Episode 26 - Double Anniversary

Episode details · 209 speaker turns · sound cues from context

00:00:12Scott Trickett: What's up? parkrun Adventurers, welcome to episode 26. You set me a challenge, Mel.

00:00:23Melissa Erbacher: I set you a challenge.

00:00:25Scott Trickett: I still don't know what SUPs are, so I'm just practicing.

00:00:29Melissa Erbacher: Are you serious?

00:00:30Scott Trickett: Yeah, I don't. What is an SUP?

00:00:32Melissa Erbacher: If it's not, what's up? It's a stand-up paddleboard. Oh.

00:00:41Scott Trickett: What a letdown.

00:00:44Melissa Erbacher: Oh, I'm sorry.

00:00:48Scott Trickett: I thought it was just walking around saying what's up. Okay.

00:00:53Melissa Erbacher: Well, you can keep on your merry way with that if you like, if it'll make you happy.

00:00:57Scott Trickett: I think I will. I think I will. Now, another weekend of parkrun has just passed. I celebrated an anniversary out at Gels parkrun. It was another lovely morning. Weather-wise, it wasn't so great down in Melbourne. I know you're a bit north of me. Did you have better luck with the weather?

00:01:17Melissa Erbacher: It was spectacular in Gladstone. It was really, really beautiful.

00:01:23Scott Trickett: Well, I was sitting up in the dark in the rain, but still I had a great time at parkrun.

00:01:30Melissa Erbacher: Did you wear some crazy socks?

00:01:33Scott Trickett: I wore some socks. I think they were crazy enough. You wore some socks. Yeah, I think they were crazy enough to get by.

00:01:39Melissa Erbacher: Did you get very many where's Wally comments?

00:01:42Scott Trickett: So you've seen the photo.

00:01:45Melissa Erbacher: I have.

00:01:46Scott Trickett: Yeah, no, I didn't get any where's Wallys.

00:01:51Melissa Erbacher: You didn't get any? Nope. Oh. I'm a little bit disappointed in the people that attended Jells on Saturday.

00:02:00Scott Trickett: They're pretty cool. They're pretty mellow at Jells. It's not too much in your face. What's up? It's more, hey, I'm here to do parkrun. Five at Jells. There weren't a lot of crazy socks, but there were a few.

00:02:15Melissa Erbacher: Oh, we saw some in the pictures on Instagram and on Facebook, but we'll talk about that later.

00:02:21Scott Trickett: Okay.

00:02:22Melissa Erbacher: Did you have a nice morning, though? You guys had cake. You know, it's an anniversary. All reasons to celebrate.

00:02:29Scott Trickett: Yeah, we got to hand out some officially awesome medals. Handed out the new medals, so that was exciting as well, as I had a little bit to do with those medals.

00:02:38Melissa Erbacher: Yeah. This is not a very widely known story, but I had a bit of a territory director fail a fortnight ago at Town of Seaside's anniversary and I took the wrong medals. So because I was also the photographer that day, when we handed out the medals for the points prize winners, They all put them on and they didn't know any of it. And I was like, stay up, stay up the front. You got to stay there for a photo. And as soon as I took the photo of all of them, I rushed forward and said, okay, guys, now what you don't realize is that all your medals actually stay Gladstone parkrun on the back of them. So I'm going to need those back and I will give your actual medals to your event director and she'll bring it next week and bless them. They're all very understanding. I hadn't actually told Gladstone that their medals were worn very temporarily by the Town of Seaside recipients the week before. So, Craig, Carmen, hi. Yeah, that's okay. They weren't dirty or anything when I gave them to you last weekend.

00:03:47Scott Trickett: I checked. Did you have them pre- or post-run?

00:03:51Melissa Erbacher: Pre-run. We do them pre-run. Well, actually, they were pre-run at Town of Seaside and they were post-run at Gladstone.

00:03:58Scott Trickett: Well, that's okay then. You know, it's funny because I almost did exactly the same thing. I had a bag of medals for packing them and I packed them in the Jells bag and it was only 11 o'clock the night before that I thought, let's just double check. Let's make sure I've got the right medals. And I didn't. So I quickly swapped them over.

00:04:21Melissa Erbacher: Well, I can promise you I won't be doing that again. Probably. Probably.

00:04:26Scott Trickett: Does this mean there are people in Town of Seaside who don't have their medals?

00:04:29Melissa Erbacher: No, they've got them by now. I gave them to the event director the next day.

00:04:34Scott Trickett: Phew.

00:04:35Melissa Erbacher: Yeah. I had them all ordered. I've got, as I mentioned in previous podcasts, the gauntlet of anniversaries for the next couple of months. And so I've got all the medals ordered and I have them in order of the anniversaries. And I literally picked the two bags up and I went, no, that's not the right bag. And I must have held on to it and put the correct one back in. And yeah, so it was just, they were right next to each other. And even though I looked on the back, I still took the wrong one. I must have been a bit of the absent-minded professor that day.

00:05:10Scott Trickett: But they were all understanding.

00:05:11Melissa Erbacher: Well, yeah, they gave them up easily enough, especially since it said Gladstone on the back. I guess they didn't really want Gladstone medals when they live and run at Town of Seaside. Yes, no, they were all...

00:05:24Scott Trickett: They're an understanding bunch of tossers.

00:05:27Melissa Erbacher: Yes, very understanding. And the event directors didn't even give me any grief about it yet, so that's good too. I might get some questions next year just before the anniversary that am I sure I've got the right medals, but that remains to be seen.

00:05:43Scott Trickett: And Gladstone, a good morning for you there, up there.

00:05:47Melissa Erbacher: It was a beautiful morning. We had, I don't even know how many, oh, there was just less than 100, I think, parkrunners on the day. I was a volunteer photographer for the second week running and got to go for a bit of a saunter out onto the course and took some photos of all the runners out on the course this week before heading back in. And yeah, no, it was a very lovely, relaxed morning and I think everybody had a really good time.

00:06:17Scott Trickett: But you're also up there for a different kind of parkrun adventure.

00:06:23Melissa Erbacher: Yes, well, I went up a little bit early on Friday and Craig, who is the co-ED at Gladstone, is in development already. of another parkrun closer to where he lives at Tannum Sands. So he had three different courses all mapped out ready for me to go and have a look at and showed them to me in order of his preference. And I agreed with him on his first preference immediately because it's just a fantastic park with really, really well taken care of, beautiful views. It's just, you know, it ticks all the boxes of everything you want in a parkrun. Plus, it has the added bonus of when you map it out on GPS or draw a diagram of it on the map, it looks like a beheaded person dancing. And I don't know how many other parkruns can say that.

00:07:22Scott Trickett: A bit of Strava competition between parkrun courses. The Headless Dancer's got a head start.

00:07:30Melissa Erbacher: Yep. They've got the whole leg flicking up backwards and everything. It's great.

00:07:34Scott Trickett: So, sorry, what's this one going to be called?

00:07:37Melissa Erbacher: Well, we're still talking about what it's going to be called. So I don't want to tell you what the options are just in case things change between now and then. But we're hoping it's only a couple of months away pending funding. So what I can tell you is it's going to be in Tannum Sands area and it's going to be beautiful.

00:08:00Scott Trickett: Well, sounds like you had a busy weekend.

00:08:03Melissa Erbacher: I did. It was a very busy weekend. I was knackered when I got home.

00:08:07Scott Trickett: You know who else had a busy weekend? Alison King had a big weekend. She launched her new parkrun over in New Zealand. How about we catch up with her right now?

Event Director interview — Puarenga parkrun, New Zealand (Alison King)

00:08:17Melissa Erbacher: And now we're jumping across the ditch to New Zealand. We have Alison King, who is the event director at, Alison, you're going to have to help me out with this, Pururanga parkrun, is that correct? Yes.

00:08:31Alison King: Yeah, Puarenga.

00:08:32Melissa Erbacher: Awesome. I was pretty close at that. Which launched just this weekend past. Alison, tell us about your parkrun.

00:08:41Alison King: So Puarenga parkrun is in Rotorua, New Zealand. We are the geothermal capital for New Zealand and Puaranga translates as sulphur flowers, which is when you're in the nice hot sulphury waters here in New Zealand or Rotorua, you'll see there's these particles in the water. And sometimes you think, oh, it's other people's dead skin, but it's not. It's the minerals that they bond together as the water cools. And the indigenous people here, the Maori here, hundreds of years ago called them sulfur flowers on the stream, which is alongside where our parkrun runs.

00:09:25Scott Trickett: So I saw on your Facebook page there's a video. Yes. And the video looks really steamy. And I think there was mention that you actually do run through the steam.

00:09:35Alison King: Yeah. We're a two-lap course along what we locals call the Sulphur Trek. And you do not stray from the trek because there are lots of vents around hot pools and Yeah, some of the course got taken out last year, just there was a new vent that came through, but that seemed to have calmed down. But yeah, it's something very different for parkrunners, I think.

00:10:06Scott Trickett: And does that mean it's warm when you're running through the steam?

00:10:09Alison King: No, not always. So we're in the middle of winter and it was a pretty chilly day, but there was all the steam around, but you don't feel overly warm from it. It just means that when it rains, the path that we're on, it dries quite quickly.

00:10:27Scott Trickett: The video didn't look warm, but you just see all this steam. It wasn't warm. So you launched. How was the reception? Did people in Rotorua love it?

00:10:38Alison King: They did. Yeah, we had 128 runners for our first event, which we were pretty stoked with because we wanted to beat the launch for the The previous North Island event, Anderson parkrun in Napier, that was last month, they had 97. So we beat them and we broke the 100. So that was a good number for us to get. We did have a lot of tourists from Rotorua. From across New Zealand, we had a contingent come up from Lower Hutt, which was New Zealand's first parkrun. There were also parkrunners from Western Springs, Auckland and Hamilton Lake and Porirua. But I would say we did a show of hands at the start and probably three quarters were locals.

00:11:31Melissa Erbacher: Alison, I'm going to come back to this geothermal thing because I don't, I don't really understand what that means. Yes, there's steam and you run through steam, but how, how does this steam happen?

00:11:46Alison King: Well, Rotorua is known for its geothermal activity. We've got this volcano just outside of town called Mount Tarawera, which 130 years ago erupted and buried one of the local villages and destroyed the original tourist attraction here, the pink and white terraces. So, yeah, 130 years ago, people would come to Rotorua to bathe on the pink and white silica terraces at Lake Rotomahana. So we had this eruption, Mount Tarawera, and ever since then, there's still been a lot of geothermal activity. So you've got the Whakarewarewa village, which is just all around geothermal stuff. We've got the Puaringa stream, which runs alongside our parkrun, which has lots of vents along it where you'll be going along and you can see these steam and these bubbles coming up in the stream. So it does make you a little bit nervous, I think, that there could be another eruption. But because there are all these different vents going off, it relieves any pressure. And it just makes it, I know, quite interesting. Every day is different. When it's a rainy day, you can smell the sulfur a bit more than when it's a bright sunshine day. And also when it's a gray day, the steam just seems really mystical. And yeah, it's like you're on another planet.

00:13:19Melissa Erbacher: It sounds intriguing. So the vents themselves, you don't run over those because of the heat from those particular spots? Or is it because you could fall in them and that's not good?

00:13:32Alison King: Probably a bit of both. But luckily, we've got this track that has been, I don't know how old this track is. It's been here for longer than, I've lived in this city, I've been here for seven years now. And so this sulphur track, on either side of it there are vents and little mounds and if you do venture a bit closer to them you can see like the yellow bits of sulphur but you really shouldn't stray too far off because you can get burnt and people have been burnt.

00:14:04Melissa Erbacher: Yowzers might need to keep an eye out for those. So tell us about your parkrun story, Alison. I understand you've only done one other parkrun yourself apart from your own event.

00:14:17Alison King: Yeah, I listen to the Marathon Talk podcast, which is co-hosted by Tom Williams, who is parkrun UK, and he and his co-host, Martin Yelling, would always talk about parkrun, like Tom would run at Harrogate and Martin would run in Poole. And even though the podcast is about marathons, they'd talk about their own parkrun for the previous week. And I just kept on hearing this parkrun. I was like, what on earth is this? And so then I looked it up. Oh, three-timed 5K run every week. It's like, this sounds pretty cool. I wonder when someone's going to do one in my town. And I waited and I waited. And there were whispers that someone was going to do one about a year and a half ago and nothing happened. And then I think it was in December I was writing my goals for the year and I still hadn't done a parkrun. I went to the Gold Coast in May last year and I got my recreational running level two certification through Athletics Australia. I should have signed up for parkrun before I went because I went for a morning run and then as I was getting back to my motel, I suddenly saw all these people running and then it struck me as like, oh, my one chance to do a parkrun and I've missed it. So in December, I wrote a list of goals of things I wanted to achieve in 2016 and one of them was to run a parkrun. And I thought, well, why don't I go a bit beyond that? Why don't I organize the parkrun as well? So in January, I was visiting some friends in Auckland and decided to stay an extra night so I could go to parkrun. And I got my friends registered as well. So I did Barry Curtis, which is botany in Auckland. And ever since then, my friend Jim has gone back every single week that he could to do Barry Curtis parkrun. So I've got him hooked. And yeah, I've only done that one. And I just loved it. It just seemed really cool, just so social and relaxed. And you made it as hard as you wanted. If you wanted to run fast, you could. If you just wanted to have a bit of a trot, you could. And yeah, everyone was the same. I loved it.

00:16:46Scott Trickett: We often say on this podcast, parkrun's not a running event. It's a social event. Did you get a good social vibe on Saturday from your crew?

00:16:55Alison King: Oh, it was awesome. I had so many people coming up and saying thanks for getting it started. And there were lots of groups of friends that did it. And I've seen just the notifications on our Facebook page ever since. It's like, oh, we'll join you next week or, you know, we'll have to get so-and-so to come along too. And that just makes me smile even more because that's what I want.

00:17:21Scott Trickett: Yeah, that's where it starts. Look out. You want some Aussies to come over and visit, I'd imagine.

00:17:27Alison King: We do because we're a very proud city. We're proud of our heritage here and what we've got to offer. And we like to think that, you know, we can show the Aussies something that they don't have back home.

00:17:40Melissa Erbacher: I'm pretty sure we don't have any volcanic parkruns yet.

00:17:44Scott Trickett: No, I don't think we do. So I'm going to add it to my list. I think it sounds very exciting.

00:17:50Alison King: Well, let me know when you're coming and, you know, and I'll show you some of our Kiwi hospitality, or manaakitanga, as they call it in Rotorua.

00:17:59Scott Trickett: I can't wait. Maybe we need to have a Contiki tour of New Zealand. Definitely. A parkrun adventure as Contiki tour of New Zealand.

00:18:07Alison King: Well, there's only 14 events.

00:18:10Scott Trickett: Yeah, and I love the name Barry Curtis for a name of a parkrun. That's not just the name of the bloke who started it, is it?

00:18:17Alison King: No, it's the name of some, the guy, I actually don't know. It's Barry Curtis Park in Auckland. He must be pretty famous. And there's a bit in that park which is named after, I want to say John Walker, who was an Olympic medalist.

00:18:37Scott Trickett: John Walker was a runner in the 80s, famous for you guys. But I haven't heard of Barry.

00:18:42Alison King: Yeah, he's a famous Kiwi. But I'm an import, so my knowledge of New Zealand really only stretches back to 2003. You're an import?

00:18:51Scott Trickett: Where are you originally from, Alison?

00:18:53Alison King: I'm originally from the UK and what's awesome is my sister's getting married in September and I'm going back to the UK and I'm a bridesmaid and one of her other bridesmaids is a parkrunner and we are going to do Norwich parkrun on the wedding day.

00:19:16Melissa Erbacher: Have you got your sister's blessing to be running a 5K run on the day she gets married?

00:19:22Alison King: She doesn't mind. I would say it's a low-key wedding, but it's not. It's in a cathedral, but she's a pretty relaxed person.

00:19:31Melissa Erbacher: Awesome. Well, you'll be able to get some parkrun adventures in while you're over there.

00:19:35Alison King: Yeah, I've already got my three mapped out for the three Saturdays I'm going to be back.

00:19:40Scott Trickett: Sounds great. Alison, thanks for coming on the podcast. It's always great to hear that.

00:19:45Alison King: Thank you for having me.

00:19:46Scott Trickett: international parkruns and you're our first Kiwi so it's our closest international parkrun and we hope more Aussies will go and visit you.

00:19:55Alison King: Please do. Come to Rotorua and it's the parkrun where you never run out of steam.

00:19:56[music]

Facts in a Haystack

00:20:13Scott Trickett: It's time to welcome Ian Hay back for our favorite segment, Facts in a Haystack. What's up, Ian?

00:20:20Ian Hay: Hey, guys.

00:20:22Scott Trickett: Ian, our keen listeners of the podcast will know I'm a massive fan of rugby league. I think it is. State of Origin was on recently.

00:20:36[laughter]

00:20:36Ian Hay: That was really convincing. That's funny.

00:20:38Scott Trickett: Yeah. So it's the State of Origin that we get excited about every year. And I know you Queenslanders are mad for it. Can we do anything with the stats, with the parkrun stats for that?

00:20:52Ian Hay: Yeah, well, I wanted to do the entire segment on state of origin, and you were so excited about that when I mentioned it and when you asked what state of origin was. I was going to do a bit of a Queensland versus New South Wales thing. So I sat down looking at the stats for ages, went over and over it, and no matter which angle I looked at, I just couldn't find a way for New South Wales to win. So it was... I didn't really see any point. The only positive thing I got out of there is, yeah, New South Wales has a parkrun. So they're winners in that aspect, but I couldn't find any stats to put them out on front. So that's pretty consistent with state of origin. So there you go.

00:21:30Scott Trickett: So Queensland won.

00:21:32Ian Hay: They usually do win. It's pretty common.

00:21:34Melissa Erbacher: We haven't – there's another game, isn't there?

00:21:37Ian Hay: There is another game, yeah. So we've got to at least give them one. No, we won't give them that one either. Yeah.

00:21:44Melissa Erbacher: Ian Hay, how to win friends and influence people.

00:21:47Ian Hay: Exactly. So no, no. We will instead look at, we've got a few different stats this time around, so I think we wanted to have a bit of a chat about the drop-off in numbers over this cold spell.

00:22:03Scott Trickett: Well, yeah, let's, because we all know everyone loves parkrun when it's nice and warm, and But do they love it just as much when it's 1 and 2 and 5 degrees?

00:22:14Ian Hay: Yeah, I think some of them struggle to get out the door, to be honest. We've had a pretty big drop-off. I know a lot of parkruns, we were getting week after week of just record attendances right through till the end of, even the end of April. We're having some massive attendances up to around the 25,000. And then suddenly it just dropped off and we've been flat out getting above 20,000 recently. And then obviously a couple of weeks ago with all the massive flooding, we were flat out getting above 10,000 that week.

00:22:44Scott Trickett: That's a little bit different because a lot of events were cancelled. But just generally across the board, what is the drop in numbers? Percentage or figure wise?

00:22:55Ian Hay: Figure wise, we've been closer to around the 18,000 more recently. So the last two weeks have been around the 18,000. So like I said, back in April, we're up around the 25,000. So that's That's a significant drop.

00:23:09Melissa Erbacher: So that'd be 7,000 parkrunners who can't hack the cold.

00:23:13Ian Hay: Exactly.

00:23:15Melissa Erbacher: Or the dark.

00:23:17Ian Hay: It certainly pushed me this weekend with the cold. It was very cool, so I don't blame a few people.

00:23:23Scott Trickett: It's shaken my confidence a bit because in the early episodes, I think we were taking a lot of the credit for the boost in numbers because we launched the podcast at the start of the year and the numbers just took off.

00:23:36Ian Hay: If you hadn't started the podcast, then we'd probably be closer to around 13,000, 14,000.

00:23:40Scott Trickett: Good point. I should never doubt the popularity of our program.

00:23:47Ian Hay: That's right. My stats are right, so you can't argue the stats. Moving on, I've got a few other little stats here too. I thought I'd have a talk about the Peel Club.

00:23:57Melissa Erbacher: Tell us about the Peel Club, Ian.

00:23:58Ian Hay: I was actually going to ask you, Mel, because we've got a bit of a Peel Club entrant here, don't we? Or a recent... Recent entrant?

00:24:07Melissa Erbacher: I would call it a celebrity more than an entrant.

00:24:13Ian Hay: Yeah, become a celebrity. Number 10, right on number 10 as well, so top 10.

00:24:18Melissa Erbacher: Yes, that was, I think it was hard won or hard fought for over, you know, I fight my own quiet battles. Nobody else knows I'm fighting it.

00:24:28Ian Hay: The stress each week of making sure you're still the one there, just hang me in there.

00:24:34Melissa Erbacher: Well, the trick is you can't tell your competition that you're competing because if you do, then they might actually start trying themselves. So that's my inside tip.

00:24:44Ian Hay: So for those who have absolutely no idea what we're talking about, the Peel Club is basically having run one event in each state or territory. So Mel recently made the number 10 position in that club. So, yeah, it's... There are quite a few that are sitting right on the edge of making their eighth one as well. So Mel was a little bit worried leading into that.

00:25:10Scott Trickett: I think in the last three or four weeks leading into it.

00:25:14Ian Hay: Yes, definitely. So I thought I'd just point out a couple of extra stats around that Peel Club. So we've got eight states and territories in total to make the Peel Club. We've got 13 people sitting at seven. So they're all very, very close. I think a couple of those hit them. hit the last couple very quickly so yeah there's a few that might be traveling around trying to get their number eight and we've got 64 people currently sitting at uh so 64 in total sitting at six or seven states so there's quite a few that have done a lot of states so i was quite impressed by which one is the elusive one to get is it the northern territory or queen no i I think it is the Northern Territory. I didn't break it down quite that far, but there are quite a few that hadn't done Northern Territory.

00:26:01Melissa Erbacher: WA, I think, is another one that, depending on where the parkrunner is from, and Tasmania, that seemed to be one that people hadn't done a lot of.

00:26:12Ian Hay: Yeah, ones a little bit further away from wherever their home parkrun. And speaking of home parkruns, I thought I'd look at, too, where they were coming from. So looking at the ones that have run six, seven or eight states. The majority, well, there's been a large amount that have come from Newey parkrun. So, yeah, there seems to be a few from there. And I took it back a bit further and said, okay, four or more states. We've got Tuggeranong and Ginninderra. I don't know if I pronounced both of those correctly. They've got 39 and 40 parkrunners at each that have done four or more states.

00:26:42Melissa Erbacher: Wow, they must be travelling together. They're all from the ACT.

00:26:45Ian Hay: Oh, there you go. Okay.

00:26:47Melissa Erbacher: travelers in the act hey they're well they're adventurous it's it's only been recently that they've had a new parkrun i guess in their states or their territory so maybe they've had to be moving a little bit further afield to get their adventure fix in that's right um the other thing i was curious about was all these people who are traveling around a lot do they get much time to actually volunteer and help out um because we always like to um

00:27:14Ian Hay: mention our volunteers out there and the people that do a lot of, uh, volunteering and helping out at their parkruns. And, um, yeah, so the ones that are sitting at, that are sitting in the peel clubs, I've done the eight states and territories. Um, they average 49, uh, volunteer stints in total. So quite a lot. So per person, per person out of all of those, they average around 49 volunteer stints. So that's, that's massive for people doing a lot of traveling. Um, And then it progressively goes down as we get less. So seven states, they average 29. Six, they average 19 volunteer stints and so forth.

00:27:50Melissa Erbacher: Yeah. That's an interesting stat.

00:27:53Scott Trickett: I'm not surprised by it, though, because to be honest, the people that are doing this, that are pursuing this, are the passionate parkrunners and generally the passionate parkrunners are good volunteers.

00:28:04Ian Hay: Yeah, that's exactly what I thought. Yep. Usually the ones that are really passionate and really into parkrun, they know what they get out of when they go and volunteer. They know how much fun it is and it's just as fun as running it.

00:28:15Melissa Erbacher: Just quietly, that 49 average, I'm above average.

00:28:20Ian Hay: Yes, you did bring the average up. Absolutely. We've also got Alan Burrell and we've got Rosian in there as well. We've got a whole heap of – they're all just passionate parkrunners so they all bump it up really well. So, yes, that's the Peel Club, a very thorough analysis of the Peel Club.

00:28:40Scott Trickett: I think we might have to get Brendan on the podcast soon. He's already been interviewed, but as a roving report, maybe we need to get to know the man behind the name. That's right.

00:28:53Ian Hay: It's a very cool concept. It's very fun.

00:28:55Melissa Erbacher: It is. It's nice to have different interesting goals to reach. So thank you, Brendan, for paving the way for the rest of us.

00:29:03Scott Trickett: Thanks again for coming on, Ian, and go the Queenslanders.

00:29:09Ian Hay: Is that right?

00:29:11Scott Trickett: Maroons?

00:29:11Ian Hay: Yep. You're going to be hanging out for the next game?

00:29:15Scott Trickett: Can't wait, counting down the days. How many days have I got to go?

00:29:20Melissa Erbacher: I thought you said you were counting.

00:29:21Scott Trickett: I was just testing you in. He's Mr. Statsman.

00:29:31Melissa Erbacher: To be honest, I don't even know who won the last two games.

00:29:36Ian Hay: Disgraceful.

00:29:37Scott Trickett: Tell you what, I'm counting down the days until we have Facts in a Haystack back on the pod. Exactly. Thanks, Ian. Thanks, guys.

00:29:47Melissa Erbacher: Thanks so much, Ian. Lots of fun to be had on Instagram this week. We had Expat Runner, another country, another parkrun. Love the Irish volley vests. PBs for my girls and no complaints from the nine-year-old who earned a post-run hot chocolate with marshmallow treat at the Kilkenny Castle Cafe. Try saying that ten times fast.

Social Adventurers (Instagram and Facebook round-up)

00:30:15Scott Trickett: Which one? Marshmallow treat?

00:30:18Melissa Erbacher: No. Kilkenny Castle Cafe. Go on, try it.

00:30:24Scott Trickett: I wanted to have a short podcast this week, so I'll just move on to Running Guy Ryan. He was at Logan River parkrun. He loves a parkrun adventure. So he went there for their third birthday, celebrated in circus style. As a clown. Literally as a clown.

00:30:48Melissa Erbacher: Yeah, he's not backward in coming forward with the costumes, Running Guy Ryan. Love them. Bunny underscore 79 was chilling at the finish line to cheer in the Town of Seaside parkrun crew while the parentals both volunteer. It's worthwhile mentioning that the picture was of a gorgeous shaggy golden retriever who was chilling at the finish line. No cake this week, though.

00:31:12Scott Trickett: Miss Spelt commented that it was a brisk 11 degrees at Nambour parkrun this morning. And she was asking the question, can you pick the pommy in this photo? And Mel, you're confident it's the guy in skinny or short shorts and singlet?

00:31:27Melissa Erbacher: Yeah, I'm pretty sure. Everyone else is wearing way more clothing than that guy. Who would be your pick?

00:31:37Scott Trickett: Maybe the guy with his head down because he's so miserable about Brexit. He's going, what have we done?

00:31:46Melissa Erbacher: We're not a political podcast.

00:31:49Scott Trickett: We are going to have a segment at some point throughout the year. Politics, NBA.

00:31:54Melissa Erbacher: Religion.

00:31:55Scott Trickett: Religion.

00:31:58Melissa Erbacher: Mama of Hope was having fun. parkrun day. Get excited. Volunteering at Laylaw.

00:32:05Scott Trickett: Mama of Hope had lots of photos. And she took a photo also from the High Fire Bridge where you can see Melbourne. You have to squint.

00:32:15Melissa Erbacher: And don't get distracted by the graffiti on the bridge.

00:32:18Scott Trickett: Hey TJ was at Gels parkrun and shared a few pics. Pics of some crazy socks.

00:32:24Melissa Erbacher: They were amazing crazy socks. Did you see them? Were you actually there and you saw them yourself?

00:32:30Scott Trickett: I've already mentioned that I was and I did see them.

00:32:33Melissa Erbacher: Yeah, I know, but you said you saw some socks, but you didn't tell me about the amazing jellyfish socks, okay? I would have remembered that if we had discussed this, and I'm sure it must have stood out if you actually saw them.

00:32:45Scott Trickett: I did see them. They were crazy. They were very cool. They were amazing.

00:32:50Melissa Erbacher: Tesla Fox said, great run at Mornington Peninsula parkrun for their second anniversary. Was very fortunate to catch the sunrise before a very solid hit out. A great flat course for PBs. If you're in Melbourne, make sure you tick this one off your list. Great people, weather and scenery. Wow, that is a really wonderful review of Mornington Peninsula. I bet they loved that.

00:33:12Scott Trickett: Running optimistic. She asked the question, how awesome is running with your bestie? What's the scale of awesome we're talking here?

00:33:22Melissa Erbacher: I've never run with my bestie, so I wouldn't know.

00:33:25Scott Trickett: We've run together.

00:33:31[laughter]

00:33:31Melissa Erbacher: Oh, I'm sorry. I mean my other bestie.

00:33:33Scott Trickett: Oh, how awkward.

00:33:39Melissa Erbacher: Yep. Okay. Moving right along. Jenna, not Gina, said the time I made off from my Contiki group to do parkrun. She actually shared a picture of her at Christie Field parkrun with Alcatraz Island in the distance, which was very cool.

00:33:56Scott Trickett: We know we can always count on Will B in 1981. And he had a couple of great posts this week. And our favourite was continuing my job today as a parkrun evangelist. Hopefully got someone going to Kawana parkrun and a new Jindy parkrun parkrunner.

00:34:15Melissa Erbacher: I love how he refers to himself as a parkrun evangelist because I've often thought of parkrun as a bit of a cult. In the best possible sense of the word. Because, you know, cults have good senses of the word.

00:34:29Scott Trickett: The good cults do.

00:34:32Melissa Erbacher: Like parkrun.

00:34:35Scott Trickett: He's sending somebody your way.

00:34:38Melissa Erbacher: He is. I'm going to have to find out who it is.

00:34:40Scott Trickett: Don't disappoint them.

00:34:43Melissa Erbacher: Oh, we don't disappoint at Kawana, just FYI. Jez Savage said, the sun breaks through the clouds over Pioneer parkrun right after we have packed up. Yeah, that's pretty typical, but I'm glad they got out there anyway and still did their parkrun.

00:35:02Scott Trickett: Let's move over to Facebook. Bit of action on Facebook this weekend. We got some congratulations from Gary Nisbet and Peter Pohlman for reaching 25 episodes. We were pretty chuffed.

00:35:14Melissa Erbacher: Tim Baldwin shared some fabulous pic from Mornington Peninsula's anniversary. Those guys were absolutely rocking their costumes. Did you see them, Scotty?

00:35:24Scott Trickett: I did. And remember on last week's show, I commented, great theme.

00:35:29Melissa Erbacher: I reckon anything that gets you to or gets somebody, I should say, to wear short metallic gold lycra bike shorts running. What do you even call tights? Are they tights when they're that short? I don't know. But yeah, anything that gets those pulled out of the cupboard, definitely worthwhile.

00:35:53Scott Trickett: I thought Adam Ant looked great, you know, bringing Adam Ant back to relevance. Relevance?

00:36:03Melissa Erbacher: Relevance.

00:36:04Scott Trickett: That's like prevalence with a silent P. And they got lots of love, lots of love for that photo too, so top work. Rowan Durant shared several pics with us this week. He was chasing rainbows all weekend and finished up with an arctic blast run at Albert Park.

00:36:24Melissa Erbacher: I think it was cold everywhere, wasn't it?

00:36:27Scott Trickett: It's been very cold in Melbourne lately.

00:36:30Melissa Erbacher: Yeah, and it was cold in Queensland. Liv Coop, she was in New South Wales and her post was a picture and literally, brr, black butt parkrun. So I think it was cold pretty much all over. And congratulations to Liv because she did her 20th different parkrun this weekend, which means she's joined the most events list. And we're coming to the not-so-pointy end of the podcast. We've got launches, three launches this week in three different states. Where are they, Scotty?

Launches and anniversaries

00:37:03Scott Trickett: Repping for Victoria, we've got Cobram launching. Cobram's up in the north of the state. We've got Atherton in Queensland. No idea where that is. It's also north. We've got a north theme. And Strathalbyn. Another one for South Australia. They're going crazy over there. I wonder if Underscore PK is going to go there and get us a roving report. I hope so.

00:37:30Melissa Erbacher: Hint, hint. Anniversaries this week. We're doing the reverse of what we did last week. So we had fewer anniversaries and more launches. No, it was the other way around. We had fewer launches and more anniversaries last week. And this week... We just have Averley parkrun in WA celebrating their third. This, of course, will completely change next year when there will be four anniversaries. Thank you very much to this week's launchers.

00:37:57Scott Trickett: So make the most of having the limelight this week, Averley. It's all yours. It will never happen again.

00:38:05Melissa Erbacher: You will no longer be the only child born on this date.

Listener challenge (parkrun adventure challenge)

00:38:09Scott Trickett: Now, we've got a challenge for our listeners today.

00:38:13Melissa Erbacher: But we're not going to tell you what it is yet. Are we, Scotty?

00:38:19Scott Trickett: No, I'm just saying we've got a challenge. It's coming. It's a good one.

00:38:25Melissa Erbacher: When are we going to tell everyone what it is?

00:38:27Scott Trickett: We're going to tell you all next week. So you've got seven days of thinking of what our challenge is going to be. We're going to do it this week, you and I. Yep.

00:38:40Melissa Erbacher: And now that we've said that we're going to do it, we actually have to go and do it.

00:38:44Scott Trickett: That was the point of me mentioning it right now.

00:38:47Melissa Erbacher: Yeah, it's a little bit scary.

00:38:49Scott Trickett: I'm looking forward to it. I'm going to rope in some of my besties to do it with me.

00:38:55Melissa Erbacher: Good plan. I think taking a posse along is extra fun added to the challenge.

00:39:01Scott Trickett: I'll give you a clue. It's to do with running. I'll go further. I'll go further. It's to do with parkrun.

00:39:11Melissa Erbacher: Not vague at all.

00:39:14Scott Trickett: So we'll leave you with that thought and see you all next week.

00:39:19Melissa Erbacher: Happy adventures, guys.