Stadl-Paura Four-Rider Team Time Trial: Course, Elevation & Route Profile

Course & Elevation

The course starts at the edge of Stadl-Paura at the Riesenberg, around 380 metres up, and first runs across the rolling hill country of Upper Austria: Rüstorf, where the main road is crossed, then Desselbrunn and Aurachkirchen. This section is fast but never flat, and it contains a notably quick descent that the race instructions flag explicitly.

After Wiesen the route turns into an underpass towards Pinsdorf and enters the first longer ascent. A continuous stretch then leads past the car dealership and straight across a large roundabout towards Pinsdorf, before the road turns right for Reindlmühl.

The closing section is the real test. From Reindlmühl via Neukirchen bei Altmünster and the Grossalm the road climbs to the finish at the Taferlhöhe car park at 829 metres, the crossing over to the Attersee. In total the course gathers around 690 metres of gain, most of it in the final third. The road is not closed, normal Austrian traffic rules apply throughout, and aero bar extensions are banned for safety reasons.

Pacing Strategy

A team time trial with nearly 700 metres of climbing is ridden differently from a flat one. On the first twenty kilometres through the hills, short classic turns on the front pay off, because the draft is still worth a lot there. What matters is that the team's weakest legs stay on over the rises: the result is taken on the fourth rider, not the strongest one.

The race is decided on the closing climb from Reindlmühl via Neukirchen to the Taferlhöhe. Once the gradient is sustained, rotating brings almost no further time gain and the team effectively rides as four individual climbers alongside each other. A squad that comes apart here loses exactly the time it earned on the fast kilometres.

The main trap is the opening. Too hard a pace on rolling terrain costs you a rider, and a missing fourth man means a five-minute penalty. Treat the fast descent at Aurachkirchen as a risk section rather than a time-gain zone as well, since the road stays open to traffic.

Training plan for Stadl-Paura Four-Rider Team Time Trial: 12-week build

For the 37 kilometres with around 690 metres of gain, expect roughly one hour to an hour and a quarter depending on team strength. The character of the effort is a time trial with fluctuating intensity: short supra-threshold spikes at every change of turn and over every rise, recovery in the draft in between, and a continuous threshold effort on the closing climb where the draft no longer helps.

The decisive sections are the transition at Wiesen into the first longer ascent and above all the final climb to the Taferlhöhe. Both require all four riders to hold their sustainable ceiling simultaneously without the group splitting.

So train threshold intervals of 8 to 20 minutes on a climb, so that the ascent at the end does not become the point where the team falls apart, and add short supra-threshold repeats of 30 to 60 seconds that mirror the rhythm of the rotation.

What solo training cannot replace is joint team sessions. Practise changing turns at race pace, holding the wheel at close range, and above all communicating on the gradient, where the pace has to be dropped to the weakest rider immediately. Because aero bar extensions are not permitted, riding a full hour in a low drop position also belongs in the preparation, so that back and neck can hold the race duration.