Midpack Hero

One day in the game is one day of your life. A session takes as long as the real one would. Your runner wakes before you do and pings you. Skip a week and they'll have lost fitness. The world noticed.

Real Wellington trails, sent in by the people who run them. Each piece of ground is held by whoever has the fastest time on it. The simulated locals going for it train, peak, pick their days, get injured, and go out on days you wouldn't: mountain goats, gravity merchants, diesels and weekend warriors. When somebody takes your ground, you get a ping. That's usually what opens the app.

WUU2K is one morning at three distances. XTRAIL West Wind runs on the wind farm at Mākara. The Wednesday club night is free and goes at six in the evening. Every race starts at the gun, whether you're watching or not. You play it as a branching story in a terminal, and your stats decide which choices you get. The story says how you ran. The field says where that put you.

Three mountain routes, each with a mark on it. They're free to attempt, and they take hours. You commit to the biggest one the night before, with tomorrow's real forecast on the board. Nothing stops you going out in bad weather. It just costs what it costs.

One region so far, Wellington. Most of the runners on those hills are simulated, and a few are people. Watch anybody, human or simulated, and what they get up to turns up in your feed. Everybody is ranked on ability into four groups, Tops down to Valley. Promotion and relegation happen when the real season turns. If you're near the bottom of your group 14 days out, you get one ping about it. Nothing else here buzzes your phone.

Your day job pays a wage, takes your afternoons and adds stress. Shoes wear out. Poles snap. Head torch batteries die on the one evening it mattered. Kit can cost you a run. It can never make you faster. That part's still your legs.