Friesland, Netherlands · Big journeys · Race routes
Ride the Elfstedenroute on your smart trainer
The eleven Frisian towns of the great skating race, by bike: Sneek, Stavoren, Harlingen, Dokkum and back into Leeuwarden.
In Chrome or Edge on a laptop or desktop, with a smart trainer or on the keys. No subscription, no card. The iPhone app is coming.
- Distance
- 251 km 156 mi
- Climbing
- 65 m 214 ft
- Highest point
- 15 m 51 ft
- Steepest 200 m
- 1.1%
- At 45 minutes a ride
- about 4 weeks
Along the way
- 0.0 km 0.0 mi Leeuwarden
- 26.3 km 16.4 mi Sneek
- 36.3 km 22.5 mi IJlst
- 67.8 km 42.1 mi Sloten
- 98.5 km 61.2 mi Stavoren
- 108.7 km 67.6 mi Hindeloopen
- 117.2 km 72.8 mi Workum
- 130.3 km 81.0 mi Bolsward
- 149.0 km 92.6 mi Harlingen
- 164.6 km 102.3 mi Franeker
- 226.3 km 140.6 mi Dokkum
- 251.4 km 156.2 mi Leeuwarden
About the road
The Elfstedentocht is the famous skating race through the eleven cities of Friesland, held only in the rare winters when the canals freeze hard enough. The Elfstedenroute follows the same towns by bike: out of Leeuwarden to Sneek, IJlst and Sloten, west to Stavoren on the IJsselmeer, up the coast by Hindeloopen, Workum and Bolsward to Harlingen, then Franeker and Dokkum, and back to Leeuwarden.
It is completely flat, but Friesland is windy, and that is the hard part.
Also known as Elfstedentocht by bike, Fietselfstedentocht, Alvestêdetocht, Elfstedenroute fietsen.
How to ride it on your trainer
- Open longvoie in Chrome or Edge on a laptop or desktop. It is free: an email and a code to sign in, no password, no card.
- Connect your trainer: any smart trainer that speaks FTMS (Wahoo, Tacx, Elite…), or a power meter, and a heart-rate strap if you have one. No trainer yet? Ride on the keys.
- Pick Elfstedenroute. longvoie sets your trainer's resistance as the road climbs and eases it as it falls, and you ride it in 3D, on the real street.
- Stop whenever you like. Your next ride starts from the metre you stopped at.
| Your usual ride | Elfstedenroute takes |
|---|---|
| 30 minutes | about 6 weeks |
| 45 minutes | about 4 weeks |
| 60 minutes | about 3 weeks |
| 90 minutes | about 7 rides |
At three or four rides a week, and a steady 25 km/h plus an hour for every 1,000 m up.
Take the road with you
The route is free to download as a GPX file, for your bike computer, Komoot, Strava or another trainer app: elfstedenroute.gpx.
More roads to ride
Route © OpenStreetMap contributors, under the Open Database License. Heights from the Copernicus DEM, through Open-Meteo.