Ultra Drop Bags and Aid Stations: How to Pack for the Wrecked Version of You

Written by James Frost, founder of Flaming Phoenix. Your race briefing always overrides anything here. Updated October 2026.

Quick answer: An ultra drop bag is a bag of your own food and kit that the race carries to a checkpoint for you. Pack each one for the tired, cold version of you who will open it: food for the next section plus spares, savoury and warm options for night, a headtorch and warm layers, fresh socks, and big clear labels.

An aid station is the staffed checkpoint where you refill water and eat whatever the race provides; a drop bag is your own supply waiting at some of them. Rules vary a lot between races. Centurion's South Downs Way 100 rules set a cut-off at every aid station, and Ultra X's 2026 England kit list caps the holdall it moves to camp at 10kg and asks for it to be waterproof. Read your own race pack before you buy a single snack.

The principle that makes drop bags work: you are not packing for the person in the kitchen the night before. You are packing for whoever arrives at mile 60 in the dark, with a stomach that has turned against sweet food, cold hands and no appetite for decisions.

What should I put in an ultra drop bag?

Put the same core in every bag (food for the next section plus spares, electrolytes, a spare soft flask, a small blister and chafe kit, wipes and any medication), then add what that point on the course needs: night kit, warm layers, fresh socks or shoes, sun cream for exposed sections.

Here is the food for one bag that covers a 6-hour section at 250 calories an hour, the middle of the 150 to 400 calories an hour recommended in the International Society of Sports Nutrition (ISSN) ultra-marathon position stand. Calories come from McCance and Widdowson's CoFID 2021 dataset and our label; the portions are ours.

That bag mixes sweet and savoury, dry and wet, and puts about a third of its calories in one compact item. To replace the bar's calories with sandwiches you would need about two and a half of them, roughly 220g; swap the potatoes for more sweets and the bag gets lighter but harder to face late at night.

The conditions layer

Estimate when you will reach each bag, including the slowdown that always comes, and pack for the weather at that hour, not at the start. Bags you will reach in the dark get a headtorch, spare batteries, a warm layer, gloves and warmer food. Later bags get dry socks and, if your feet swell on long runs, shoes half a size up. Exposed, hot sections get sun cream and a buff to wet.

The comfort layer

Morale is a real resource 60 miles in. A clean dry top, a treat you will look forward to, even a note to yourself, earns its weight. Food that feels like a reward gets eaten; food that feels like a chore comes home.

Labels and packing

Use a bright, waterproof bag you can spot in a pile of a hundred. Write your name, race number and the checkpoint in big letters, plus "out" or "back" if the course passes the same point twice. Inside, use labelled freezer bags by job (food, feet, night) so a tired brain or a volunteer can find things fast, keep liquids in leak-proof bottles, and never pack anything you cannot afford to lose.

What do aid stations give you, and what don't they?

Most aid stations offer water, a sports drink, sweets, fruit, crisps and biscuits, and on longer races soup, flat cola and sometimes hot food. Check the race's published list, but never plan to live on it: tables get picked over before the back of the field arrives, and the drink may not suit your stomach.

Hot food is worth hunting for. The ISSN recommends that races over 50 miles, where runners skip several meals, provide at least one hot, calorie-dense meal at a strategic point. If your race does not, a cup of hot water at a night checkpoint and something you can stir into it will do the same job. Sam Lees, who reached 100 miles at GB Ultras' Hope Trails event despite the heat, described a simple pattern: "I alternated between fruit and food at the aid station and then a few bites of the bar at the start line area and that seemed to work really well."

The other trap is time. Minutes at a table add up over a long race, and the chair is where many races end. The exception is food: leaving under-fuelled to save a minute is a bad trade, because getting behind on calories is how a rough patch becomes a long one.

How do you get through an aid station quickly?

Arrive with a plan and run the same sequence every time: fluids, pocket food for the next gap, something to eat there, kit only if needed, then leave. In the last few minutes before each station, decide what you need so you are not standing at the table thinking.

1. Refill bottles first, with electrolyte if it is warm.
2. Restock pockets with enough food to reach the next station.
3. Eat or drink something at the table.
4. Deal with feet or chafing only if they need it now.
5. Take what you need from your drop bag for the next section, and go.

How much to carry out depends on the gap to the next station. The table multiplies the ISSN's hourly ranges for fluid and calories by the time you expect the gap to take.

Heat pushes you to the top of the fluid range and cold to the bottom, although the ISSN notes that cold can blunt thirst, so drink to a plan rather than to feel. For a longer look at what goes in your vest between stations, the best foods for ultra running sets out what tends to work at each stage of a race.

What should go in a night-section drop bag?

Night bags need light, warmth and food that still appeals at 3am: a headtorch with spare batteries, a warm layer, gloves, and soft, salty or warm food rather than more sweets. Caffeine helps here; the ISSN suggests repeated doses of about 50mg an hour are likely to be well tolerated, mainly for night running.

This is where a drop bag pays for itself. Alan C used a bar this way at checkpoints on the UTMB: "Used one complete bar with water to make an easily eaten porridge at UTMB checkpoints." A Phoenix Bar has up to 557 calories in only 120g, with up to 66g of carbohydrate and 18 to 19g of protein, and stirred into hot water it becomes a soft porridge; the method is in how to use Phoenix Bars, and other warm options are in high calorie porridge.

Common drop bag mistakes

The classic error is packing what tastes good while you are fresh. At the kitchen table you fill the bag with sweet gels and bars; at mile 60 your stomach has turned and the one thing you want, something savoury and warm, is not there. Gut trouble is the norm in long races: Stuempfle and Hoffman found that 60% of 272 Western States runners felt nauseous, mostly in the hottest, hardest part of the race, so pack the later bags for that runner. Why the stomach quits, and what to do about it, is in the guide to nausea and appetite loss during races.

Other common ones:

• Relying on aid-station food you have never tried in training.
• One identical bag for every checkpoint, ignoring night, weather and how you will feel.
• Food that spoils or melts: cream-filled snacks, chocolate in summer, sandwiches packed two days early.
• Too few calories per gram, so the bag fills up with bulk. The calorie-dense foods ranking shows which foods carry the most calories for their weight.
• Nothing but gels. By halfway, the constant hit of concentrated sugar is often what turns a stomach; the energy gel alternatives guide has real-food swaps.

Phoenix Bars keep for up to two years (Cherry Bakewell 12 months), so you can pack bags days ahead and put unopened bars back in the box for the next race. If you are building bags for several races, a mixed pack from the shop lets you find the flavours you still want late on. For how other bars compare, see the best energy bars for ultra running; dense high calorie bars of any brand save space in a bag.

Drop bag questions

How many drop bags do you get in an ultra?

It depends entirely on the race: some allow none, some allow one or two at set checkpoints, and multi-day races often move one holdall between camps (Ultra X England caps it at 10kg). Your race pack will say where bags can go and when they must be handed in.

Can I put hot food in a drop bag?

Not hot, but you can pack food that becomes hot with the checkpoint's hot water: instant noodles, a cup soup, instant porridge or a bar that turns into porridge. Pack a spoon and a cup if the race does not insist you carry one.

What happens to drop bags after the race?

Most races take bags back to the finish or the next camp for you to collect, but they are never guaranteed to come back. Leave valuables at home and label everything.

How long can food sit in a drop bag?

Choose sealed, shelf-stable food and pack it no more than a day or two before hand-in. Avoid anything that needs a fridge, including meat, cheese or mayonnaise sandwiches on a warm weekend. Sealed sweets, dried fruit, crisps and wrapped bars keep fine.

What should I pack for a 100-mile race?

The same core, scaled to the gaps and the night. The 100-mile nutrition guide has an hour-by-hour plan, and the ultra marathon kit list covers mandatory kit. How the bags fit into a full race plan is in the ultra running nutrition guide and the trail running guide, and if you fuel plant-based, the vegan endurance nutrition guide covers what to pack when aid stations do not cater for you.

Sources: Centurion Running, South Downs Way 100 rules (2026); Ultra X England 2026 kit list; Tiller and others, ISSN ultra-marathon position stand (2019); Stuempfle and Hoffman, gastrointestinal distress in a 161km ultramarathon (2015); McCance and Widdowson's CoFID 2021.