Chris Worfolk's Blog

Since I took up triathlon, I have swum in a range of lakes. I’ve tried to list them below with my favourite ones at the top and getting “less favourite” down towards the bottom. I haven’t included sea swims (but in summary Redcar and Sunderland were cold, Weymouth and St Ives were nice) but I have included rivers. Also, I haven’t included lake swims in Finland which are lovely but I’ve never done a “proper” swim there.

Roundhay Park

It’s lovely. Deep. Not too hot or too cold. The water is relatively clear. It is free of plant life. Just watch out for the swans.

Windermere

The scenery is the most beautiful of any lake I’ve swum in. Great if you’re doing heads-up breaststroke. If you’re not, well, you’re just looking at the water. And that water gets distributed by other lake users, i.e. boats, otherwise, it would probably have the top spot.

Llyn Padarn

Another lake with beautiful scenery. Freezing cold though, even in a heatwave. And the slippery slate makes getting in and out difficult.

Blue Lagoon

You have to love the Blue Lagoon just for Bev & Morg alone. It is a bit murky, though, and sometimes difficult to see when you’re about to hit a shallow bit.

Leeds Dock

Despite what you might think, it is a lovely place to swim. The water feels fresh. It is cold, though.

Allerthorpe

So shallow you can walk half of the swim course. It is also too small when once you put several hundred triathletes in there. Warms up well, though, and lakes plant life.

Ripon race course

Clear water. So weedy, though. Unbelievably weedy. Some of the swim is literally grabbing handfuls of weeds and pulling yourself along.

Bowers Lake

Also known as Caroline’ Lake at RSPB St Aiden’s, it has a lot of reeds but once you get out into the centre it is not too bad.

River Ure

I did my first full-distance triathlon here which was traumatic but not because of the water quality. That said, there was a hidden concrete block or wooden post or something that I kicked and it really hurt my foot.

Thoresby Hall

Outlaw X said they had cut a path through the weeds. If they had, it was impossible to tell.

Holme Pierrepont rowing course

Weedy, but also just a rowing lake and therefore incredibly boring.

Castle Howard

Shallow, even after you have sunk through the half a metre of mud underfoot. This also makes the water super-muddy. And there is a lot of plant life floating around on the surface.

Manvers Lake

Shallow, weedy, muddy. It has everything you don’t want in a lake.

River Wharfe

After completing Wetherby Triathlon I was throwing my guts up and by all accounts, I wasn’t the only one. Which is a shame because it wasn’t too cold.

Man’s Search for Meaning is a book by Viktor Frankl. The majority of the book talks about his experience as a Nazi prisoner of war and his experience in the concentration camps.

The second part of the book discusses logotherapy, which is Frankl’s own form of therapy. It is similar to existential therapy and looks to find meaning in life. Life is suffering but if you can find meaning in the suffering, it becomes bearable.

One of the techniques, paradoxical intention encourages clients to do the opposite of what they fear. For example, if you are worried about blushing in public, go out into public and try to blush as much as possible. Similar experiments are often described in modern CBT textbooks.

The Chevin Chase is an 11k trail race that takes place on Boxing Day each year. it is notoriously hilly but not as hilly as I expected: there were clearly some flat bits in it!

The race is now split across two waves and there were around 19 Harriers in each. It rained as we waited for the start but lightened up slightly once the gun went off and we began our climb up the first long hill. With hundreds of people around it was a timid start as there was nowhere to go.

After the first three or four kilometres, it thinned out. I got to the 2k point and thought “I’m glad I weren’t for leggings and long sleeves because I’m still cold”. It wasn’t until the long climb at the 9k point that I started to get too hot.

The course was in good condition, mostly. My feet were dry until the water dip at 9k, which was then followed by some deep slippy mud. But the trails through Chevin Forest Park were very runnable. I made the decision to run through the water dip.

There was plenty of n course support including JP and Anne who took this lovely photo:

The final part is downhill with one little kick up. Luckily I had heard Lou’s warning about the kick and was prepared for it! Nobody had told James, so I managed to catch him up and we crossed the line together.

It was a beautiful race and I didn’t mind the hills. The weather was miserable. But whereas do you get the chance to catch up with so many Harriers in one spot over Christmas? Would do again.

Had France in the family sweepstake. So close.

The mixed reactions to Gareth Southgate’s management are silly. England made it to the semi-finals in 2018, the final of Euro 2020 and only just fell to France in this World Cup. It’s the most consistent England team we’ve had in my lifetime.

Yesterday, Venla set a new PB at Marlay junior parkrun: 15:15. The big shift, though, was that she ran the whole thing for the first time (with me, at least).

I don’t encourage pacing because that is a boring adult thing to do. Sprinting a bit and then walking a bit is usually much more fun. But Venla spontaneously decided halfway around the course that she wanted to try and run all the way to the end. And she managed it!

Clontarf is an area of Dublin just north of the city centre. They promise Dublin’s flattest half marathon, which after Tollymore a few weeks ago had a strong appeal.

The course goes out along the seafront before taking the wooden bridge over to Bull Island. It then goes over to the far side of the island facing onto the Irish sea and along the beach for two kilometres before heading back across the island, onto the mainland and along the coastal path towards Howth. You then turn around and re-trace your steps.

Over 3,000 people took part meaning the course was busy. Once we were back on the main land there were lots of runners coming the other way and overtaking became difficult. I was aiming for the 1:50 wave, but somehow found myself in the 1:45 wave and yet still spent the whole race overtaking people.

On the way out, the beach was lovely. There was plenty of firm sand to run on. On the way back, things were more challenging. The tide had come in and covered a lot of the sand. The wind became a strong cross-head wind and a lot of people found it so hard going that they dropped to a walk. I managed to battle on but at over two kilometres it was a hard 15 minutes!

Thankfully, we did eventually reach the bridge and back onto the mainland. The wind and tide was now throwing waves over the seafront wall so my careful attempts to keep my feet (and my hair) dry were at an end. At least we got a brief tail wind coming back across the bridge.

My official time was:

1:46:57

Officially, I didn’t care about time and just wanted to take it easy and have fun. But a part of me also wanted to make sure I was under 1:50 so that I could tell myself that if I was actually trying, I could go much faster. In the end, I was comfortably under and that was good enough for 629 out of 2,307.

Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) is the original mindfulness programme developed by Jon Kabat-Zinn. While there are many forms of mindfulness today, back in the late 70s, mindfulness was just being born and this was the eight-week intensive programme that took a previously spiritual practice and turned it into a medical one.

This new course takes you step-by-step through the programme with additional modules for teachers and mental health professionals.

You can preview the course here or watch the trailer below.

Tollymore is a forest park located at the foot of the Mourne Mountains in Newcastle. So that’s not the Newcastle in England, nor the one that is in County Dublin, or the five others that are in the Republic of Ireland. It’s the one in County Down, Northern Ireland. There are a lot of them.

It is a pretty hilly affair. The race starts from the car park which is not too far from the river at the bottom of the valley, and then goes up the hill and down again four times. It’s not mountainous but the over 1,000 metres of evaluation gain mean there are long, steep climbs that switch back and forth. The route comes out of the vegetation several times onto the barren hilltops.

The race is available in half marathon (one loop), marathon (two loops) and ultra (three loops) formats. The first few kilometres were about people sorting out their positions as we ran in a large group before the inevitable thinning out that allows you to see the ground in front of you.

It rained most of the morning, right up until the start. I started in a buff and rain jacket but was soon too warm and packed everything away into my running pack. Despite the clouds and gloom it was comfortably warm after this. On the second lap my stomach was starting to moan so I switched out some of my nutrition for the cake on offer at the feed station.

As I reached the main road that brings you back into the finish of the lap, Elina and Venla came walking along it from Newcastle. A lovely boost to cheer me home. My official time was:

4:21:15

That was good enough for 34 out of 73. I had no time ambition going in, but was pushing for sub-4:30 towards the end. Nobody managed to run under three hours. Despite the hills, or more likely because of them, it was an incredibly beautiful event and I will probably return to the Mournes for future races.

With my parents visiting, we were determined to get out and do a parkrun on Saturday. And that took some determination because it was raining heavily. More heavily then when my first parkrun in Ireland over at Fairview. And that was in the warmth of early September.

The run starts at the top of the hill by Cabinteely house and then goes down the hill and back up again for one short loop and then two longer loops. I set off quite hard as I wanted to stay warm and was soon wondering if I had overcooked it given I still have a cold. By the third lap I was ready to walk up the hill but another runner slowed down to chant encouraging words at me and then I was socially obligated to keep pushing. I managed to hold it together to the line, squeezing in at 22:59.

Exploring another new parkrun in Dublin. Brickfields is not too far from Rathmines and a bit smaller than Bushy: the course consists of four laps of the top part of the park. The surface is good although there are lots of leaves, and it is flat.