XTERRA Austria: Course, Elevation & Route Profile

Course & Elevation

The day starts in the Altausseer See with 1,500 m swum in two loops; the start and transition sit at Altaussee Park. From there you go straight into the terrain, because the bike course starts climbing after little more than a hundred metres.

The bike is a 16.9 km loop on trail and gravel, ridden twice. The opening climb runs 2.85 km at 7.8 percent average, broken up by ramps around 30 percent. Three more climbs follow each lap, at km 5.4, km 7.6 and km 9.3, the last of them averaging 9.2 percent. Less than ten percent of the lap is flat, with roughly a fifth steeply uphill and another fifth steeply downhill. Descending is a discipline of its own here, not a rest.

The run is not a loop. It goes point to point from Altaussee over the Tressensattel towards Grundlsee and down to the finish in Bad Aussee, and it opens with its hardest section: from km 0.5 the trail climbs 2.73 km at 9.7 percent average with individual pitches beyond 30 percent, 264 metres in total. After that the gradient tips downward for most of the way to the line.

Pacing Strategy

The two identical bike laps give the race its structure: everything you ride on lap one comes back a second time. The climb straight out of transition is the worst possible place to defend a good swim position. It takes most riders 15 to 25 minutes, and overcooking it there colours the rest of the day.

XTERRA Austria is decided in the first three kilometres of the run. Two hundred and sixty-four metres of climbing immediately off the bike, with ramps where fast hiking is the sensible choice, expose any miscalculation made on the bike. Get up it evenly and what follows is mostly downhill to Bad Aussee.

The second trap is the descending. About a fifth of the bike lap drops steeply; braking constantly there costs more time than any climb and burns extra strength in your arms and trunk. Treat the first lap's descents as reconnaissance and ride the second lap's with what you learned.

Training plan for XTERRA Austria: 12-week build

For an age-group athlete the whole race usually takes between roughly four and five and a half hours. The demand is fragmented rather than steady: across the bike and the run barely more than ten percent of the course is level, so every rise forces a surge and every descent becomes a technical phase at low output.

The two long bike climbs, 2.85 km at 7.8 percent, one per lap, and the run climb over the Tressensattel decide the race. All three ask for the same quality: holding a high but repeatable output off-road for 15 to 25 minutes while the gradient keeps changing under you.

In practice that means long climbing intervals on the mountain bike rather than on the road: two to three blocks of 15 minutes uphill on gravel or trail, plus repeats of short steep ramps for the surges beyond 20 percent. Descending technique matters just as much. Ride technical descents regularly and also when you are already tired, because that is exactly when they come in the race.

For the run you need two things: hiking and running climbs of around ten percent, ideally straight off a ride, and downhill running on trails. The long descent from the Tressensattel down to Bad Aussee loads the quadriceps in braking mode, and only regular downhill running prepares you for that. Because the run is point to point, you can rehearse it in two halves: the climb as a dedicated uphill session, the descent that follows it as a longer trail downhill.