IRONMAN 70.3 Venice-Jesolo: Course, Route Profile & Map

Course & Elevation

The day starts on the beach at the western end of the Lido di Jesolo, level with the lighthouse. There is no mass start: athletes go in rolling, in small groups a few seconds apart, so you enter the water when your turn comes and swim a single loop parallel to the shore before returning to the sand. The field is large, over 2,500 starters, but the rolling start means you never meet all of it at once.

From the water to the bike is a long way. The exit runs over matting and a temporary footbridge across the road into the transition area, and because the bike loop comes back to the same point it is one transition used twice, first as T1, then as T2. The run course starts there as well, and the finish is on the beach by the lighthouse.

What defines this course is the absence of structure. In none of the three disciplines is there a climb, a descent or a technical section that takes over the rhythm or forces a pause on you. The route counts among the fastest on the 70.3 calendar, and it is precisely that uniformity that makes it harder than the finishing times suggest.

Pacing Strategy

The rolling start spares you the scrum but invites a surge: you enter the water more or less alone and want to catch the group ahead. Swim the first hundred metres deliberately controlled, the sea is cool at this time of year and your breathing needs a few strokes to settle. The swim is the shortest part of the day and the one with the least to gain.

The race is decided on the bike, though not in the way the fast course suggests. Treat it as a hunt for a bike split and you pay for it on the first run lap. Build the transitions into the plan, the way from the water to the bike is long, and start drinking there rather than once you are riding.

The real trap is the uniformity. With no climbs, nothing shifts the load for you; with no descents, nothing gives it back. Set your bike power at the lower end of your middle-distance range and let the third run lap answer whether the arithmetic was right.

Training plan for IRONMAN 70.3 Venice-Jesolo: 12-week build

For age-group athletes the day runs about four and a half to six and a half hours. The demand is the same across all three disciplines: steady aerobic work, no spikes, no rhythm changes forced on you by the course. Build your preparation mainly from intervals and hill sessions and you are training past the actual task.

So train the transitions, not only the disciplines. Brick sessions in which a long, steady bike block runs straight into a run at goal race pace are the key building block, and with them the craft of the transition itself: pulling a wetsuit off with cold hands, running barefoot over long stretches of matting, finding your way around a transition area you enter twice in one day.

Conditions pull in two directions. In late April the sea is cold enough that this is a wetsuit swim, and a rolling start means you go in without a long warm-up swim, so cold-water sessions in the suit belong in the final weeks. By the middle of the day, on the other hand, the open and unshaded promenade can already turn distinctly warm, so a drinking and cooling routine has to fit into the same plan.

The emphasis is therefore uninterrupted output: long sessions with no recovery built in, fixed fuelling intervals instead of eating by feel, and at least one full rehearsal that chains swim, bike and run in race order and in one go. Climbing metres you do not need for this course.