London Winter 10k, 5 Feb 2023

The London Winter 10k fell at a good time to see how my speed and general fitness was doing in the build up to the European Duathlon Champs in March. Additionally, any chance to run around London on closed roads has to be taken! Unfortunately I caught COVID in mid December which halted my winter training slightly so I wasn’t entirely sure how the legs would manage on the day. Additionally, I had just come off a week of night shifts so I was trying my best to recover from those!

It was a chilly but beautifully sunny and clear morning. This was a huge charity event with over 10,000 people running. Thankfully they had split us into manageable sized waves based on predicted times. My legs felt good on my warm up and I was excited to get going. I found a good paced group at the start and we were cruising around the course nicely.  Although the course was very flat, it was wiggly with lots of 180 turn backs and high ride buildings causing dodgy GPS pacing. I decided I would have to go off feel and see how my timing was doing at the marked 5k point. I got to 5K in 19:45 and felt really comfortable so upped the pace slightly and left my group behind. I attached myself onto the shoulder of another girl and stuck with her until the last 800m- a beautiful downhill straight finish. My legs finally decided they were tired at this point and I dug deep to keep them turning over. When I realised a sub 39 was in reach, I tried to give it everything I could!

I stopped my watch dead on 39mins, but thankfully my chip time was 38:59! What an epic race. My pacing was consistent and I managed to negative split the race which is extremely rare for me!

I finished 20th female (out of 7545 women) and 189th overall (out of 13,706).

Probably my best executed 10k race ever, not what I expected when I woke up that morning!

Megan Powell