TRI ALMERE: Course, Route Profile & Map

Course & Elevation

The day begins at half past nine with a rolling start off the bathing beach at Almere Haven, a single thousand-metre lap through the Gooimeer. Out of the water you cross to the race site at the Manifestatieveld and from there onto the bike course: three laps of 29.3 kilometres each, out and back along the Gooimeerdijk and the Eemmeerdijk with a loop through the polder near De Eemhof. The closing 10 km is a lead-in plus four laps of 2.5 km through the Almere Haven district.

Almere stands on ground that did not exist seventy years ago. The whole polder lies below sea level, and the dykes you ride on are the only rises in sight. Water on one side, the Gooimeer and in places the Eemmeer, flat open farmland on the other: there is no cover, from wind or from sun. The organiser describes its site as a beach location for good reason; start, transition and finish all sit on the Almere Haven beach next to the beach brasserie.

The effort falls unmistakably on the bike. Almost ninety of the hundred kilometres are ridden, and because the bike course is the same lap three times, the wind pattern repeats three times too. The run afterwards is short enough to attack but long enough to punish a bike split that was too ambitious. This race is not to be confused with Challenge Almere-Amsterdam, the long-distance event held in the same city in September.

Pacing Strategy

The race is decided on the second bike lap. On a dyke course ridden three times, lap one teaches you exactly where the wind sits, and lap two decides whether you use that information or ignore it. The temptation is to read the tailwind stretch as confirmation; the honest yardstick is the wattage that will still carry you through a third lap into the wind.

The move from bike to run is the second point at which the day tips. After three hours in the aero position on a dyke with no climb anywhere to break the position, hips and back are stiff, and the run offers no hill to force the change of rhythm. Run the first kilometre deliberately under goal pace and let cadence do the work.

The trap is the short swim. A thousand metres invites you to treat it as a warm-up and go out hard on it, even though almost ninety kilometres of riding follow. Water temperature compounds it: in mid-May the Gooimeer can be cold enough to make wetsuits compulsory, and a first kilometre swum too hard in cold water costs you the first bike lap.

Training plan for TRI ALMERE: 12-week build

For an age-group athlete the TRI 100 takes roughly three and a half to five hours, of which around two thirds falls on the bike. The demand is a long, even, near-threshold effort with no variation: there are neither climbs nor descents to structure the intensity for you, and no passage in which heart rate drops by itself.

The second and third bike laps and the transition that follows them decide the race. Train the combination rather than the parts: rides of two and a half to three and a half hours at constant power in the aero position, the final third deliberately into the wind, followed by a brick run of thirty to forty-five minutes. A course without a profile forgives no gaps in form, because there is no recovery in which to hide them.

Conditions here are a training brief of their own, and there are two. The wind over open polder is the only real resistance of the day; ride deliberately in wind and learn to stay stable on the bars in a crosswind, particularly if you race a deep front wheel. And in mid-May the Gooimeer is still cold: open-water sessions in a wetsuit at low temperature, including the first hectic minutes, belong in the final weeks.

The last emphasis is how long the position holds. Three hours of aero riding with no climb to interrupt it loads trunk, hip flexors and neck identically throughout, and those are exactly the structures that decide the four laps of running at the end. Build continuous time on the bars systematically and add core stability and hip mobility rather than only accumulating volume.