London Duathlon, 4 Sep 2022

With my A race of the year upcoming (European Sprint Duathlon Champs in Bilbao) and brick sessions becoming more frequent in my training plan, I decided to take on the London duathlon as a training race. Despite living in London for 6 years, I have never participated in the closed road Richmond Park event. It is renowned for very much being a mass participation event however the opportunity to race on closed roads and get some proper transition practice in was not to be missed.

The race format for the “half duathlon” – 5k run , 22k bike, 5km run. Although a non drafting event, I took my road bike to practice as per the draft legal race in Bilbao.

I was really excited for this event, no pressure but a chance to see how the legs were doing and enjoy that race atmosphere. The event was huge! There were 1000s of people doing a variety of different distances and it was so nice to see so many people doing this sport I absolutely adore.

I lined up ready to go and after a quick briefing we were off. I set off well and settled in to a rhythm pretty quickly, I was very much on my own with a few fast men off in the distance. After 5 mins or so, the course turned on to a very long false flat and my running legs suddenly decided to go on strike and not work quite as well as I wanted. I could feel my HR and breathing climbing so I relaxed the pace and gently strided my way around the rest of the course- able to pick it up again a little bit coming in to transition. First run 19min 56secs.

I ran through transition well and was quick to get my bike and run out. Most people in the longer event were heading out on the bikes too but were very much walking with them and stopping at the mount line… I zoomed past them all and managed a good flying mount. However disaster struck - as I was putting my feet in my shoes, one of the straps came completely out and despite trying my best to correct it on the move, the bike course was very busy so I stopped to sort it out- not ideal.

I got back on the bike and my cycling legs came to me pretty quickly. Before I knew it I was zooming around the course overtaking most people already out there from previous races. Due to it being a mass participation event, there was some interesting cycling positioning going on and I had to shout at people to move over to let me through on several occasions. At the various roundabouts I had to slow more than usual due to the volume of people - slightly frustrating but I gave it beans where I could. Bike- 41:30

I came back into transition well, hopped off my bike, ran in and out again pretty rapidly. Usually in a sprint when I head out on the final run, my legs are jelly for a while but come back- this time they just felt generally heavy and did not want to turn over at all. Coupled with the long false flat and no competition around, I definitely did not persevere as much as I could have done, picking the pace back up again at the final flat part of the course heading to the finish. Second run 20:56 .

I crossed the line feeling a bit mixed, it was a good training race but could have been much better! I was under the impression I was first lady, however when looking up the results later, it turned out there was a later wave with a speedy lady who was 90secs or so quicker on that final run and pipped me to the win!

Final result- 1hr 24 , 2nd female out of 177, 15th person out of 416 (including men), 1st in AG out of 28.

Megan Powell