Fueling for runners and riders
Fuel every run and ride from the evidence, on your wrist.
From a 60-minute tempo run to a 100-mile race or a long day on the bike: VertPilot builds your carbohydrate, fluid and sodium plan from what sports science actually shows, runs it on your watch one buzz at a time, shows the tank live on your phone, and reviews the session afterwards.
iPhone and Android apps launch together, with the free data field for Garmin watches through Connect IQ. The coach is a subscription, bought here, never inside the app.
One plan, four moments
Plan
Add the race with its aid stations, or just say "3 hours, 4 gels, hot" or "90 km ride, two bottles of mix". The engine turns your gut history, the terrain and the weather into an hourly plan with every intake timed, and shows you why.
Watch
One tap sends it to your watch through the phone. The data field buzzes once per intake, then goes quiet. You press Lap when you have actually eaten. Miss one and the next takes over. Works in any activity: run, trail run, ride, hike.
Phone, live
At the aid station, type or say "a banana and a cup of coke". The phone works out the grams, the tank refills, and the watch counts it too. Fix a wrong Lap with one tap, on both.
Review
After the run: intake against target, the longest gap without carbs, where the tank dipped, how the stomach felt. Then a suggested profile change you can apply with one tap.
Built from the research, not from a gel brand
Every rule in the plan engine traces to a peer-reviewed source on endurance nutrition. The plan screen shows them next to the numbers. Read the sources.
Your gut sets the target, not your weight
Carbohydrate absorption is limited by the gut, not body size, and it is trainable. The plan starts from what you have proven you can take in and caps it where the literature says the ceiling sits: about 60 g/h for one sugar, about 90 with glucose and fructose together.
Jeukendrup 2014, Stellingwerff and Cox 2014, Costa 2017Front-loaded, then tapered
Appetite shifts to savoury and fat late in a long day and gut symptoms rise with heat and fatigue. Targets come down through the second half of a long event instead of pretending hour eight looks like hour one. Short sessions get a flat target.
Tiller 2019 position stand, Costa 2019, Stuempfle 2015Heat, a first ultra, a nervous stomach
Each pulls the target down and shortens the interval between doses. Smaller and more frequent beats bigger and rarer when the stomach is at risk. Fructose is the usual culprit at high doses. Riders, whose gut is not being jostled, sit higher in the same bands.
Tiller 2019, Costa 2025 practitioner guide, Stuempfle 2013Fluids and sodium from the same sources
Drink to thirst inside a floor and a ceiling, sodium from your products plus a top-up in heat, scaled to measured sweat sodium ranges rather than a single number for everyone.
Baker 2016, Tiller 2019, Costa 2019The tank follows your effort
The glycogen estimate burns each second's calories at a carbohydrate share that follows your heart rate, half at an easy shuffle, three quarters near threshold, with an allowance for heart rate drift late in the day. Confirmed gels go back onto the store almost one for one.
Romijn 1993, Achten and Jeukendrup 2002, Coyle 1986, Coyle and Gonzalez-Alonso 2001The biggest number is the one that matters
Fatigue in the field tracks falling blood glucose more closely than the glycogen store itself. So the largest figure on the watch is carbohydrate taken in the last 60 minutes against your target. The tank is context. The hourly figure is the alarm.
Coyle 1986, Endocrine Reviews 2026The glycogen figure is a model to pace your eating, not a measurement. General guidance from the data you enter, not medical advice.
What leaves your watch is your call
Link the watch and your fueling record comes to the app: start, duration, every intake, the tank estimate. Everything else is a switch with a reason written next to it.
- Effort. Distance, calories, heart rate, ascent. Why: it calibrates how fast you burn carbs, so the plans become yours.
- Effort over time. Heart rate, pace and altitude every minute. Why: the review can see when you faded and when you ate, side by side.
- Coarse route. Your position every five minutes, rounded to about 100 m, never a track. Why: terrain, aid stations, and the weather at the start. Off by default.
- Help improve the rules. Anonymised statistics across all runners, under a random id, with no time, place or name. Off by default.
Nothing to lose if we lose it
The server stores no name, no email, no picture. Your account is an opaque sign-in id; your identity stays on your phone. Each run shows what was actually shared. You can download everything as a file and delete any run or your whole account, in the app, immediately.
Servers in Frankfurt. Nothing is sold or shared with anyone. Privacy policy.
What the coach will read
- Your plan against what you actually took, minute by minute.
- Heart rate, pace and altitude next to each intake.
- How your stomach and energy felt, in your own words.
- The weather at the start and your race history.
The coach comes after the data
The review you get today is built from rules, the same rules as the plan. The AI coach is next: race-week nutrition, the carb load, pre-start hydration, and honest feedback after every long run, written from your numbers and your answers rather than from a template.
It is a subscription, bought here on the site once it ships. The data field, the plans and the review stay free. No purchase happens inside the app or on the watch.
What is coming
In the order we are building it. No dates: each lands when it works on real runs and rides.
Store releases
The data field in the Connect IQ Store, the apps in the App Store and Google Play, submitted together. Beta testers get all three first: ask here.
The AI coach
Race-week nutrition, the carb load, pre-start hydration, and a written review after every long session from your numbers and your answers. Subscription.
Routes
Import the course, split it by aid station, get the climb per segment and a fueling plan that knows where the food is and how long the climbs take.
Race strategy
Pacing per segment, cutoff buffers, what to pick up at each station, and a plan B when you are behind. Built on the same data the watch already collects.
Also on the list: bike computers, higher carbohydrate bands and bike speeds for riders, a product library with your own gels and drinks, and anonymised insight into what intake rates people really sustain, from runners who opt in.
FAQ
Which watches and computers work?
Garmin watches that run Connect IQ data fields. The field is being tested on recent fenix models and will list its supported devices in the Connect IQ Store; Edge bike computers are the next target. It runs inside any activity: run, trail run, ride, hike.
Do I need the phone during the race?
No. The plan lives on the watch once sent. The phone adds the live view, the aid-station logging and the sync back; if it is out of reach, the watch keeps the final upload and sends it when you next start the field.
Is the glycogen number real?
It is an estimate from your calories, heart rate and confirmed intake, starting from a value scaled to your weight and how your day began (loaded, normal, fasted). It is there to pace your eating. The number that decides the day is the hourly intake, and that one is a count, not a model.
Is this only for ultras?
No. The same evidence covers a one-hour tempo run, a marathon, a gran fondo and a hundred-miler; only the targets change. Under an hour the plan says water is enough. The engine's roots are in mountain ultras, so the taper and the aid-station logic come from there, and the cycling-specific parts, higher tolerance bands and bike speeds for time estimates, are being tuned.
iPhone or Android?
Both. The apps share one codebase and launch together, alongside the data field in the Connect IQ Store. Beta access covers all three: the watch field through a Connect IQ beta link, iPhone through TestFlight, Android through Google Play testing.
What does it cost?
The data field, the plans, the live phone view and the review are free. The AI coach will be a subscription bought on this site.