Schwarzachtal Triathlon: Course, Route Profile & Map

Course & Elevation

The swim is 500 metres in the bathing lake, marked out with buoys and lines; wetsuits are allowed if the water is cool enough. The start is at 13:30, in the early afternoon, and both transition and finish sit at the Café am See.

The bike is three laps of a roughly ten kilometre asphalt circuit around the Schwarzachtal lakes, between Ertingen, Riedlingen, Herbertingen and Marbach in Upper Swabia. Thirty kilometres in total with 145 metres of climbing, 74 percent of the route flat, an altitude band between 540 and 579 metres. The profile has exactly one feature, and it repeats: every lap contains a 430 metre climb averaging 5.8 percent and touching eight (at kilometre 4.6, again at 14.25 and finally at 23.93). Otherwise the course rolls.

The 5.2 kilometre run is the flattest section: ten metres of climbing in all, 90 percent level, and on balance even slightly downhill. The organiser explicitly calls it relatively flat and describes it as roughly half on gravel and half on asphalt paths by the lakes. The race is a joint project of several Ertingen clubs and is sold out for 2026.

Pacing Strategy

The 500 metres in the bathing lake are short, clearly marked and hold few surprises. Use that for even pacing rather than a sprint. With 30 bike kilometres ahead, coming out of the water in the red is the most expensive mistake of the day.

On the bike everything turns on the one climb you ride three times. Four hundred and thirty metres at just under six percent are short enough to muscle over and long enough that doing so three times comes due. Ride all three passes at the same clearly capped intensity, seated and in one gear more than you think you need. Between the climbs, at 74 percent flat, the course is a pure time-trial task in which a stable position pays more than any acceleration.

The third pass at kilometre 23.93 decides the race. Only a good six kilometres to transition remain after it, and riding it in the red costs you the first two kilometres of the run. On the run the terrain then gives you nothing: 90 percent flat, ten metres of climbing, no rise to check a pace set too high. The trap is therefore the start of the run, not its end.

Training plan for Schwarzachtal Triathlon: 12-week build

The open race takes roughly 1:25 to 2:00 depending on level. The demand is a largely even effort at or just below threshold with a short, markedly harder climb embedded in it three times, and a closing run that stays physiologically uniform throughout.

The third climb on the bike and the switch into the run decide it. Because the run course offers no structure at all, that is where it is settled whether you can hold a constant pace over the 5.2 kilometres or spend them fighting the after-effects of a bike leg finished too hard.

Bike training should therefore reproduce exactly that pattern: 3 to 4 repetitions of a 60 to 120 second climb at around six percent, embedded in a ride of 60 to 90 minutes in the upper aerobic range rather than as isolated hill intervals. The stimulus lies in the repetition with long, briskly ridden sections in between.

For the run, brick sessions of 15 to 25 minutes with the first three minutes deliberately controlled are what count, part of them on gravel, because roughly half the course is unpaved. And the conditions are no side issue here: a 13:30 start at the end of August means racing in the afternoon warmth, a whole morning of waiting with the fuelling that implies, and lake water that after the summer may well be warm enough to leave the wetsuit question open.