European Sprint Duathlon Championships 2020, 7 Mar 2020
I came into my third European Championships feeling fit, fast and strong! With a bronze and silver medal from the previous years, I was hungry for the win. Despite still being 24, I have moved up to the 25-29 age category this year so I had some new faces to race against. I had 6 other Brits, 2 Spanish and 1 Portuguese lady to race against - the biggest and most diverse field I have had yet at one of these races.
Run 1 (slightly short of 5km) was fantastic. I have a history of going off too fast and paying for it in the remainder of the race. However, I kept to my plan and ensured I was amongst the top handful of ladies to get into a good pack on the bike. If it were a straight 5k race, I definitely had more to give but I’m glad I was reserved and could get on to the bike in a good relaxed manner (actually managed my flying mount too!). Run 1- 18:00.
Going on to the bike, a pack of 8 formed and we immediately started to co-ordinate ourselves into a chain gang. I looked around and noticed that no one in the pack was in my AG and the couple who were slightly ahead of us were not either, fantastic! I again felt really strong on the bike and tried to push the pace when I was at the front. A couple of Spanish girls were hanging on to the back and putting no work in so the other 6 of us Brits tried our hardest to drop them. Unfortunately the very flat and non-technical course made this quite hard and we had to settle for the fact we would remain in this group until T2 or risk expending too much energy to get away. We caught the two ladies who were at the front of the race with a couple of miles to go and 10 of us all came in to T2 together. Bike (20km)- 34:09
The duathlon had come down to a 2.5km running race to decide overall finish positions. I knew I would win my age group as long as nothing disastrous happened but I was really gunning for a good overall position. The final 2.5km was psychologically tough - there was a lot of slowing and speeding up and I had to really stay strong. In the final 200m sprint, a technical official on a bike pulled out right in front of me onto the narrow course which caused me to decelerate very quickly. “Why on earth did you do that!?” I was shouting in my head. In this chaos, someone went into the back of me and stepped on the back of my foot which caused my foot to slip out of my shoe! I managed to continue running with my toes dragging it along but it unfortunately cost me a few places in the overall ranking. Run 2- 10:59.
Final Result- 1st 25-29 AG, 9th/125 overall. 1:04:27. I was disappointed not to have finished higher up overall, however, this was the closest race I have ever done. The top 11 of us were all within 30seconds of each other! I had won my age group by 1min30 and finally got the gold medal I was dreaming of!
Having felt so good on the bike, I am very excited to move back to some draft-illegal racing. Tim has really helped me up my game on the bike and I’m excited to see what difference that can make in my summer triathlons and standard distance Duathlon World Champs in September. I’ve got a bit more work to do on my run off the bike but considering how early on in the season it is I’m very chuffed with the times I’ve been churning out in training and racing and excited try and hit some new PB’s!
Megan Powell
