Ultra Valle de Bravo

The experience

The long race is 49 km with 2,050 m of gain, run at roughly two thousand metres in a pine, oak and fir forest where the warmest month tops out at 22 °C. Aid stations refill only, so the kit you start with is the kit you race with.

The forest around the course was decreed a protected zone by President Ávila Camacho on 15 November 1941 to guard the watersheds that feed the Valle de Bravo reservoir. The same reserve holds Piedra Herrada, where monarch butterflies settle on the firs from mid-October to mid-March.

Valle de Bravo joined the Pueblos Mágicos programme in 2005. Its original Mazahua name was Pameje; the Spanish called it San Francisco del Valle de Temascaltepec, and in the second half of the nineteenth century it took its present name in honour of General Nicolás Bravo. The town still fires brown-clay pottery in the Barrio de Otumba from clay dug at El Calvario and Barranca Seca.

Where the sources disagreeThis is a first edition. As of 16 September 2026 the organizer has published four distances and their gain, a date and a village name, but no course map, no start times, no cutoffs, no highest point and no route type. The series rulebook allows up to 20 percent of any course on pavement. Aid stations hand out no bottles; without a cup or soft flask you drink nothing. Entry fees carry a 16 percent tax, an 8 percent platform fee, a 90-peso insurance charge and a 50-peso site-preservation fee on top of the listed price.

Every run here is free to read. The Field Cap pays for the next place we go and verify, and the runners wearing it are what keeps this independent.