going to quietly wreck.
Plan for the heat and the night
There is no altitude to deal with here, so the two things that drive your pacing are heat and darkness. Through the hot exposed middle hours, back off the effort and treat it like survival, just keep eating and drinking, and your pace will come back once the sun goes down. But that recovery only shows up if you stayed disciplined and kept fueling through the heat.
If you want to know how your fitness from a recent race carries over to a rugged 68 mile mountain effort like this, our race equivalent calculator helps you reality-check your goal time before you lock it in.
Fueling strategy for the Backbone Trail Ultra
A hot, exposed, all-day-and-night effort makes fueling and hydration just as important as fitness. The heat on the open chaparral ridgelines is the thing that wrecks most well-trained runners, so plan for it.
Carbs: ramp to the high end, on a trained gut
For something this long, aim for about 60 to 90 grams of carbohydrate per hour, leaning toward the high end once your gut can handle it. Use a glucose-plus-fructose blend so you can absorb more than a single sugar lets you, and practice your exact hourly carb number on long runs so 80 to 90 g/h feels normal, not like a science experiment, on race day.
The heat makes all of this harder, because a hot stomach takes less. That is one more reason to practice your fueling in race-like heat and to keep taking in calories through the ugly hot hours, when your appetite drops off but your engine still needs the fuel.
Sodium and fluid: built for the exposure
On the open Backbone ridgelines you can sweat out a lot, so bias your sodium toward 500 to 700 mg per liter of fluid and carry enough to cover the dry exposed gaps between aid stations. Cramping, a sloshy stomach, and that wrung-out feeling late in the race are usually fluid and sodium problems. Not fitness problems.
Dial in a plan that fits you with our free ultra fueling calculator. Put in your weight, your goal time, and the expected heat, and it gives you a carb, sodium, fluid, and caffeine number per hour built for the Backbone duration and conditions. Then go test it in training.
This guide is for planning and training purposes and reflects publicly available information about the Coyote Backbone Trail Ultra. The next edition date was not confirmed by the organizer at the time of writing, and race details including the date, distances, course, aid stations, and cutoffs can change year to year. Always confirm the current specifics on the official race website before you train or travel.