Chris Worfolk's Blog

Back in the day, Leeds had a marathon. Then, in 2003, just before I became an adult, they stopped having one. And for twenty years there was no city marathon. In 2022, I went travelling. And Leeds announced they were launching a new city marathon. Finally, in 2026, my schedule and the Leeds Marthon schedule lined up. I feel like Baddiel and Skinner should write a song about this.

I’ve had a tough time with marathon running recently, most recently running Dublin Marathon on my birthday. This time, I felt quite anxious for the first four kilometres or so. Maybe it was that feelings of “this is going to be hours of suffering ahead”. After this, though, it mostly went away. I had some light headedness about 16 kilometres in, but otherwise felt good.

I also moved well. My last few marathons have all been around 4:30 mark, so I was expecting to be slower than this with the big hill coming back from Otley. But it just never materialised. I kept ticking kilometres off at just over six minutes. I think I had mentally prepared myself for it to be super hilly, and so once I was up onto the ridge line, and even coming back from Otley, it just never felt that bad. I ran almost the whole way up to Bramhope with only a short walking stint to eat.

At about 34k, the marathon and half marathon routes merge. This meant those of us running a marathon at six minutes a kilometre, and those running a half at what I would guess would be 12ish minutes, were jammed together on the same road. It was hard to find space, and I felt sorry for the half runners who suddenly found themselves swarmed by marathon runners. It was crowded the whole way down Otley Road and into the stadium. Lovely finish line, though.

My time was:

4:02:50

Elina and Venla came to meet me after the race. It was tricky finding each other as both o2 and Vodafone’s networks were down around the stadium.

The support was excellent. I’ve never done London but I’ve done Dublin twice and I would say in Dublin, there are people watching more than there are not people. Leeds wasn’t quite Dublin good but much stronger than any other race I’ve done. I think that says quite a lot given it is not a city marathon: Dublin stays within the city at all times, whereas this is an out-and-back to Otley and still enjoys great support along a lot of the course.

Overall, great race. I would still say it is pretty hilly to make a PB attempt on it, and you risk getting trapped behind half marathon runners. But as a nice day out with great support, it’s a lovely race to do.

After almost a decade away, I’ve returned to Toastmasters. Back in the day, we had much of paper manuals and lots of talk about the upcoming changes known as pathways. It’s all here now. I’m on the “motivational strategies” pathway, which means I’m back doing an ice breaker speech. My topic was “Why Can’t We Agree About Gaza?” and well down well.

The HS2 debate often gets framed around “do we need this?” But a much better comparison is “if we have X amount of money for trains, where should we spend it?”

Leeds, Bristol, Liverpool, Cardiff, Belfast and Cambridge all lack a light rail or tram system. This is economically damaging. I know people who have had to turn down multiple jobs because there is no reliable way to get from work to their children’s school on time. People want to work. Companies want to hire them. But lack of infrastructure is turning working people into benefit claimants. I don’t want to pay for that.

The target user of HS2, well-paid professionals, have other options (slightly slower trains, planes, cars, online meetings), whereas the lack of public transport limits people who typically work in-person jobs and have no other options for travel. I do want to live in a society where we look after the most vulnerable.

I don’t know if HS2 is a “good” use of money in isolation. But I do know it’s a poor choice compared to building more light rail.

Hyperpolitics: Extreme Politicization Without Political Consequences is a book by Anton Jäger. In it, he charts the political landscape, describing eras he calls politics, post-politics, anti-politics, and into the current era, hyperpolitics.

People used to be part of social movements such as political parties, trade unions, sports clubs and churches. Now everything is ephemeral: movements rise and die, such as the Occupy Movement and Black Lives Matter protests on the left, and the Tea Party and Proud Boys on the right. People are highly politically engaged but not part of durable movements. This mirrors the attention span of social media and market trading.

Jäger doesn’t touch on this in the book, but it should be noted that one of the reasons Black Lives Matter doesn’t have clear leaders is to stop them all getting murdered, as happened in the civil rights movement.

Attempts have been made to change things: Corbyn and Momentum in Labour, and Bernie Sanders in the US. But, on the whole, the left has been poorly adapted to this new world. The right has been damaged, too, but has still been able to push policies that are more market friendly. Momentum did not rebuild the base into a coherent political movement and Sanders isn’t even a Democrat.

Jäger argues that the deinstitutionalisation of politics was done deliberately by neoliberalism, that wanted to hollow out social institutions so the market could be protected from democracy. Political parties became an oligarchy of power-sharing by parties basically running along the central line.

What is the answer? Political parties and trade unions may be the answer. But without factories and with suburbs, these may have been a product of their time. We do not have the same communities or shared workspaces we previously had. As Mark Fisher notes, factory strikes worked in a way that university lecturer strikes do not. It might be we need a new paradigm, such as social reproductive contact points (schools, daycares, etc). But work is where conflicting needs clash, so should not be written off.

Even political parties are ephemeral these days. We have seen UKIP come and go, then the Brexit Party come and go, and at time of writing we have Reform. Elsewhere in Europe, Pirate Parties have won elections before fading away. Any solution based on this not only has to build a political party with local engagement, but also has to rebuild class consciousness.

Track sessions are back in full flow at Hyde Park Harriers, and I was back coaching last week. I also had the pleasure of leading group one on Monday, including loads of people running with the club for the first time.

Two months ago, our kitchen floor collapsed. There has been a lot of back-and-forth about it, but last week, contractors finally came in to sort it out. When they took the floor up to find out what was going on, they found there was an old rotting floor underneath it, and someone had just built a new floor over the top of it.

Stokesley Leisure Centre is a pool-based sprint triathlon based at Stokesley Leisure Centre in Yorkshire, run by Cleveland Triathlon Club. The pool was wide enough and there were only 3-4 of us in each lane with participants starting every three minutes. The bike course is absolutely beautiful: it just enters the North York Moors National Park so you get panoramic views without any hills being involved. The run is a road-based out-and-back. The only thing I was surprised at was they didn’t check bikes in and out of transition, but maybe that’s the joy of living in a town of 6,000 people. Would do this race again.

Swillington Wilds is a new open water swim and sauna venue in South East Leeds.

You need a membership to swim there. The lake is around 200 metres long and maybe 30 metres wide, so you’re never too far from the bank. They have a changing area and toilets on site. It is muddy underfoot so you don’t have to worry about stepping on stones, though not everyone might like the squelch.

It doesn’t have the same safety culture as the Blue Lagoon. They have someone watching with a throwable flotation device, but they don’t have any paddle boards out on the water or rescue craft. But if you’re a wild swimmer, you’re probably used to jumping in a lake by yourself, and the setup is similar to the open water sessions at Leeds Dock.

Ever since I watched Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life, I knew I had to do Wild. And by do, I mean read the book Wild: A Journey from Lost to Found by Cheryl Strayed.

It is a memoir in which Strayed recounts her journey hiking 1,800 kilometres of the Pacific Crest Trail. It opens with a heartbreaking recounting of her mother’s death due to lung cancer that itself was a deeply uncomfortable read, both emotionally and from the physical descriptions. But I’m glad I stuck with it as it opens up into a warming tale as Strayed rediscovers herself.

First triathlon of 2026 is in the bag. Tadcaster is a lovely chill race and always a pleasure to take part in. It is part of the HPH club championships, and with only four of us competing, myself and three women, I only had to finish to take the championship lead after one races.

Setup was fine, including a pre-race brownie from the coffee van. I went for a complicated three-shoe setup so that I had one pair from pool to T1, then bike and run shoes. It’s a lot of shoes to bring, but a 600m run from the pool to T1, along multiple roads, so the extra pair of shoes was well worth it.

I felt good in the swim. There were only three of us in our lane and I was the first out, although that probably says more about how accurate my 400m prediction time was. I clocked my swim at just over nine minutes, which isn’t my fastest ever, but consistent with previous efforts but something I thought I was taking quite steady.

It was a beautiful day for cycling. Clear, cool, and no wind. I haven’t done any work in the aero position all year but I got down on the bars for several sections of the course and felt pretty quick. The only slight panic was when the guy in front of me missed the turn back into transition and I had a split-second question about whether it was me that was wrong. But no.

Out onto the run. This felt quite weird because someone started catching me. This isn’t how these things work. People overtake me in the swim and the bike and then I catch people on the run. But with zero overtakes so far, someone was breathing down my neck until the water station. They backed off and then caught me on the trail section at the bridge. Not for too long, though, and I managed to take the place back. Up the steps and across the finish line for a well-earned pork pie.

My overall time was:

1:14:35

My splits are below. It should be noted that in 2021 the river flooded and the run course was changed to a shorter out-and-back on the road, hence why we all have amazing run splits for that year.

New fastest T2 time, and not bad for my first race in the 40-44 age group. Thank you to all of the volunteers and marshals, and to Elina and Venla for keeping me company.