Kyburglauf: Course, Elevation & Route Profile

Course & Elevation

The gun goes at 11:50 by the gym in Kyburg, up on the spur above the Töss valley. The first half stays high: rolling ground over the Brünggerberg, with the highest point of the course at around kilometre five at 687 metres, run on field and forest track with short asphalt sections.

From kilometre 6.4 the long descent begins. Down the Tutschgenhalde the course loses close to two hundred metres by kilometre 8.9 and reaches the valley floor at Sennhof at 473 metres. A hairpin left follows and a flat stretch along the Töss to the intermediate timing point. Then comes the Treppensprint: 158 metres of height in 750 metres, a good twenty percent on average, 450 steps of uneven height and spacing, up to the castle. The finish is at the top beside the gym.

The Kyburglauf is run for the 43rd time in 2026, organised by the Verein Kyburglauf and held in early November since 1981. Schloss Kyburg sits around 150 metres above the Töss and is the best preserved castle in north-eastern Switzerland; the course runs around it through autumn foliage between forest edges and fields. In 2019, 440 runners finished the main race. Start, finish, changing rooms, catering and prize-giving are all together at the gym.

Pacing Strategy

This course splits into three very unequal parts, and only the first can be run to a pace. The rolling kilometres over the Brünggerberg are the one section where a target time matters at all; hold an even threshold pace there and resist attacking the short counter-rises.

The race is decided on the stairway, but it is usually lost on the descent before it. Two hundred metres of descending between kilometre 6.4 and 8.9 feel free and still cost: on unpaved ground and at high cadence, running down too fast loads exactly the muscles you need moments later for 450 steps. Take the descent under control, with short steps and without braking, and arrive at the Töss with your legs intact.

On the stairway itself the organiser's own advice is right: walk it from the first step at a brisk, regular rhythm rather than running and then collapsing. The steps are deliberately irregular in height and spacing, so a fixed rhythm matters more than speed. Climb it evenly and you pass people in its second half almost automatically.

Training plan for Kyburglauf: 12-week build

For a committed age-group runner the main race takes roughly forty-five to seventy minutes. The demand comes in three parts: thirty to forty minutes of rolling steady work, then a long eccentric descent, then a short and very intense climbing effort of three to six minutes on a stairway. Physiologically those are three different requirements inside one race.

What decides it is the combination of descent and stairway, and that order belongs in training. Run long descents on natural ground deliberately quick and attach a steep climb immediately afterwards; training the stairway fresh does not prepare for what happens in the race. Two or three such sessions in the final six weeks are enough.

For the steps themselves only steps help. Five to eight repetitions of two to three minutes on a stairway or a very steep path, walked briskly with active arm drive rather than run, reproduce the requirement directly. Add calf strength and eccentric quadriceps work, because both are what limit you here.

Among the conditions, season and surface count. Early November in the Töss valley means wet leaves, damp forest and field tracks, cool air and a start just before noon. Train the descents on slippery ground rather than dry asphalt, choose shoes with pronounced tread, and plan kit that copes with the change from the windy height above the valley down to the sheltered valley floor and back up again.