SaintéLyon, live.

Start at 23:30, last cut-off at 4 pm

A race that begins when most race days are over: the gun goes at half past eleven at night in Saint-Étienne, and the finish is in Lyon after daybreak.

The 72nd SaintéLyon runs on 28–29 November 2026. The organiser gives the main race as “around 80 km” with at least 2,000 metres of climbing, and the line changes a little every year. Close to 8,000 runners leave Saint-Étienne in six or seven waves from 23:30 and follow the ridges of the Monts du Lyonnais east to Lyon. Bibs are collected at the Halle Tony Garnier on the Friday and Saturday.

There are five aid stations: Saint-Christo-en-Jarez (km 17), Sainte-Catherine (km 32), Le Camp-Saint-Genou (km 46, drinks only), Soucieu-en-Jarrest (km 60) and Chaponost (km 67). The cut-offs are clock times, not elapsed times: 04:00 at km 17, 07:00 at km 32, and 16:00 at Lyon, km 82. The same night, shorter races start further along the line — SaintExpress from Sainte-Catherine, SaintéVia from Mornant, SaintéSprint from Soucieu-en-Jarrest and SaintéTic from Chaponost — while Lyon SaintéLyon runs the whole way to Saint-Étienne first.

For the people at home this is a race you sleep through. With a Livebib link from their runner, family wake up to see where on the line she is, how far she has come and an estimated finish time that has been recalculated all night. Phones often lose signal on the ridges and in the woods; when that happens the position is carried forward along the course and marked as estimated rather than freezing. No app, no account, and the runner decides who gets the link.