The London Duathlon

Periodically I abscond from my family responsibilities to engage in an activity of selfishness and often moderate masochism. The opportunity to take part in the London Duathlon with a few of my English friends was too good to turn down. Ignore the fact that I have not ridden my bike since leaving Canada five weeks earlier, and I had not run for 10 months up until three weeks ago. Surely I had enough accumulated fitness from years of being generally active? Not so, it would seem.

Before: racking the bikes

After: filling the bellies

We set off at what seemed like a conservative five minute/kilometre pace and for the first five or 6 km it felt quite good. However as the field strung out it became apparent that today was going to be a struggle. I even eased off in the final kilometre of the first 10 K so that I wouldn’t be too winded at the beginning of the bike ride. The Richmond Park course is quite hilly and there are lots of sharp corners so it’s difficult to get into a rhythm. There is a moment on the third lap when everyone asks themself “is this really the third lap or are we on the fourth and final lap?” Definitely we were on the third lap. By now it was pretty warm and sunny but I thought to myself we only have the final 5K run to do. How hard can that be? Everyone who has done duathlon or triathlon knows that coming off the bike to run is hard. For the first little while your legs feel like wood. But normally after a short while things ease up and it’s OK. That’s what I thought to myself as I struggled out of transition and into the first km. However, far from getting easier it just seem to go slower and slower and my heart rate seemed to go faster and faster. It was an immeasurable relief to cross the finish line all be it rather slowly. I had set myself a goal of not walking! I quickly found shade, eat and drank everything we were given at the finish line, and sat still for 15 minutes.

We were going to do this day-out properly and after three hours of exercise that was rather more intensive than it should’ve been, it was off to the pub for a Sunday roast. Sometimes after these events it’s hard to stomach real food and even beer can be off putting. Thankfully not today. The roast was fantastic, the ale was fantastic and a couple of hours spent bantering was the perfect way to wrap up the event. Of course, when you get back to your family the perception is that you’ve had a day off to yourself, which is basically true. And so it was straight back into supervising dinner and marshalling bedtime routine.

Far from a sedentary recovery day on Monday, we chose to brave the hottest days of the English summer to visit the Weald and Downland museum, which is a collection of reconstructed buildings from between the ninth and 18th century in the south of England. It was a lovely day out especially since the schools had gone back already in England, and so it was just us and the retirees. We learned a lot about heavy horses and the kids had a great time doing the hunt for the neat features that you see on the buildings. 

I think I will dedicate a separate post to Legoland, which is where we went the next day.