the naturafit Triathlon Höchstadt: Course, Elevation & Route Profile

Course & Elevation

The day starts in the pool. Waves go off as water starts, and the Kurzdistanz enters the water before the Jedermann distance. Counting lengths is your own responsibility, there is a marshal on every lane, and you swim to the right throughout. A time limit applies to the swim: reach it and you have to leave the pool and end your race.

There is only one transition zone, and you use it twice, both times at your own bike slot. Apart from bottles and clipped in shoes, everything goes into a folding box you bring yourself, and the helmet has to be closed before you lift the bike off the rack. Then come two laps on roads that are not closed to traffic, with no aid station and no drafting allowed, and finally four run laps with one aid station per lap whose lap bands you collect yourself.

Everything centres on the Freibad at Kieferndorfer Weg: swim, transitions, finish and prize giving sit within a few hundred metres of each other, while the bike lap heads out into the fields and carp ponds of the Aischgrund. The local club has run the race in late September for more than a decade, and the overall result is corrected for the different wave start times, so what you see on the road rarely tells you where you stand.

Pacing Strategy

Restraint in the pool pays twice over. There are no feet to sit on and no sighting to practise, but you have to keep count of 30 lengths yourself: swim the opening lengths too hard and you lose the count along with the time.

The Kurzdistanz is decided on the second bike lap. Drafting is banned, so you ride alone and to your own effort rather than to somebody else's pace, and since there is no aid station on the bike, everything you need for roughly an hour has to be with you from the start. Force a target time here and you pay for it on the first two run laps.

The trap is comparing yourself with the people around you. The field starts in waves and is ranked on time, and on the shared laps you constantly meet athletes who are in a different race. Run your four laps to your own plan, and decide in advance on which lap you drink.

Training plan for the naturafit Triathlon Höchstadt: 12-week build

Depending on your level, expect roughly 2:20 to 3:00 hours. The demand is aerobic throughout and gives almost nothing back: a pool swim without waves or current, a rolling bike lap that is never flat for long, and a run course without a single climb to break the rhythm.

The decisive parts are the second bike lap, the opening kilometres of the run and the two transitions. Both changes happen at the same bike slot under the folding box rule, which makes the transition a skill worth rehearsing rather than an interlude between disciplines.

Conditions are Franconian late summer: cool morning air at the open air pool, pool water at the end of its season, wind over open fields on the bike, and no real shade in the business park on the run. Decide your transition clothing in advance instead of improvising on race morning.

Set your priorities accordingly: long, even pool sets up to 1,500 metres continuous, keeping the count yourself instead of watching the clock; solo rides on open roads with junctions and village sections rather than the trainer; at least one brick session a week in the specific phase; and practised self supply on the bike, because nobody out there hands you anything.