European Sprint Duathlon Championships 2020, 7 Mar 2020

This was my second time representing GB in the European Championships and I had moved up into the age group 20-24. In last year’s European championships, I won a bronze medal, but I knew in this championship I wouldn’t get a medal because I was racing with some amazing athletes in my age group. But I was looking forward to racing and the experience.

Leading up to the race I was very nervous as it felt like a bigger event than last year. Before the race started, I did my warmup and was feeling fit. A couple of minutes before the race started the female athletes lined up across the start line. The atmosphere was very tense and with the music playing it made me nervous. Then the gun went off and the race started, as soon as I started to run my hip pulled and I was in pain and was finding it hard to run but I wanted to finish the race, so I carried on. Even though my hip was hurting I still did my first run (5km) in 22 minutes which I was happy with. My T1 was very fast which I was also happy about. Going out onto the cycle I was on my own, I didn’t know how this would go as my hip was still hurting me. For the first part of the cycle I was on my own then I joined a group of athletes. We were working well together until we got to a U-turn and coming out of the turn I couldn’t get the power and got dropped so this meant that I was working on my own again for the last part of the cycle.

My T2 was fast again and I was happy with that. Going out onto my second run I was struggling to run and lift my leg up because my hip was hurting but I was determined to finish the last run (2.5km). My run was very slow compared to how it should have been but when I was getting to near the finish line I went as fast as I could. Going to the finish line I managed to sprint, overtaking someone before the line which I was happy about. My overall time was much slower than I expected it to be and wanted it to be, but I was glad to be finished, 10th in my age group in the end.

The race has made me motivated for the rest of the race season and made me want to qualify for GB in triathlon as well. 

Amy Woodroofe