Althofner Radrennen: Course, Elevation & Route Profile

Course & Elevation

Start and finish are at the Freizeitzentrum in Althofen. The course runs from the roundabout towards Guttaring, turns at the Kuss filling station and comes back the same way. The organiser describes the profile as flat, and it is: the whole course sits inside a band of around 40 metres, with a shallow dip midway out and a gentle rise to the turnaround that comes back as an equally gentle descent on the way home.

That symmetry is what makes the course honest. An out-and-back neutralises the wind across the full distance, so nobody gets a free tailwind half. The one real interruption is the 180-degree turn itself: you lose speed there, have to brake in a controlled way and then accelerate back to race pace in the middle of the effort.

It is ridden as an individual time trial with 30-second start intervals, from 9 a.m. Licence holders, hobby riders and triathletes may all start, scored in their own age categories for Hobby, Lizenz and Damen. The race counts towards the Kärnten Sport Jedermann Cup and is run for the 23rd time in 2026. The Carinthian youth championship uses the same course earlier in the morning, which makes for a compact, busy race morning.

Pacing Strategy

Eleven flat kilometres mean roughly 16 to 22 minutes flat out, depending on level. That is too short for cautious rationing and too long to simply sprint away: power should sit almost constantly at or just above threshold from the first kilometre to the last. Because there is no gradient, there is also no moment where a mistake corrects itself.

The race is decided at the turnaround and in the two kilometres after it. Braking too late costs safety, braking too early costs seconds, and rebuilding speed afterwards tempts almost everyone into a short, expensive surge. Deliberately ramp back to race pace over twenty to thirty seconds after the turn instead of clawing it back in five.

The biggest trap is the outbound leg. It drops a few metres first and then rises gently to the turn, so the second half of the way out feels sluggish and is often misread as a bad day, which makes riders push harder. That backfires on the return, where the same power produces more speed and all you would have to do is hold it. Ride out on power rather than on speed, and ride back on feel to the line.

Training plan for Althofner Radrennen: 12-week build

For most starters the effort lasts between 16 and 25 minutes. In character it is the purest form of sustained effort: one uninterrupted push with no recovery, no accelerations and no tactical decisions. What counts is the power you can hold for a good quarter of an hour without fading, and the ability to produce it in an aerodynamically demanding but sustainable position.

Two things decide the result that riders routinely underrate on a flat course. First, consistency: across eleven kilometres without terrain every fluctuation in power costs time directly, because air resistance rises disproportionately with speed. Second, the turnaround, the one element that breaks the rhythm and demands both technique and nerve.

Training should therefore lead with long threshold intervals: two to three repeats of 10 to 20 minutes at time-trial intensity on flat, ideally junction-free roads, ridden to power. Shorter blocks of 5 to 8 minutes slightly above threshold help stabilise the top end, and cadence work matters because flat-road speed calls for noticeably higher cadences than climbing does.

Two very specific points round it off. Practise the 180-degree turn at race speed, braking and reacceleration included, until it stops being a break in the effort and becomes a planned part of it. And practise your time-trial position until you can hold it for twenty minutes without losing power: on a flat course, aerodynamics buys more time than any extra watt. Because the gun goes at 9 a.m., a full warm-up on a cool morning belongs in the plan too.