Chris Worfolk's Blog

We’ve been searching for a bike for Venla for a while as she wanted to move to a peddle cycle. This was a tough challenge because a lot of them are twice as heavy as my bike. I get that I have a fancy bike that is super light. But sitll, even my first cheap cross bike was around 11kg. Many of the children’s bikes, which are half the size, are significantly heavier than that.

Thankfully, we eventually managed to find a Frog 52. It comes with a spotty design. How come grown-ups never get that?

If you’re looking for a flat parkrun, Selby is a good shout. It takes place on an airfield and you run an out-and-back hockey still shape that is entirely flat. There isn’t much else to look at but I didn’t find it boring and there was a good crowd. Thank you to all of the volunteers for making it happen.

Motivational Interviewing can be described as the science of helping people change. Inspiring change in others is not about adding information (“here is what you should do”) but rather understanding that people have good reasons for doing what they do and helping them determine if there is a better course of action.

Let’s take an example of someone who is trying to spend less so they can buy a house. Anyone can go up to them and say “why not spend less money?” That’s obvious. In reality, they have good reason for spending money: perhaps they want to travel while they are young and able bodied. Perhaps buying beer at the pub is an important part of their social life. Perhaps they pend money on their niece because they want them to have a better childhood than they had. Perhaps the cost of living crisis offers a choice between saving or eating. These are all very valid reasons.

Instead of lecturing, Motivational Interviewing helps people work through these decisions, working out what is truly important to them and building motivation to follow a path that is aligned with their values.

In my new course, you will learn what Motivational Interviewing is and how its techniques are used to help people resolve ambivalence and inspire positive change. Preview the course on Holbeck College or watch the trailer below.

We had the pleasure of Michelle’s company last week which also involved the opportunity to do some tourist stuff like going to the sealife centre, eating at Johnnie Fox’s and another trip around the Book of Kells. Venla actually ate her food at Johnnie Fox’s so miracles do come true. Plenty of beach trips as well, of course! Alas, at no point did we take a proper group photo.

Working at Relational Depth in Counselling and Psychotherapy is a book by Dave Mearns and Mick Cooper that expands on Rogerian concepts of relational meeting and describes the idea of relational depth: a profound meeting on contact in the therapeutic relationship.

The author argue that relationship depth goes beyond the surface level of professional caring. They suggest that professional boundaries, while important, get in the way of really being with your clients in the encounter. Instead, they suggest we should allow ourselves to truly care for our clients and bringer a greater level of honesty, openness and immediacy into the room.

I cycled down to Bray to see the air show. Much better on a bike as most of the roads were closed but the guards were waving bikes through. Saturday was sunny but Sunday was nice enough. Some rain on the way back but still warm. Here are some videos.

Catalina flying boat

The Flying Dentist

Aer Lingus A320neo

It’s not just my car that recently left us after many years of faithful service. Two pairs of my trainers have ripped between the sole and the upper.

My Brooks Launch are my every day shoe. I don’t know how far I have walked in them but somewhere in the range of 2,000 kilometres seems plausible. My Hoka Bondi X are my easy miles running shoe. They managed a respectable 1,290 kilometres of running before retirement.

I’m now so old that Vine came and went before I ever really knew what it was. But I have jumped into the world of #shorts on YouTube. Here is my first attempt, before I realised that the YouTube app has the ability to overlay a ghost image to help you line clips up.

Even with a leisurely start time, my alarm went off at 06:00. I debated whether to get up. After a hard time at Lough Cutra and a hard time at Metalman, I wasn’t sure if I really wanted to take on Kilkenny. But I also need to get back into the water.

In the end, the swim was cancelled due to water quality anyway. Replaced by a 2.4k run along the same run course we could take on twice after the bike. The first run was easy enough. A lot of people sprinted off and soon realised that had over-paced themselves. Even after T1 the running wasn’t over as the mount line was up a steep grassy hill.

The bike was great. Lots of clear junctions or guards stopping traffic for us. The first half of the course was into a headwind and few other people were using aerobars so even riding at less than 200 Watts I was passing long lines of athletes who were struggling into the wind. Maybe only three stronger cyclists came past me, although I was in the third of three waves.

The second run was also comfortable enough. It is not a flat course but I was just about able to pace myself up the hill. We finished on the top lawn in front of Kilkenny Castle.

My overall time was:

1:20:27

I just scraped into the top half coming 100th out of 212 athletes. Of course, I’m in the M30-39 category, so that only translates to 21 of 34. My splits were:

Pace wise, I was 165th in run 1 and 77th in run 2, so some nice negative splits going on there.

What could be better than doing a middle distance triathlon an then resting? Following it up with a marathon the next day! It is very much unclear why I thought this would be a good idea at the time.

I missed a spot on my collar while applying suncream on Saturday, and even the area I did cover were not looking too fresh. otherwise, I felt an acceptable level of stiff. You might ask how I stayed hydrated the evening before given I had just done a triathlon. This is how:

There were around 26 of us from the running club down at the event so we met before the race for a few team photos.

The first 10k of the race is hilly. I was aiming for a “let’s just get around but it would be nice to go somewhere between 4:00 and 4:30” mood. Given how tired I was from the day before, it soon became clear that 4:30 was going to be difficult but possibly achievable, even with talking the initial hills.

After this, the course moves onto the greenway and levels out. The morning clouds were gradually giving way, though, and the sun kept coming out and slowly baking us all. The organisers had put additional water stations on so I was able to douse myself every 4k or so.

I was tired the whole way around. It felt good getting to the half way point but I began to feel quite anxious after this. I’m not sure if it was the no-mans-land of being past half way and yet no way near finishing, or just being so far away with it being and out-and-back, or just the rest of life getting on top of me. Really disappointing, though, as running is my thing. I kept moving with some running and some walking.

Having raced the day before, it was impossible to come into the race with perfect hydration, so I ran with my backpack and flasks. This mean I had 250 ml of Red Bull sitting in one of them that I saved for the 30k point. The combination of closing in on home and caffeine kick gave me the boost to get through the final hour.

Best of all, there was a crowd from the club cheering us home. My official time was:

4:23:19

We finished the day with a celebration at the pub, followed by a meal and craic. It was lovely to get to know everyone better and thank you for making me feel welcome.