We at Ultra X pride ourselves on doing things dif­fer­ently, mak­ing multistage ultras more access­ible to the masses is one thing but to be gamechangers we know that we have got to con­stantly innov­ate, look at ways we can improve and incor­por­ate the latest think­ing into our events. Any­thing which makes our lives easi­er and more effi­cient as organ­izers means a bet­ter ser­vice at a more afford­able price for the run­ners. This is why we have teamed up with What3words to help with our route map­ping in Mex­ico.

Ultra X Mex­ico is based in the remote Cop­per Canyons of Chi­hua­hua. The route can­not be passed eas­ily by vehicle so it’s often either don­key or your own two feet if you want to get some­where! Check­points have been stra­tegic­ally posi­tioned so that vehicles loaded up with gazebos, mas­sage tables and a tonne of water can at least get close to the route, before our crew will lug the neces­sary items onto the course. How­ever, get­ting to them is not easy, par­tic­u­larly when the com­mu­nic­a­tions in the area can be dif­fi­cult.

What3words is a really simple way to talk about loc­a­tion. They have divided the world into a grid of 3m x 3m squares and assigned each one a unique 3 word address. It means any­one can accur­ately find any loc­a­tion and share it more quickly, eas­ily and with less ambi­gu­ity than oth­er sys­tems. It is simple yet accur­ate — con­vert­ing com­plex GPS coordin­ates into unique 3 word addresses. It means any­one can talk about any­where with 3 simple words. This will make life a lot easi­er for our crew and drivers who will have lim­ited access to com­mu­nic­a­tions in the remote canyons.

Each check­point and camp­site on the course has been assigned a three let­ter word. E.g Check Point 4 on Day 2 is Forceful.spray.entryways. The fin­ish line of the epic long day is Mugged.flatness.prepped. Get­ting to this one will be a little spe­cial!

Words are not only easi­er to remem­ber but are less prone to error when com­mu­nic­at­ing. In addi­tion, there is auto­mat­ic error detec­tion built in as the 3 word addresses are inten­tion­ally ran­dom­ised and unre­lated to the squares around them. To avoid con­fu­sion, sim­il­ar sound­ing addresses are also placed as far from each oth­er as pos­sible. The soft­ware accounts for spelling errors and oth­er typ­ing mis­takes.

We’ve loved try­ing out this new tech and are excited to be tri­al­ling it for the first time in Mex­ico this Novem­ber.

#theUl­traX­per­i­ence