Chris Worfolk's Blog

The 2018 Winter Olympics featured 2,921 of the world’s best Olympians. And an American skier sporting a Hungarian flag named Elizabeth Marian Swaney.

She competed in the half-pipe for Hungary. There wasn’t much in the way of tricks. She did grab her skies at one point. That was about it. You can watch her run on the BBC website.

The reason she was competing for Hungary is that they have no selection criteria. Unlike the first two nations, she tried to compete for. But, having enough of a varied lineage, is eligible to compete for three.

There is much debate as to whether she was the best, or worst, Olympian.

The answer is “the worst”, of course, but I still like her. Like many others have commented, she gives the rest of us hope. I’ve been running for 25 years. My vo2 max is 45. That’s what an average man of my age would have as standard. Some athletes have double that. I’m never going to be Mo Farah because I don’t have the innate ability.

But I could be Elizabeth Marian Swaney, because she doesn’t have any innate ability, either.

If you ask yourself “what is the most ridiculous way you could blow money in order to try and save an insignificant amount of time in your time trial?” you would probably come up with this.

It’s an aero bell. And one review said that it could take 45 seconds off your time trial. So, all I need to do is find 182 other ways to do this and I should be able to beat Chris Froome.

I didn’t really want this on my bike. But, it has been so cold recently, that the bell that came with my bike snapped off. It has a plastic ringer and it just couldn’t handle the cold. So, I tried to find a replacement. And there are lots. If you want a Disney princess bell on your bike.

I didn’t, so I tried to order a small one from Amazon. That didn’t fit. In my desperation to find a search term that would find an adult bell, rather than a child’s, I tried aero bell, thinking it was almost too ridiculous to consider, but having run out of other options. Which is when this turned up.

How much faster does it make me? I’m not sure yet. But hopefully, it will double my average speed.

Facebook ads cost money. Therefore, if you’re running them, you want to make sure they are converting. Rule one of this process is to make sure the links worth. It sounds obvious, but these people seem to have missed it.

Here is an advert by RaceCheck that produces a 404:

A funny one-off, you might think. But you would be incorrect. I see this kind of thing all the time. Here is an advert by Live To Tri that does the same thing:

By the way, if you ever wanted proof that people will interact with a Facebook post without actually clicking on it, notice that 12 people have liked an ad that does not work.

Here is another advert fail. Facebook allows us to target age. So, they know that I was not born before 1985. Why would they target someone born after 1985 with this ad?

Maybe it is some kind of clever tactic that makes people click out of anger? I’m not sure. But I didn’t click.

If you’re spending money on Facebook advertising, it is worth checking whether the links work. Otherwise, you are literally throwing money away.

Last Sunday, Bramley Baths triathlon team ran an indoor triathlon: swim, bike and run using the pool, gym bikes and treadmills. It was a lot of fun, despite what the facial expression in the photograph might suggest.

The course

The race started with a 250-yard swim in the pool. Yep, yards. Bramley Baths was constructed in 1904 and metric wasn’t a big thing back then. This knocked nearly 10% of the distance off from when I calculated my expected swim time in The Edge’s pool.

After that, it was on to the fitness studio where they had static bikes set up. Finally, on to the gym to use the treadmills.

Transitions were untimed for safety reasons: they didn’t want people rushing around the building and running into each other, other gym users and the many sharp corners that feature in Edwardian architecture. This meant it was a fairly stress-free event, especially as there was a short queue for the bikes, giving us time to get our breath back.

The results

My combined time was 30:23, which placed me 7th out of 31 participants. This broke down to 5:19 in the swim, 20:37 on the bike and 4:27 on the run.

30:23

I’m pleased with that. It would have been nice to get my bike under 20 minutes (and thus my time under 30 minutes), as I have ridden faster on the gym bikes at The Edge. However, I’m not sure how comparable they are to each other (or real riding) as I don’t know how accurate the speed and distance calculations are.

My swim was slightly ahead of my predicted time (5:36), but I wasn’t pushing that hard when I set my estimated time, and I knew I had an untimed transition coming up, so I went a little harder than I would have done in a normal triathlon.

Since I hurt my foot in November, it has taken a long time to get running again. So, I decided to invest in some injury prevention. Top of that list was a running gait analysis.

I could go to a running shop where they would put me on a treadmill and analyse what was going on. However, there is a severe risk that what would happen is that it would magically turn out I needed a new, £100+ pair of trainers. In fact, that’s exactly what did happen to me.

So, I was looking for somewhere that might be able to give me some better advice. I found David at West Leeds Practice. They are a physiotherapy clinic based in the city centre and one of the services they offer is a running gait analysis.

It’s certainly thorough. We started off with some strength exercises, testing the differences between my left and my right side. My left was weaker, and this was no surprise to me, but having measured it, David has then been able to give me a strengthening routine tailored to improving it.

Then I hopped on the treadmill and we did a video analysis. I ran for a little bit and then we analysed what was going on with my arms and legs from a range of different angles. There was some stuff here, too, such as my crossing my legs over the centre was I run. I think this was exhibited by the rather small size of the treadmill, but it’s something I’ve been mindful of ever since.

Finally, he gave me a set of foot pods to place on my trainers and monitor my running for a week. I went back a week later to get the analysis (all of which was included in my session) and we reviewed my cadence, ground contact time and oscillation. I’m working on improving my cadence at the moment. It’s too early to say whether it is working or not, though the few test runs I have done made things go from red to green on my Garmin run reports.

All in all, I like what they do. David was very evidence-based and the analysis is certainly in detail: we looked at a lot of different things and reviewed all the ways I could improve my technique and reduce the chance of future injury. If you run a lot, it is worth investing in.

The so-called new year is a pretty arbitrary deadline that evolved from a series of long-dead popes. Still, as arbitrary deadlines go, it is a great chance to regroup and take stock of what’s been going on and what we want to achieve in the next solar rotation.

Of course, it’s now the middle of February. So, I’m going to stop thinking and finally publish this.

Be better at business

I declared that 2017 was my year of marketing and I have learnt a lot about building sales funnels, capturing leads and building an audience. But none of it has been hugely successful and certainly not good enough to provide a real income.

Part of the problem is that I’m struggling to engage with step one: build what people want, not what you want them to want. So, I’m going to double down on this.

Finish my master’s degree

By the middle of last month, I felt like giving up. My grades have not met my own personal standard, and while there is a queue of people telling me that a merit (the equivalent of a 2:1) is a great grade to have, it doesn’t feel like it. Especially now Venla is here. There are standards to be set: there is no award for coming second in the Nobel Prize voting. Or, worst still, settling for winning a non-natural science-based prize.

But I don’t like giving up and that certainly wouldn’t set a good example, even if we would be a lot richer. And I’m excited about my dissertation, or, at least, motivated to get on with it.

Triathlon & fitness

Last year felt like a pretty slow year for fitness. Sure, I smashed my 5km, 10km and half marathon times, but it all felt a bit like business as usual. This year, I’m taking things up a gear. A bit of business as usual two: aiming for a sub-2 hour half marathon, but also looking at longer distances and continuing my move over to triathlon.

Earlier this month we trekked down to Huddersfield for a surprise party of my friend, and former boss, Nick. Here are four things we learnt…

Karaoke bands are a thing

You can have a band that turn up and play backing music while you sing along to lyrics from an iPad mounted on a mic stand. What an awesome idea.

A great find by party organiser Lee-Anne. She booked them after being impressed by a gig they did in Manchester. And had the heart to stick with them even after they politely told her that they have never played in Manchester and she must be confusing them with a different band.

Star Wars-themed does not automatically mean fancy dress

In my defence, I was assuming Elina would choose the white robe outfit. It was 100% her that assumed I would want her to go in a golden bikini. Which is not true, because finding a Jabba the Hutt costume is both expensive and difficult.

Venla likes to fight stormtroopers

Especially if they are inflatable and easy to push over.

John Smith’s Stadium is quite nice

Everyone knows that you burn calories just by being in a sports venue, even if you are just there to consume alcohol, buffet food and some kind of delicious chocolate ganache tartlet.

A few weeks ago, we attended my Auntie Doreen’s 90th birthday party. It was an afternoon tea at a working men’s club. It’s not a venue that would have struck me as being good at afternoon tea.

Yet, ironically, they can serve a decent afternoon tea. What they can’t do, is serve decent beer or properly mixed coke. But who needs such things when you have high-quality cake.

Venla had a giraffe of a time. That’s like a whale of a time, except she was on a giraffe.

“In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual.” Galileo Galilei.

This is what a Super Bowl party looks like when you grow up and lose all of your friends:

Venla, my sole companion for the evening, fell asleep two hours before kick-off.

Which is a shame, because it was a great game. It felt like the narrative had gone a bit off the rails when the Patriots didn’t win. I’m not used to that happening in Super Bowls. It also means that Brady had now lost three Super Bowls: one more he’ll match the record (I’m not bragging, but I haven’t lost any).

The Eagles finish the season on a high, and while it’s not quite the five straight wins that the 49ers finished the season with, the Eagles can be proud of what they have achieved.

And now Elina can enjoy a blissful six months of no NFL.