IRONMAN 70.3 Alghero: Course, Elevation & Route Profile

Course & Elevation

The day starts on sand. The gun goes on the beach of the Lido San Giovanni, the swim runs out into the sheltered bay and back on an out and back course, and transition sits roughly a hundred metres beyond the water exit. A T1 barely gets shorter than that: you are on the bike before your heart rate has settled.

What follows is a single 90 kilometre loop, north past Fertilia and out into the Nurra, with two out and back spurs on open country road, a turnaround at the Grotte di Nettuno and a return leg through the Parco Naturale Regionale di Porto Conte. The sequencing is what defines this course: the hardest section, the Capo Caccia headland, sits deep into the bike, and some twenty flat kilometres follow it, on which a climb bought too dearly shows up immediately. T2 returns to the same transition by the Lido.

The run is then the opposite of the bike: the same loop three times over the seafront promenade, down to the harbour, along the Bastioni and through the Catalan old town, finishing at the port. You pass the finish area twice before you are allowed to take it. Alghero is small enough that beach, transition and finish are all within walking distance of each other, and the sold out debut put around 3,000 starters from 91 countries on that sand, more than half of them from outside Italy.

Pacing Strategy

This half distance spreads its costs unevenly. In sheltered water the swim is the cheapest discipline of the day and should be treated that way: racing the 1.9 kilometres buys a couple of minutes and hands them back in the first hour on the bike. The very short run into transition reinforces that, because it gives you no time to come down.

The day is decided between the last quarter of the bike and the first running lap. The headland comes late, and if you have ridden the flat kilometres before it above target power you lose time there, then lose it again on foot. Ration the bike by power rather than by speed: the spurs cover the same stretch of road out and back, the fast half always comes first, and the clock lies about it.

The second trap sits at the start of the run. Coming off the aero bars into a town where the air stands still between the walls, the opening kilometres feel easy. Running the first of the three laps deliberately conservatively, and taking aid at the recurring junction from the first pass, is worth more here than any surge along the promenade.

Training plan for IRONMAN 70.3 Alghero: 12-week build

For an age group athlete the IRONMAN 70.3 Alghero takes roughly five to seven hours. The demand is steady and aerobic for most of it: a long swim in calm water, a mostly flat bike leg spent on the aero bars, a flat half marathon. The exceptions are few, but all of them sit late, so preparation aims at durability rather than at peaks.

The central session is therefore the brick, run in the order the race imposes it: a long flat ride at target race power, finished with one short hard climb and followed immediately by 20 to 40 minutes of running. That exact sequence, climbing late and then getting straight onto your feet, is where this race turns.

Then there are the conditions. By late May the north west coast of Sardinia is already warm, the bike leg is largely shadeless and exposed to the coastal wind, and the old town section of the run lap sits in still air. Heat acclimatisation in the weeks beforehand, a drinking and cooling plan that starts on the bike rather than at the run, and confidence in crosswinds are core work here, not extras.

The swim asks for navigation more than for speed: a beach start off soft sand, an out and back course with buoys, salt water and a field that bunches at the turn. Practise entering from the beach, sighting every few strokes, and swimming in a pack. And practise T1: a hundred metres between water and bike means your heart rate and your head have to come down once you are already riding, while others are clipping in beside you.