Episode 96
2018-01-25
— open the full-size artworkShow artwork, January 2018HostsMelissa Erbacher Scott Trickett
Roving reportersLyndell Murray Tony O'Connell
GuestsDave 'Robbo' Robertson Travis Ireland
Show notes
The parkrun adventurers are back and feeling fresh for 2018! First up we set off on a run around Australia with Run Down Under founder Travis Ireland. Dave (Robbo) Robertson is back to give us a glimpse of the athletics selection line-up as it develops ahead of the Commonwealth Games, and shares his thoughts following his 250 milestone. Plus podcast mainstays Lyndell and TOC report in from the field at the launches of Zillmere (opens in a new tab) and Gardiners Creek (opens in a new tab) parkruns.
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Enhanced transcript
Speakers named, sound described and segments marked by the editing pass — not yet checked by a person.
Read the transcriptGuests
Travis Ireland
What Run Down Under is, a membership app that has you run or walk the 14,000km lap of Australia through 98 towns; what activities count (structured exercise only, no cycling or incidental walking); record holders Stephen Wright and Charlie Boyle; the 2018 ambassador programme; the Run Around USA and Run Around Europe maps; his home parkrun (Main Beach) and his dream parkrun (Merimbula, where he grew up).
Dave 'Robbo' Robertson
His 250th parkrun at Newy (60th person in Australia to reach it), founding Newy as roughly Australia's seventh event after meeting Tim Oberg at Main Beach in 2011, a congratulatory tweet from Paul Sinton-Hewitt, then the first round of Commonwealth Games athletics selections (Celia Sullohern, Jess Trengove, Lisa Weightman, Virginia Moloney, Liam Adams, Michael Shelley, Stewart McSweyn) and a wrap of the Hunter Track Classic including Linden Hall's 15:18 5000m, plus an appeal to help source a new inflatable "Jumpy" kangaroo before the Gold Coast Games.
Roving reports
In this episode
Welcome starts at 0:16
Melissa Erbacher and Scott Trickett back for the first episode of 2018, thanking the B team who covered the break; Scott is recording outdoors with Buster barking at the fence, and Mel's neighbour's staffy keeps getting stuck on her back deck. Mel is up to 53 events and is aiming for 20 new ones this year after 15 in 2017; Scott spent Christmas in Sydney, ticked off St Peters and ran with Paul Wilcock and Bobby Prentiss at Campbelltown, and both hosts were at the Zillmere launch on Saturday. Travis Ireland from Run Down Under is coming up; Mel is doing a unicorn virtual run, and Scott's rib has come good after months out, with a resolution of no trail races in 2018.
Roving reports & the Channel 5 News crew starts at 42:11
Lyndell Murray reports from the launch of Zillmere parkrun in Brisbane's northern suburbs, the long-awaited "big Z" for alphabet collectors. She interviews an English-born New Zealand tourist chasing her first true Zed, Logan River parkrunners Carolyn and Greg (who complete every letter of the Australian alphabet bar X), volunteer/Run Director "Sarge", the Nisbet family from Sandgate, and Event Director Mark. She signs off explicitly "on behalf of the Channel 5 News crew".
Roving reports & the Channel 5 News crew starts at 56:56
TOC reports from the launch of Gardiners Creek parkrun in Victoria, 466 finishers, said to beat the Victorian launch record by about 80. He interviews Event Director Wendy Glen about the turnout, the granitic-sand trail course, and five generations of her family at Gardiners Creek; he also confesses to joining the stack club himself.
Launches and anniversaries starts at 1:03:10"Where is the cake?"
Scott takes launches, Bargara (QLD), Bright (VIC) and San Remo (NSW); Mel takes anniversaries, Bibra Lake (WA), Churchill (VIC), Cooks River (NSW), Mudgee (NSW), Port Fairy (VIC), Sirromet (QLD), Tamborine Mountain (QLD) and The Terrace (NSW). Mel notes the calendar lives on the parkrun Australia blog and is linked in the weekly newsletter.
Sign-off starts at 1:10:51
Scotty said 'let's wrap it up' and asked where Mel was adventuring: she was going to Kawana, where the first two homegrown Kawana parkrunners were reaching the 250 club that weekend. They talked about how 250 takes rather more than five calendar years once volunteering is counted, and about how little fanfare their own milestones had; Mel then could not recall the word for the ratio of volunteering to runs, so they left it as the word of the week for listeners to guess before Scotty said he would chat to her next week.
Word of the week starts at 1:14:01
Mel gropes for the term for the ratio of volunteering to runs and can't retrieve it ("There's my word of the week that I don't know what the hell I'm thinking of"); Scott turns it into the listener bit "we've got a word of the week for our listeners to guess". Played here as a running gag rather than a formally set-up segment.