Episode 240 - Raw & Uncut

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HostsMelissa Ellis Oliver Spake

Roving reportersNadine Crawford Tracey Wood

Show notes

From the Facebook post

Episode 240 is brought to you by the numbers: 7, 8, 250, 325, 350 and 418!

This week we hear Roving Reports from Tracey, live from the tail at Bunyaville (opens in a new tab) parkrun, and Nadine at Ted Scobie Oval (opens in a new tab) parkrun, who offers a hot tip on a place to visit while in town. We receive mail

from South Toowoomba (opens in a new tab) parkrun, chat about more longest run adventures and Mel shares her parkrunday experience too. Spoiler alert – it has a real parkrun in it! (Wagi Bridge (opens in a new tab) parkrun)

Oh, and who can tell us what our SPF is for this week?

From the podcast feed

Episode 240 is brought to you by the numbers: 7, 8, 250, 325, 350 and 418! This week we hear Roving Reports from Tracey, live from the tail at Bunyaville (opens in a new tab), and Nadine at Ted Scobie Oval (opens in a new tab), who offers a hot tip on a place to visit while in town. We receive mail from the team at South Toowoomba (opens in a new tab), hear about more longest run adventures and Mel shares her parkrunday experience too. Spoiler alert – it has a real parkrun in it! Oh, and who can tell us what our SPF is for this week?

Roving reports

1Ted Scobie Oval2Bunyaville

In this episode

• Welcome starts at 0:23

  Melissa Ellis hosting with Ollie Spake, whose Shellharbour mentions are being counted. Ollie RD'd a windy Shellharbour where Sam timekept, then did the inaugural Country to Coast longest run set up by Steve of Cowpasture Reserve, Camden: Campbelltown, Camden, Picton, Bowral, Shellharbour, North Wollongong and Sandon Point. With Victorian events cancelled again on the Friday, Mel drove north with TOC and Jackie for Tony O'Connell's 250th at Wagi Bridge, where Marvellous Mark was RD and Shellharbour's Karen and Ralph turned up, and she reads Glenn Sullivan's TOCopedia tribute from the Inverloch Facebook page.

• Roving reports & the Channel 5 News crew starts at 19:49

  Two roving reports played back to back after Ollie's handoff "We did hear from a couple of other parkrunners at the weekend, a couple of familiar voices, one we haven't heard from for a while." First Nadine Crawford from Ted Scobie Oval parkrun in Griffith, NSW, interviewing visiting Wagga parkrunners Matt and Beth, co-EDs James and Glenys, and her husband Ian, with a running joke about whether Mel should have visited the Hermit's Cave. Then Tracey Wood from Bunyaville in Brisbane, interviewing Alison on her 250th parkrun and Claire the founding ED, and tail-walking in the cold. Hosts debrief both-.

• SPF starts at 30:09Shellharbour parkrun Factor

  A new acronym coined on air this week and immediately adopted as a running gag: the SPF, or Shellharbour parkrun Factor, the number of times Ollie manages to mention his home parkrun in an episode. Flagged in Mel's cold open ("the man whose passion for his home parkrun has inspired the creation of a new acronym"), counted live ("First mention." / "We're counting." / "One."), and formally named and benchmarked by Tracey at the end of her roving report,-: "Now that the Statman is no longer around, I'm going to give you my own stats. And this week, the SPF was 13... see if you can beat that this week, Ollie." Hosts then discuss it-, with Ollie thanking Tracey for "an index I can realistically achieve".

• Emails starts at 34:06

  "You've got mail." A single email read out from Eman at South Toowoomba parkrun, who was RD for event number 136 with 156 participants: parkrun adventurer Michael "Shortsy" Schultz visited while padding out his Wilson Index and completing his 418th event, and co-ED Robbie hit unofficial milestones of 350 parkruns and 325 volunteer events. Followed by a private message from Bruce Purdy, who worked out that the next parkrunday falling on February 14th (relevant to the new Valentine's Peak parkrun in the USA) is in 2026, conveniently a World Cup year in the States.

• Dazza's starts at 38:23

  Listener comments and milestone shout-outs, framed around the relaunch of parkrun in Denmark ("we failed to elicit any Danish references or Danish listeners, sadly, this week"). Contributors read out include Tony "TOC" O'Connell (250th at Wagga Bridge), Neil Taylor (Burley Griffin parkrun's 5th birthday), Ingrid Botha (Dolls Point's 4th), Sam Schroder, Bernadette Bennett, Mandy Oliver, Dawn Branton, Karo Vos, Val Warwick, Mark Scarborough, Brett Bailey, Sally Heppleston, Rebecca Bailey, Tracy Wood, Alison King, Nadine Crawford, Tanya Bailey ("that completes our Bailey shot for this week"), Janet Reid, Chris Fraser, Sonja Pohlman and Karen Hamilton.

• the Informant starts at 51:29

  Weekly unofficial stats report, and this week a handover: the podcast's "intern" character takes the Informant role over from the previous incumbent, who bickers with her throughout ("You're not the informant." / "I am now."). Stats: Denmark returns with 7 events, 309 in Australia, 32 in New Zealand, plus Japan 13, Poland 71, Russia 66, South Africa 28, USA 23 and 5 in UK territories, 554 events worldwide, a post-COVID record, including four launches. Aus/NZ attendance 29,919 of 38,566 worldwide, down ~3,000. 3,855 PBs, 879 first-timers, 72 Junior 10s, 160 fifties, 90 hundreds, 23 two-fifties. 17 called bingo (Colin Bridge quickest at 165 events, Yvonne Gruber slowest at 290). Five new ACT Territorians; Neil Barnett becomes the second Queenslander alongside Michael Schultz. Biggest Wilson Index movers Bea Sykes and Tanya Farmer, up seven each.

• Sign-off starts at 1:03:55

  Mel asked where Ollie would be next week; he said he would be fairly local, as the winter solstice means midsummer for him, with maypoles, mulled wine, flower crowns and a little frog dance, and Mel appealed to Hannah to get a photograph of it for the following week's podcast post. Mel said she did not know where she would be and might abscond again, perhaps back to the ACT or over to South Australia for their longest run on Sunday the 27th of June, but her first priority was Eynesbury and putting on junior parkrun on the Sunday if Victoria was able to return. After a long detour about maypoles, his parents-in-law at Oak Flats and a joke Guinness record attempt, Ollie said it would be a relatively quiet parkrun day for him, then wrapped up, inviting listeners to share their parkrun, return,parkrun and sausage roll stories via Facebook or the email address, and said they would see everyone next week for more adventures.