IRONMAN · Lanzarote · 15 May 2027
How to train for IRONMAN Lanzarote
People come to Lanzarote for the climbs. The organiser has held this race since 1992 and calls it the oldest of its series in Europe, and its reputation is volcanoes, lava fields and 2190 m of climbing on one loop. So riders train for the steep stuff. Few of them are undone by the steepest ramp.
What they cannot do is ride the forty kilometres after the descent. The bike drops to near sea level at kilometre 120 and then spends the next forty climbing back above 300 m on road so gentle that most of it never registers as a climb. That is where Lanzarote is won and lost, on the part of the course nobody photographs.
By Kian Briel, founder. Analysed by engine 1, updated
What is actually on the road
The organiser's own course files, drawn the way the Event Analyzer draws a member's race.
- Swim3.8 km in 2 laps6 m upCourse file
- Bike181 km2,190 m upCourse file
- Run42.5 km in 3 laps138 m upCourse file
The swim is 3.8 km off Playa Grande in Puerto del Carmen, 2 laps with an Australian exit, starting and ending on the sand. The organiser logged the water at 19 C in 2026 and 21 C the year before. There is one transition zone, on the same beach, with the finish line beside it.
The bike is 1 lap of 181 km out of Puerto del Carmen and back, past Timanfaya National Park, La Geria and Mirador del Río. You leave through the Rancho Texas Roundabout at kilometre 3.1 and come back through it at kilometre 174, and there is a race-day-only turn on the LZ-2 at kilometre 25. The file climbs above 300 m in the first 14 km. It then rolls between roughly 150 m and 340 m until kilometre 91, where the biggest climb of the day, 3.2 km at 6.1 percent, lifts you to the high point near 570 m. A 5.1 km descent at 5.7 percent follows, then a 3.2 km climb at 4.9 percent, then the steepest ramp on the course, 1 km at 7.1 percent near kilometre 108. After that the road falls more than 400 m in the ten kilometres to kilometre 120.
The run is 3 laps along Avenida de Las Playas beside the sea. The organiser calls it rolling. The file measures 138 m over the marathon and reads it as one flat segment.
Course shape by distance
- Flat 73%
- Climbing 13%
- Descending 14%
The longest stretches
- Bike, climbing1.03 km2% of the bike
- Bike, flat12.1 km6% of the bike
- Run, flat42.5 km100% of the run
Each row is one unbroken stretch of the course that keeps the same shape the whole way. The number is how much of that leg you spend inside it, and it comes out the same whether you are fast or slow.
What this course asks of each leg
Twelve training dimensions scored for each leg against its own course, the way the Event Analyzer scores a member's race.
Durability, on the bike, for a long time. Aerobic endurance scores 95 on all three legs, and on the bike aerobic durability at 94 and muscular endurance at 93 sit right behind it. The bike is 55 percent of a Trained athlete's day, so the first seven places in the cross-leg ranking all belong to it.
The volcano shows up lower down. Strength and force reads 54 on the bike against 35 on the run. High-intensity capacity reads 43 on the bike and 25 everywhere else. Technical skill reads 60 on the bike, where almost 32 km descend at 3 percent or steeper, and 78 in the water.
The bands carry it through. A Trained athlete swims 1:19:52, rides 7:09:50 at 159 W and runs 4:18:18, for 12:58:00. The Competitive band, from 4.15 W/kg at 75 kg and 4:20 /km threshold pace, finishes in 11:01:10. Sixty-seven minutes of that gap come from the bike and 39 from the run. On this island the watts buy more time than anywhere else in the day, because every extra watt is multiplied by 2190 m of climbing.
Heat is modest. The organiser's highs were 24 C in 2026, 26 C in 2025 and 25 C in 2024, and environmental resilience scores 60 on every leg. Wind is the organiser's own warning. It says the bike frequently features tough winds, and on a single loop of an island there is no telling which side of it you will meet them on.
- Aerobic endurance95
- Aerobic durability90
- Muscular endurance90
- Fueling resilience85
- Threshold durability80
- Technical skill78
- Environmental resilience60
- Threshold capacity55
- High-intensity capacity25
- Strength / force25
- Anaerobic capacity15
- Sprint power0
Nymiva reads what you can already show, from your own data
Connect your training history and the Focus Lab scores the same twelve dimensions this course demands against where you sit today. The gap between the two is what you train.
- MeasuredFrom your thresholds and testsThreshold power, threshold pace, critical swim speed and field tests you have done. The dimensions they can carry are scored directly.
- EstimatedFrom your training historyConnected activities are read for what they prove: long efforts, late-session fade, repeated hard work, fueling on long days. Each score says how it was read.
- ProxyFrom a stand-in, and named as oneWhere only an indirect signal exists, the score carries the proxy it came from and a lower confidence, never a number dressed as a measurement.
- UnmeasuredHonestly blankA dimension nothing in your data can answer stays unmeasured. It is never a zero, and the plan does not pretend to know it.
Every dimension ends in one word
- Develop the course asks more than you can show
- Maintain close enough to hold at the minimum dose
- Covered nothing to build here
- Unmeasured the course needs it, your data cannot say yet
Two readings sit behind every Nymiva plan. One scores the course on twelve dimensions from its file and the organiser's figures. The other scores you on the same twelve, from your thresholds and your connected training history, with a note beside each score saying where it came from and how much it can carry. The plan only treats a dimension as a gap when the course scores it higher than you do, and it ranks gaps by the share of the day they touch. With the bike more than half of this race, a bike gap wins most arguments.
There is no reader behind this page, so the season beneath it cannot know your gaps. It supposes they line up with the biggest demands and builds 28 weeks from there, with 5 developmental blocks ahead of two peak weeks and race week. The first block puts aerobic endurance in front in every sport. The second hands the lead to fueling resilience in every sport, which on a day this long is no surprise. Muscular endurance leads bike and run in the third, aerobic durability leads them in the fourth, and aerobic endurance closes the build. A member's season is built from their own data and will argue with this one.
Train the bike to protect the run
Which demands matter most across the whole race. A leg's demand counts for as much of the day as that leg takes, so a score of 85 on the bike outweighs the same score on the swim.
- 01Aerobic enduranceBike leg, 55% of the day95 × 55%53
- 02Aerobic durabilityBike leg, 55% of the day94 × 55%52
- 03Muscular enduranceBike leg, 55% of the day93 × 55%51
The bike takes 55% of the Trained reference band’s day, so its demands carry the most race weight. What the bike leaves in the legs is what the run gets.
Which demand gets a block, and when
The engine freezes one lead focus per sport on every developmental block, holds the rest at maintenance, and verifies before it reprioritises.
An illustration, not your plan. This page has none of your data, so the season below is the engine’s answer to one stated assumption: that your gaps line up with what IRONMAN Lanzarote demands. Your own season is built from your history, your thresholds, the days you can train and the races you have entered, and it will differ from this in its priorities, its sessions and its load.
- 01Run aerobic endurance, a development block4 weeks
- 02Bike muscular endurance, a practice block4 weeks
- 03Bike aerobic durability, a practice block6 weeks
- 04Bike aerobic endurance, a development block5 weeks
In the order the allocator places them, general first, most race-like last.
- Week 1PrepPrep
A lead-in week. It develops nothing by design.
- Weeks 2 to 9Foundation 1Closes with a recovery week
- PriorityBike aerobic endurance
- PriorityRun aerobic endurance
- PrioritySwim aerobic endurance
- SupportBike aerobic durability
- SupportRun aerobic durability
- SupportBike muscular endurance
- SupportRun muscular endurance
- SupportSwim aerobic durability
- SupportSwim muscular endurance
- SupportBike fueling resilience
- SupportRun fueling resilience
- SupportSwim fueling resilience
- Weeks 10 to 13Foundation 2Closes with a recovery week
- PriorityBike fueling resilience
- PriorityRun fueling resilience
- PrioritySwim fueling resilience
- SupportBike aerobic endurance
- SupportBike aerobic durability
- SupportRun aerobic endurance
- SupportRun aerobic durability
- SupportSwim aerobic endurance
- SupportBike muscular endurance
- SupportRun muscular endurance
- SupportSwim aerobic durability
- SupportSwim muscular endurance
- Weeks 14 to 17Foundation 3Closes with a recovery week
- PriorityBike muscular endurance
- PriorityRun muscular endurance
- PrioritySwim aerobic durability
- SupportBike aerobic endurance
- SupportBike aerobic durability
- SupportRun aerobic endurance
- SupportRun aerobic durability
- SupportSwim aerobic endurance
- SupportSwim muscular endurance
- SupportBike fueling resilience
- SupportRun fueling resilience
- SupportSwim fueling resilience
- Weeks 18 to 21Event shaping 1Closes with a recovery week
- PriorityBike aerobic durability
- PriorityRun aerobic durability
- PrioritySwim muscular endurance
- SupportBike aerobic endurance
- SupportRun aerobic endurance
- SupportSwim aerobic endurance
- SupportBike muscular endurance
- SupportRun muscular endurance
- SupportSwim aerobic durability
- SupportBike fueling resilience
- SupportRun fueling resilience
- SupportSwim fueling resilience
- Weeks 22 to 25Event shaping 2Closes with a recovery week
- PriorityBike aerobic endurance
- PriorityRun aerobic endurance
- PrioritySwim aerobic endurance
- SupportBike aerobic durability
- SupportRun aerobic durability
- SupportBike muscular endurance
- SupportRun muscular endurance
- SupportSwim aerobic durability
- SupportSwim muscular endurance
- SupportBike fueling resilience
- SupportRun fueling resilience
- SupportSwim fueling resilience
- Weeks 26 to 27PeakPeak
The taper. Load comes down toward the race, content stays specific.
- Week 28RaceRace
Race week.
Held at maintenance between blocks
- Runaerobic endurance, aerobic durability, threshold durability, muscular endurance, fueling resilience
- Bikemuscular endurance, aerobic durability, aerobic endurance, threshold durability, technical skill, fueling resilience
- Swimaerobic endurance, aerobic durability, threshold durability, muscular endurance, technical skill, fueling resilience
Touches scheduled by each capability’s own decay, at a fraction of its development dose, so earlier work is still there on race day.
The sessions the blocks are built from
One entry per kind of work the block trains, at the intensity that work is meant to be done at. Where the same work runs at several lengths, the entry shows the span it grows across rather than one entry per length.
- Foundation 1 · Weeks 2 to 975 to 240 min
150 to 210 min at Zone 2
BikePower, Zone 2Trains aerobic capacity - Foundation 1 · Weeks 2 to 940 to 270 min
180 to 210 min at Zone 3, then 30 min at Zone 4
BikePower, Zone 3Trains aerobic capacity - Foundation 1 · Weeks 2 to 935 to 120 min
90 min at Zone 2
RunPace, Zone 2Trains aerobic capacity - Foundation 1 · Weeks 2 to 950 min
4 x 1.5 min at Zone 3, 6 min easy between
RunHeart rate, Zone 3Trains aerobic capacity - Foundation 1 · Weeks 2 to 945 to 51 min
4 x 8 min at Zone 2, 1 min easy between
SwimPace, Zone 2Trains aerobic capacity - Foundation 1 · Weeks 2 to 947 to 81 min
3 x 1000 m at Zone 3, 0.3 min easy between
SwimPace, Zone 3Trains aerobic capacity
12× rolling-course surges
1.8 min at Zone 5, then 1.8 min at Zone 5, then 1.8 min at Zone 5, then 1.8 min at Zone 5, then 1.8 min at Zone 5, then 1.8 min at Zone 5, then 1.8 min at Zone 5, then 1.8 min at Zone 5, then 1.8 min at Zone 5, then 1.8 min at Zone 5, then 1.8 min at Zone 5, then 1.8 min at Zone 5, 4 min easy between
Compiled by the deterministic course compiler from the organiser’s file: the course’s one repeatable requirement, rehearsed at a dose the progression allows.
- Bike
- 90 min
- Trains threshold durability
- Supports muscular endurance
- Supports high intensity capacity
28 weeks, laid out backwards from race day
The shortest runway Nymiva builds for this event type, with its blocks, recovery weeks, taper and race week in place.
- 1
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- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6
- 7
- 8
- 9
- 10
- 11
- 12
- 13
- 14
- 15
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- 25
- 26
- 27
- 28
- Prep
- Foundation
- Event shaping
- Peak
- Race
- Recovery week
Your own season carries these same phases on your own dates, with the load solved from your fitness and the days you can train, and it changes when your data does.
What each level does on the day
Reference finish times per peer band, the pacing plan the model holds each band to, and where the day is decided.
| Band | Swim | Bike | Run | Finish |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Recreational2:11 /100m critical swim speed · 2.47 W/kg at 75 kg · 6:08 /km threshold pace | 1:34:15 | 8:04:05 | 5:10:38 | 14:58:58 |
| Trained1:51 /100m critical swim speed · 3.03 W/kg at 75 kg · 5:06 /km threshold pace | 1:19:52 | 7:09:50 | 4:18:18 | 12:58:00 |
| Competitive1:36 /100m critical swim speed · 4.15 W/kg at 75 kg · 4:20 /km threshold pace | 1:09:04 | 6:02:38 | 3:39:28 | 11:01:10 |
| Elite1:26 /100m critical swim speed · 5.27 W/kg at 75 kg · 3:50 /km threshold pace | 1:01:53 | 5:29:47 | 3:14:09 | 9:55:49 |
Pacing plan
- 0 km0.3%27.7 km/h7:00
- 3.23 km3.7%14.2 km/h1:37
- 3.61 km1.4%22.4 km/h1:58
- 4.34 km4.5%12.4 km/h3:13
- 5.01 km0.8%25.2 km/h3:22
- 6.42 km3.8%14 km/h13:07
- 9.47 km-1.5%37 km/h0:19
- 9.67 km5.2%11.1 km/h10:07
79 more segments in the full plan.
- Run: reach 4:20 /km and this course gives back 1:56:50.
Where it is decided
Between kilometre 120 and kilometre 161 of the bike.
The famous parts are short. The 7.1 percent ramp near kilometre 108 takes 1.8 percent of the bike leg in the engine's reference run. Those climbs hurt, and they are honest. You know they are coming, you can see the top, and the clock barely notices them.
Then the road drops to kilometre 120 and relaxes, and so do the riders. From there the file climbs back above 300 m by kilometre 156, most of it at under 1 percent: 10 km at 0.9 percent, a 2.9 km climb at 4.7 percent, and a 12 km drag at 0.6 percent from kilometre 144. The engine gives that one 12 km drag 6.3 percent of the bike leg, the largest single block of time on the bike and three and a half times the steepest ramp. It looks flat. It is not flat, it comes late in the day, and it faces whatever wind the island has left for you.
The engine's session for this bike is twelve hard efforts of a minute and three quarters at Zone 5, with four easy minutes after each. It is the shape of the climbing in the first half, and it is worth doing. But the rider who wins the last 40 km is the one who can still hold 159 W on a gradient too shallow to feel like work. The run then tells you who that was. It reads as one flat segment along Avenida de Las Playas, all of it decisive, and it is run on whatever the drag from kilometre 120 left over.
Getting it wrong
Racing the climbs is the first mistake. The ramps near kilometre 91 and kilometre 108 are where people go into the red to keep a wheel, and none of it shows on the clock at the finish.
The second is the descent. From kilometre 110 to kilometre 120 the road falls more than 400 m, and riders take it as a rest they have earned. It is a rest. It is not a reset. Whatever you spent climbing is still spent at the bottom, and the next forty kilometres rise again.
The third is the run's first loop. The crowd on Avenida de Las Playas is loud, the road reads flat, and the sea breeze makes it feel cooler than the sun says it is. Three loops is long enough for that to catch up with you twice.
Conditions on the day
- 2026high 24 C, low 17 Cwater 19 C
- 2025high 26 C, low 17 Cwater 21 C
- 2024high 25 C, low 19 Cwater 19 C
From the organiser’s own records. Not a forecast.
Every session is a claim, every block is a test
A plan is not a calendar. Each key session states what it trains and how that is checked, and each block ends with a public verdict before the next one is chosen.
What a block promises
Bike aerobic endurance moves from your baseline to a stated target by the end of Foundation 1
- The baseline is your measured score when the block starts. The target is the score the model predicts for it.
- Verified at the block’s recovery week, by a field test or a refresh of the supply read from your history.
- Confidence rises by agreement between independent signals, never by one metric crossing a line.
- A block that misses its target is a public miss. The next block is chosen from what was proven, not from what was planned.
- 01Stimulus achievedThe work landed in the zone the session named, for the dose it named.
- 02Partially achievedSome of the work landed. The session banks what it can prove.
- 03Not achievedThe load may have been there. The stimulus was not, so nothing is banked.
- 04Data insufficientNo usable stream. The session is neither credited nor blamed.
- Session verified
- Progression banked
- Block verified
- Priority reassessed
- Plan adapted
Your numbers, this course
Analyze IRONMAN Lanzarote against my fitness
The same simulation and the same Focus Lab read, on your thresholds instead of a band’s. Three numbers give a finish estimate and a partial read. A connected history gives the whole table.
The first 14 days are free.
- Trained band finish
- 12:58:00
- Of the day on the bike
- 55%
- Dimensions scored per leg
- 12
- Season runway shown
- 28 wk
Questions people ask
- How hilly is the IRONMAN Lanzarote bike course?
- Very. The one-loop 180.2 km from Puerto del Carmen climbs 2190 m on the organiser's file. The biggest single climb is 3.2 km at 6.1 percent from kilometre 91 to the high point of the course, around 570 m. The steepest sustained climb is 1 km at 7.1 percent near kilometre 108.
- What water temperature should I expect at Playa Grande?
- The organiser logged 19 C in 2026, 21 C in 2025 and 19 C in 2024. The swim is two laps with an Australian exit, starting and finishing on the beach. The wetsuit decision is not on the course page, so check it in race week.
- Is the IRONMAN Lanzarote run course flat?
- Nearly. The organiser calls it rolling, but the three loops along Avenida de Las Playas climb 138 m in total on the file, and the engine reads the whole marathon as one flat segment. The organiser promises intense sunshine and a sea breeze.
- Is IRONMAN Lanzarote windy?
- The organiser says the bike course frequently features tough winds and that the race is forged by wind, heat and volcanic terrain. Air temperatures are mild, with highs between 24 C and 26 C over the three years it publishes.
Course data from the organiser’s published files, analysed 24 Sept 2026 by engine 1, demand model 4. Reference times are simulated for a peer band at a stated reference athlete and are not a prediction for anyone. Nothing on this page is medical advice.
IRONMAN® and IRONMAN 70.3® are registered trademarks, and 5150 is a trademark, of World Triathlon Corporation. Nymiva is an independent training platform and is not affiliated with, sponsored by or endorsed by World Triathlon Corporation. Course data is read from the organiser’s public course pages for the purpose of describing the event.