Episode 16 - Pat Farmer

Episode details · 166 speaker turns · sound cues from context

00:00:07Melissa Erbacher: episode of parkrun Adventurers. It's a big one tonight. I'm joined by Scotty.

00:00:14Scott Trickett: Howdy all.

00:00:14Melissa Erbacher: Say hello.

00:00:15Scott Trickett: I said howdy. Good. I'm following on your lead.

00:00:19Melissa Erbacher: Obviously, I'm the other half of the adventuring duo. My name is Mel. We're here to bring you another grossly inaccurate episode tonight, today, this morning, this afternoon. midnight whenever you might be listening have you had an adventure recently scotty well of course i have well give us the details on saturday

00:00:33[crosstalk]

00:00:43Scott Trickett: On parkrun Day, I was involved in the Laylaw parkrun launch, which from not only my reports, everybody else's reports, was a big success. We had a Welcome to Country to get us started, which was performed by one of the local elders. We had the mayor, and then we were joined by Aunty Pam Pedersen, who also welcomed all the runners. Can you get the theme?

00:01:10Melissa Erbacher: Everyone was really welcomed by the sounds of it.

00:01:13Scott Trickett: Yeah, and then we did a run briefing, got into some warm-up from the Indigenous Hip Hop Project, which I was a little bit sceptical of going into it, just because I know the general parkrun crowd, and I wasn't sure if they were going to embrace a hip hop warm-up.

00:01:34Melissa Erbacher: Be honest, Scotty, you just don't like dancing yourself.

00:01:38Scott Trickett: I'm not a big dancer. My family's got a history of dancing, but it skipped me. But it's also, in Melbourne, we don't have a lot of warm-ups at the event, so it's not a thing. I know I've been to some other parkruns, you might be involved in some, where the warm-up is part of it. But in Melbourne, that doesn't happen. So I wasn't sure how it was going to be embraced down here. But it was embraced, let me tell you. Everybody got into it. The hip-hop dancers were fantastic.

00:02:06Melissa Erbacher: Is it going to be a regular?

00:02:08Scott Trickett: Look, it's not. It was a launch special for Lalor. They might come back for the anniversary or maybe another time during the year.

00:02:15Melissa Erbacher: So what I really want to know about, you mentioned last week, you had something to do with ensuring there was a bridge on the course, which is the High Five Bridge. And I've got parkrun adventurous spies out there, Scotty. And one of them wants to know, how many high fives did you give on that bridge last weekend?

00:02:38Scott Trickett: Give me a name. Who's your spouse?

00:02:40Melissa Erbacher: No, no. Okay. I can't reveal my sources. I've got them all over the country.

00:02:45Scott Trickett: Yeah. Can you believe it? I completely forgot. And it's strange. Like, how can you forget to give a high five?

00:02:53Melissa Erbacher: On the high five bridge?

00:02:54Scott Trickett: On the high five bridge. I kind of remembered.

00:02:58Melissa Erbacher: Did you give any high fives?

00:03:00Scott Trickett: I did. I picked up my game after that, but completely missed the bridge.

00:03:06Melissa Erbacher: I don't know if we can forgive you for that. No. You might have to go back and do it again.

00:03:09Scott Trickett: I can guarantee I'll do that, and there'll be high fives to everyone.

00:03:13Melissa Erbacher: Word for word, you said there are no excuses, so we can't take forgetting as a good enough excuse. You've got to pick up your game.

00:03:24Scott Trickett: For one week only, I will hang my head in shame in terms of high fives. There's no doubt about that. I was caught in a pack and I think that's what happened.

00:03:36Melissa Erbacher: These are all just sounding like excuses.

00:03:40Scott Trickett: Yeah.

00:03:41Melissa Erbacher: Just bear in mind what you say on this podcast doesn't just stay on the podcast. It goes out there and people are hearing it and people report back to me. I want names.

00:03:56Scott Trickett: Off air, I want names.

00:03:59Melissa Erbacher: You can try.

00:04:02Scott Trickett: But from all reports, the High Five Bridge was a highlight of the course. Some people might think, what the hell are you going over just the bridge? Because we just go over it and then come back. But the views, if you take your time and you look out, particularly coming back over the bridge, you get a fantastic view of Melbourne, which is a pretty city.

00:04:23Melissa Erbacher: Just don't forget to keep your right hand up for high-fiving as you're looking at the pretty view.

00:04:31Scott Trickett: Okay, enough about that. The rest of the launch was a success. Again, the hip-hop dancers were around at the end and they were performing. We had some fresh fruit handed out. Just the general vibe. It was really nice. It was really casual. It was really friendly and it was really supportive. Therefore, I determine Laylaw parkrun launch a success.

00:04:53Melissa Erbacher: Excellent. That's what we love to hear. Always good to have a good launch and I'm sure Melissa had a great time.

00:05:00Scott Trickett: I think she did. She did a wonderful job too. First time, very composed. She did confide in me that she might get a bit emotional, but she held it all together, and she just ran a very smooth event. Well done, Melissa. The other Melissa.

00:05:15Melissa Erbacher: Mackay actually had a very successful launch also by reports that I'm hearing from around the ground, so that's great to hear. We love successful launches, and so Mackay and Lalor, twins in the parkrun world, Look forward to hearing them going on the up and up. What else happened this week in the parkrun world, Scotty?

00:05:37Scott Trickett: Brian Peters became the first Aussie to run 250 parkruns on Australian soil, 240 of which were at Main Beach.

00:05:46Melissa Erbacher: Congratulations, Brian. That's a pretty mammoth effort. You'll be getting your green shirt, no doubt, very shortly.

00:05:54Scott Trickett: He has visited four other events across the Gold Coast, and we're going to make the assumption that Brian travels for cake.

00:06:02Melissa Erbacher: Because he's only done those four other events a couple of times?

00:06:05Scott Trickett: Yeah.

00:06:06Melissa Erbacher: Yep. Who doesn't travel for cake, really? I know there's a lot of parkrun adventurers out there, and that's their sole motivation.

00:06:13Scott Trickett: Cake.

00:06:15Melissa Erbacher: Cake.

00:06:17Scott Trickett: Numbers were good around Australia again this week.

00:06:20Melissa Erbacher: The best kind of good, I believe.

00:06:23Scott Trickett: We don't have an official figure, but we're pretty confident there's another record, attendance record.

00:06:30Melissa Erbacher: Over 25,000? Yeah. We've tipped the scales at over a quarter of 100,000 this week. So that is fairly damn impressive. If you parkran last weekend, You're part of those awesome numbers and congratulations to the volunteers that made that happen.

00:06:50Scott Trickett: Indeed. Just getting bigger and bigger. Every week, parkrun in Australia. It's the biggest running movement in the world, if you hadn't heard already.

00:06:58Melissa Erbacher: Speaking of the world, did you hear about the mummy who was unearthed wearing Adidas shoes?

00:07:04Scott Trickett: I haven't. Enlighten me.

00:07:06Melissa Erbacher: She was in Mongolia. She's wearing shoes that have stripes reminiscent of the Adidas symbol. You know, how all their shoes and all their clothes have those three stripes. And it's actually sparked time-traveling theories, which I think is pretty amusing, possibly. This would be a good time to mention the fact that we do have a listener in Mongolia, or we had one once.

00:07:33Scott Trickett: No, I think they're a recurring listener.

00:07:37Melissa Erbacher: They're a recurring listener. We need to find out who this person is. This parkrun adventurer who's in Mongolia. How can we figure this out, Scotty?

00:07:45Scott Trickett: It's not a big country, Mongolia.

00:07:48Melissa Erbacher: Presumably, the person is not the unearthed mummy. She probably doesn't know anything about iPods or social media.

00:08:00Scott Trickett: Why are you making that presumption?

00:08:04Melissa Erbacher: The mummy, because she's dead. She died a long time ago and was embalmed, probably before electronic devices were invented.

00:08:15Scott Trickett: Good point. So you've got a date when she became a mummy?

00:08:20Melissa Erbacher: Well, I don't, but I'm sure the scientists do. Don't do a lot of research for these podcasts. I mean, come on.

00:08:28Scott Trickett: Yeah, do you know which is the biggest parkrun in Melbourne?

00:08:33Melissa Erbacher: Well, if I'm to go by the advice of one of their prominent territory directors, I believe it's Diamond Creek. Would that be incorrect?

00:08:41Scott Trickett: Very much so. Do your research. Check the facts.

00:08:47Melissa Erbacher: Yeah.

00:08:49Scott Trickett: I know Dr. Scott does.

00:08:52Melissa Erbacher: Sorry, Dr. Scott.

00:08:53Scott Trickett: It's about time I got something wrong.

00:08:56Melissa Erbacher: Well, it makes a pleasant change that you're offending someone this week instead of me. So thanks for that, taking the heat off. I enjoyed my week off. Let's see who I can offend this week.

00:09:08Scott Trickett: We've got plenty of program left to go, and it's a busy one this week. So should we crack on?

Guest interview — Tom Williams on the Little Stoke parkrun charging dispute

00:09:14Melissa Erbacher: Last week in the UK, the Stoke Gifford Parish Council voted 6 to 4 in favour of charging Little Stoke parkrun for use of the park. This decision has received global news coverage, much of it condemning the actions of the council. We are fortunate enough to be joined by Tom Williams, the Chief Operating Officer for parkrun Global.

00:09:34Unidentified speaker: Welcome to the pod, Tom.

00:09:37Scott Trickett: Hi Scott, nice to be on. Yes, it's certainly great that you could join us, Tom. We wanted to get a little bit of a background on what has probably been the biggest media story in parkrun history.

00:09:48Tom Williams: Yeah, I'm sure it has been the biggest parkrun news story. It's been amazing, really. It's actually been going for about six months, maybe a little bit longer. We've been surprised at the level of outpouring. We've been touched and humbled and we feel really honoured at really how much people love what we do. From all aspects of society, really, people, non-parkrunners, regular parkrunners, top elite runners who have or haven't done parkrun, celebrities, government, Governing bodies, everybody has come out overwhelmingly in support, which has been humbling.

00:10:21Scott Trickett: Let's take it back to six months ago. How did it all come about that the council wanted to start charging Baccarat?

00:10:28Tom Williams: Well, it's an interesting situation, really, and I think this is where a lot of the problems stem from. We've been at pains throughout to say we don't want to vilify the council. We want to come to a positive resolution with them as opposed to really try and have any kind of fight or anything like that. Unfortunately... they made a decision without consulting us or the local team at the time and then communicated that decision to the local team without really any consultation. And that was back in September. And that decision was that every parkrunner should be charged a pound every time they run and then that money should be handed over to the council. And as you can imagine, that didn't go down particularly well.

00:11:11Scott Trickett: No. We've got a similar situation here in Melbourne as well, where the local council wanted to do that. We know it's unfeasible, but can you tell listeners what are the consequences of if parkrun agrees to do that? How much damage can it do to parkrun itself?

00:11:29Tom Williams: Yeah, this is really important. And I think a lot of people caught on to this fairly quickly. And we've had some support from really high levels in government, for example, the Minister for Sport and DCMS and so on. And they... It's clear that everybody realised that not only is the future of Little Stoke parkrun at risk here, but actually the future of parkrun across the world is at risk. And the reason for that is, we're successful, parkrun is successful because we break down barriers to delivery of events. not necessarily because we break down barriers to participation and we do do that fairly well but there are other things you can go and do for free and there are other things that are easy to get involved in perhaps not as easy as parkrun but they are out there but what we do is we break down the barriers for local people to deliver these events in their local communities that then allows us to have as we do at the moment 850 local events every single week and we're starting about 350 a year at the current run rate key to breaking down, removing barriers to people delivering events is those local teams or part of HQ centrally not having to apply for grants for every single event, every single year. You can imagine if we had to apply for 850 grants every year at the moment and growing. And also key that Part Run, HQ or the local events don't have to find the money every single year ongoing to support those events. So, you know, obviously councils will say things like, well, the fee wouldn't go up, we'd charge you a minimum amount, it'd never change. But of course, once you open the door to that charging, it's very difficult to control and to limit it. And so I think in Australia you've got about 170 events. And if you put a fee on each of those, or you have 25,000 runners, if you put a fee on each of those and you grow the way we expect you to grow, so I would expect Australia within 10 years certainly to have 500 or 600 events, probably having juniors as well, probably having 100,000 runners a week. And actually, when you start saying, well, that's an Aussie dollar a runner, 100,000 Aussie dollars a week simply doesn't work. And so in order for us to not set that precedent and to protect that ethos, that free to participate ethos, and to continue to remove barriers to the delivery of events, it's critical that we don't accept... then this is the way we would phrase it. We don't accept permission to use any land that we use on the condition of a fee being paid or a grant being raised.

00:13:59Scott Trickett: Makes sense to me. So the outcome is that the council decided to impose a fee on Little Stoke. So parkrun stopped or cancelled the event on the weekend. What's the future for Little Stoke as we stand right now?

00:14:15Tom Williams: It's not overly clear. I would say today we've had a head office meeting of the senior management department this morning just before I spoke to you to discuss where we are. Since that initial request of a pound a runner, it's been very difficult for us to really get clarity from the local council as to what they really want other than money. So they've been unable to define an amount of money. Although they've talked about grants that they would help us to apply for, we believe those grants don't really exist. They've also been unable to identify the amount that having parkrun there costs the council through wear and tear or whatever it might be. They've also not been interested in conversations around any things we can add in value in kind in terms of non-part-run volunteering in terms of promoting other local events and so on. So it's a really awkward situation where we are currently looking at the robustness of their decision. So we respect their decision. their position as a local parish council in the UK to make a democratic decision with an outcome and for them to attempt to enforce that outcome. At the moment we're looking at actually what is the robustness of that decision and what's our right to appeal and actually it's a little bit more complicated than we first thought. We're still hopeful for a positive outcome. We took the decision to... Cancel Little Stoke parkrun on Saturday for a number of reasons. One, the event team, who are all local volunteers, are absolutely exhausted. They've done a phenomenal job, but they've signed up as event core volunteers of a local parkrun and they've found themselves on the biggest... television programmes in the country, live, being grilled by TV presenters and being put next to the councillors who have just made this decision. So it's been a hugely challenging time for them. They've been phenomenal. I don't say that lightly. They really have been unbelievable. However, they were exhausted. And at the same time, the outpouring of... feelings were so strong we all as a group between the local volunteer team and us at HQ we didn't believe that it was possible to guarantee the safety of that event had it gone ahead so it has about 300 runners a week it's a three lap course three and a half lap course in a relatively small park we wouldn't like it at the moment to have more than four or five hundred runners I'm sure and there was a genuine concern we could have several thousand runners turn up So it was cancelled on Saturday. We've not yet discussed. It's now Monday. We've not yet discussed what this Saturday will look like. It may or may not be cancelled this Saturday. And we're just taking each day as it comes, really. And I honestly could not give you a view on whether I think we will see Little Stoke parkrun again. Hopefully we will. We're doing everything we can possibly to get it going again.

00:17:08Scott Trickett: I've got one more question on the cancel. Just from a novice, from an Australian perspective, Is there any difference between a parish council and a normal council, rational thinking council?

00:17:22Tom Williams: It's really interesting and I've learned a lot more about it than I knew before. I'm still, I wouldn't say I'm an expert on these things. Essentially, the parkrun comes under the jurisdiction of South Gloucestershire County Council. So that's the kind of county it sits within. But in certain areas of the UK, much, much, much smaller areas of a county, the power is delegated down to a local parish council who are a group of, I think in this case, 12 parish councillors who have certain rights over the use of the land in that council. So they will set rates for football pitches borrowing it. They will give football teams borrowing the pitches. They will... give people like us permission or not. So we have our permission letter which we got when we started Little Stoke parkrun is a permission letter from Stoke Gifford Parish Council. It's not overly clear where the ultimate power lies in these kind of things. They are the lowest level of government as far as I can understand. However, it's not clear whether higher levels can directly overrule them. And my feeling is they probably can't because that parish council are put in place to use democracy and make these decisions. And that is what they've done.

00:18:37Melissa Erbacher: Tom, you mentioned before the outpouring of support for Little Stokes that you've got from both across the country and internationally. And there have been a lot of questions here in Australia from event teams about what they can do to help and just other parkrunners as well. I understand there are a lot of petitions or one or two separate petitions going around. What exactly could we do to help the Little Stoke parkrun cause?

00:19:06Tom Williams: So I think at the moment, the best thing people can do is just show their support, typically on social media by sharing images and using the hashtag that we came up with, Love Little Stoke. And that's made a huge difference to the team and the community there, and they all feel like they're being very much supported. The petition's an interesting one. So it's had, I think, in excess of 55,000 signatures so far. It's not something that we've actually particularly promoted centrally. And the reason for that has always been that... it's really local signatures that are most important and most influential in them. So you're better to have 5,000 signatures of which they're all local than a million signatures of which none of them are local because it's a local issue. What we have found, however, is that the large number of signatures on that petition has really engaged the interest of... politicians and the establishment and of the news pages. So actually, although it may not directly influence Little Stoke, Stoke Gifford Parish Council, which is the parish council we're talking about, it has actually helped us to raise the profile of the case, which is really important to us. So I think if people want to go along to the change.org petition, they'll find it. If they search for Little Stoke parkrun on change.org, then they can sign that. And that's really great. And actually it shows some solidarity around the world and the importance of parkrun to people. um mostly we're kind of appealing for calm and for people to um let us and the local little stoke parkrun volunteer team do everything we can to work with the council to come to a satisfactory resolution um and and hopefully we'll do that i've got to say the response from parkrun

00:20:28[crosstalk]

00:20:48Scott Trickett: I liked it. I really liked it. That it was a calm response. It wasn't provocative in any way. Did you feel proud to be part of parkrun moment in time?

00:20:58Tom Williams: Yeah. Hugely proud. The proudest moment for me really was seeing Geoff Keogh, the local ambassador, and then Becky Bushnell, the event director, in fact, in the other order, going on BBC Breakfast. So it was the day after the announcement. We'd just that night had the decision to go against this. Emotions were really high. They'd barely slept. And they found themselves on BBC Breakfast, which is one of the most watched TV programmes in the UK, live to the nation. being stood right next to the chairman of the council who had made that decision ultimately to throw them out. And they were unbelievable. And I think to see volunteers, I mean, for us, it's our job. So for me, it's my job. And I'm really proud of how my staff and myself have acted, but it's our job. that's kind of what we sign up to do and that's how I see how we earn our money. That's what we need to do well. But for the volunteers, they don't step up to do that. They don't sign up to do that. They sign up to get people active in their local park. So for them to... act with a level of professionalism and expertise and and jeff keogh the local ambassador was on a very very big radio two show um here in the uk called the jeremy vine show um again with with a representative from stoke gifford parish council and was just so awesome and we've given them no media training we've not like sorry turn my phone off We've given them no media training. We've supported them as best we can, but they've just excelled. And for me, I was really proud of that, really proud of those volunteers just achieving wonderful things.

00:22:31Scott Trickett: And one of the side effects to all this is there's no such thing as bad publicity. The registrations and the attendance this week all went up in the UK.

00:22:40Tom Williams: Yeah, not record registrations overall, I guess, because in January and February, we see insane registrations. So in the first week of January, we'll typically see 20,000 registrations. But we average in the UK about 10,000 registrations a week, and we had 14,000. So it was a very clear 40% spike in registrations. I think it was the biggest ever Tuesday and Wednesday in history for parkrun registrations. And actually, we had shocking weather in the UK, and we were only... Probably across the whole weekend, I think we were about 500 people short of an overall attendance record. I think we had 89,000 participants compared to a record of about 90. But actually, English weather is bad. I know that, but it was particularly bad. So we had snow and sub-zero temperatures across lots of the UK, which for the middle of April is unheard of. So I think that probably stopped us having actually quite a significant attendance record.

00:23:34Melissa Erbacher: It's been wonderful to have your perspective, Tom, especially given... your involvement with parkrun in uk and global essentially so thank you very much for joining us thank you for covering it i really really appreciate it thanks for all your support everybody in australia it's been amazing

00:23:39[music]

Interview with a parkrunner who has an interesting story (unnamed slot) — Pat Farmer

00:24:02Scott Trickett: From time to time on the podcast, we like to catch up with parkrunners around the world and around Australia, who have got an interesting story to tell. This week, we're a little bit chuffed to be joined by Pat Farmer, who I'm hoping most of you wouldn't know. Pat's got an illustrious career of running, but he also loves parkrun. So welcome to the parkrun Adventurers, Pat Farmer.

00:24:27Pat Farmer: Thank you so much. It's great to be here and great to have a chat with fellow parkrunners.

00:24:32Scott Trickett: Now, Pat, you're just back in the country, I assume. You've just returned from an epic journey through India.

00:24:39Pat Farmer: Yeah.

00:24:39Scott Trickett: Do you want to tell us a little bit about what you're up to?

00:24:42Pat Farmer: Yeah, well, look, I often go and speak to kids in schools, high schools, primary schools, right around the country and indeed overseas. And the first thing I say to the kids when I speak to them is, hands up everybody that does cross country. And they all put their hands up. And then they'll say to them, what country do you cross? And then they all put their hands back down again. And it's a bit like that with me, I suppose. I've just run the length of India from Kanyakumari right through to Kashmir, so southernmost point to northernmost point. And prior to that, of course, I've run the length of Vietnam. uh from chinese border right down to the southernmost point a place called nam can uh then i've run lebanon jordan israel palestine i've raced across america a couple of times and around australia and a few other countries in the world um via the um pole to pole run that i did from north pole down through into the south pole so so um With that in mind, I was looking for a new challenge and I had the opportunity to have a look at India. Of course, India is one of these places that is just so dynamic and so different and diverse from one place to the next. They call India the nation of nations because it was once upon a time many different kingdoms and then those kingdoms came together to form states and those states came together to form the country as we know it today. So consequently, they do things a little bit differently from one state to the next state and then all the way through the country because of climate changes and because of diversity. It's just so different. Let me give you an example. Down south through Tamil Nadu where I started is where the three seas meet. So you've got like the Indian Ocean, the Bengal Sea and of course the Arabian Sea and all three of these meet at one point one beach and that's where that's basically where I started, a place called Kanyakumari from there I was I was assisted with thousands literally thousands of runners on the 26th of January which is not only Australia Day but it's also India Republic Day and from there I ran on up the coastline through around 13 other states all the way through to Kashmir. So basically up the coastline through to Mumbai, which is still on the western coast of India. And then from there I went a little bit further north and then headed inland towards Agra. Agra is famous for the Taj Mahal. And then from Agra on up into Delhi and from Delhi on up into Kashmir via Rajasthan and a number of other really fascinating, incredibly exotic places which were which were just tremendous. Probably the most standout place out of all of that was Amritsar. And Amritsar is right near the Indian-Pakistan border. And it's famous for, one, the changing of the guard every single morning and every single afternoon. They raise the flag and then they lower the flag, both in Pakistan and in India. And they have a bit of a face-off. It's almost like watching gladiators perform and they have grandstands on both sides of the border and crowds of people clapping and cheering each side on as they face off with each other and then of course lower the flags or put the flags up if it's in the morning. And then it's also famous for the Golden Temple. The Golden Temple is run by the Sikhs and the most amazing thing about this beautiful Golden Temple aside from the many stories that come with it, is the fact that they feed 80,000 people a day, just poor people, any people, any denomination, any faith that come there that are looking for a meal, they provide them with a meal for the day. So it's a really beautiful way for me to have started that day's run of 80 kilometres.

00:28:38Melissa Erbacher: So, Pat, you mentioned that you started in the south, obviously, and where all the oceans and seas meet. I understand in the first couple of days that you had some quite high temperatures and extreme humidity to deal with. How did you cope with that?

00:28:55Pat Farmer: Well, for your Australian listeners, down south it would be Very similar to running through Kerala and running through Kerala and Tamil Nadu right up through India or just shy of Goa is very similar at that time of the year in January. It's very similar to running through Northern Territory in say January. It's very, very hot, incredibly humid. And I knew that I'd struggle with the heat there having come straight across from Sydney and not having much time to acclimatise. But it really sapped my energy. And of course, any of the runners out there will know that dry heat, you can deal with that even if it's up as high as 40 degrees. I've run the Simpson Desert and Death Valley in America and a number of other deserts around the world. And that dry heat, what happens is it's hot and it's piercing your body almost. But what happens with it is you sweat and then the sweat makes its way to the outer layer of your clothing. It dries off and then you get a cooling effect from it. But when it's very, very humid, what happens is you sweat and then the sweat just sits in your clothing. It doesn't dry off at all. And so it creates another insulation barrier between yourself and the air outside and then what happens is you just overheat and that's exactly what happened to me. I ended up having to go to the hospital after only two days and I got three liters of fluid water put into my arm or three liters of saline put into my arm then got off out of the hospital bed and did another 18 kilometers to get my distance done for the day. So I was running approximately 80 kilometers a day every single day for the full duration of this run, so that's 64 days. And, you know, down south it was because of the humidity and the acclimatization in the early stages, I found it very, very difficult, but not impossible.

00:31:04Melissa Erbacher: You've certainly got some tenacity. Does stubbornness run in your family?

00:31:08Pat Farmer: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, some people say that it's determination. And other people say it's stubbornness. It just depends on how you look at it. Either way, it's a good trait in an athlete because athletes need to be able to face the barriers and walls and difficulties, whether they be internally or externally, and then they need to be able to push through that. And the only way you can do that is by being incredibly stubborn and determined and focused on what your end result is to be and what you want it to be.

00:31:40Melissa Erbacher: I love the word stubborn. It's definitely a compliment when I use it.

00:31:46Scott Trickett: So the end result, you were running for disadvantaged women throughout India, so you were raising awareness and funds for that cause?

00:31:56Pat Farmer: Yeah, well what a lot of people would probably know already is that India had a caste system not that long ago and basically people just believed that they were always going to be poor in life or they were always going to be wealthy in life or they were always destined to be what they were and that was all there was to it and they couldn't change their stars as they say in the movies but But of course, we all know that not to be true. And if with hard work and determination and often with education and study, you can change your stars, you can change your future. And so it's only just in recent times and a lot of work because of Mahatma Gandhi, of course, who rebelled against this caste system, that things changed in India and that system was basically changed and people started believing in themselves. And with that in mind, you started to get a bit of an evolution. Now, one of the big problems has been is that When people come from very, very poor families in India, a lot of the poor farming parents will turn around and they'll say, look, we've got two children, we've got a boy and we've got a girl. is a good chance that our girl will probably get married and then whoever she marries will bring the income into the family. So it doesn't matter if she gets an education or not. So they don't bother pursuing an education for their daughter. I was trying to change that mindset. Of course, the Prime Minister, Prime Minister Modi, is another person who's working diligently to change that and it is changing and through the NGOs like the Nanhi Kali Foundation which was the organization I was raising money for um they're changing that situation now the great thing about that is what I've always said is that if you educate the girl child then you educate the future mothers and if you educate the mothers you educate the family and if you educate the family of course you educate the nation so I mean through this run and through uh through the fundraising as well directly, we're making a difference to literally thousands of people's lives there in India and it's tremendous to be able to do that. And like I've seen it in Egypt, I did a bit of work for the International Red Cross in Egypt and I saw over there they have a system where a lot of the women who are very, very poor, they can't read or write, they're completely illiterate and they're living in rubbish tips out in the deserts of Cairo. And I saw this firsthand myself. And they couldn't read or write because, and so consequently, their children didn't get a birth certificate because they couldn't fill out the forms when their child was born. So that meant that when their child grew up, that child didn't get an ID card. And so in Egypt, without an ID card, you can't get a job. You can't work. So you can only work on the black market. And if you work on the black market, you get paid absolute peanuts and you basically resolve yourself to a life of slavery. And so that was what was happening there and I didn't want to see that same thing happen in India or any other place. So I've been working for years to try and change that and through education is the way to do it.

00:35:16Scott Trickett: I've got to say, I love your courses that you've run for. That's a course that we don't hear a lot of. You ran in Israel, Lebanon, Palestine for the peace run. The pole-to-pole run was for clean water. How do you go about choosing what course you run for and what you choose to raise money for?

00:35:35Pat Farmer: Well, there's a bit of practicality comes into all of that. A lot of your listeners are athletes that want to make a difference through their running, and so they often look for a cause, a charity, and usually that cause or that charity is pretty close to home, so it may be something that's affected them or something that's happened to somebody close to them. In my... With my life, you know, I always look globally at things. So, for instance, with the pole-to-pole run, I imagine myself running through places like Ecuador, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala, places like that that most Australians have never even heard of. And I thought to myself, now, if I'm running there for the Humpty Dumpty Foundation, which is a charity that operates out of Sydney, nobody is going to know what on earth that is and i'm going to spend half my life explaining to them what it's all about so for that reason i chose an international charity and of course there was a few big ones and one of those that stood out in my mind was of course the the international red cross and i was very impressed with their clean water projects and their and their projects to alleviate poverty. So that's why I did the poll run for the Red Cross, because I knew every single country I went into, they would already know about the Red Cross, there would already be mechanisms in place which would make my job a hell of a lot easier. So that was important to me. When I ran in Vietnam, the length of Vietnam, of course, clean sanitary conditions was something that was high on the agenda. A lot of people were dying before they left their teenage years because of poor sanitary condition and the lack of clean drinking water, which is just crazy in these times when We can send people into outer space. We're talking about jet packs on just ordinary commuters, and yet people are dying because they can't get their hands on a filtration system for clean drinking water or be able to find a toilet. And that's what gets up my goat and makes me determined to do the things I do. So when I just see just huge anomalies between very, very poor people and the lifestyle that we take for granted here in Australia. So naturally, that was something that I felt strongly about as I ran through Vietnam and You know, we made a big difference there. And then, of course, now with this last run, I tapped into girls' education and then I needed to find, you know, who were the NGOs that were delivering that. And then I did a little bit of research to make sure that they're all credible and reputable. And one of the things that I always do is I never handle the money. So whenever I'm planning a run, I organize my own sponsorship to do the run. So first of all, I get the run in place. And that means if there's a film crew going along, I organize to pay the film crew and everything's covered. And then I select the charity so that I'm doing the run regardless of funds raised. And then the funds raised, every single cent of those funds raised goes directly to the charity.

00:38:49Scott Trickett: You're a busy man, Pat. You do a lot of running, obviously, which we've heard about. We know you've done some parkruns. Do you have much time for parkrun, and what do you like about parkruns?

00:39:01Pat Farmer: Well, I love parkrun for numerous reasons. Everybody has their own reasons for loving parkrun. Some people love it because they see it as an opportunity to meet their future husband, wife, partner, whatever. And I see that occurring more and more these days. In fact, even my daughter's over in London at the moment and she's, not that she's looking for anybody, she has a boyfriend over here, but she's, she loves, you know, she started going to parkrun over there in London, it's her first job, because she just wanted to meet other people and not feel so isolated in a whole new country. So, It's one of the beautiful things about it is that you meet like-minded people for starters. Second thing I love about it is that there's no pressure. It's up to your own personal best and you just go in there and some people are trying to lose weight and some people are trying to run a good time or a better time than they did the week before. And some people just use that as their regular training regime or regular exercise regime. So it helps keep them honest because they've got something to aim for each week. For me, obviously the distance is short in comparison to the things I do, but I like to be able to have a bit of speed from time to time. And so I love to go out there and have a shot at the shorter runs against all sorts of people. And they just help keep me honest and help me to work hard at those shorter runs, which normally I could easily get very complacent about. But you never know when you might need a kick in an event where you just need to pick up the pace a little bit. So parkrun helps me a lot with that. So I run, obviously, when we're traveling interstate, both myself, Tanya and I, my wife, Tanya, she loves parkrun as well and she's a member. We go to St. Peter's when we're at home here. And then when we're not here, when we're traveling anywhere, she always tries to look for a parkrun that's on somewhere, and we'll go along to that parkrun. And I think that's one of the beauties of it all, that you can still do your Saturday morning run anywhere in the world and usually find a parkrun. And, you know, it's free, it's great, and may it always be that way.

00:41:15Scott Trickett: Tanya sounds like a real parkrun adventurer. She's doing what we all do. She won't go on a holiday if they don't have a parkrun nearby.

00:41:22Pat Farmer: Basically, yeah.

00:41:24Melissa Erbacher: And Tanya, she's beating you on the numbers at parkrun as well, isn't she? She's going to get to her 100 shirt before you do.

00:41:32Pat Farmer: That's what she said to me. Because I just go, like, I show up, you know, I show up to get a bit of spin every now and then. Of course, I'll have a layoff now still for another two weeks before I do any running. So I'm trying to put some weight on. I lost 10 kilos from that last run. And I need to put some weight back on and get some strength back in my body. And then I'll get back into it. But she keeps saying to me all the time, I'm going to get my T-shirt, my 100th T-shirt. And it's amazing. It's the greatest prize in the world to her as far as she's concerned. That's it, you know. Forget about a gold medal for the Olympics. She just wants a parkrun T-shirt.

00:42:10Melissa Erbacher: Oh, look, I'm still working toward my 100th shirt. It's going to be another few months away yet, and I've been doing it for four years, so...

00:42:18Scott Trickett: Part of the global growth for parkrun is targeting India. How do you think parkrun will go in India and what impact do you reckon it would have if it ever gets up there?

00:42:30Pat Farmer: it will have enormous impact beyond anybody's wildest dreams. There were so many people saying to me, like I said, I was joined by sometimes two or three people and other times two or three thousand people on the sides of the road. People would just join in to run with me, schools, colleges, individuals, all sorts of people. I had people from the military run with me, from the Air Force, Army, Navy, the police force. But one of the things that came through loud and clear from everybody is that they want more events on in India and they want, they want to run and they want to run because anybody can do it. One of the things I love about running and why I said that this was probably one of the best diplomatic missions that had ever been carried out by anyone between Australia and India was because when you run young people, old people, boys, girls, boys, you know, people of all ages can compete in the same event together. Whereas if you're playing a game of cricket or soccer or, you know, it's categorized and you know, you're in the under sevens or you're in the under 21s or you're the male, you're in the male team or you're in the female team or you're in the old buffers team or whatever. Whereas with running, anybody and everybody can go in the event. They can compete together and they love that. And the other thing that they love is all you need is a park or a, nice open space with a bit of fresh air and just a pair of shoes or in some cases as I saw in India you don't even need the shoes so you can just get out there and you can just do it and to be able to run with other people gives you a sense of unity a sense of belonging as well and it's a quite a driving force to know that you you you're accompanied by other people in what you're doing and like-minded people and that you're not alone after all so It's a beautiful thing. It will take off enormously in India. It will go incredibly well. In fact, I've been asked back to head up a number of runs and races over there and help them sort out a few more events. So you will see that the whole running epidemic will really take off in India. And when you consider they have 1.2 billion people, don't be surprised at the changes. At the moment, Most people don't see India as much of an athletic nation, but if they take a hold of this, they will really start to excel.

00:44:56Melissa Erbacher: Now, Pat, when you did your pole-to-pole run, you came across some polar bears. And I have what I consider to be an entirely rational fear of bears. So I just want to know, what do you do when that happens?

00:45:13Pat Farmer: Well, the first thing you have to do is try never to get in that situation in the wild. I'll tell you a little bit of a lead-up story to that whole deal. I was in New York in 2010 and I was staying in New York in 2010 in the lead-up to the run that would start later on in April 2011 up in Longyearbyen and from there I'd be flown by I'd be flown by plane and then Russian helicopter into the North Pole. Longyearbyen is one of the islands off the coast of Norway. So I was in New York climatizing and training for that, and I had my two children with me, Brooke and Dylan, and they were much younger back in those days. And... I remember taking them to New York Zoo one morning. There was a lot of snow around that year in 2010, by the way, and I purposely set my base up there because I would drag a truck tyre from Harlem down into Central Park and then I would drag it around four laps. So that's 40 k's basically around Central Park and then drag it back up into where I was staying. My hands were frozen, and then I'd thaw out in a bath, and then I'd take my kids out for the day. I remember taking them out on this one day, and I told them, we're going to the zoo, which is in Central Park. I said, we're going to look at a polar bear. They said, Dad, what do you want to go see a polar bear for? I said, I want to see what I'm up against. I went and checked out this polar bear at the zoo before I took off on the run. And it said basically on the side of the cage, this is Fluffy the Bear or whatever his name was at the time, and he consumes 20,000 calories, no, 40,000 calories a day. And I remember thinking to myself at the time, well, I'm supposed to consume between 10 and 15,000 calories a day when I get into the North Pole. There's no way in the world that I'll be able to get my hands on 10 or 15 Big Macs a day, and I'm not going to be able to eat that much anyway, so I don't know what I'm going to do. As it turns out, I ended up surviving on olive oil and some other pretty gross things that were high in calories. But my point, my point was that first of all, you have to know your enemy. So I learned as much as I possibly could about bears, polar bears, black bears and grizzly bears, because I came across those in Canada. Um, uh, and then secondly, I, uh, you've got to make sure that you're always trying to stay upwind. So whenever you could, whenever you saw there was polar bear prints in the ice there in the polar region, I would always try and stay upwind. And as a consequence to that, yes, I did see polar bears and I did see a big black bear that I come very, very close to as well in Canada. The black bear, I didn't have a choice. He was on the road and he was just right in front of me. thankfully for me he wasn't too keen on eating me and he just sort of shrugged his shoulders and basically just kept on walking across the road but with the polar bears when they come out they're incredibly hungry but the thing that touched my heart was that I saw this imprint in the snow and the ice in the North Pole and it was fresh. It still had fur around the outside of the imprint. And I was wearing snowshoes at the time. I wear a size nine and a half Brooks running shoe. I had boots on, Baffin boots on at the time. So you can imagine the size of my foot. And then I had the snowshoe, which is like a tennis racket that goes on over the top of that. So you can imagine how big that was. And this whole snowshoe fitted inside the footprint of this polar bear. And then, you know, I was incredibly worried and scared about that. And then I looked a little bit closer and I saw these little paw prints on So there was two baby polar bears, two little baby polar bears that were right beside the mother as well. And obviously had been in hibernation, just come out. And so when they're like that, although they look incredibly cute, they're incredibly hungry as well. So, uh, myself and my guide was on a very, very high alert from that point on. So I carried my ice axe with me on, on my body, not just in my sled. So I tied it up on a belt around my waist. Not that I would be able to do much with an ice axe, but that's the mentality at the time. Uh, and we had a 303 rifle and although we let off a couple of rounds just to make a bit of noise, um, And scare things off. I didn't ever have to use it. So that was a good thing. But yeah, so I suppose my advice to you is don't carry food on you when you're traveling. And then the rest of it is just stay upwind. And the rest of it's in the lap of the gods. Because, you know, I would sleep in my tents, 24-hour sunlight in the North Pole. in summer and so you put a mask over your face so that it blacks it out. You get inside your sleeping bag, the wind is howling 100k an hour outside and it's snowing at the same time. The sun is blazing down still, which is really weird. And then you close your eyes and you're so worn out that you actually sleep. Well, if a polar bear wants to eat you, it'll find your tent and it'll eat you. And it'll get you before you can even wake up. So, you know, a lot of it is luck.

00:50:53Melissa Erbacher: Okay, so what I'm taking from this is plan A, avoid. Do not go to the North Pole. Don't go to Canada. And you should be fine.

00:51:02Pat Farmer: Well, or go there just in organised tours and, you know, you can always stay in a motor vehicle or a skidoo and you can stay pretty far away from these things. Or if you're with an organised group in the North Pole, you just get in and out of the helicopter and you check it all out or you fly over the top of it and that's it. But if you're actually doing an expedition across there, then good luck.

00:51:26Melissa Erbacher: Make sure you're the faster runner of the group.

00:51:29Pat Farmer: That's it, just faster than the other person, not just...

00:51:33Melissa Erbacher: Don't have to outrun the bears, just the other people.

00:51:36Pat Farmer: Exactly.

00:51:39Scott Trickett: Pat, it's been an absolute treat having you on our podcast. Thanks for telling us the stories of your adventures in India and around the world.

00:51:46Pat Farmer: And look, if anybody wants to find out, they want to see more pictures and some video, if they just go to patfarmer.com, they can see some of the short snippets of videos and bits and pieces. not only from the India run but through some of the runs that I've done over the last five or six years.

00:52:03Melissa Erbacher: Wonderful. And are they still able to donate to your Spirit of India run as well?

00:52:08Pat Farmer: Yeah, you bet. I'll be collecting funds for that right up until the end of the next month. So I'm doing a lot of corporate public speaking engagements at the moment and the funds from those are going directly to that cause as well. So if they just go onto the website, patfarmer.com, they click on the My Cause button and they can make a donation there. That would be great.

00:52:25[music]

Roving Adventurers (roving reporter crossover) — Warwick parkrun

00:52:36Scott Trickett: We've given a lot of airtime to a couple of running clubs on this podcast, namely yours, which has got a really long name, one that we haven't talked about much, but there's a lot of runners out there. You would have seen a lot of red, not parkrun 50 red, but 530 runners red. And one of our roving adventurers, Peter Pohlman, caught up with Gary Wells at parkrun on the weekend. Let's have a listen.

00:53:04Peter Pohlman: Hello parkrun Adventurers, and welcome to Warwick parkrun. Warwick is a bit of a northern stronghold for 530 Runners, and this week we are joined by Garry Wells, aka Guru, a founder of the 530 Runners. Welcome, Guru. Thank you very much. Very excited to be here.

00:53:21Unidentified speaker: For the second take. Briefly, what is 530 Runners? 530 Runners is a whole group of people, runners, all around Australia and overseas that like to get together and run.

00:53:34Peter Pohlman: Are there any requirements before joining? Yes, there is. What are the requirements for joining? Just ask to be a 530 Runner. It's a very exclusive club then.

00:53:47Unidentified speaker: Very exclusive.

00:53:48Peter Pohlman: And speaking of exclusive, do you have any thoughts on the 530s getting a cool hand sign for photos, like Wooters or Zoolanders or Westerfoldians?

00:53:58Unidentified speaker: I don't think we need it, really. That's a good answer. I like that answer. We don't need it. What are you doing here in Warwick, Gary? I'm on my way through to a family holiday in Queensland, testing out this beautiful warm weather that we're having. That's why I'm here dressed in a jumper. But, yeah, it's all good.

00:54:22Peter Pohlman: And you're going to be practising one of the legs of Pentath Run I hear tomorrow. Absolutely. Tell me more about this Pentath Run. pentath run great idea instead of just doing one run of a weekend you can totally destroy yourself doing five runs and this year Warwick parkrun is also hosting a freedom run at five o'clock on the Friday night because there's no parkrun on pentath weekend because the half marathon uses the same course so thanks for visiting Warwick parkrun Gary and happy parkrun adventure thank you very much go 530s

00:55:02Melissa Erbacher: Thanks very much, Peter and Gary. It's awesome to hear from the 530 Runners. They're also our good mate Ian Hay's club. So great to have you guys on board listening to the show. Around the social landscape this week, we've had some interesting suggestions for merchandise so far. If you recall last week, we put the call out to ask what people thought would be the essential kit that they needed as a parkrun adventurer. So we have had suggestions for technical running shirts and singlets. Ross Pentland on Twitter suggested bottle openers because you can never have too many of those. Melissa Ellis suggested that we could have running singlets that say, I'm a parkrun adventurer, which can only be obtained once a parkrunner has run at a certain amount of parkruns. That one could be very tricky to manage.

Around the social landscape

00:56:00Scott Trickett: Yeah, we'd have to put on staff. I think to keep track of that.

00:56:04Melissa Erbacher: And with what we've got to pay, which is effectively nothing, we probably wouldn't be able to put on any staff.

00:56:12Scott Trickett: Unless they're happy to be paid in leg warmers.

00:56:15Melissa Erbacher: Well, and this is the thing. You suggested leg warmers, Scotty. I'm a little bit confused about what leg warmers are exactly. When somebody says leg warmers to me, I get an image in my head of – You know, dancers with these big, fluffy, knitted things around their calves.

00:56:34Scott Trickett: Exactly. Seriously? I was trying to keep it on theme last week.

00:56:41Melissa Erbacher: So you don't mean like running calf sleeves or anything. You actually mean the big, chunky, woolly leg warmers.

00:56:49Scott Trickett: It does get cold in Melbourne. Not so much in Queensland. Well, I see people love those long socks. So I just took it to the next evolution.

00:56:59Melissa Erbacher: You think parkrun adventurers on long socks would be performance enhancing?

00:57:03Scott Trickett: Let's not go there. Okay, so we've got some great suggestions for merchandise. We'll put it in the big think tank and we'll come back when we've got a strategy.

00:57:14Melissa Erbacher: And or money to create said merchandise.

00:57:19Scott Trickett: How was Instagram this week?

00:57:22Melissa Erbacher: Instagram was awesome this week. We had Stuart Marshall training, checking in. This was a bit of a special pic because he shared a photo of a couple holding a just married sign. I'm assuming he is the gentleman in that photo. And the caption that goes with it is, the caption says it all, love you beautiful wife, would not be where I am today without you. So how romantic is that? To be hashtag parkrun adventurers, they're obviously avid parkrunners and they've just got married. I feel really special that we were involved in that.

00:58:00Scott Trickett: I'm guessing it was a parkrun meeting, reunion. What are they called?

00:58:05Melissa Erbacher: I think it's actually that they just parkrun together. parkrunners, yeah. You don't think they met? Have fun together. Well, they didn't mention it. in their other hashtags. So, yeah. I don't know. Stuart, Marshall, Train, get in touch and give us your story.

00:58:25Scott Trickett: I also noticed Healthy Mum, Healthy Family had a pic of the Bent Logic tag with the hashtag Never Forget Barcode Again.

00:58:34Melissa Erbacher: I'm still to get one of those round plastic Bent Logic tags. A couple of years ago for Christmas, every family member who was registered with parkrun got one from me in their stocking. Do you think anyone thought to spend $6 on me? No. No. Still no BentLogic tag for me. Gems underscore 21 shared a very cute video of a young person doing parkrun and said, this is how a two-year-old does parkrun. No stopping this kid. I particularly love the hashtag that she used. Only meant to do one lap but ran the whole five kilometres. How impressive is that? A two-year-old doing the whole five kilometers. I am in awe of this child. Big parkrun career ahead of him.

00:59:25Scott Trickett: Thanks, Gems21. We also had some posts from our regulars, Running Guy Ryan, Misspelt, Underscore PK, and Positiveism1. So thanks, guys. We do see them. We still love them.

Where is the cake this week? (launches and anniversaries)

00:59:38Melissa Erbacher: This week we've got a launch in South Australia. It's been a little while since SA has had a launch, so it's pretty exciting.

00:59:47Scott Trickett: In the Clare Valley too.

00:59:48Melissa Erbacher: Mm-hmm.

00:59:50Scott Trickett: We talked about this on previous episodes when we had Robbo on. He mentioned that there was a parkrun coming to the Clare Valley and there might be a connection with a winery.

01:00:00Melissa Erbacher: The Naked Runners have their own winery.

01:00:03Scott Trickett: Mm-hmm.

01:00:05Melissa Erbacher: Well, they don't have their own winery, but there's a brand, a label of wine called the Naked Runners or Running Naked, something along those lines. Either way, I'm pretty sure it's very drinkable. We need to get down to Clare very soon and test out their parkrun as well as the other local fair.

01:00:23Scott Trickett: It'd be cool if we could find a winery called the Adventurers.

01:00:27Melissa Erbacher: Let's just make one. Maybe that's the merchandise we need to go into. It's the fuel, the fuel for adventures. Ooh. put that in the think tank as well and where is the cake this week oh the cake is all over the country we've got Ginninderra in the ACT having their fourth anniversary how awesome is that lilydale lake in victoria are having their second anniversary with a very cool red theme i like a color theme just a solid color always looks good in the photos

01:01:02Scott Trickett: Rockingham in WA are celebrating their third anniversary with a heroes and villains theme. And rounding it out, Stone's Corner.

01:01:11Unidentified speaker: Queensland.

01:01:13Scott Trickett: Ian Hay's event. They're celebrating two years with a fluoro event. And interestingly enough, the whole event team from Southbank parkrun are volunteering there this week.

01:01:27Melissa Erbacher: They are. That's a nice gesture. I'm not sure... I would take up the offer to have my event run by another event team because I'm a bit of a volunteer who runs as opposed to a runner who volunteers. But lovely, lovely gesture from the South Bank parkrun team and I'm pretty sure the Stones Corner team were very chuffed to receive it.

01:01:50Scott Trickett: Clearly. So hopefully Ian will give us a report in amongst all his facts and stats in a couple of weeks' time. We'll hear all about the fluoro run.

01:01:59Melissa Erbacher: And that's it from us this week. Big episode. We hope you enjoyed it.

01:02:05Scott Trickett: This is another long one, so let's wrap it up now. We will be back next week with our 17th episode. So for now, it's goodbye.

01:02:12Melissa Erbacher: Chat to you next week.