Mountain bike ride & race planning
Your fitness, your trail, one plan. Train your way into it.
Every rider fades differently. Redline Athlete simulates your efforts on the actual course, climb by climb, and shows how fatigue compounds over the day for you: your fitness, your abilities and the way you ride it. Connect Strava and it builds a gap analysis from your training history against the events you have planned, so you know what still needs riding before race day.
No card. No account needed to try it. The guest demo runs the full model on the Soldier Hollow trails in Utah, with a sample season of riding behind it.
First look
See what it actually tells you.
A full ride and race read, start to finish.
Soldier Hollow, Utah · World Cup XCO, Sept 20
A World Cup rider and you, on the same lap.
Four laps of the public Soldier Hollow trails at 5,600 feet, both riders through the same model the app runs on your file. The pro finishes a full lap ahead, and half of every lap's gap is one climb.
30:17 by the finish
of each lap's gap, 328 ft
added down the first descent: the trail caps both riders
of FTP, in from sea level
Nobody is racing the pro. The question is your own goal.
The guest demo loads this loop as a sample race, four laps with a 2:00 goal and eight weeks of sample riding behind it. Open Progression and it answers the only question that matters before race day: could you do it today, and if not, where the minutes are.
Not the official World Cup lap, which the UCI has not published. A public loop on the same trails, ridden four times to a World Cup length.
- 2h 14m is the best the sample rider's last eight weeks give on this course, at 185 W.
- 2h 00m is the goal, and it asks 216 W held the whole way. 14 minutes to find.
- The opening climb of each lap holds the most of it: 276 W for 9 minutes, ridden 1:42 slower than the goal needs. See the strip below.
Start to finish
Pick the ride. Build the plan. Close the gap. Race it.
One thread from the file you upload to the morning you line up, and then back again from every ride you do in between.
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1
Identify your race or big ride
Drop in a GPX from a race listing, Trailforks, RideWithGPS, Strava or your head unit, or stitch several into one route. Set a goal: finish it, hit a time, or beat last year. Weight and FTP are set once and stay set, and everything downstream moves with them.
One slider across the top. Finish time, fatigue and reserve move with it. -
2
Build out the plan
Every climb, corner and stretch of loose ground, priced by what it costs you rather than averaged flat. Carbs per hour on the same kind of slider, feeds placed where the course actually lets you eat, and markers that carry the plan's own numbers to your head unit.
Fueling: what it saves against what your gut will actually take. 
Markers you name, carrying what the plan predicts you'll average there. They move when the plan does. -
3
Could you do it today? Pro
Not a fitness score. A clock. Your best comparable riding of the last eight weeks, solved over this exact course, against what your goal asks, and the minutes between them. Then the two ways to close it, in the order the numbers pick: train the ground that holds the gap, or move the target. Most apps have one lever and it is always train more.
Your best day against your goal. The lever that leads is the one the gap actually sits on. Underneath, the course itself is the axis. Every demand it makes is marked on the profile, with what it asks in watts and how much slower you ride it, and the clock running away from goal pace is drawn as one line, so the steep parts of that line are exactly where the race is decided for you.
Where the minutes are. Every stretch that costs you, and what it asks, on one line you already know how to read. -
4
Every ride you log counts Pro
Import from Strava or upload the file from your head unit. Eight weeks of riding, one bar a week, each one cut by heart rate zone so a week of easy hours and a week of intervals stop drawing the same block. Press a week and it opens into its days. The ground you actually ride, the places you start from, and the climbs you keep doing are all read off the files, and none of it needs tagging.
Eight weeks, and what was in them. Rest days are drawn, not closed up. And the question every rider actually has, answered the only honest way: the same ground, compared with itself, at the same heart rate. Ride harder and you go faster, which says nothing. The dots show the working behind the number.
Same beats, more speed. That vertical distance is the only part that is fitness. -
5
Race day: know exactly what's coming
At every point on the course the model knows which set your speed: your legs, the corners, or the brakes. Every stretch where it was not your legs becomes a play, with what it throws away, what to do there, and where your reserve comes back. Mark them and they ride to your head unit as cues. It runs on the guest course without an account.
Six moves on a 19-mile lap: where they are, what each one costs, and what to do.
Why a road calculator gets this wrong
MTB pacing isn't road pacing.
Every general cycling pacing tool assumes you can hold a target number. On singletrack you can't, not on race day and not six hours into a route you've never ridden. The plan has to be built around that instead of pretending otherwise.
Technical sections cost more than their grade says
A rocky, rooty 2% grade is not a 2% effort. The course is rated on how rideable it actually is, so the effort the model expects on chunder is one you can hold.
Speed carries between segments, and a flat average throws that away
Tight, turny singletrack caps your speed no matter how many watts you have, so power stops paying. A short riser straight off a descent gets ridden faster than flat ground, because you arrive at it carrying speed. Segment-by-segment integration keeps both, so downhill to uphill transitions and rolling carry-over land where they really land instead of being averaged flat.
The same climb costs more at mile 40 than at mile 4
A 6% wall early and the same 6% wall late are identical on a gradient chart and nothing alike on the bike. Every climb is graded by what it will cost you when you actually arrive there, so the profile shows the ride you are going to feel rather than the one on the map.
Pavement, fire road and singletrack are three different bikes
Measured from a race file: the same bike rolled at under half the resistance on groomed fire road that it did on singletrack. That is 13 to 17% of your finish time, a bigger swing than changing bikes. So the course is not one surface. Tell it where the pavement ends in plain English, and it splits the route into sections it prices separately, then colors the map and the profile so you can see the ground change under you.
A 50-minute lap fails differently than a six-hour day
A long race runs out of legs and fuel. A short, punchy one runs out of something else: the finite reserve you spend every time you go over threshold, and refill only when you drop back under it. Empty it and you cannot hold the pace, whatever your fatigue says. The plan tracks both clocks and tells you which one is actually deciding your ride, so a hard XC lap gets a verdict built for a hard XC lap, not a marathon plan squeezed to fit.
A physics engine, not a rule of thumb. It analyzes your route datapoint by datapoint, weighing grade, curvature and surface against your weight and your power, solving what the bike actually does on each piece of trail and carrying the speed you leave with into the next one.
Two ways riders use it
A number on the start line. A plan for the day you're not sure about.
Ride the course before you ride the course
XC and marathon events. An honest finish time, a fatigue curve across the laps and a fuel schedule sized to the effort, so you find out whether your goal time survives lap three now, instead of on lap three.
The route you've been circling for a month
Your first 50-miler, an all-day linkup, the loop everyone says is too much. It answers the two questions that actually decide whether you go: how long am I out there, and how much food and water do I need to carry?
Pricing
Free is your race. Pro is your season.
The demo route isn't a watermarked teaser. You can run the full model on it and print the real sheet without an account.
- Full pacing & fatigue model
- Soldier Hollow demo course loaded
- Print the demo plan sheet
- 2 custom fuel points and 2 course markers
- Color the map and profile by surface
- Everything in Guest
- Your own GPX, saved. Swap it whenever
- Save your ride plans against it
- Send the course and markers to your head unit (GPX or TCX)
- 3 AI ride reads per 30 days
- Unlimited saved courses, all live at once
- Progression: could you do it today, where the minutes are, and every ride you log
- Print sheets and unlimited markers for your own routes
- Surface by section: draw it, describe it, or let the trail suggest it
- Saved athlete profile and rides dashboard
- Seven day trail outlook, from rainfall, drying and the soil under the trail
- Unlimited AI reads of your plan, in a voice you choose or one you write
Start free, in about a minute
Upload the GPX for your next race. See what it costs, how to pace it and what to eat, then keep it saved for when you come back to it. Sign in with Google, no card.
Questions
Before you upload anything.
Is this only for racing?
No. Racing is where the model came from, but the same question sits behind any big day: how long will this take me, how hard can I ride it, and how much food do I need on board? Riders use it to size up a first 50-miler, an all-day linkup or an unfamiliar route just as often as a start line.
Do I need a power meter?
It helps, but no. The model works from your FTP and weight, and reports effort as watts per pound alongside the duration, so you can ride to feel and still trust the fueling plan. If you don't know your FTP, start from a recent hard hour and adjust.
How is this different from Best Bike Split or a road pacing calculator?
Those model a rider holding a target on predictable surfaces. This one starts from the assumption that you can't. Technical terrain caps what's usable, and sustainable power decays across a long day. The fueling plan is scheduled against where the route lets you eat, which a road tool has no reason to consider.
Where do I get a GPX file?
Most race listings publish one. For a ride, export from Trailforks, RideWithGPS, Komoot or a Strava route, or pull it off your head unit if you've ridden part of it before.
Can I send the plan to my head unit?
Yes. Export the course with your markers as a GPX or a TCX course file. Use the TCX for a Garmin, because it writes the markers as real course points, which is what an Edge announces as you reach one, and the timings come from the ride the model predicts for you. A Wahoo ELEMNT ACE, BOLT 3 or ROAM 3 shows them on the map from either file, and earlier BOLT and ROAM units list them in the cue sheet. A Hammerhead Karoo takes the route but drops the markers, so route that one through Ride with GPS. Suunto and Amazfit take the route and keep points of interest in their own apps.
Can I try it without making an account?
Yes. The guest demo runs the full calculator on a loaded route with no sign-in. Uploading your own GPX and saving a profile are the parts that need an account.
Stop guessing at hour three.
Race day or the biggest ride you've attempted: run the model on a loaded route right now. No account, no card.