The upcom­ing XTERRA sea­son 2020

We all look for­ward to the upcom­ing sea­son. Also in 2020 the XTERRA Euro­pean Tour will offer a mix of already estab­lished events as well as brand-new ones – span­ning the whole con­ti­nent.

As usu­al the sea­son kick­es off in April with races in south-east­ern Europe. XTERRA Mal­ta starts the 2020 rac­ing on April 4th, fol­lowed by the new race in Croa­t­ia two weeks lat­er and anoth­er Medit­eran­ian race in Greece anoth­er week lat­er.

In May the XTERRA fam­i­ly moves to the south-west of Europe to Por­tu­gal (10th May). Two weeks lat­er the first of two Ital­ian races is on the menu at Lake Gar­da.

In June the Tour has stops at XTERRA Bel­gium (Namur on the 13th) and Switzer­land (Val­lée de Joux on the 27th).

July brings one of the clas­sic cross-triathlon races, XTERRA France (Xon­rupt on the 5th) fol­lowed by XTERRA Czech (Prachat­ice on the 12th) and XTERRA Italy (Lake Scan­no on the 19th). The races in Xon­rupt and Scan­no are two of the four gold races in the year’s XTERRA Euro­pean Tour (the oth­er two being Croa­t­ia and Ger­many).

One month lat­er XTERRA Lux­em­bourg is on the list – one of the new races of 2019. Just six days lat­er this year’s XTERRA Euro­pean Cham­pi­onship takes stage at XTERRA Ger­many in Zit­tau, one of the most pres­ti­gious races on the cal­en­dar. As in 2019 the Tour ends on the island of Ame­land at XTERRA Nether­lands. This means that there is again a broad spec­trum of 13 races across all of Europe.

As usu­al in the XTERRA world the dis­tances are tai­lored around the so-called „Olympic Dis­tance“ with the moun­tain bike seg­ments being usu­al­ly a bit short­er due to the hard­er cours­es and slow­er speeds. In the end races make up between about 2,5 hours (for the elite) and 4,5 hours (for slow­er ama­teurs) with race dis­tances being 1,5k swim fol­lowed by about 30 to 40k bike and a 10k run.

At the gold races in Croa­t­ia (Mali Los­inj), France (Xon­rupt), Italy (Scan­no) and Ger­many (Zit­tau) there is twice the price mon­ey for the elites as well as twice the qual­i­fi­ca­tion slots for the ama­teurs on offer.

If you nev­er tried an XTERRA race hop on the moun­tain bike, put on those trail­run­nign shoes and head out to train in the wild out­doors. See you at the races!

A guest con­tri­bu­tion by Jörg Schnei­der (www.js-triathlon-coaching.de) (expe­ri­enced triath­lete and coach)