Kallinchen Triathlon: Course, Route Profile & Map

Course & Elevation

The swim is a land start from the beach: two 750-metre laps anticlockwise in the Motzener See, with a short landing after the first, before the route leads into transition.

The bike leg is three 13-kilometre laps clockwise around the Motzener See, on roads fully closed to traffic for the race. The profile is flat: across the 39 kilometres roughly 150 metres of elevation accumulate, 70 percent of the course is level, and there is not a single climb worth the name. What remains is a circuit with clear corners and three identical passes, perfect for riding to power or perceived effort.

The 10K runs as two five-kilometre laps on closed side streets in Kallinchen, each with two turnaround points, on a routing the organiser has redrawn for 2026. With 26 metres of gain over ten kilometres and more than 80 percent of it flat, this is a pure rhythm course whose only difficulty lies in the turns and in the pace. The Kallinchen Triathlon has been run since 1989, counts as a regional classic and regularly sells out.

Pacing Strategy

On a course without gradients nothing meters your effort but you. Come out of the water controlled (the second swim lap after the landing invites a surge) and ride the three bike laps to power rather than feel. The key checkpoint is the end of lap one: if you are faster than planned there, you started too hard.

The race is decided on the third bike lap. Because the circuit repeats identically, no section rescues or punishes you; overspend on the first two laps and you lose second after second here and reach transition with heavy legs.

The classic trap on this course is drafting in your head: a flat, fully closed circuit tempts you to pace off groups instead of off your own numbers. The same applies in miniature on the run; four turnarounds each cost a few metres of momentum, so rebuild speed smoothly after every turn and make a point of not running the second lap slower than the first.

Training plan for Kallinchen Triathlon: 12-week build

For the Olympic distance in Kallinchen expect roughly two to two and three quarter hours of racing depending on your level.

The demand is as uniform as triathlon gets: 70 percent of the bike course and more than 80 percent of the run are level, there are no climbs and therefore no natural changes of load. The effort sits in the upper aerobic to near-threshold band for essentially the whole race.

What decides the day is therefore less any single feature than the ability to hold a high, even pace: the third bike lap, the transition into running and the second run lap. Add the aero position, which on a flat circuit has to be held for 39 uninterrupted kilometres.

Training should centre on long threshold intervals on the bike in aero position: blocks of ten to twenty minutes rather than short, hard efforts. Add brick runs straight off those sessions, tempo runs at target 10K race pace on flat ground, and open-water work with sighting, including the landing between the two swim laps. Practising turns and standing accelerations is worth its own slot, because this course serves up eight of them.