Chris Worfolk's Blog

It was a roasting hot day for the Tour de Yorkshire so I was worried about sunburn. Of course, being a computer programmer and being from Yorkshire, I’m worried about sunburn pretty much all of the time.

I started with some factor 50 and then re-applied a special factor 30 “sport” edition at each feed station. The sport edition is more resistant to sweat than normal suncream. It feels more like you’re spreading an ointment than some cream.

For the most part, it worked. The only problem was there was a slight gap between where my suncream came up to and where my cycling shorts came down to.

I’m not sure if I didn’t cream high enough or whether my shorts rode up a little bit during the ride. But, either way, I’ve got these little strips of sunburn that have been hanging around on my legs all week.

Still, at least it was nowhere near as bad as Iceland.

After finishing the sportive, we went down to watch the pro men’s race finish.

The first man through was Stéphane Rossetto who went on to take the stage win. This was on Burley Road, a few hundred metres from the finish. The chasing pack weren’t too far behind.

Taken during the Tour de Yorkshire sportive. I think this is Thruscross Reservoir. There are definitely worse places to be cycling.

Last week, I completed the Tour de Yorkshire sportive. The medium route, 84km (90km once I had ridden door-to-door) was not only the longest ride I had ever done, by some 10km, but also included a fierce 1,200 metres of climbing.

It started up at Woodhouse Moor, where they had a small event village and meeting point. Due to the number of people that took part, there was a long queue to get started. It took about 30 minutes from joining the back of it to getting on the road.

Once at the front, we were off. The route took us along Meanwood Road up and up to the ring road, where we crossed and headed up towards Eccup and then on towards Harrogate. We climbed through North Rigton and the rolling road towards Beckwithshaw where the first feed station was located.

It was a pretty crap feed station. There was around a 40-minute queue for water, and the food available consisted of crips, bananas and Jaffa cakes. Certainly not up to the standard of other sportives.

Back on the road, we turned west on Penny Pot Lane and then north again to Menwith Hill before starting the journey homeward via Blubberhouses. The scenery up there is spectacular. Once you get on top of the moors, you can see for miles.

The hills

The road between Blubberhouses and Otley is a hilly one. By this point, the long route had re-joined us and so the road was filled with medium and long route people. Even though these were all cyclists that had chosen a harder option than the short route, people began struggling. Many people got off and pushed their bike up Snowden Bank.

I miscalculated the road we were coming out of Otley on. For some reason, I had gotten it into my head that we were taking the main road. It had Tour de Yorkshire signs all over it, after all. But we didn’t. We went straight out of the back of Otley and up Chevin Bank. 1750 metres at an average gradient of 9.4%. It just kept coming.

And, after all of that, we then went straight back down the hill to Pool in Wharfedale where the second feed stop was located. This one was better, with sausage rolls, pork pies and jelly babies. And, more importantly, reasonable access to water.

The final stretch included another tough climb: Black Hill Road into Arthington. This one was only 1500 metres at an average gradient of 7.2%. But that is deceptive because it starts off shallow and them ramps up the higher you go. The 90-degree bend half way up is rated at an eye-watering 19%. This was probably the hardest climb of the day, although I suspect that was because I already had Chevin Bank in my legs.

The finish

Finishing on The Headrow was amazing. I had enough in my legs to open up my sprint. Maybe I should have savoured the moment, but it felt great to pretend to be a pro racing for the line. Unlike the big runs in Leeds, there weren’t that many people finishing. So, when I raised my arm in victory and everyone cheered, there was a cause and effect thing going on. Thank you to everyone who cheered us home!

Results

My official time clocked in at:

4:42:54

That’s nearly 12 hours ahead of the so-called winner Greg Van Avermaet. Some would argue that doing the medium route of a one-day sportive is a lot easier than the four days of substantially longer routes that the pros did. But he had teammates and a peloton to protect him, I did it all on my own.

My average moving speed was 19.5 kph, although that is door-to-door, not just the sportive. It’s pretty slow compared to the 23.4 kph I managed in York-Leeds-York (and any objective measure), but it was very hilly.

Conclusion

I think the Tour de Yorkshire is my favourite sportive so far. In part, its a number game. They claimed to have 5,000 riders taking part. It certainly was busy and it’s nice to ride with other people. A common problem with sportives is that, even if you have 500 people, when you spread them out over 100km, there are not many of them around. It gets lonley. Here there was none of that. The feed stations were poor, but the finish was excellent. And the scenery was beautiful.

The weather has warmed up. Why did I ask for this again? I hate the warmth. This was a terrible idea.

Fresh from Middleton Woods Parkrun last week, I was determined to run a fast one this week. And luck was on my side. The first Saturday of the month is a pacer month. This month included only three pacers but one of them was perfect for me: the 23-minute man.

In April, I took a minute and a half off my PB but even then, I knew I could go faster. So, I set out following the pacer to see how long I could hold on for.

It turns out the answer was about 2.5 km. Halfway through the second lap, I started to lose touch with him as my legs just wouldn’t keep up the speed. I slowly slipped behind, maybe 5-10 seconds over the next lap. This doesn’t sound like a huge gap now, but it felt like one at the time. I knew if I could just keep him in sight by the 4km mark, I stood a chance.

Once we hit that point I got a second wind and slowly started reeling him in down the back straight. It took the top of the park, too, but as we rounded the final corner onto the finish straight I went around him on the outside.

No sprint finish, just a desperate battle to keep the pace and stay ahead of him. I doubled-over just after the finish line and the volunteers had to shepherd me along to get me out of the way of other runners. But I had done enough.

My new PB was:

22:39

This time, I don’t think I can run any faster. I’ve set a Parkrun PB that reflects the best performance I can give right now. I’m pleased with it. It gives me an age grading of 57%, which still leaves me 3% adrift of my Dad’s best effort.

Here’s an updated graph:

I only remembered to take the obligatory selfie after I had set off running home, hence why it looks so bad.

Historically, I’ve defended the reporting of BBC News. Both the left and right claim it is biased in the other camp’s favour and their claims often seem unequally unfounded. Recently, however, it has become more difficult to ignore their right-wing bias.

It’s not just their tedious reporting of “royal affairs” as if that is something legitimately interesting, it’s that actual research has found a systematic bias against Jeremy Corbyn.

What about their 2018 local election results reporting?

Labour gained 77 councillors and the Liberal Democrats gained 75. The Conservatives lost 33 councillors, despite UKIP unloading 123 of them, which you would expect the Tories to sweet up a few of. That puts Labour on 2,350 and the Tories on 1,332. And the BBC describes it as “no clear party winner”.

Is this fair?

Yes and no. At first glance, it looks bad. Labour has made gains and the Conservatives have taken losses. So, it seems unfair to suggest that Labour did not win.

However, in terms of the shift, it’s not a very big one. An additional 77 councillors are not that many when you already have 2,288 of them. It’s only a 3% increase. And they didn’t gain control of any councils.

When you look at the percentage increases, the only people who can be said to have had a good day are the Liberal Democrats, who increased their councillors by 14% and took control of four councils.

So, when looking at the shift in power, there was no clear winner between Labour and the Tories.

What about the popular vote?

There is one argument still to be made in favour of a bias against Labour. And that is that they did make significant gains in the popular vote. Labour moved up eight percentage points while the Conservatives are down three.

That is the biggest swing for Labour since Jeremy Corbyn took office. You have to go back to 2013 when Ed Milliband lost all of the votes to find a bigger swing. Until this point, Labour hasn’t enjoyed great results at local elections, but it is unfair to blame that on Corbyn given the amount of in-fighting that has been going on.

Of course, in our current electoral system, the popular vote is worth nothing. Nobody understands that better than Donald Trump.

Conclusion

In this case, the BBC’s reporting isn’t as biased as it may look at first glance.

Recently, I’ve been experimenting with soups a little. Nothing too exciting, but I have decided that rather than working from recipes, I’m just going to throw stuff into a pan and see if I can do it off-script. This recipe worked out well, so I thought I would share.

Ingredients

• 2 tbsp vegetable oil
• Carrot
• Fennel
• Garlic clove
• 1 tsp crushed chillis
• Sweet potato
• 1 litre chicken stock
• 100g sweetcorn
• 300ml double cream
• Flat-leaf parsley
• Chicken breasts

Instructions

Cook the chicken breasts in the oven according to packet instructions: usually around 30-35 minutes at 180-200 degrees C will do it. Put some bowls in a plate warmer.

Meanwhile, heat a large pan with some vegetable oil it in. Finely slice the carrot, fennel and garlic and combine it with the crushed chillis. Season with salt and pepper and cook it for a few minutes.

Peel and dice the sweet potato into any size chunks you like. Throw this in and continue to cook for a few more minutes. Add the chicken stock and sweetcorn and bring to a boil. Leave to simmer until the chicken is two minutes away from done.

When the chicken is almost ready, take a stick blender to the pan and destroy everything until there are no lumps. Add the double cream and stir to heat through. You can take the pan off the heat.

Take the chicken out of the oven and slice. Fill your bowls with some soup, then dump the sliced chicken in the middle. Chop some parsley and sprinkle that around the edges.

In Finland, open water swimming is straightforward: you get drunk and then at midnight, jump in the nearest lake. Some swim, some don’t. But that’s just nature’s way; it’s survival of the fittest. Over in Britain, it seems a little different.

I wanted to get some open water practice in before the triathlon season gets any further. So, I booked into the Blue Lagooners down near Pontefract. Here’s me trying on my wetsuit beforehand.

It was cold. Very, very cold. But not as bad as I imagined. The wetsuit does a great job of keeping you warm. It was only my hands and feet that were frozen. This made for quite a challenge when it came time to get out, as trying to get a wetsuit off is difficult at the best of times, but even harder when your hands are numb.

The venue is nice. They have a 250 metre and a 500-metre course. The changing rooms are just huts on the lakeside. The staff are friendly and provided a lot of useful information on getting the most from the session.

I managed 1,500 metres in the end. Although, for some reason, my Garmin recorded it as 44 metres. I’m looking forward to future events and, more importantly, to the lake warming up a little more.

With the Tour De Yorkshire just days away, I set out to complete my first 80km ride. Not only would this be my longest ride yet but it would also involve even more hills than usual. So, the last thing I needed was problems with my gears.

Unfortunately, that’s what I got. I’ve been having problems with my gears for a while and, despite getting it “fixed” by Evans, it hasn’t got any better. In fact, it’s got worse. I couldn’t use first gear at all. So, I had to complete the 1,000 metres of climbing in second or higher.

But while it did slow me down, it didn’t stop me. I headed up through Otley all the way to Blubberhouses, taking in climbs of up to 14%, before heading east to Harrogate and back down to Leeds.

My legs were gone by the end of it. Finishing my ride down the canal towpath I struggled to hold 15 mph on the flat.

Nevertheless, job done. It wasn’t quite a replication of next week: it was 80km rather than 86km, and, more importantly, it was 1,000 metres of climbing rather than 1,200. Still, I feel like I can go into the sportive with a lot more confidence than I had before.

I support the sugar tax. I think it will prove an effective deterrent to sugary drinks, just as adding a 5p fee to plastic bags has massively reduced their usage. But some retailers do not seem to have handled it very well.

Take a look at this, for example:

On the right is a standard 500ml Coke bottle. On the left is a 375ml that seems to be shaped to look like a 500ml bottle. 375ml is not much bigger than a can (330ml).

When I went to Tesco, I grabbed what I thought was a 500ml bottle. It was only later I realised it was only 375ml. I felt scammed. I didn’t see any indicating it was a smaller bottle, something which you would expect ethically they should point out to customers.

I spoke to Tesco about it and they said they were sorry but didn’t promise to do anything about it.

Hi Chris, I'm very sorry that you feel scammed. This change has been made by the supplier in light of the sugar tax. If you would like me to log your feedback please DM me your name, address and email. Thanks – Mark #ShareaCoke https://t.co/py5Z991Bme

— Tesco (@Tesco) April 23, 2018

Elina informs me that Marks & Spencer are still offering the 500ml bottles as part of their meal deal.