Stauseelauf Gippingen: Course, Route Profile & Map

Course & Elevation

The start is on the Chileweg at the edge of Gippingen. A few hundred metres along the Lacheweg the course reaches the shore of the Klingnauer Stausee and follows it clockwise: first some four kilometres south-east down the western side, past Kleindöttingen to the lower end of the reservoir, where the Aare is crossed at Döttingen. From there it runs back north-west on the Klingnau side, over the second Aare crossing at the top of the reservoir and back to Gippingen, where the finish sits on the Stauseestrasse in the middle of the village.

This lap has no elevation profile worth the name. It moves between 313 and 323 metres, a ten metre band, and almost two thirds of its length falls inside the flat gradient bracket. Not one rise is long or steep enough to register as a climb at all. The surface is mostly asphalt road with a few stretches of shore path.

The Klingnauer Stausee is a nature reserve in the lower Aare valley and one of the most important waterbird sites in Switzerland, which makes the lap something other than a road loop on the edge of a village. The race is held on 31 December, in 2026 for the 47th time, organised by the OK Stauseelauf on behalf of the Veloclub Gippingen. Bib collection opens at 10:00 in the Mehrzweckhalle Leuggern, a good kilometre from the start, which makes an obvious warm-up. A heated hall with catering stands at the finish, every participant receives a pair of Rohner socks, and the club serves its traditional raclette by the Kapelle Gippingen the evening before.

Pacing Strategy

On a lap with no climbing the pacing question shifts entirely: it is not about saving something for a hill, it is about holding one pace for 7.53 kilometres. That is harder than it sounds. Because nothing slows you down naturally, most people run the first kilometre too fast and pay it back from kilometre five.

The decisive part is the long shoreline stretch in the second half. After the Aare crossing at Döttingen come roughly three straight, uniform kilometres with little visual change, and that is exactly where the field comes apart. Anyone who has run evenly to that point can find a group and sit in; anyone who started too fast covers those three kilometres alone.

The trap is wind and cold, not gradient. On 31 December the lower Aare valley often sits under high fog, the air is damp and cold, and there is no shelter over open water; on the far side the same wind is then behind you. So plan the return leg by effort rather than by the split you ran on the way out. And because the age categories start in waves between 12:20 and 13:30, the warm-up is easy to time, but the cold between warming up and starting is real.

Training plan for Stauseelauf Gippingen: 12-week build

For a well trained age-group runner the Hauptlauf takes roughly 27 to 45 minutes. The demand is about as even as a running race gets: forty metres of climbing over 7.5 kilometres means a continuous effort at or just above threshold, with no recovery on descents and no change of rhythm.

What decides the race is therefore not a section of the course but the ability to hold threshold pace. The preparation is classic threshold work: two by fifteen to twenty minutes at race pace with a short jog between, once a week, plus tempo runs over three to four kilometres slightly faster than target race pace.

The second emphasis is running economy on hard, flat ground. The whole lap runs mostly on asphalt without gradient, which means a very high number of repetitions at a constant stride length and a correspondingly high load on calves and Achilles. Do the key sessions on the road rather than on soft forest ground, and add strides and calf strengthening.

Among the conditions, the date counts. A race on 31 December means training through the holidays and racing at temperatures near freezing, often in Aare valley fog. In the last fortnight put at least one hard session into the middle of the day in the cold, test gloves, hat and the long-or-short-tights question under load beforehand, and expect to need a longer warm-up than in summer.