Bruce Fordyce
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Talked to at their parkrun
Episode 348
The Springboks' win over the All Blacks the night before, and running the southernmost parkrun in Africa
Interviewed as a guest
Episode 328
the parkrun South Africa conference returning after four years and parkrun getting back on its feet post-COVID.
Episode 309
How parkrun came to South Africa - Paul Sinton-Hewitt, Tom Williams and Peter Fordham talking Bruce and Gill into Bushy Park in April 2011, and the launch of Delta parkrun with 26 runners on 12 November 2011 (its 500th event was that morning). Also his Comrades career (30 finishes, nine wins, from June 1976), 5km becoming his favourite distance, South Africa's proudly slowest average finish time and its township events, the near-fatal 18-month lockdown and recovery towards 30,000 weekly participants, the drive to put an AED at all ~200 South African events, and parkrun tourism.
Episode 44
The headline interview: how parkrun came to South Africa and how it grew. Bruce traces it from being paced by Paul Sinton-Hewitt at Comrades, to running Bushy Park before the 2011 London Marathon, to the first South African event at Delta Park, Johannesburg in November 2011 with 26 runners; then growth to ~88 events, half a million registrations and 28-30,000 runners a week, a deliberately slow launch rate of about two a month with the team present at every launch, big events (North Beach Durban, the world's biggest) versus tiny ones (Summerfields near Kruger, Springbok in the Northern Cape), the fact that roughly half of South African parkrunners walk, his overseas top three (Gdynia in Poland, Bushy, Mosman) and favourite South African courses, Century City in Cape Town which runs through a shopping centre, Voortrekker Monument, Root 44, Mofolo in Soweto, plus the hippos-and-lions stories and the South African fifth birthday plans.