Episode 446 - Show us your weed

2026-03-25

HostMelissa Ellis

Roving reportersAli Sheppard Calum Burrell Lyndell Murray Ruth Perkins

GuestTim Oberg

Show notes

Did we get your attention? Good! We’ve also got the Big Cheese and a swathe of roving reports from the UK (Queens parkrun in Glasgow and Flint Castle in Wales) to Poland (Zalew Łęg) and back home, with Gayndah River Walk ( in Queensland). There’s all the usuals too with Reginald and a rhyming Dazzas to enjoy. Who is the Big Cheese you say? Why it’s Tim Oberg of course! Bringing us a RAD review of his latest pursuit.

Guests

Roving reports

In this episode

• parkrun news bulletin

  News block: the six Austrian events collectively declining to hold their national special day on 1 May (Tony reads an anonymised Austrian ED's social-media explanation about course capacity and permit limits); Lithuania's special day on 11 March with 12 adventurers across three events; parkrun New Zealand attendance figures for 21 March (66 events, 12,656 parkrunners, 1,131 volunteers, Cambridge attendance record 181 up to 210); Australian smallest/largest events and three new Australian attendance records (Bluegum Hills NSW, Maylands Peninsula WA, Mildura Weir VIC).

• Roving Adventurers (roving reporter crossovers)

  Four back-to-back roving reports, thrown to at [00:31:09] and recapped by Tony at [00:54:49] as "reports from four different places, four different countries": Calum Burrell at Queens, Glasgow (Scotland) with ED/RD Laura; Ruth Perkins at Flint Castle (Wales) with ED Lucy Douglas and ambassador Jill Jones; Lyndell Murray at Gayndah Riverwalk (Queensland) for its fifth birthday with ED Dale; Ali Sheppard at Zalew Leg (Poland) with 16-year-old parkrunner Kuba.

• Dazza's

  Listener submissions segment, this week themed on World Poetry Day - every entry a poem. Read out: Sherry Eccles (Bill Rose Sports Complex NSW, 250th event), Mandy Oliver (Surfers Paradise Parkfront QLD, 500th), Michael Little (Copper Trail SA), Sonia Polman (the Beaches NSW - the seaweed photo that gives the episode its title), Ellie Shepherd (Durham UK), Gareth Arnold (WA, assumed), Val Warwick (Ilarah Riparian Parklands NSW), and a long one from Matthew Billington (Rokeby) referred to rather than read.

• Poem Zone

  Not run this episode - referenced retrospectively while introducing the poetry-themed Dazza's. Tony: "it's almost like the old days of Scotty and Mel and their... Poet's Corner." Melissa: "The Poem Zone." Tony: "That was what it was called." Recorded here because it is direct in-episode evidence that this named bit is long retired and is associated by the current hosts with the Scott Trickett / Melissa Erbacher era.

• the Obi Award — Sonia Polman

  Awarded to Sonia Polman for her Dazza's entry from the Beaches, NSW - specifically the photograph accompanying it. Tony at [01:02:59]: "our Obie this week goes to Sonia Polman. That was a great photo of Michael from the beaches" (Michael Sharp, the volunteer pictured), with Melissa adding "Yeah, show us your weed" - the seaweed-covered beach shot that supplies the episode title. Opened with the running "obelope" gag at [01:02:32] ("time for an obelope. Do we still even do that?").

• Emails

  Listener email bag, opened with a "You've got mail" sound effect. Two emails: Ian Shaw (day-one listener, guest on episode 182) on his "Tutu/Two-Two Day" numerology - 22:12 at Gungahlin on 22/2/2025 and 22:22 at Wagga Bridge on the June solstice, his birthday; and Alistair (tourism streak 28) with two coffee reports, one from an unnamed "restricted" event the hosts deduce is Puckapunyal, and one from Rhodes NSW event 516.

• Club Corner

  Delivered in character by Reginald Yardley-Pomfrey III. A survey of parkrun-related smartphone apps: parkrun's purchase of the 5K app (now simply "parkrun", published by parkrun Global Ltd, v4.0 rolled out March 2026), the parkrun Virtual Volunteer app (originally by Nuism of Newcastle NSW, part-owned by Penny Redhead), then pros and cons of parkrun Planner (James Kent), Running Achievements (Ford Hollett), Park Race (Alexander Cahill) and parkrunner-5K Results (Apps for London Ltd / Gary Grace). Closes with a reminder that all non-milestone clubs are unofficial. Followed by studio discussion with Melissa and Tony.

• Consolidated Club Report

  Weekly club stats for Saturday 21 March 2026: of 890 members, 614 took part in 13 countries across 341 locations; international and state-by-state breakdown; Malaysia absent (their single event took the week off). Includes the largest international fronds (Maritzburg Golf Club, South Africa, 14 March - including roster member Johan Duvenhage; Inn Promenade, Austria, 21 March), "the pilgrimage" sub-item (nobody on 14 or 21 March; Dale and Rachel Morgan on 7 March, Imogen Swales on 28 February), and the largest Australian fronds (Auburn Botanic Gardens, 14; The Ponds, 9). Melissa claims the largest actual frond of the Palm recording weekend - 11, accidentally, at Cruickshank Park.

• Launches and anniversaries ("Where is the cake?")

  Launch recap covering several weeks, with Tony explaining the eight-week paperwork lead time and the Christmas staff break as the reason for the thin run: Walton Promenade UK (28 Feb, 268 finishers/20 volunteers); Hofgarten Germany (7 March, 116/18); Victoria Embankment Nottingham UK (14 March, 895/36 - with discussion of eight or nine parkruns inside a 5km radius); and four on 21 March - West Stow Country Park UK (199/23), a Beach Reserve parkrun at the northern tip of New Zealand's South Island (167/16), Kulturpark Nuremberg Germany (57/11) and Mandeville NZ (172/20, bringing the South Island to 25 events).