IRONMAN 70.3 Erkner Training Plan & Preparation

Course & Elevation

The swim is one loop of the Dämeritzsee, the lake straddling the border between Berlin and Brandenburg, starting from the Erkner lido. Transition sits about 150 metres away at the sports centre and serves both changes.

The bike course consists of two identical 44-kilometre loops. Each loop heads south past Grünheide, swings south-east towards Hangelsberg and further east in the direction of Fürstenwalde, before returning through Spreenhagen and along the Spree back to Erkner. The whole loop lies between 33 and 55 metres of altitude, there is not one rise that deserves the name of a climb, and the roads are broad and straight for long stretches.

The half marathon is four laps of a not quite five-kilometre circuit through Erkner itself, past the market square and the Gerhart Hauptmann Museum. It too is level, fully paved, and passes the same spectator zones four times — which gives the race the character of a compact city event and makes time gaps unusually easy to read.

Pacing Strategy

On a course with no terrain, the pacing question shifts entirely onto your own discipline. On the bike that means constant power well below threshold, committed to the aero position, without letting faster groups tempt you into surges. The course never slows you down — your plan has to.

The central trap is overbiking. Because speed feels effortless on the straight Brandenburg roads, many athletes dismount ten minutes ahead of their target split and lose twenty on the run. The second bike loop is the honest gauge: ride the first one too hard and you feel it before transition.

The race is decided in the second half of the half marathon. Four laps through Erkner expose without mercy anyone who overspent on the bike. Treat the swim as a controlled opener, the bike as an investment in the run, and save the final escalation for the last lap.

12-Week Preparation

For the middle distance on this course, budget roughly 4:15 to 7 hours of total effort depending on your level — a swim of 30 to 45 minutes, a bike leg of 2:15 to 3:10, plus the half marathon.

Across all three disciplines the demand is evenly aerobic: no terrain-forced spikes, no recovery phases, just the long holding of a brisk intensity. That is precisely the challenge — the course rewards athletes with a high threshold and a stable sense of pace.

Decisive are the aero position over 90 almost uninterrupted kilometres and the ability to hit your run pace straight off the bike. Preparation therefore centres on long rides in race geometry, tempo blocks at or just below middle-distance intensity, and regular brick runs that anchor goal pace immediately after dismounting.

For the swim, open-water sessions with sighting practice in a lake pay off. Beyond that, this course demands no special skills — only the consistently trained fundamentals of the middle distance: threshold, aero position, brick resilience. And because four run laps offer plenty of chances to change rhythm, practising a deliberately monotonous, unimpressed pace is worth adding.