the 5150 Erkner: Course, Route Profile & Map

Course & Elevation

Everything in this race passes through one point: the lido on the Dämeritzsee. You start the swim there, transition sits there, and you come back to it off the bike loop. The 1.5 kilometres in the lake are the only part of the day you cannot steer by power or pace; the 40 bike kilometres that follow are the longest unbroken block, and only the run leaves the lakeside for the town.

The run is a circuit through Erkner itself, covered several times, past the Kirchvorplatz and the Gerhart-Hauptmann-Museum, with the finish at the Sportzentrum. The town opens only a tightly measured window for it: the bike course is fully closed for the morning and then reopened from the outside in, while the run corridor through the town stays shut longer still. This is not an open-ended day out but a morning programme with a hard end.

2026 is the fifth running of the weekend, and Saturday belongs to the short distances: the 5150 first, then the 4:18:4 sprint format, then the IRONKIDS. For you that means a run course where the same spectators come round again and where somebody is always passing who is in a different race or on a different lap.

Pacing Strategy

Allocate your effort so that the swim stays the cheapest part of the day. The 1.5 kilometres cost roughly 25 to 35 minutes depending on your level, and swimming the lake hard buys you perhaps a minute of that while taking away your opening bike kilometres. Leave the water with the intention of working calmly and completely through T1: wetsuit off, legs sorted, power only after that.

The 5150 Erkner is decided in the second half of the 10 kilometre run. The circuit is flat and full of turns, there is no climb to force a change of rhythm on you, and on a lapped course somebody is constantly going past who is in another race or on another lap. Run your own split, not the splits of the people around you.

The trap sits in the move from cold water into cool morning air: in a previous edition the air at the start measured eleven degrees. If you get onto the bike wet and chilled and ride the first kilometres by feel rather than by plan, you do not pay for it there but in T2.

Training plan for the 5150 Erkner: 12-week build

For the Olympic distance, budget roughly 2:15 to 2:50 hours depending on your level and your swim speed. The demand is the same across all three parts: one continuous aerobic effort with no recovery window. Because the course has no terrain to force a change of pace on you, the only real break comes at the two transitions, and those cost time rather than giving recovery.

The race is decided at the change from bike to run and in the first two kilometres after it. If you metered the bike properly, the flat town asphalt lets you settle into a sustainable split quickly; if you overspent, you find out immediately, because there is no gradient behind which a collapse can hide.

Conditions are an early Brandenburg autumn on open water. The Dämeritzsee is cool by mid-September, the start falls in the early morning, and in a previous edition the conditions forced the long-distance swim to be shortened. Open-water sessions in low water temperatures, including the exit and a wetsuit change under time pressure, therefore belong in the preparation rather than in the nice-to-have column.

In training, prioritise continuous 1,500 metre swims with sighting instead of a pool wall, brick sessions from bike to run at race pace rather than as an easy jog, rehearsed transition routines, and flat 10 kilometre runs where you hold the split through the second half. On this distance, volume is worth less than the ability to join three controlled blocks without one of them falling apart.