Chris Worfolk's Blog

It has been a few years since our last group trip. Venla did come to Anglesey, but only in utero. As such, we were long overdue for a getaway. I fancied doing IRONMAN 70.3 Weymouth, so it seemed like an excellent opportunity to combine the two.

Our accommodation was a The Bakehouse, ideally situated near the pavilion with the beach one hundred metres away on one side and the quay even closer on the other.

The weather was sunny for the first few days, and we hit the beach several times. We walked up to Nothe Fort and explored the museum.

Saturday included Weymouth parkrun, and a BBQ and Sunday was taken up by IRONMAN 70.3 Weymouth. The second half of the week was rather wetter. It rained throughout the race.
As a result, on Sunday, we headed to the Sealife Centre. This seemed like a nice, dry, inside activity. But not in Weymouth. Most of their exhibits were outside, including the penguins, seals and Venla’s personal favourite: the scary duck. We were rather glad to get home and dry.

Most of all, though, we just hung out. It was a great opportunity to spend a week with friends.

Our holiday in Weymouth gave me a chance to do some parkrun tourism. I wondered whether it would be incredibly busy with 2,700 athletes descending in the town for IRONMAN. However, it turns out most of them were too serious to do a parkrun the day before.

The course is a mini loop through the trees of Lodmoor park before and out and back that goes to the far side and then back to the loop. The sun was shining, and once you hid from the coastal wind, it was hot.

Everyone was friendly, and it was an enjoyable run.

Nidderdale is a fun triathlon. Pool-based, surprisingly flat for a Nidderdale and offering the best finishers t-shirt of any race is have done, it is a great way to finish the season.

Last year it was my ninth and final. This year it was a warm-up for my two remaining races. The weather was much better this year. It was the only race I dragged Elina and Venla did last year and it rained the whole day. Not much sun this year either but at least it was dry.

The swim

Due to poor timing on my part, I only arrived at the poolside two minutes before I was due to start and was almost immediately in the water. I took the first half easy as I lazily drafted another swimmer before speeding up for the second half.

The bike

The bike course is rolling, but the rolls are small enough that you can spend most of the time on your aero bars. Only one Pearson overtook me, and he cruised past on his hoods even while I was aero.

On the way back, I ended up caught behind a traffic jam of cars trying to get over a narrow bridge. My descending was much faster thanks to the dry roads, though, and no chain drop in the final corner this year, either.

The run

Nothing much to report here. I did not push too hard as my endless cold was still dragging on.

The result

I finished with a time of:

1:19:42

That is around five and a half minutes faster than last year. Position splits were 112th (swim), 36th (T1), 39th (bike), 87th (T2), 51st (run) out of 170. That was good enough for 53rd place.

My splits were:

My faster swim time is really T1 time: last year it was raining so many of us put our shoes on after leaving the pool but before crossing the timing mat.

It’s not often that we have an eminent doctor of chemistry visiting Leeds. But earlier this month we were graced with James and Meg dropping by for a wedding.

This is one of the few occasions where we would deliberately want to eat British. So, we hit George’s. They put candy floss on everything, and the food was generally acceptable but mediocre.

We also hit Blackhouse for Sunday lunch. My beef roast was so bad I had to send it back. But they did replace it with a much better one and took it off the bill. I’ll happily go back but stick to a classic steak next time.

We forgot to take a picture, so here is a stock image…

In this video, I will review the Spatz Roadman overshoes.

I dislike cycling in winter because my feet get wet. And when my feet get wet, I become miserable. There is a solution: overshoes. Waterproof covers that go over your cycling shoes to keep your feet warm and dry.

Unfortunately, most overshoes fail to do this. They have two problems. The first is that they are not made tough enough to survive going outside in them and thus get holes in the bottom. The second is that your socks and leggings get wet and the water soaks down to your feet.

Spatz tries to solve this by making them knee-high. This completely covers your socks. The Roadman has the additional benefit of 4.5mm neoprene to keep your feet warm and reflective strips so that cars can see you when commuting in the dark.

I do not commute every day but I do get some long rides in over the winter weekends. Results are mostly good. They keep my feet warmer than regular overshoes. Below 5 degrees Celcius my feet still get cold after two hours but it beats what I was getting before. They also keep me dry. After half a dozen rides, they have developed holes in the bottom of the toe box, though.

To put them on, you need to put them on before your shoes, then put your shoes on and pull the overshoes down. I demonstrate that in the video. Spatz says you can wear them over or under your leggings. I recommend putting them under your leggings as that stops the water soaking down.

The Tacx ANT+ antenna is an ANT+ dongle that connects to your computer via USB. It is designed to allow you to connect your ANT+ sensors such as speed, cadence, heart rate, etc, to your PC or laptop so that you can run Zwift or any other computer-based bike training software.

The problem with most dongles is the drop-outs. This is a disaster for Zwift as it can ruin your intervals or worse when in a group ride, get dropped by the peloton, at which point you have no chance of getting back on again.

The Tacx unit tries to overcome this by providing a long cable so that you can plug it in and move it closer to your bike or smart trainer. It’s a heavy unit with a sturdy base so it will not get knocked around. The unit feels solid and high-quality.

That said, I was still getting drop-outs. If anything, they were worse than when I was connecting my gear with Bluetooth. The Garmin head unit on my bike receives the signal the whole time, so it only seems to be the computer connectivity that is the problem.

My new course, Mindfulness & Visualisation for Athletes, is now live. Here is the blurb:

Mindfulness and visualisation can help athletes train harder, perform better, stay motivated and even recover from injury faster. If you’re an athlete, a coach, or someone interested in sport psychology, this is the course for you.

It is a hands-on course in which we will do mindfulness practices and visualisation exercises together. We’ll also cover the theory behind how and why it works. We’ll learn in a variety of ways including exercises, videos, handouts and quizzes to reinforce the knowledge.

We’ll cover:

• Focus
• Confidence
• Stress
• Competition preparation
• Motivation
• Relaxation

And much more! Watch the video below to see the trailer or preview the course here.

In this video, I’ll review the Hoka One One Clifton 6 running shoe.

Hoka One One is known for the maximalist shoes that have a huge amount of cushioning but relatively little drop. The Clifton 6 is a road shoe with neutral stability.

They fit fairly narrow: as soon as I put it on I knew I had to go for the wide version, something I have not had to do in other brands of shoes.

The cushioning is noticeable. It does not feel mushy, but it does not have the same responsiveness as a race shoe, either. You really notice it after you have worn them for a few hours and then take them off. “Oh yeah, this is what the ground feels like!”

The toe box is almost as good as Nike and has enough space for my massive big toe. A lot has been made of the mid-foot rocker but I do not think it is a big deal. I do not notice it all that much and Brooks have a similar thing in their shoes.

when I first started wearing them the medial arch was digging a little. However, this disappeared after the first 20-30km. The drop is only 5mm, so coming from a 10mm drop, I could feel a tugging on my calf when I first put them on. This has not been a problem while running, though.

The cushioned sole means I would not want to make any quick cuts in these. They would be no use on the basketball court. But they are running trainers, and for running, they are fine.

One thing that does annoy me is that I regularly scrape the fall of my foot on the ground. You could argue I just need to pick my feet up further. However, this is not a problem I run into in other shoes.

Overall, I like these shoes. They will not be replacing my race shoes, but they will be forming part of my regular rotation for those easy-paced runs where speed is not an issue.

In this video, I’ll review the Ohmme Vajra II vest.

I started off by doing yoga in a normal t-shirt. This works fine for getting into yoga but I quickly ran into a problem: whenever I did a downward-facing dog, my t-shirt would slide down, showing off my less-than-toned stomach and the neck would cover my mouth and get in the way of my breathing.

Enter the Vajra II yoga vest from Ohmme. It feels lovely to touch and is clingy, so you can happily hang upside down in down dog without it sliding down your midriff.

Being a vest, it gives me more spacing for breathing, too. It is not perfect, my bottom lip can still catch on the beck of the best in down dog, but it is a definite improvement on a regular t-shirt.

The Ohmme website suggests that the vest fits small and that you should order one size bigger than you usually would. I found this not to be the case. I typically buy a medium. I tried the medium and the large and the medium was plenty big enough.

In this video, I’ll review the Roka R1 swimming goggles.

The Roka R1 goggles are Roka’s top-of-the-range offering designed for open water swimming. As with everything Roka to, the packaging is designed with care. But what about the product itself?

My initial thoughts were that the lenses were a little small and stuck into my eye sockets too much. Equally, the strap seemed rather small and tough. Having tested it, there is no discomfort when swimming, so neither of these concerns is a problem. That said, the strap is a little fiddly to keep together.

There are no frames around the lenses. In theory, this adds extra visibility as you can see out of the top or down the bottom. This seems to add some additional field of view when I am at home, but, to be honest, I did not notice a real difference while swimming.

The goggles come with a white cloth bag which is high-quality, but I am not sure if I should be getting it wet or not. It also looks a lot like tissue and I almost blew my nose on it several times!

This pair has the mirror coating. This is a little too dark for my taste when using in the pool. However, in the lake, they are perfect when the sun is out as you can swim towards the sun without being blinded.

So far they have been for free. However, I have only done three swims with them so far, and typically the anti-fog coating wears off after half a dozen swims, so we will have to wait and see how long this remains the case.

I like these goggles. I think they will be replacing my Zoggs Predator as my go-to goggles for triathlon races when the sun is shining. However, I’ll be using different goggles in the pool or may even the lake when it is overcast.