The Freetrail Podcast with Dylan Bowman Understanding the UTMB Index: What's Changing & Why It's Important?
Apr 27, 2026
Karen Merlin, a UTMB sports and sustainability team member focused on inclusion and athlete policy, and Adrian Vincent, an engineer who rebuilt the UTMB Index and scoring systems, explain recent changes to the Index. They walk through why the system exists, how the new four-step scoring method works, gender scoring choices, data collection challenges, retroactive rescoring, and impacts on everyday and elite runners.
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Race Directors Hear From Athletes About Uploading Results
- Dylan Bowman shared that failing to upload Big Alta results initially meant top athlete performances weren't in UTMB's database.
- Athletes requested the upload because those results impact sponsorships and future race access.
Effort Metric Lets Races Be Compared
- New algorithm first finds similar races using a combined distance-plus-elevation 'effort' metric to compare events.
- Elevation divided by 100 adds to kilometers to create an equivalent effort distance for profile matching.
Long Races Can Predict Shorter Race Performance
- The new model allows no strict upper distance cap when matching races, so long-distance results can inform shorter-distance expectations.
- This helps predict performances for athletes like Jim Walmsley who rarely race a given shorter distance.