ALOHA TRI Linz: Course, Elevation & Route Profile

Course & Elevation

The swim starts at 9 am in the Pleschinger See on a triangle course, two laps with a short run across the beach between them. Every buoy stays on your right shoulder, so sighting works in the same direction all the way round. Out of the water it is only a few metres into transition right at the lake.

The bike course leaves the lake on a connector along the cycle path and the B3, then rides the same out-and-back to Steyregg twice. All of the difficulty sits inside a four-kilometre window: a short 300 metre ramp at just under five per cent at kilometre 11.1, the bridge ramp at kilometre 12.5 with 380 metres at 8.7 per cent and peaks of 13.6 per cent, and immediately after it, from kilometre 13.3, a grinding 1.53 kilometres at 4.7 per cent up to the day's high point at around 360 metres. From there a long descent gives back a good hundred metres to river level. At kilometres 32.9, 34.2 and 35.0 the same sequence arrives a second time. The roads are not closed and normal traffic rules apply.

The run is the opposite proposition: four laps of an out-and-back on the Danube dyke, where the elevation band spans six metres across ten kilometres. Every lap passes the start/finish at the Gasthaus s'Plesch and the transition area, so you go by the same spectators and the same clock four times. The event is deliberately compact: the same courses are also raced as an aquabike and as a bike-and-run on the same morning, with the awards at noon.

Pacing Strategy

The short run across the beach after the first swim lap is a built-in change of rhythm. Use it to breathe and to line up the first buoy of lap two rather than sprinting it; 1.5 kilometres is too short to justify the seconds and too long to carry an over-cooked heart rate through two laps.

The race is decided on the second pass of the ramp sequence, between kilometre 32.9 and 36.5. The first time round the three climbs feel manageable, because they are short and cost only 120 metres; the second time you already have 33 kilometres in your legs and ten kilometres of running still to come. Ride the first pass at deliberately even output and in an easier gear, especially the bridge ramp with its 13.6 per cent, which invites an out-of-the-saddle effort.

The trap comes afterwards. The long descent back to river level feels like recovery, but the run gives nothing back: on a dyke with six metres of elevation range there is no rise on which to quietly bleed off an overcooked bike, and the four laps are short enough that a collapse plays out three more times in front of the crowd. Add the time of day: with a 9 am start the run lands in the late morning of early July, out in the open by the river with no shade.

Training plan for ALOHA TRI Linz: 12-week build

Expect roughly two and a half to three and a half hours for the short distance, depending on your level. The demand is untypical for an Olympic race: instead of one steady effort, the bike asks for two short hard blocks of about twelve minutes with a supra-threshold section inside them, embedded in otherwise rolling to flat kilometres averaging 12.5 metres of climbing per kilometre.

What decides it is the ability to return to target output after those blocks. Going over threshold twice on the bridge ramp and then needing twenty minutes to recover costs far more than the ramp ever gains. The second factor is the switch to a completely flat run: after a bike leg with more than 500 metres of climbing, the running muscles find their rhythm on a level dyke more slowly than the legs suggest.

So the training emphasis is rides with built-in climbs of 30 seconds to 6 minutes, done as 2 times 4 to 5 repetitions inside a 90-minute endurance ride, where the point after each ramp is to be back at race output within two minutes. Follow at least every second such session with a 20 to 30 minute brick run on flat, straight ground.

For the swim, practise open-water sighting exclusively to the right, plus one or two beach exits per session: out of the water, a few strides on land and straight back in. And because the run falls in the late morning of early July on a dyke with no shade, heat adaptation and a drinking plan that works across four laps belong in the final four weeks.