IRONMAN 70.3 · Campeche · 8 Nov 2026
How to train for IRONMAN 70.3 Campeche
The organiser sells Campeche as fast and flat, ideal for first-timers and personal bests, and on the profile it is exactly that. Ninety-eight percent of the course is flat by distance. The run climbs 23 m in 21.7 km.
What the profile cannot draw is the air. This is the Walled City on the Yucatan Peninsula, raced on the Gulf of Mexico with recorded highs of 33 C, and the first thing Nymiva asks of an athlete here is not power or pace. It is the ability to keep producing either one in the heat.
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.
- Swim1.94 km5 m upCourse file
- Bike90.2 km in 2 laps226 m upCourse file
- Run21.7 km in 3 laps23 m upCourse file
From Bonita Beach the swim goes off as a rolling start, athletes entering the Gulf in a continuous stream and seeding themselves by expected swim time. It covers 1.9 km, in water the organiser measured at 29 C in 2024 and 24 C a year later.
Out of T1 the bike heads for the Merida Highway and turns right at the bridge onto the Malecon. Those first 8 km hold the only real rises on the course: an 891 m rise at 4.4 percent, a shorter one of 309 m at 4.9 percent, then a 773 m drop at 6 percent. After that come 2 laps up and back along the Malecon and the Merida Highway, and the profile finds no further climb. The engine reads those final 81.8 km as a single flat segment holding 89.6 percent of the bike leg.
The run is 3 laps, past the Marine Fountains, along the Malecon and through Downtown, finishing at the Sea Gate. The profile has one segment for the whole of it. There is no hill to hide behind.
Course shape by distance
- Flat 98%
- Climbing 1%
- Descending 1%
The longest stretches
- Bike, climbing0.31 km1% of the bike
- Bike, flat81.8 km90% of the bike
- Run, flat21.7 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.
Heat before anything else. Environmental resilience scores 90 on every leg and sits at the top of each one. Aerobic endurance follows at 85, then muscular endurance at 81 on the bike and 80 on the run, then threshold capacity at 70.
Look at what is missing. High-intensity capacity and strength and force both read 43 on the bike, well behind every endurance score. Ask the engine for a session built from this bike file and it gives back two efforts of a minute and a half, with close to five minutes of easy riding between them. Two, because there are two rises worth the name, and both sit before the loops begin.
So the demand is simple to state. Ride a long time at an even output in hot air. Then run a half marathon in the same air, hours later. A Trained athlete swims 39:04, rides 2:57:55 at 182 W and runs 2:02:52, which comes to 5:49:51. The Competitive band, from 4.15 W/kg at 75 kg, rides 2:37:23 and runs 1:44:24 for 5:05:34. About twenty minutes of the gap is bike and about eighteen is run, and the run takes only about two thirds as long as the ride.
- Environmental resilience90
- Aerobic endurance85
- Muscular endurance81
- Technical skill71
- Threshold capacity70
- Aerobic durability65
- Threshold durability65
- Fueling resilience55
- High-intensity capacity40
- Anaerobic capacity25
- Strength / force20
- Sprint power5
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
Nymiva holds a course and an athlete against the same twelve dimensions. The course is scored from its file. The athlete is scored from thresholds and connected training history, each score marked with its source and its confidence. A gap exists only where the course asks for more than the athlete has shown, and every gap is weighted by how much of the race it occupies. Here that means the bike and the run carry almost all the weight, and heat sits at the top of both.
This page cannot see your data. Its season assumes your gaps line up with the biggest demands and builds 24 weeks in 5 developmental blocks before a two-week taper. Aerobic endurance leads the opening block for all three sports. In the second, aerobic durability leads on the bike and the run while the swim works on threshold capacity. The third moves the bike and the run onto threshold capacity and the swim onto technique. Muscular endurance leads the fourth, and aerobic endurance takes the last block before the taper. A member's season is built from their own numbers, and it will disagree with this one where their numbers do.
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.
- 01Environmental resilienceBike leg, 51% of the day90 × 51%46
- 02Aerobic enduranceBike leg, 51% of the day85 × 51%43
- 03Muscular enduranceBike leg, 51% of the day81 × 51%41
The bike takes 51% 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 70.3 Campeche 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 muscular endurance, a practice block4 weeks
- 02Run aerobic endurance, a development block4 weeks
- 03Bike muscular endurance, a practice block4 weeks
- 04Bike aerobic endurance, a development block4 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 5Foundation 1Closes with a recovery week
- PriorityBike aerobic endurance
- PriorityRun aerobic endurance
- PrioritySwim aerobic endurance
- SupportBike muscular endurance
- SupportRun muscular endurance
- SupportSwim muscular endurance
- SupportBike threshold capacity
- SupportRun threshold capacity
- SupportSwim technical skill
- SupportSwim threshold capacity
- SupportBike aerobic durability
- SupportRun aerobic durability
- Weeks 6 to 9Foundation 2Closes with a recovery week
- PrioritySwim threshold capacity
- PriorityBike aerobic durability
- PriorityRun aerobic durability
- SupportBike aerobic endurance
- SupportRun aerobic endurance
- SupportSwim aerobic endurance
- SupportBike muscular endurance
- SupportRun muscular endurance
- SupportSwim muscular endurance
- SupportBike threshold capacity
- SupportRun threshold capacity
- SupportSwim technical skill
- Weeks 10 to 13Foundation 3Closes with a recovery week
- PriorityBike threshold capacity
- PriorityRun threshold capacity
- PrioritySwim technical skill
- SupportBike aerobic endurance
- SupportRun aerobic endurance
- SupportSwim aerobic endurance
- SupportBike muscular endurance
- SupportRun muscular endurance
- SupportSwim muscular endurance
- SupportSwim threshold capacity
- SupportBike aerobic durability
- SupportRun aerobic durability
- Weeks 14 to 17Event shaping 1Closes with a recovery week
- PriorityBike muscular endurance
- PriorityRun muscular endurance
- PrioritySwim muscular endurance
- SupportBike aerobic endurance
- SupportRun aerobic endurance
- SupportSwim aerobic endurance
- SupportBike threshold capacity
- SupportRun threshold capacity
- SupportSwim technical skill
- SupportSwim threshold capacity
- SupportBike aerobic durability
- SupportRun aerobic durability
- Weeks 18 to 21Event shaping 2Closes with a recovery week
- PriorityBike aerobic endurance
- PriorityRun aerobic endurance
- PrioritySwim aerobic endurance
- SupportBike muscular endurance
- SupportRun muscular endurance
- SupportSwim muscular endurance
- SupportBike threshold capacity
- SupportRun threshold capacity
- SupportSwim technical skill
- SupportSwim threshold capacity
- SupportBike aerobic durability
- SupportRun aerobic durability
- Weeks 22 to 23PeakPeak
The taper. Load comes down toward the race, content stays specific.
- Week 24RaceRace
Race week.
Held at maintenance between blocks
- Runmuscular endurance, aerobic endurance, aerobic durability, threshold capacity, threshold durability
- Bikemuscular endurance, aerobic endurance, aerobic durability, threshold capacity, threshold durability
- Swimaerobic endurance, aerobic durability, threshold capacity, threshold durability, muscular endurance, technical skill
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 575 to 240 min
150 to 210 min at Zone 2
BikePower, Zone 2Trains aerobic capacity - Foundation 1 · Weeks 2 to 540 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 535 to 120 min
90 min at Zone 2
RunPace, Zone 2Trains aerobic capacity - Foundation 1 · Weeks 2 to 550 min
4 x 1.5 min at Zone 3, 6 min easy between
RunHeart rate, Zone 3Trains aerobic capacity - Foundation 1 · Weeks 2 to 545 to 51 min
4 x 8 min at Zone 2, 1 min easy between
SwimPace, Zone 2Trains aerobic capacity - Foundation 1 · Weeks 2 to 547 to 81 min
3 x 1000 m at Zone 3, 0.3 min easy between
SwimPace, Zone 3Trains aerobic capacity
2× course-matched climbs
1.5 min at Zone 5, then 1.5 min at Zone 5, 4.8 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
- 33 min
- Trains high intensity capacity
- Supports strength force
- Supports muscular endurance
24 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
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6
- 7
- 8
- 9
- 10
- 11
- 12
- 13
- 14
- 15
- 16
- 17
- 18
- 19
- 20
- 21
- 22
- 23
- 24
- 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 | 0:46:07 | 3:13:07 | 2:27:46 | 6:37:00 |
| Trained1:51 /100m critical swim speed · 3.03 W/kg at 75 kg · 5:06 /km threshold pace | 0:39:04 | 2:57:55 | 2:02:52 | 5:49:51 |
| Competitive1:36 /100m critical swim speed · 4.15 W/kg at 75 kg · 4:20 /km threshold pace | 0:33:47 | 2:37:23 | 1:44:24 | 5:05:34 |
| Elite1:26 /100m critical swim speed · 5.27 W/kg at 75 kg · 3:50 /km threshold pace | 0:30:16 | 2:23:44 | 1:32:21 | 4:36:21 |
Pacing plan
- 0 km-5.1%54.5 km/h0:03
- 0.04 km0.4%28.8 km/h6:25
- 3.13 km4.4%14.2 km/h3:46
- 4.02 km-0.4%32.8 km/h1:33
- 4.86 km-3%45.4 km/h0:24
- 5.16 km0.3%29.3 km/h2:26
- 6.35 km4.9%13.1 km/h1:25
- 6.66 km-1.3%37.2 km/h1:31
2 more segments in the full plan.
- Run: reach 4:20 /km and this course gives back 44:17.
Where it is decided
On the run, and the bike decides how the run goes.
A flat course takes away every cue a rider uses to meter effort. There is no climb to slow you down and no descent to rest on. The engine puts 89.6 percent of the bike leg on one flat segment, and on flat road a rider who feels good simply rides harder. On the Malecon, with the Gulf beside you and the field around you, that feels free. It is not free in heat. Every watt above your plan on the loops comes back as heat you carry onto the run.
Then the three laps. A Trained athlete starts running well over three and a half hours into the day, and the whole run leg is one flat segment. The difference between a good day and a long one is not found on any stretch of road. It is found in whether the pace from the first lap past the Marine Fountains still exists on the third. The crowd along the Malecon and through Downtown will be loud every time you pass. The Sea Gate is the only place it pays to respond.
Getting it wrong
Seeding too far forward. The rolling start rewards honesty. Put yourself among swimmers faster than you and you spend the first minutes in the Gulf at their pace rather than yours, in water that was 29 C in 2024.
Taking the opening climbs personally. The rises on the way to the Malecon arrive while your legs are fresh from the swim. They are the only hills of the day and they are over quickly. Riding them hard buys nothing on a course where 98 percent of the distance is flat.
Pacing the run from a spring training log. The organiser's highs run from 30 C to 33 C, and the three-loop course offers no hill to excuse a slower kilometre. Start at the pace the day allows rather than the one you trained for.
Conditions on the day
- 2025high 33 C, low 21 Cwater 24 C
- 2024high 30 C, low 24 Cwater 29 C
- 2023high 32 C, low 21 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 70.3 Campeche 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
- 5:49:51
- Of the day on the bike
- 51%
- Dimensions scored per leg
- 12
- Season runway shown
- 24 wk
Questions people ask
- Is IRONMAN 70.3 Campeche a flat course?
- Yes. The organiser calls it fast and flat, and 98 percent of the course is flat by distance. The bike climbs 226 m in total, its only real rises sit in the first 8 km on the way from T1 to the Malecon, and the steepest is 309 m at 4.9 percent. The run climbs 23 m.
- How warm is the water at IRONMAN 70.3 Campeche?
- The organiser logged 29 C in 2024 and 24 C in 2025 for the swim in the Gulf of Mexico. The wetsuit decision is not on the course page, so check the athlete guide in race week.
- How does the swim start work?
- It is a rolling start from Bonita Beach. Athletes enter the water in a continuous stream through a controlled access point, and their time starts at the timing mats. The organiser asks athletes to self-seed by projected swim time. It is encouraged, not mandatory.
- How hot is IRONMAN 70.3 Campeche?
- The organiser recorded highs of 33 C in 2025, 30 C in 2024 and 32 C in 2023. The low in 2024 was 24 C, so the day starts warm and stays that way.
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.