What's new

The whole week in the Monday email

The Monday email now carries your runner's full sheet: every attribute, its bar, and what it moved this week.

• Every go counts. A route you came in short on, or turned round on, is in your week beside the ones you took, and so is ground you went for and missed: how many goes, your best, and how far off whoever holds it.
• Long times read in hours. A route record or a long piece of ground no longer arrives as a pile of minutes.
• Only a real winner is named. A race the pack won no longer reads as won by whoever was first among the names.
• Places read as places. 24th of 60, and each race name opens its page.

More screen for the race

On a race or a route, the header and the menu slide away as you read down, so the picture sits at the top of the screen and the story gets the rest. Scroll up a little and they come back.

The seen lines in a race are only what you were close enough to watch happen. A runner who drops back to you no longer brings everything they did up the road with them.

West Wind's long course goes at nine, on the hour, the way the race itself does.

How a race works, on the calendar

The race calendar opens with a short drawer that walks a race through: what entering costs, when the gun goes, what a call is and where your place comes from.

• Tap a label for the answer. The gun, the entry and your plan on each race card open their answer from Help over the calendar, the same way calls already did.

A free ride off the tops

Lost on a route and winched out, you're sat in the helicopter now, watching the range go by underneath. The page says it plainly: lifted out, where, and how far you got.

• The story fits the hour. A midday rescue doesn't talk about spotlights.
• The day shows what it cost. No time, and the Reputation and Confidence it took.
• The ride is free. The people out looking for you are LandSAR volunteers, and the Causes shelf in the shop is one tap from the rescue screen.
• Read it back. A day that ended in the helicopter is in your log with the rest, and replays to the rescue.
• Off the hill early. Each route's page now lists the days that turned round or got flown out, and counts the helicopters.

Your legs, in bars

Out on a race or a route, your energy, legs and gut are three bars under the picture now, so a crowd of runners around you can't hide them. A bar goes amber when you're tiring and red when you're nearly done, and when one drops it shows by how much.

• Gut is on the screen for the first time. It always moved your pace. Now you can see why a stretch went slowly on fresh legs.
• A strip under the bars shows how far along the course you are.
• They're up on the start line too. The bars you'll set off with are under the picture while you wait for the gun, and carry straight on into the race.
• The ranges look like the ranges. On a route, and at West Wind, the flat bits go past tussock, swing bridges, track signs and huts, not bus stops.

WUU2K closes the season

WUU2K now falls on the last Saturday of every season, so each one ends on its biggest morning, a few days before the ladder settles. The next is Saturday 28 November, and entries are open now.

What we hold about you

Everything we keep about you, who else handles any of it, and how to get a copy or get rid of it, on one page at /privacy. It's linked from the foot of the site, from sign-up, and from Help.

• Deleting your account now takes your push subscriptions and your other sign-ins with it, as Help always said it did.

Checked in seconds

A note in a ground log or a hut book, and a nickname you send up, are checked while you watch now. A few seconds, and the page shows the answer without you leaving it.

Who is real

Every simulated runner now carries a small ⚙ after their name, on the boards, the race pages and your feed. A name without one is a person.

Ground you sent in gets an answer

Send in a piece of ground and you hear what happened to it.

• On the board. When it goes live you get a line in your feed, and a push or an email like any other ground news.
• Turned down. If it doesn't make it, the same line tells you why, in the words of the person who read it.
• Check your address. Nothing reaches your inbox until it is verified, and Today now says so over the feed until it is.

Levels you can feel

A level is news now, on the way up and on the way down.

• Going up. A new level leads your day with what it opens, and your runner jumps for joy the first time you see it.
• Coming back. A level you had lost and won back is marked too, without the jump.
• Going down. A level lost says so, quietly, with what it has shut and how far it is to get it back.

Told before a call can go unheard

If push is off, the races and FKT boards say so before you commit.

• Where you enter. With push off on every device you own, both boards say a call can stand without anybody telling you, and show the one step that turns it on for the device in your hand.
• On the button too. Entering a race or going for a route says it again in the confirm, until push is on.

Ground within reach sooner

The region's other runners start closer to where you do.

• A gentler start. Everyone the game puts in the region begins lower and grows over the season, so your first piece of ground should come about a month sooner than it would have.
• This morning's times came down too. Every time set on the ground since the restart now matches the runner who set it, so each piece is held at a slower time than it was at breakfast.

A front page that shows you the game

The front page moves now, and it shows the world getting on with it.

• A trailer. A minute of Midpack Hero, from a console waking up to a finish arch. It plays quietly at the top of the page, and opens with sound on its own page. There is an upright cut for phones.
• Right now in Wellington. How many runners there are, how many outings went out today, the next gun counting down, the last piece of ground taken, and who has climbed the ladder this week.
• The game itself. Real screens from today, the ground board and race day, and the places each part of the game happens.
• One way in. Join the beta is the button. The teaser and the trailer sit beside it.

The ladder, for anyone to see

The four divisions are on their own page now, and you don't need to be logged in to read them.

• Who's climbing. Every runner carries an arrow for where they sit against a week ago, and the three who climbed furthest are at the top.
• People are marked. A person carries a mark beside their name. Everyone else is a simulated local.
• Names only. A name, a place and an arrow. Nobody's stats are on it.

A better Monday email

The weekly email is about you now. It opens with how your runner's week went and ends with what is coming up, with the region's news underneath.

• Your week. Days out, any level gained and what it opened, what your body gained or lost, and the nearest thing within reach.
• Moments. Your race results, badges and any ground or mark you took.
• Your people. What your mates and the runners you watch got up to.
• Coming up. Every start line in the next seven days, and who you know is already on it.
• It stops if you do. If two go by without a visit, the next one waits until you are back.
• Verified addresses only. No email from the game comes until you've verified your address. The account screen says so if you haven't. Push works either way.

A sharp top on iPhone

The top of the installed app on an iPhone was blurred under iOS 27. It is sharp again, and the bar with the clock and battery is the same colour as the header.

• Add it again to get the fix. An iPhone keeps the old top until the app is removed from the home screen and added back from Safari.

A win that looks like one

Win a race and the game finally notices.

• Over the line, you jump. Your runner leaps about with their arms up while confetti comes down, and the panel says WINNER.
• The result is lit. Your time is the big number under "You won", with how far clear of second you were, and your first win says so.
• It leads Today. For the day the result is up, the win sits at the top of Today.

A take that looks like one

Taking a piece of ground or an FKT mark is the first thing on Today, and it is lit.

• The headline of the day. For the day after you take one, it sits at the top of Today with your time as the biggest number on the screen, above what it paid and where it left you in the region.
• It arrives. The first time you see it on a device it writes itself out. After that it is simply there.
• A mark gets the same. An FKT mark is drawn the way a piece of ground is, on Today and on the routes board.

A personal best, or ground somebody has already had back, keeps the same card with the lights off.

Two races at once

Today keeps up with every race you have somebody in.

• Your place on the race card. Once the gun has gone, your race on Today says where you are and how far in, along with anybody you follow on the same start line.
• The people you follow, racing elsewhere. A race with somebody you follow out on it gets a short readout of its own: their place, how far in, the race clock and the way through to the whole board. Today keeps itself up to date while any of them is running.
• The alarm knows you are racing. If the gun goes before your alarm, the morning push says where you are in the race and how far in, or your time if you are already home.

The morning after a race or a taper, the day's session arrives with your alarm, so standing orders give you the usual hours before they take it.

Tapering into a race

The days before a race you have entered are yours to rest.

• Taper instead of skipping. A few days out from your race, the session on Today can be tapered: that is the day's training done, nothing is lost, and the day still counts towards your streak. The longer the race, the earlier the taper opens.
• A shakeout on race eve. The day before, you can swap the session for an easy thirty. Once you are out on it, that is the day.
• Sessions suit your load. A heavy session is no longer offered when it would put you in the red, and once your load is costing you form you are offered only easy ones.

Easier to read on a phone

Boards, results and the race calendar line up, so a number is where you look for it.

• Boards are tables. Place, name and time sit in three columns on every board and result, with anything else about the row underneath the name.
• Labels and values line up. A value starts in the same place on every row, or on the line under its label when it is too long to fit beside it.
• The race calendar is one fact a row. Distance, gun, how long it takes, the start, the entry and the field each get a line of their own.
• Call by call reads down the course, kilometre first, then where, what it did to your place, and what you called. The call you spent your class ability on carries its name.
• The feed hangs off its times, so every entry starts in the same place.
• Text in a box is bigger, the same size as everything around it.

The start line

Five minutes before the gun, open the race and you are on the start line with everyone else: the field stood about around you, and an announcer saying who is in and how they look.

• The push takes you there. The five-minute warning opens the start line, and so does the race card on today.
• Everyone sets off together. When the gun goes the same picture starts running, and the quick ones pull away up the road while the slow ones drop back.
• You see who passes you. Anybody close enough to see is drawn beside you, named, and an overtake slides past on screen whichever way it goes. Mates are always drawn first.
• Watchers get it too. The race's own page shows the start line to anyone, signed in or not.
• Your plan is on the race's page. Once you are entered it says so, and you can change your plan there right up to the gun. The race card on the calendar links straight to it.

Signed in on every device

Signing out on your laptop leaves you signed in on your phone, and the other way round. A new account stays signed in from the day it is made.

• Changing your password signs out everywhere else. Use it if a device goes missing.

Each quality explains itself

Tap Climbing, Heat or any other quality on your runner and the popup answers for that one: what it does to a time, what it does in a race, and which sessions build it.

Asleep until the alarm

Between lights out and your alarm, today says Asleep and tells you the minute the alarm goes, which is when the next session arrives. Your runner is drawn in bed for all of it, right up to that minute.

• Wake up now. After midnight you can get your runner up early and start the day, for free. A declared S–K still sets off at the alarm, so it can't be woken early that morning.

Rest days pay

Load now comes off a little at a time whenever you're home, not all at once when you wake.

• Rest is the quickest way down. Your load halves every day and a half at home, and the more you're carrying the faster it falls. Nothing comes off while you're out running.
• Easy sessions add a point or two. They keep you training for almost nothing, and they never risk an injury, even when you're niggled.

Plain answers

Help and the screens say what happens, in fewer words.

• Help that answers first. Every answer on the help page leads with the answer, and the numbers sit in short lines you can read on a phone. Tap a term in the game and the popup shows the whole short answer.
• Notes that match the game. The shop, the job board, the race calendar, the ground board and the routes say exactly what each choice costs and does.

How your days go

• All on the you screen. Your job, standing orders and holiday booking sit with your runner, your standing and your kit.
• A new nickname reaches the top line. The name along the top of every screen changes once your nickname goes up, with no reload.

Last week's results

• Every running, in full. A race's own page lists its past runnings, and each one now opens to the whole result: everybody named, in the order they came home, and where anyone who dropped out stopped. The address carries it, so a result can be sent to somebody.
• Medals you can tell apart. The trophy shelf hangs gold for a win, silver for second, bronze for third and pewter for every other finish. Tap a medal to see the race, where you came and the day.

Five minutes to the gun

Pings come when things happen, night or day.

• Five minutes to the gun. A race you're entered in tells you five minutes before the gun, so you can be on the page when the field goes.
• Through the night. Race calls and everything else now come at any hour, so an overnight race asks you its night questions instead of leaving them to your plan. Silence your phone if you want the night off.
• Old devices let go. A phone or browser that hasn't opened the game in a month stops getting pings. Open the game on it again and it picks them back up.

Something to spend it on

The purse buys things other people can see: kit, a house full of it, and a dog.

• Kit that shows. Sunglasses, a race visor, a buff, arm sleeves and calf socks, in the shop's colours. Your vest is on your back now, and you can dye it. Anything you wear for looks comes off again at the counter.
• Signature. A colourway that shimmers between two colours, on anything sold in colours. And a watch that catches the light.
• Home. The chest freezer, the wind trainer, the gravel bike on the wall and the rest are real. Buy them on the counter's Home shelf and they stand round you on a rest day, where a mate can see them. Normatecs are worn in bed.
• A trophy shelf. You buy the shelf. Only medals you ran for go on it, and you choose which from the pool room.
• A dog. Pick a coat and a name. It runs with you, sleeps by the bed and sits at your feet when a mate looks in. It eats a little every morning, and if the purse can't cover a week of that, it stays with family until it can.
• The big ones. A campervan parked wherever you set off up a hill, and a pain cave for rest days.
• Moves. Buy a flex to use on mates, or a pose to cross a finish line in. Some can only be earned: arms up for a top-three finish, a bow for a win, and kissing the ground after an ultra.

None of it makes you faster.

Mates

Watch somebody who watches you back and you're mates. The region screen shows them to you.

• Mates. There's nothing to accept. As soon as two people watch each other, each gets a line in the feed saying so. Only people can be mates.
• Where they are. Mates open the region screen, drawn doing what they're doing right now: at work, asleep, out on a hill, on holiday. When you're both free, you stand together, and now and then one of you waves.
• Flex. Once a day you can flex at a mate. They see it the next time they open the region screen.
• Head to head. Each mate's card has their week beside yours, the ground you've both run, and how your races against each other have gone.
• Same start line. When a mate has entered the same race as you, your race card says so, and so does the reminder when you haven't entered yet.
• Same stretch of trail. A mate close enough to see runs beside you in your race picture, in front or behind where the board has them. When the board swaps you over, you watch one of you go past.
• Run it together. Ask one or more mates up a piece of ground at a day and time. Picking how you'll run it sends the ask, and the board says who you asked. Each says yes on their own approach, or can't make it. At the time you all set off, whether anybody is looking or not: out together, up it at your own pace, the first one waits at the top, and home together. You're all on the map, and afterwards everybody gets the group's times as well as their own. It takes the day's slot, and a fast time still takes the ground. An invite, fifteen minutes to go and the result are the three things a mate can send to your phone. Today shows a run you're down for that day with its clock, and any ask still waiting on your answer.

The live board now puts every runner at the same distance their own race screen shows.

Club night, every week

Races come and find you now, and a new runner's first week is free.

• Every week. Switch on every week on the Wednesday club night and you're on the start list each time entries open, unless you're injured, on holiday or racing somewhere else that day.
• Still time to enter. A race you could still enter and haven't sends you one notification: at noon on the day for an afternoon or evening gun, and the evening before for a morning one. Mute it on the account screen like anything else.
• A free first week. For a new runner's first seven days, a missed session costs no Confidence, fitness doesn't drift and the purse isn't spent while you're away.
• The way back. Come back after a few days away to losses on the card and it starts with how they come back: with training, and never below the runner you registered as.
• Fewer emails. The morning wake stops emailing once you haven't opened the game for three days. The nudge and the Monday email still come.

Dark now starts at the real sunset, not an hour before it, so the head torch stays off, and running without one costs nothing, until the sun is actually down.

Back from a night away

Today says what happened while you were out, and what you could go and get.

• What moved. Come back after a night or a working day and today opens with what changed since you last looked: your qualities, your level, ground you took or lost, a race that was settled and the purse.
• In reach. Under it, the nearest ground you could take and how far off you are, the next level and what it opens, and the division above when it's close.
• Your week. A row of squares beside your form, one for each day your runner went out, and how many weeks in a row you've kept four of them.

The rules, where you need them

The game says more about how it works, at the moment you need to know.

• Press a word for its answer. Load, form, condition, stress, standing and every quality open their answer over the screen you're on, with the rest a press away in Help. A word you can press is underlined, and a label you can't press isn't.
• Help has the numbers. What a session or a piece of ground puts on your load, what a night takes off, the chance an effort hurts you, how the stress gauge fills and empties, what a point of a quality is worth against par, and what standing is made of. They are read from the game itself, so they stay right. Help also explains backcountry, and the one thing the route board keeps to itself.
• Cards say what it costs first. A piece of ground says when the day's slot is spent or the day's work is past what your form can take, and asks before you set off. A session says when it goes out in the wet or the dark.
• The day's first outing counts as a first. Form takes the second-session knock only once an earlier outing that day is home.
• Enter now, bring the kit on the day. A race takes your entry short of its compulsory kit and checks it at the start line. A race the purse can't cover says so where the button would be.
• Stay away and you drift back to the runner you made, the roll and all, for runners made from today.

Smaller things: a race page lists a running once it has been run, the gels on your belt name the race they're for, and a race page counts a win's standing the way the region does. The region ladder numbers each group the same with or without the rivals filter, a rival's dossier names a weak spot only where there is one, and a piece of ground's history says when a local let it go. Your first job change comes a month after you start, the career log calls your level a level, and sign-up says what your name is used for. On a phone the site header scrolls out of the way, the teaser has a way home and to sign up, and a new account sees account and help until its runner is made.

Race night, read properly

Anyone can watch a race now, and a race says what happened in it.

• No account needed to watch. Every race's own page opens to anyone, and Help lists them. It turns to the live board by itself when the gun goes.
• Every race has a winner on its page. When runners from the pack beat every name, the front of them gets a line with a place and a time.
• Call by call. Your result lists each call you made, where it left you and what the stretch after it cost or gave back against your legs.
• One place everywhere. Your race screen, the live board and the report afterwards agree on where you were, and a call's story stays as it was when you reached it.
• Push on pushes. The plan takes the quickest line open to you at each call, and the chosen plan shows as chosen.
• New runners start at level 1, with no reputation yet. Everyone else has been counted the same way, so your level may read lower than it did.

Smaller things: the race card says how much of your day a race takes, a session card shows its load, jobs say the second session opens at level 5, a taken name is flagged as you type it, the live board says what its arrows cover, a result says when a race knocked your confidence, and "you are in" waits until you are.

You

Your runner has a screen of their own again, one tap from today.

• you is on the bar, next to today. It shows your runner, where you stand in the region and the state of your kit, all open on one screen, with the class ladder, the cabinet, the wardrobe and your history a tap further down.
• Today is about today. The hub keeps the forecast and the day's money, and what you are like as a runner lives under you.

The line at the top of the screen stays on one line at every width. When it is tight the game's name steps aside first, and a long name is trimmed before the clock is. The row of doors under it no longer breaks a word over two lines; what does not fit goes into the menu at the end.

Your race, on the race's page

The account of how your race went is on the race's own page as well as at the finish.

• Open the race after it is scored and your report sits under the result, for you and nobody else.
• The report tells more of the story. It holds your time against what your legs were good for at the gun, names each stretch where you gained or lost ground from one end to the other, says where the rest of the places went, and when nothing else explains a bad stretch, says what it did to your energy or your legs.
• The report starts counting at the first stretch of the course. Where the board had you at the gun is a forecast, and it no longer turns up as the best place you ran in.
• Once the story is over and you are still out there, the hub shows you running to the line rather than already finished.

Moving between today, out, region, shop and account is quicker. The screen changes in place and no longer reloads the whole page.

Lights out

Your runner keeps the hours their life gives them.

• The night is a night now. Between the hour they turn in and the alarm their job sets, the hub shows a runner asleep rather than standing about the kitchen. A route that runs through the small hours still shows you out on it.
• Training done is not bed. Once the day's sessions are spent your runner is done for the day, feet up and shoes off, rather than asleep in the middle of the afternoon. If the shift is still on they are at work until it ends.

The belt you turn up with

The game tells you when you are short of gels, before the gun.

• Your kit block counts against the race you have entered. Three gels with the ultra on Saturday reads as short, on the hub and at the counter, with the number the distance is asking for beside it.

• The race card says what a short belt costs. On a race that will not turn you away for it, the card says how many gels the distance wants and how many are in your pack, from the day you enter until the gun.

• A race page shows the race that is coming. Once a start line has runners on it, the page about that race is the start list rather than the result of the last one. A race under way still comes first, and a result stays up while nobody has entered the next one.

• The field has a sharp end. The runners without names in a race are a real local field now rather than a crowd you clear by about level 8, so a place is worth what it says. Where you finish will read lower than it used to for the same run, and the top of a career still wins.

• More of the field has a name. Up to sixteen of the runners you can follow will line up for a race, so whether somebody turns up is down to whether they fancy it rather than to a cap.

• A leaderboard says who is ahead of it. When runners without names are leading, the board counts them above the top row instead of opening at fifth with nothing above it.

• A race tells you how you ran, and the results tell you where you came. The story at the finish is about the race you had, so it never claims a placing it cannot know. It is decided by your own clock against your own par, which is why a club runner having the day of their life gets to read about it.

• A real placing gets said properly. Win one, make the podium or come home inside the top ten and the write-up says so instead of filing it as another number out of the field.

The race you run is the time you post

How you run each stretch of a race is what your finishing time is made of.

• Running a stretch well buys you time on it. Attacking a climb you are built for is genuinely faster up it than power-hiking it, and attacking one you are not is slower. Every call you answer prices the ground in front of you, and your time is those stretches added up.
• What you spend, you pay for later. Go with the move at 15 km and the last kilometre charges you for it. An empty tank is slow whatever you choose, and confidence decides how slow: it does not make you faster, it makes you less slow when it goes wrong. What a race does to yours stays with your runner afterwards.
• Your pace is on the screen, in minutes per kilometre, beside the distance you have covered. If what is left of your race is a walk, the number says so and the picture shows one.
• The ending describes the race you ran. A fast race is never told it blew up, whatever it cost you to run it; and blowing up reads as blowing up when it cost you the race as well. Coming home with plenty left is a controlled day rather than a great one, and the best day on the course belongs to whoever had it, at any level.
• Where you are and when you cross are one number. The distance runs out exactly as you reach the line, and the ending lands with it.
• Your place moves when something happens on the course. The board reads the race you have actually run rather than an estimate of it, so a place changes when you answer a call and not otherwise.
• Nobody is pulled out a kilometre from the line. You stop where stopping is possible, which is an aid station with a road out of it. Past the last one you finish, however slowly, and slowly costs you places rather than the whole day.
• A way back to the board. The field is usually still out when your race ends, so your result links to the live board for as long as the race is being run.

Midpack Hero has its own address

The game lives at midpackhero.com now. Anything you bookmarked, pasted or shared still lands on the same page.

Two things to do once, because a browser treats a new address as a new place:

• Sign in again.
• Switch the pings back on, if you had them. Add Midpack Hero to your home screen again from the new address, and the first time you open it from the tile it asks, once, whether you want them.

Mail from the game comes from ping@midpackhero.com.

And the about page says where this came from. An idea the two of us had about a race you read rather than watch, and the rabbit holes between that and the game you are playing. Both outfits behind it are named and linked, and the picture at the top is the pair of us on a ridge above the harbour at dawn.

One race, one board

• A call comes when you get there. Calls used to land at the times a perfect run would have reached them, so on a bad day the call for 54 km arrived while you were short of 45. Every decision now re-prices the road ahead against the day you are having, and the kilometre on your screen, the countdown to the next call and the hour of the day move together.
• Everybody sees the same board. Every runner on it is read the same way, off their own race and their own clock, so you, your rival and somebody watching from home see the same places. The gap to the runner ahead is the gap on the trail, not the gap you would finish in.
• Your race, written up. A short account of your own race sits under the result: where you were at your best, where the places went, and one thing about the nearest runner on your list. It says only what your race recorded.
• Every screen knows you are racing. Today, out and the routes board all draw the race now, the same picture the race screen does.

Put right on the way: setting off with exactly the gels a race asks for no longer locks you out of it, a race you step away from picks up where you left it, a moved start time takes the start list with it, and race day stands the training board down whether or not you opened the game before the gun.

The Wednesday race is a straight race

The free race on Te Ahumairangi every Wednesday is scored on the clock now, like every other race, and it is called the Te Ahumairangi Club Night. It was a handicap, so the field finished together if everybody ran to form. Same hill, same nine and a half kilometres, same gun at six, still free, and the fastest runner round it wins.

There is a clock on the screen while you are out on a route now, and it keeps running on the walk out. The race clock ticks by the second rather than jumping.

The shop is a place, and your kit gives out

• The counter is somewhere you have to be. While you are out on anything, a session, a hill, a route or a race, the shop, the physio and the wardrobe are shut. You can still read the shelf and how worn your kit is.
• The shelf says what you own, on the card you are looking at, with a count for gels. Kit bought once lasts for ever, and the cupboard has a bin for the pair you will never put on again.
• A shell wets out, and old shoes keep getting slower. Past its wet outings a jacket stops counting, and a start line that asks for one turns you away. You are told at four fifths of its life and again in the race-week kit check. Shoes never die; they cost more the further past their kilometres they go.
• You can give a cause more than the month. A dial on both cards, up to ¤4,000. It buys nothing extra, and the shelf keeps a running total.

What you can read about somebody else

A dossier names what they do for a living now, and says what they have been up to: what they have entered, the last few pieces of ground and routes they put a time on, their last ten race results, their division and their cabinet, each as one table. The head to head has a you and a them column, and anyone on a start list who is a person is marked as one.

The game has a new name

The game is Midpack Hero. It was The Long Game, a name that already belonged to a podcast, a board game and most of a page of search results, and for one day in between it was The Midpack, which named where you are standing rather than what you are doing about it.

The midpack is still where almost everybody out on a trail is. The hurt is the same as at the front, the day is longer, and no one is filming. That is the whole of what this game is about.

Nothing else moved. Your runner, your ground, your kit, your badges and your results are where you left them.

The FAQ is called help, and you can search it

Help is on the bar beside the five doors, and there is a box at the top of it. Type what happened and it keeps the answers that match: injured, gpx, holiday, ¤. It looks for the word you used rather than the word we used, so tired finds load and money finds the purse. A search is a link, too: midpackhero.com/help?q=holiday opens the page already filtered.

Typing on an iPhone no longer zooms the page in and leaves it there.

Every race, live, and worth watching

Every race on the calendar runs on one clock, and you can watch any of them, not only your own.

• A race's page carries its whole arc: the start list while entries are open, a live board once the gun has gone, then the result sheet. The board is marked provisional until the whole field is home.
• Races run at the pace a real one would. The WUU2K half takes about two hours, the 65 the better part of a day. The Wednesday club night stays quick, over in about thirteen minutes.
• A call sends a push, on every race, and you get five minutes to answer it whatever the race clock is doing.

The hills are a skill, and you can be winched off one

The routes ask for backcountry, which is what the hills teach you by being in them.

• Every route says what it earns. Jumbo–Holdsworth is worth 3 the first time round, the Southern Crossing 5, the S–K 10, each stepping down a point a trip. A day you turn round on still teaches you something.
• A route you are not ready for ends with a helicopter. No time posted, nothing paid, and a knock to your Confidence and your Reputation that everybody hears about. Nobody dies out here.
• Nothing stops you going. The board will not refuse you, and it will not say which route is beyond you either. Start on Jumbo.

The whole S–K is in pictures now: the Mangatainoka swing bridges, Arete and the wrong spur off it, Dracophyllum, Nichols Hut, the knobs to Boyd-Wilson, and Kiwi Ranch Road at the end. Twenty-one places on the route carry art, up from thirteen.

New runners start at the bottom

Sign up on Monday and you could be in the Tops, the region's top group, by Thursday. The local field was seeded too slow. Every local runner has been stood up against a real career, so the five standards run from your own day-one level to the top of the sport with no hole between, and a new runner starts in the Valley.

• The local ground is held at faster times, and a local runner may hold only one piece of it, so more of the board is within reach of a runner a month or two in.
• Your division reads the whole runner. Reputation counts towards it now, not only your seven qualities.
• Reputation buys you a name. At 25 a nickname field opens on your account, and it sits between your first and last name everywhere your name appears. Drop under 25 and it comes off until you are back over. The locals are on the same terms, and only about five of the thirty-two have the results to wear theirs.
• The cabinet holds what you won, newest first, rather than a list of what you have not done yet.

Two causes at the shop

There is a Causes shelf at the shop, the only counter in the game that hands you nothing back. Eighty a month to either of two outfits. LandSAR come and get people off the hill, and a month with them halves what a callout costs your name. Trail Running NZ put the volunteer crew on the tracks, and a month to them opens the trail crew green on the race singlet for good. Nothing renews itself, each month is worth a point to your name, and neither will ever be worth a second on a hill.

Less on the screen, more in the FAQ

Ten screens have had their explaining taken off them. What a route pays, what holding ground is worth, what a level costs: all still true, all on the FAQ, with a link where the sentence used to be. What stays on the screen is what you are deciding and what it will cost you.

And telling us something goes somewhere. What you write in the contact form becomes a numbered job on our side, with somebody who has to close it, and the reply comes from the same address as before.

Five doors, and a lot fewer words

Everything on the screen was the same volume, and there was too much of it.

• Every screen has three levels. One headline saying what to do next, above one filled button. Under that, the live state worth reading. Under that, everything you look up rather than act on, folded into drawers that say what is in them.
• The nav is five words: today, out, region, shop, account. out is the one door that used to be three, ground, routes and races, with a strip along the top to move between them.
• Today and your runner are one screen. The runner sheet is six drawers under the hub, and the hub came out shorter than before it absorbed a whole screen.
• The boards lead with the decision. A name, what is standing on it, what it is worth, and only the rows that bite today. The ground board went from about thirteen phone screens to under two.
• The region opens with the people, one row each with a watch button, then what everybody you watch has been up to, then the four divisions.
• Living costs come off the wage. Rent, power and a supermarket shop every morning before anything reaches the purse, and the jobs board prints all three. No bankruptcy and no debt: a thin month is a squeeze.
• Two new things on the counter. A recovery session, which takes the tail off a heavy week. And a race singlet, which does nothing at all and is the thing you buy because you want to look like that.
• Your first week has a thread through it. Five things worth doing once sit on the hub for seven days, each linking to where it is done, and then the list takes itself away.

You can see how everybody else is going

Every row on the ladder carries the load a runner is carrying, with the red zone marked, and how their body reads today, Flying down to Wrecked. You still cannot read their attributes: you can see the shape somebody is in, not what they are made of.

And every name leads somewhere. The standings, a dossier, the career log, the boards and the hub all link a name to the page behind it, so whoever holds a piece of ground is a tap away.

The doors are open

The game is open to anybody who wants a runner, and the bits of it that said otherwise have gone.

• There is a contact form at the foot of every page. Tell us what happened, what you expected, and roughly when.
• The FAQ says what happens to what you write. Ground logs, hut books and the name on a teaser run are all read before they reach anybody's board. Be as rude as you like about a hill, and none of it at another runner.
• Closing an account and deleting one are different things. Closing can be undone. Deleting erases the lot, straight away, from your own account page.
• The way in is guarded. Five wrong passwords sits the login down for five minutes.
• A link to the game looks like the game when you paste it somewhere.

The feed is somewhere to go

• Names in the feed are links. A hill goes to its record, a runner to their dossier, and it works everywhere a name is printed, back through the whole career log.
• Races have a record page: the course record, the ten quickest, and every running of it with your own result on the day.
• A record says what has been run, not what is meant to be. The par lines are gone from every record page. What survives is the gap to a person.
• Put it on your Home Screen. The game installs, with its own tile drawn as your runner. On an iPhone that is the only way a ping can reach you, and the game now says so until you have done it.

A long day out knows what time it is

On the mountain routes, and the S–K in particular:

• The story tells you the actual hour, off the clock you are running on rather than one somebody imagined.
• A beat waits until you get there. The ground between two calls arrives as you cover it, so Dracophyllum and Nichols are two arrivals in your day rather than one paragraph read hours early.
• Nobody wakes up while they are still out there. The day still turns over. There is no morning ping, nothing new on the training board until you are home, and no night's rest: running through the night is not sleeping it.
• Turning back gets you off the hill. Retreat at Dundas Ridge and you are home that afternoon. The run lands on the day it was, with your time, the mark and the splits, and the ending waits for the road end.

Going on holiday

Book a holiday on your account screen, pick the day it starts and how long, and your runner goes with you instead of quietly falling apart while you are up a hill with no signal.

• Four weeks of the year, three at a time, seven days at least, booked ahead and free to call off until the morning it begins.
• The first morning clears the load and the stress. The fitness still slides, at half pace.
• A session you never started costs no Confidence, and the autopilot stands down.
• It does not hold your division. The season turns whether you are there or not, and the booking screen says whether that falls inside your holiday.

The season is the real one, and the region is cut into four

• The competitive year is the New Zealand calendar: 1 December, 1 March, 1 June and 1 September. When it turns, the divisions settle and every piece of ground stands open. Your times, your bests, your marks and your badges are untouched; what ends is the tenancy.
• Four divisions: Tops, Ridge, Bush and Valley. Everybody in Wellington is ranked on fitness and sorted into a group of fixed size, so there is always somebody directly above you to get past. It settles when the season turns, with a fortnight's warning if you are in the bottom two.
• The field has doubled, from fourteen runners to thirty-two, and it no longer stops where it used to. A handful of the new arrivals are national level, and they train into it over months the same way you do.
• Standing still costs something. Fitness drifts when you stop training and no longer slows down the longer you are gone. The runner sheet says the day the next point comes off. Nothing falls below the runner you started as.
• The races come round at different rates. The Wednesday race is every week. West Wind is the first Sunday of the month. WUU2K is once a season, entries open eight weeks out.

Reputation fades, and a long day out pays

• Reputation decays. Stop racing and it drifts back down, fastest when it is highest, never below the eight you started with. Your badges are untouched. Reputation is what people think of you now; a badge is what you did.
• Ground and marks pay every time, not once. Taking a piece of ground pays again after a fortnight, a mark after three weeks, and each take gets a block on the board saying what it won.
• A mountain day is worth what it costs. Finishing a route pays on its own, whether or not the mark changes hands, and each of the three has a finisher badge.
• Every piece of ground has a Regular: whoever has been up it most in the last ninety days. Not quickest. Turning up.
• A personal best is news. Beating your own time on a line somebody else holds gets the block a take gets.
• Every route and every piece of ground has a record page: who holds it and since when, the ten quickest, and every time it has changed hands.

A world with other people in it

• Ground logs and hut books. Every piece of ground carries a log and every route a hut book, read before you commit. Finish an outing and you can sign it. The field signs the ground log too, and nobody signs the hut book.
• Rivals. Tag anyone, a person or one of the field, and the standings narrow to the handful you care about. Nobody is told you are watching them.
• Somebody else was out here today. A quiet line naming whoever ran the same line earlier.
• Absence stops paying. Your runner gets on with their life while you are gone, and it costs.
• The physio. A massage takes the stress down, a session clears a niggle. A strain or a real injury is refused at any price.
• The places, drawn. Fifty-six pictures, one per place on each course, arriving with the prose as you reach them.

The wind farm, the kit, and the purse

• West Wind replaces Turbine 16. Turbine was invented. West Wind is a real race on the wind farm at Makara, 17 km and 761 m, every landmark read off the organiser's own pages.
• The kit is yours to buy. You start with trail shoes and two gels. The mountain routes and the two long WUU2K distances each carry a compulsory list, checked at the start line rather than at entry. No gear, no race.
• The money is a purse, marked ¤. Same numbers, different sign.

The hub answers one question

• What can I do now? One headline, then the ways to spend the day. The rest folds away.
• One body, one outing. You cannot start a session and a hill at the same instant.
• Race day stands down every board, not only the session board.
• The writing got read. A dash we had been reaching for in every other sentence is gone, and the walls of explanation with it.

The board is real hills now

• You can add ground. Export a GPX from your watch, crop it in the browser to the span you mean, name it, send it in. No file ever reaches us, and the ends of your run stay at your house.
• The eight hills the board launched with are retired. Every number on them was typed by hand. The board said the Tip Track was 2.4 km; a real recording says 3.46.
• A hill is priced off a real time. Where somebody has run it, par is that time and a bit. Where nobody has, a model fitted against the ones that do.
• Crowns and segments are gone as words. You hold ground, and somebody takes it off you.

Read your race back

• A finished race or route can be replayed, typed out again at reading pace with a way to skip to the end.
• The teaser can be shared. Play it to an ending and you get a card, a permanent link, a name to put on the run, and a public list of finished runs. The link never shows the transcript.
• Shoes are sold in a colour, and the sprite wears the pair you bought.
• Four ways up a piece of ground, chosen before you set off.
• Everything the game says was read end to end, so the whole thing sounds like one person rather than eleven.

Numbers you could not read

• Ground trains you. A hard effort on a real hill builds whatever that ground is made of.
• The day has one slot. Take the session or go and attack something. A second big day costs.
• Load is on the front page, with the red zone marked.
• Levels climb like an RPG's. Level 2 is cheap, level 20 is 281 points, and going up says what it opened.
• An attempt takes the time it takes, rather than an hour whatever the distance.

Your runner on your home screen

• The app icon is your runner, side on, in the kit you dressed them in.
• The look you make is the look you keep. Only earned kit changes it now.
• A strip at the top of every screen while you are out there, with a blinking cursor when something is waiting on you.
• More than one race at a time. The only thing refused is two start lines on one morning.
• All three WUU2K courses were corrected against the real race, and every par is calibrated against published finishing times.

Everyone on the same clock

• An event race has a gun. The field sets off together, the calls unlock as the clock reaches them, and the whole start line is scored at once. The first one is a free Wednesday handicap over Te Ahumairangi, about thirteen minutes end to end.
• What one runner does, another runner reads. Go early at a landmark and everyone near you sees it.
• A race plan for the mornings you sleep through. Play it safe or push on, and any call you leave standing is taken by it. A field does not wait.
• The weather is real, fetched off the forecast every morning, so a six o'clock start in July is a headlamp start.
• Race day types, the way the teaser always has, and the hub leads with the race.

Mountains, bad days, and a beginner's week

• FKT routes are played, not timed. Three Tararua mountain days, written off the real routes, each a run of decisions. Nobody starts holding a mark, and the field cannot answer a call at two in the morning.
• A night policy. Pick what happens to a call that lands at 3 a.m. before you go.
• Bad days exist. Form of the day is half what you have done to yourself and half the luck of the morning.
• A beginner has a beginner's week. Nineteen sessions on a four-tier ladder.
• Badges. Inside the day on the S–K, the hour to Powell Hut, a long lunch on the Southern Crossing. They cannot be bought or taken back, and two unlock a hat in a colour that exists nowhere else.
• The shop sells things now. It used to render a balance and nothing for sale.

Money, mountains, and five classes

• A public site, so there is somewhere to send people.
• Jobs are a lever. Eighty-three of them, each a trade between money, weekday training time, stress and flexibility. Change once a month, free.
• WUU2K is one event at three distances. 21 km at nine, 45 at seven, 65 at six in the dark, all finishing at the velodrome. Entries cost money and are never refunded.
• FKT routes. Free, hours long, declared the day before with tomorrow's forecast on the board. A bad window is never blocked, only costed.
• Five classes and an ability ladder. Tussock climber, scree hound, road convert, hut bagger, rogainer, with a readout at level 5, a one-shot at 10 and a world perk at 15.

The world stops rewarding you for leaving

• Absence costs. A session you ignore lapses and fitness drifts back toward where your class started.
• The rivals are real runners. A whole field of them, each with a personality, training on their own schedule and coming for your ground while the app is shut.
• Weather, darkness and the season cost you time, and are on the board before you commit.
• Money, time and stress. Your job pays a wage, eats your afternoon session if it is a rigid one, and grinds you down if you never rest.
• Gear wears out. Kit can cost you time and comfort. It can never make you faster.
• Your runner is drawn on screen, out of text on a monospace grid, in a scene that comes off the world: the route scrolling past, the weather, the desk at work, the way they move carrying an injury.

The world runs whether you open it or not

The first version anybody could sign up to and live in.

• Make a runner. Rolled stats, a background, a region, a job, and a kit dresser.
• One sim day per real day. Up to two sessions, then sleep, then a ping in the morning that your runner is awake. The world advances with the app shut.
• Ground worth holding. Wellington trails with a time on them, and an injury chain where you are warned first, every time.
• Race day. Enter a local race and play it through with the engine the teaser runs on, gated by the stats you actually built.
• Notifications. Web push first, email as a backstop, quiet hours from ten at night.

The Western States teaser

The first thing anybody could play. One hundred miles of Western States as a branching scenario with thirteen endings, typed out a character at a time on a green phosphor terminal. The stats that decide which way it goes are hidden, no choice in it rolls a die, and everyone in the field is a parody of somebody you might recognise. It takes about ten minutes.