The Ultra Event Readiness & Risk Assessment isn't a quiz with a vibe-based score. Every checkpoint, every question, and every scoring rule was built for a specific reason. This is that reasoning, laid out plainly — written and maintained by me, Jeff Cady, the person who built it.
Browse Every Question & Source →UERA runs the same three-step process I use as a coach, and the same one I used for over a decade in cybersecurity risk assessment: figure out where the real risk actually is, rank it by what would hurt most, then build a concrete plan to close the gap — instead of a generic checklist that treats a taper-week reminder and a life-threatening gap with the same weight.
Most pre-race checklists are really just packing lists. UERA is built around a different question: if something goes wrong out there, what's the actual chain of events that gets you there, and did you already close that door? That's a risk-assessment framing, not a checklist framing, and it changes what gets asked and how it gets scored.
A single overall number hides where the actual problem is. UERA scores ten separate checkpoints independently, then averages them — so "72% ready" always comes with a specific answer to "ready for what, and weak where."
Does your training terrain actually match what's ahead?
Heat, altitude, cold — acclimation takes weeks, not days.
Tested and matched to your actual discipline, not generic.
A race-day fueling plan is a rehearsed skill, not an assumption.
Phase-aware: what matters 6–12 weeks out differs from taper week.
Unresolved issues and undisclosed conditions are where bad days start.
Does anyone know your plan if it goes wrong?
Crew, cutoffs, drop bags — the machinery around the miles.
A plan for the low points, decided before you're in one.
What happens in the 72 hours after matters more than people plan for.
Every question has a set of answers ordered from lowest risk to highest. Your answer's position in that list becomes a fraction — the best answer scores 0, the worst scores 1, and answers in between land proportionally.
Two deliberate exceptions to that simple math:
"Not applicable" doesn't get punished. If a question doesn't apply to your event — no overnight shelter needed, no on-course medical support to look up — selecting that option scores as 0 risk, not as a missing or wrong answer. A risk assessment shouldn't penalize you for a risk that isn't there.
One question is informational only. Whether you've progressed through shorter distances before your first ultra is useful context for a coach, but the science doesn't support treating it as a risk factor — UESCA's own certification material is explicit that this isn't a prerequisite for success. So that answer is shown, but excluded entirely from the score. A framework that scores things has to be honest about what it doesn't actually know is risky.
In cybersecurity, nobody achieves "secure" and stops. You assess, you find the highest-priority gap, you close that one gap, and then you reassess — because fixing one thing can shift what the next-biggest risk actually is. A security program that never gets re-audited isn't secure, it's just untested. UERA is built to work the same way, on purpose.
Don't treat a Moderate or High score across all ten checkpoints as ten things to fix this week. Look at the Risk Skyline or the Readiness Radar, find the one checkpoint that's actually tallest or reddest, and work on just that one. Trying to fix everything at once is how people burn out two weeks into a training block and fix nothing.
Then reassess — retake the assessment and use Compare With a Previous Assessment to see, checkpoint by checkpoint, whether that specific thing actually moved. Not a feeling that you're "more ready," an actual before-and-after number. If it didn't move, that tells you something too: either the fix wasn't the right one, or it wasn't finished. Pick the next-highest checkpoint and repeat. That loop — assess, prioritize one thing, fix it, remeasure — is the whole framework, not just the scoring math.
None of that requires trusting me, or anyone, with your data. UERA runs entirely in your browser — there's no server collecting your answers, and Compare works the same way, reading both PDFs locally on your own device. It's private to you by default. You decide if anyone ever sees it, including me.
UERA covers four disciplines — ultramarathons, mountaineering, ski mountaineering (skimo), and long-distance hiking — and most of the assessment content actually changes depending on which one you select, not just the label.
Early in development, the Gear checkpoint asked every discipline the same questions: trekking poles, headlamp, shoe break-in. It worked fine for ultrarunners. For a mountaineer, it was actively wrong — nothing about ice axe competency, crampon fit, or crevasse rescue gear, the things that actually carry risk in that discipline. A mountaineer who was genuinely well-prepared would score as high-risk anyway, simply because the tool never asked about the gear that mattered to them.
That's now fixed across the assessment: Gear, Training, and the first-timer question sets all branch by discipline, built from each discipline's own literature rather than adapted from running. Mountaineering's training questions are grounded in Steve House and Scott Johnston's Training for the New Alpinism — aerobic base before intensity, loaded muscular endurance, periodized progression. Skimo's are grounded in the companion volume, Training for the Uphill Athlete, applied to that sport's actual weekly-hours structure. Neither is a relabeled version of the ultrarunning content.
Nothing in UERA is generic wellness advice. Every question's remediation guidance links to a specific, named source — something you can actually go read, not a made-up citation. A sample of what the framework draws on:
The full list — every question, every option, every scoring rule, every link — is browsable here, loaded live from the same file that drives the tool itself. Prefer the raw data? It's also open on GitHub.
Getting details like that right — what's actually a risk factor versus what's just useful context — comes from engaging with the source material directly, not assuming what "seems right." That same standard now runs on more than just my own review.
Coaches across ultrarunning, mountaineering, skimo, and long-distance hiking can flag a wrong link, a question that doesn't hold up, or a gap in what's covered — directly in the tool. Every change runs through an automated test suite before anything ships: every discipline, every score boundary, the PDF export, checked fresh every time, the same way a real risk assessment should be audited rather than trusted on faith.
Ten checkpoints, your actual discipline, a full remediation plan, and a printable report.
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