24h Rad am Ring Training Plan & Preparation

Course & Elevation

The 24-hour race at Rad am Ring is ridden on a loop of roughly 24.4 km that links the Grand-Prix circuit with the legendary Nordschleife. Each lap adds around 517 metres of climbing, spread across a constant exchange of short ascents and fast descents. Only about a sixth of the course is genuinely flat.

After the start on the wide, fast F1 corners the road drops for several kilometres to its lowest point near kilometre 13, where you shed almost 270 metres of altitude and carry a lot of speed. Then comes the heart of the lap: a climb of about three kilometres averaging a little over six percent, with ramps up to twelve percent, that gains 195 metres in one continuous effort through the forest. A further steep section of around eight percent follows soon after, before the road rolls on toward the Hohe Acht and back to the line.

Racing runs for a full 24 hours, solo or in teams of two, four or eight, through the day, the night and the next morning. The festival has been one of Germany's largest of its kind since 2003, and the setting of F1 arena, 92 corners and the famous Nordschleife turns every lap into its own chapter that you read again and again over many hours.

Pacing Strategy

Because the clock runs and not the odometer, what matters is the intensity you can repeat for 24 hours, not your quickest single lap. The lap is hilly: around 20 vertical metres per kilometre, spread over several short ramps and one longer climb of just over three kilometres from kilometre 13.8 (averaging 6.4 percent, 195 metres). That climb is where matches are saved or burned over many laps.

Ride it at a steady endurance effort every lap, out of the saddle only when you must. The trap is the first daylight hours: on fresh legs you attack the ramp too hard and pay for it in the night. Eat and drink on a fixed per-lap rhythm rather than by feel, and plan pit stops so lap times stay even — over 24 hours consistency wins, not the one fast lap.

12-Week Preparation

How you prepare depends heavily on your format. In a four-person team you ride single laps or short blocks of 30 to 70 minutes again and again across 24 hours, each at high intensity with recovery in between. Solo or as a pair, the demand shifts toward endurance and pacing your laps over many hours. Either way the deciding quality is repeatability: not one fast lap, but many similarly fast laps over the same climb.

The effort is rolling rather than steady. Every lap, after the long descent, the three-kilometre climb with ramps up to twelve percent asks for 195 metres of continuous ascent. This section governs your pace and your fatigue across the whole day. Train it with hill or muscular-endurance intervals of three to six minutes just above threshold, repeated several times in a session, so the climb stays controlled even on your twelfth lap.

Build long rides with many short, hard ascents rather than a single long ramp. For team relays, teach your body to handle repeated hard short efforts with incomplete recovery, for example several 20- to 40-minute blocks at the upper end of your aerobic range with brief breaks. Practise riding in the dark with lights, and warming up quickly between changeovers. If you start solo or as a pair, also test nutrition, saddle comfort and a realistic, rather conservative lap time over very long distances beforehand.