LyonSaintéLyon Aid Station Planner

LyonSaintéLyon covers the SaintéLyon course twice: 78 km out from Lyon to Saint-Étienne during Saturday daylight, a meal and a rest in the dedicated area, then the full night race back with the 8,000-strong field, starting from the front line. 800 places, 156.74 km, 4,239 m of climbing.

Two races with one clock. The outbound leg is untimed but capped: Saint-Étienne closes at 22:30, thirteen and a half hours after the 09:00 start. The return leg then runs to the SaintéLyon barriers, and the finish at Lyon closes at 16:00 on Sunday - 31 hours in total. Only the return leg is ranked.

Plan the rest stop as a checkpoint, not a break. The Saint-Étienne stop is where the race is won and lost: too short and you start the night cold and underfed, too long and the 00:40 departure barrier decides for you. Most finishers spend between 45 minutes and two hours there.

Drop bags, and only here. The organizer carries two lightening bags per runner, one to Sainte-Catherine on the way out and one to Saint-Étienne. That is the only outside kit you get: crew assistance at aid stations is banned across the whole event.

The second crossing is the hard one. The Monts du Lyonnais crest at 885 m is climbed in daylight on the way out and in the dark, in November, on 78 km legs on the way back. Runners who treat the outbound leg as a race rather than a transfer rarely finish.

Checkpoint distances and elevation come from the organizer's timing platform for the 2025 edition - verify against the official race guide at saintelyon.com once the 2026 course is published.

Most runners build race pacing plans by dividing total distance evenly - which ignores the fact that an uphill kilometre takes far longer than a flat one. This planner uses TrailMath's enhanced km-effort model to distribute your goal time proportionally by effort, not by distance.

The km-effort formula for each segment is: distance_km + gain_m/100 + loss_m/150. This is TrailMath's extension of the standard ITRA gain-only formula, which adds descent cost based on Minetti's finding that steep technical descents carry real metabolic load. A 5km segment with 500m of gain and 200m of loss has an effort of 5 + 5 + 1.3 = 11.3 km-effort - equivalent to running 11.3km flat. Time is allocated proportionally to this effort score.

Why gain and loss have asymmetric costs. Minetti et al. (2002) mapped the metabolic cost of inclined locomotion across gradients from -45% to +45%. The key findings: metabolic cost rises steeply above 15-20% uphill grade, making power hiking more energy-efficient than running on steep climbs. On descents, eccentric muscle loading (quads acting as brakes) creates its own metabolic cost - steep technical descents are far more demanding than the same gradient on a smooth fire road. The gain/100 + loss/150 asymmetry in the formula reflects this - gain is more costly per metre than loss, but loss is not free.

Power hiking threshold is flagged at segments where your computed pace exceeds 12 min/km (19 min/mile). This threshold corresponds to the crossover point where walking biomechanics become more efficient than running on steep uphill terrain. Strategic power hiking on marked segments preserves leg muscle for descents and reduces overall race time compared to running everything.

This km-effort model is the same formula used in TrailMath's training engine for load calculation (following Dan Johnston's asymmetric elevation scoring methodology), ensuring consistency between how your training load is measured and how your race effort is planned.

Minetti AE et al. (2002). Energy cost of walking and running at extreme uphill and downhill slopes. J Appl Physiol. 93(3):1039-46. Minetti AE et al. (1995). Mechanical determinants of gradient walking energetics in man. J Physiol. 481(Pt 1):235-43. ITRA. km-effort formula. International Trail Running Association. itra.run