Tom Williams
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Talked to at their parkrun
Episode 342
His first parkrun trip to New Zealand, Dunedin, Balclutha, Hamilton Park, Invercargill and Lake2Lake Trail in four days; what makes a natural parkrun venue; the goal of 100 New Zealand events, with parkrun now waiving startup fees and covering defibrillator costs there; prescribing parkrun and diversity/inclusion work; and a top-three dodge, the three parkruns where he has finished first (Bolton, Roosevelt Island and Lake2Lake Trail).
Interviewed as a guest
Episode 202
The impending return of parkrun after the COVID-19 pause. Tom explains that reopening is more complex than the two-weekend global shutdown of all 22 parkrun countries was; the save-the-date of 4 July for New Zealand, the first country back; how parkrun tracks 22 sets of national regulations (a 7:30am UK strategy meeting five days a week, a Friday territory-leads steering group, Tuesday updates to the world); why no country's rules currently permit events even where lockdown is light (Sweden, Poland, Belarus); the backlog of events waiting to launch and his willingness to start "20, 30, 40, 50 events on a single weekend"; survey work on whether volunteers and participants will return; and his deepest concern, that the pause has knocked back years of outreach to the least active, most in-need participants, work Chrissie Wellington's health and wellbeing team is now researching.
Episode 92
Behind the scenes of the parkrun Germany launch (three events on 2 December, Leipzig, Mannheim, Hanover, with Berlin, Munich and Osnabrück in January, resourced through Jakub who also runs parkrun Poland), the new deliberately app-only model being trialled there, unusual event requests (aircraft carriers, space stations, Camp Bastion), and the new parkrun Virtual Volunteer app, how it grew out of a Newcastle company's timing/scanning app used at Newy parkrun, why paper barcodes still work at scale, and plans for a more phone-friendly WebFMS 2.0.
Episode 35
Tom the parkrunner rather than Tom the boss: separating the job from the Saturday experience, and the awkwardness of turning up at events unannounced; registering as parkrunner A6013 on 4 August 2007 after seeing Bushy Park Time Trial in Runner's World; founding Hyde Park Time Trial in Leeds (the fourth event and the first outside London) in October 2007 by writing it into the University of Leeds sport and exercise science course; his family's routine around Harrogate Juniors, where wife Helen is Event Director, and daughter Rosie telling the tail runner she was four so she could run at three; parkrun tourism, 72 different events, Crissy Field, South Africa, Canada, freedom runs in Sweden, and upcoming trips to Russia for International parkrun Day and Poland's fifth anniversary; the Yorkshire ten-in-a-day run that prefigured Australia's Longest Run, and why parkrun could not support such events formally; and Marathon Talk's origins and its links back into parkrun (Bruce Fordyce and parkrun South Africa, Ellie Greenwood and Canada, Ron Clarke and Australia). The hosts close by asking him back for a second part.
Episode 20
A returning HQ update on the Little Stoke parkrun charging dispute, parkrun challenging the robustness of the parish council's 6-4 decision, the 28 May deadline, and the philosophical argument about free events on public land, plus parkrun UK reaching its one millionth different runner and shifting global attendance records as Australia and South Africa grow.
Episode 16
The Little Stoke parkrun / Stoke Gifford Parish Council decision to charge parkrunners a pound a run, how it arose, why parkrun cannot accept land permission conditional on a fee (with a projection of what per-runner charging would mean for Australia), the cancellation of Little Stoke parkrun, parish-council powers in the UK, the #LoveLittleStoke response and the change.org petition, and the 40% spike in UK registrations that followed.