Episode 50
2016-12-21
HostMelissa Erbacher
GuestsDave "Robbo" Robertson Ian Hay Paul Kitching Paul Sinton-Hewitt Renee Gimbert Tim Oberg
Show notes
The parkrun adventurers make the 50 Club this week and to celebrate we're joined by some show faves. Ian Hay drops by to settle some outstanding stats and Tim Oberg and Renee Gimbert share their 2016 highlights. We talk about parkrun beginnings and adventure with ideas man and parkrun Founder Paul Sinton-Hewitt. And we wrap up festivities with Dave 'Robbo' Robertson and the Channel 4 News Team's Paul Kitching.
Enhanced transcript
Checked transcript — speakers named, sound described, segments marked.
Read the transcriptGuests
Ian Hay
Year-end "Mel versus Scott" statistics rematch — volunteer stints, run totals and the best events for Mels and Scotts to feel at home — plus a statistician joke and a sign-off on the year of Facts in a Haystack.
Tim Oberg
2016 highlights and 2017 hopes: Renee joining as the second full-time staff member, signing Medibank as third national sponsor, the expected launch of junior parkrun in Australia, a Christmas wish for an incident-free festive period, and run directing at Airlie Beach parkrun on Christmas and New Year's Day.
Renee Gimbert
2016 highlights and 2017 hopes: joining parkrun Australia full-time and doubling the team, what extra staff means for event and territory directors, the target of launching at least one parkrun a week in 2017, a Christmas wish for a defib at every one of Australia's 200 events, and family Christmas Day parkrun plans.
Paul Sinton-Hewitt
parkrun's beginnings and adventure: starting Bushy Park because he was lonely and wanted to see his mates, the coffee afterwards being the point, the hardware-store washers and Forestry Commission aluminium tokens that preceded barcodes, why he is A1674 and numbers 1-4 are vacant, the three millionth registration, roughly £3m invested in systems plus about £50,000 a year of his own for five years, volunteering as the model's make-or-break, having visited ~190-200 different events, plans for an extended Australian trip, and why Christmas Day is the best parkrun of the year.
Dave "Robbo" Robertson
A sombre opening on the death of Newy parkrunner Jennifer Bates and the purple-shirt tribute run, then his parkrun year: the launch of The Terrace parkrun at Raymond Terrace with Olympian Marty Dent, Scott Westcott running Newy before flying to Rio, two South African parkruns (Green Point and Durbanville), and his four-year-old daughter Grace's first 5k. Also reflects on why the parkrun Show Australia stopped at 50 episodes.
Paul Kitching
Year-end "get to know the Channel 4 News crew" studio chat: discovering parkrun in January and getting obsessed, why he started filing roving reports from SA, Mount Barker's flat Laratinga Wetlands course and photography-mad community, the Mount Barker mannequin challenge, and interviewing Paul Sinton-Hewitt under the parkrun tree at Bushy Park on parkrun's 12th birthday.
In this episode
Bottom three parkruns
Carry-over bit from the previous week in which each host names their three least favourite parkruns. Both hosts deliver their lists but the actual event names are obscured in the audio — each host claims the other's line was "noisy" and that they "didn't quite catch all of that", which reads as a deliberate production gag/censoring rather than a recording fault.
Christmas bonbon jokes
A festive running bit unique to this Christmas/50th special: Mel explains that she hand-fills Christmas bonbons for her family and asks Scott for bad bonbon jokes. From then on every single guest in the episode (Ian Hay, Renee, Tim, Robbo, PK) is asked for a terrible bonbon joke, and Mel reads one out to open each interview.
parkrun news bulletin
Short stylised news read, alternating between the two hosts, entirely about the podcast's own 50-episode milestone: 2,490 minutes of audio released, 113 guests, 34 roving adventures reported, hundreds of social adventures shared, six new costumes for Mel and four official-event stacks for Scott.
Facts in a Haystack
Ian Hay returns two weeks running to deliver the stats he owed from last week: the year-end "Mel versus Scott" rematch across all Australian parkrunners named Mel or Scott — 277 Mels with 933 volunteer stints vs 1,009 Scotts with 1,194 stints (Scotts win again on totals, Mels win on average), 10,500 runs by Mels vs 12,300 by Scotts, and the best events to find your namesakes: Maitland for Mels (37) and Newy for Scotts (57).
Channel 5 News Crew
Billed on air as "a segment we like to call: get to know the Channel 4 News crew" — a studio chat with the crew's "one and only member", underscore PK (Paul Kitching), rather than a field report. Covers how he found parkrun in January, why he started sending in roving reports from South Australia, Mount Barker parkrun and its Laratinga Wetlands course and photography culture, the Mount Barker mannequin challenge video, and his Bushy Park interview with Paul Sinton-Hewitt on parkrun's 12th birthday.
Launches and anniversaries ("Where is the cake?")
The usual sign-off cake check, but there are no launches or anniversaries this week — "Unless you like fruitcake for Christmas... Probably just candy canes, I think, this week" — replaced by the bonus of Christmas Day plus Saturday parkruns back to back, which prompts a friendly argument between the hosts about whether that happened last year too.