Episode 47

Episode details · 135 speaker turns · sound cues from context

00:00:12Melissa Erbacher: Episode 47 of parkrun Adventurers is here. How the my goodness did that happen? It's almost, we're pushing that 50 milestone. It's so close I can smell it. Welcome to the podcast, Scotty.

00:00:29Scott Trickett: Hey, is it a bit like, thanks Mel, is it a bit like when you're getting close to your first 50 shirt? You know, you made sure that you ran every week.

00:00:38Melissa Erbacher: Yeah, but even then it took like 10 runs just For those last five runs to happen. Well, it feels like it took 10 weeks for those last five runs, even when you were running every week.

00:00:50Scott Trickett: It did. I remember getting close to my 100 last year and planning every week, you know, where I'm going to be, how I'm going to hit it, where I was going to be. It just seemed to take forever. And that's a bit the same with getting to episode 50 of the podcast.

00:01:05Melissa Erbacher: A little bit. It's fun, but it just seems like we're never going to get to that magic 5.0.

00:01:11Scott Trickett: It's always fun. parkrun is the definition of fun. It is. Whether it be podcasts or weekly 5K timed runs. It's time for the news.

parkrun news bulletin

00:01:21[music]

00:01:30Melissa Erbacher: 17,073 first-timers rocked up to parkruns across the world this parkrun Day. The breakdown goes like this. 3,087 in Australia. 11 in Canada, 31 in Denmark, 33 in France, 618 in Ireland, 19 in Italy, 154 in New Zealand, 224 in Poland, 86 in Russia, 15 in Singapore, 3386 in South Africa, 7 in Sweden, 8497 in UK and 114 in the USA. with the UK and Ireland also welcoming 782 and 9 first-time juniors to their junior parkruns, respectively.

00:02:18Scott Trickett: Tribe Sports are currently running a Black Friday promotion, offering free global shipping on all orders. With the festive season upon us and a recently expanded range of parkrun kit available, now could be a perfect time to add some items to the running wardrobe.

00:02:34Melissa Erbacher: Achilles Melbourne club member and Gels parkrunner Adam Koops has completed his second marathon with sighted guide Amelia in a PB time of 3 hours 38 minutes at Run for the Young. Adam and Amelia ran their first marathon together in October this year at the Melbourne Marathon Festival.

00:02:52Scott Trickett: The Afterglow Twilight Night Trail Run took place on Victoria's surf coast over the weekend. Runners were treated to either 12 or 21 kilometres of scenic fluoro funnery, with parkrunners taking the lead in the glow and fluoro fancy dress stakes. Reports have been received from the International Space Station that this year, several parkrunners were visible from space. Hey Mel, have you heard of the World Wide Companion Run?

00:03:25Melissa Erbacher: I have not.

00:03:27Scott Trickett: me tell you about it it was the idea of a guy whose mate moved away but he still wanted to run with his mate so he set up this international running event so that at the same time anywhere in the world they could run together and from that it's grown going to include a lot more people so four o'clock on monday morning this week I did a freedom run around Westerfolds with 19 other crazies who wanted to get up at 4 o'clock in the morning and go for a run.

00:04:00Melissa Erbacher: So when you say it's at this same time, it's literally, it's not you run at 4 a.m. here and they're running at 4 a.m. in Canada, for example. It's they're running at whatever the time difference is between 4 a.m. and then so that you're physically running at the same time in different time zones.

00:04:18Scott Trickett: Exactly. So the guy who set it up is in New Zealand. So he set it up nice and cushy for, I think, a 7 o'clock run for him. The flow-on effect for that is 4 o'clock for us. It would be 3 o'clock for you. You know, over in Europe, it's in the middle of the night. But the funny thing is, last year he changed the time so it was 5 o'clock in the afternoon for us. And nobody did it because it wasn't fun to get up and go for a run at 5 o'clock in the afternoon. But make it 4 o'clock in the morning...

00:04:48Melissa Erbacher: To get up and go for a run at 5 o'clock in the afternoon. Do you sleep most of your afternoons? Do you have a siesta and that's too early to get out of bed?

00:04:59Scott Trickett: That's a good idea.

00:05:02Melissa Erbacher: Maybe more people would have done it last year if they had.

00:05:05Scott Trickett: I did have a little siesta on Monday afternoon. I can let you in on that secret. Because when you get up at 3.30 to go for a run, you start to crash at about 12 o'clock, 1 o'clock.

00:05:17Melissa Erbacher: Aren't you used to getting up at that time to watch the NFL anyway?

00:05:19Scott Trickett: Well, I am, but that's a different matter because you get up and you sit on the couch.

00:05:24Melissa Erbacher: And watch other people do physical activity.

00:05:27Scott Trickett: Exactly. Getting up, getting dressed in your gear, driving to a park, running 5K is completely different to sitting on the couch for three hours watching football. But lots of fun. I highly recommend it. And I reckon next year it's going to be at the same time. So it might be a bit of a push for you.

00:05:43Melissa Erbacher: I can get up at 3 o'clock in the morning or earlier.

00:05:46Scott Trickett: Yeah, I think we should make it a thing with all our parkrun adventures. I mean, that's the definition of a parkrun adventure.

00:05:53Melissa Erbacher: Is all running at the same time. Yeah. Well, why wait? Why not let's plan it for, you know, earlier in the year? That could be our own personal adventure.

00:06:04Scott Trickett: Yeah, we could do something like that. But we've got 12 months to plan for next year's worldwide companion run. Did you have any adventures that started at 4 o'clock in the morning this week or on the weekend?

00:06:18Melissa Erbacher: I've been dreaming a lot lately but I couldn't tell you what time those dreams are happening. No adventures as such at parkrun. We had a special event though at my home parkrun on Saturday. One of our much loved parkrunners passed away a couple of weeks ago so We had a tribute run for him on Saturday. And it was very beautiful. Everybody dressed in blue in honour of him because that was his favourite colour. And yeah, it was a very special morning. An event that is high on the to-do list for both myself and Scotty is Bunyaville in Queensland because we both love a trail. Joining us now, we have the event directors, Steve Marston and Brenda Gibb. Welcome to the podcast, guys.

Meet the ED

00:07:25Brenda Gibb: Thank you. Thank you for having us.

00:07:28Melissa Erbacher: Now, it's a bit exciting. You're just about to celebrate your third anniversary this weekend. What are the plans?

00:07:34Steve Marston: A lot of people enjoy the trails, have a great run. and enjoy some fruit and some celebrations afterwards.

00:07:40Brenda Gibb: We're also one of the only trail runs in Brisbane area, so it's a great way to come and sightsee, actually, and do some mounts of opportunity.

00:07:52Melissa Erbacher: I understand you have a little bit of elevation on your course. Is that something that you think draws the runners in or keeps them away?

00:08:00Steve Marston: I think it can be cut both ways, Mel. I think some people love the challenge of the hills and other people love a flat parkrun and will stay away. I know our fill-in territory director this weekend is looking forward to the challenge. He's never run a trail parkrun before.

00:08:17Brenda Gibb: Exactly, yeah. No, I think it's great. I think the scenery and the people make up for it not being flat and And I just think it's amounts of opportunity. It really is a great course. Everybody should come and see it for themselves.

00:08:36Scott Trickett: So your record is 231. How many do you average on an average week these days?

00:08:43Steve Marston: Yeah, I usually get about around the 100 mark. But in winter, obviously, like most parkruns, it drops off a little bit.

00:08:52Tim Boyle: And then it picks up again as it warms up a little bit.

00:08:55Steve Marston: So over the wintertime, we kind of get somewhere around the 80s or so. And then over summer, we tend to get around the 100, 120 most weeks. We haven't managed to break our attendance record since we launched all the way back three years ago.

00:09:10Brenda Gibb: I think we get a lot of cross-country runners during winter, though, because they train for their cross-country runs or their more yearly runs just to build up some strength. And that is great to see. I think that's what keeps us going, is to see the runners being eager to train for those runs. We've also had a lot of runners say that our course helps them on marathons because they find that the building of strength actually helps them keep their... you know, keep their pace at one distance and they don't feel as tired. So I guess a bit of mixture of both can be good for a person, a runner especially.

00:10:01Melissa Erbacher: I love your amounts of opportunity point of view, Brenda. I think that's a very positive way to look at some elevation on a course. Now, Do you get a lot of adventurers who come from other events? I mean, obviously, if you've got an average sort of roughly of 100 or sometimes 120 in the summer, we're in the summer now, but you want to break a 231 course attendance record. So I'm assuming you're going to be hoping for a lot of adventurers joining you. Does it happen very often?

00:10:33Brenda Gibb: It happens on occasion. We do get a lot of international runners come through and a lot of national runners actually visiting us. I think it depends on each individual runner. Like Steve said, actually, it's like you either like running on a flat course with a lot of people or you like running in a bush where you get a bit of scenery.

00:10:59Scott Trickett: I've been involved in setting up a trail parkrun down here in Melbourne, Studley. Now, we've had the unfortunate of a few falls at our course. Have you come across many stack club entries?

00:11:14Steve Marston: We call them Bunyaville tattoos, Scott.

00:11:16Scott Trickett: Okay, that's a good one.

00:11:18Brenda Gibb: We've had no serious stacks. We all manage them. It's great. It's like the people are very friendly. They stop to help. And we've just been amazed by the support we've had, really.

00:11:34Steve Marston: It is just a part of trail running, unfortunately. And I think people tend to fall often on the less technical sections because they're just cruising and not so mindful of their foot placement. And that's when, you know, there's a great, there's this huge big stump or something. And then the thing that you actually trip over is the smallest little pebble that's just sticking out of the surface of the trail.

00:11:57Melissa Erbacher: But as you say, it's a Bunyaville tattoo, so it's like a badge of honour, isn't it?

00:12:02Brenda Gibb: Exactly.

00:12:03Melissa Erbacher: I know that's the way they treat it at Nambour parkrun. They've actually created Stack Club stickers for any entrants that join the Stack Club. They just instigated that at their anniversary two weeks ago. So I think that's going to be an ongoing thing now.

00:12:20Brenda Gibb: Wow. That's an excellent way to look at it, actually. Yeah.

00:12:26Melissa Erbacher: I understand that when they were looking at launching, they actually contacted you guys to find out what you had in your first aid kit because a lot of people don't realize, but all parkrun events get issued with quite a small, sort of easy to carry first aid kit, which possibly isn't quite sufficient to cope with the kinds of injuries that you might deal with on a trail event. If somebody stacks it on a trail, usually they've got a few more scrapes and bumps and bruises. than if they just go down on a concrete path. Have you got a supercharged first aid kit?

00:13:03Steve Marston: Well, Mel, we're lucky enough that we have one of our regular parkrunners works at a hospital.

00:13:08Brenda Gibb: Peer nurses at parkrun that always is willing to donate something and is always willing to help out. Like the few stacks we've had, they were on the scene, they stopped their run to help and assist. And that's really great to see. I'm really impressed by the community group that we've got.

00:13:33Melissa Erbacher: And have you guys done much adventuring around yourselves or do you stick pretty much closely to Bunyaville?

00:13:39Steve Marston: Yeah, I have, Mel. I've run about 20-odd different parkrun courses, I think.

00:13:43Melissa Erbacher: Great. Can you give us a top three?

00:13:45Steve Marston: Well, Bunyaville, of course.

00:13:47Melissa Erbacher: No, you're not allowed to include Bunyaville. If you'd listened to the podcast before, you would realise we never let people include their home parkruns.

00:13:55Steve Marston: I think my top three would be Nambour, Kawana and Sale, actually, in Victoria.

00:14:03Melissa Erbacher: Oh, we haven't heard a lot about Sale, I don't think. What's that course like?

00:14:09Steve Marston: It's an out-and-back, flattish course around the lake in the park at Sale. Yeah, it's quite a nice course. I haven't done Bairnsdale yet, which looks like a really nice course, actually.

00:14:21Scott Trickett: It's always good to have a bunch on your list. Are you originally from Victoria, Steve, or just a frequent visitor?

00:14:28Steve Marston: Victoria for a couple of years, and I still have a couple of really good friends down in Victoria, so I am down in Victoria probably once or twice a year for a few weeks.

00:14:38Scott Trickett: And what's both of your backgrounds, running backgrounds? How did you get involved in parkrun?

00:14:43Brenda Gibb: I actually didn't even know parkrun existed until I googled free running because obviously at the time when I googled free running, I wasn't able to afford many entries into running events and I wanted to join a running club that could support me, encourage me and help me get back into it because obviously after a lot of years, I wasn't... in running and it was really great to come to parkrun it was a really friendly atmosphere and everybody was just like supportive I was quite amazed actually I was quite it was quite daunting actually I took my daughter with me for the first time and said well if you don't like it we don't have to stay But everybody was so lovely that I ended up staying. And here I am three years later, the event director. So it's great. It's fantastic.

00:15:45Steve Marston: My brother had convinced me to try. We did a Tough Mudder together as a work event. He was working with me at the time. And Sandgate parkrun launched. And he knew Vanessa Gibson personally. And so he convinced me to go along. to the inaugural Sandgrave parkrun as some form of training for Tough Mudder. And, yeah, I was, like, I was, Brenda, a bit sceptical and kind of going, oh, you know, I'm not really much of a runner, Craig. And, yeah, from that first morning I was hooked and I've been going back every Saturday morning that I can ever since.

00:16:19Scott Trickett: Thanks for coming on the podcast this week, guys, sharing the Bunyaville story. Good luck with trying to break your record on the weekend.

00:16:26Steve Marston: Yes, we'll let you know how it goes.

00:16:28Scott Trickett: We'll be watching.

00:16:29Brenda Gibb: Excellent.

00:16:40Scott Trickett: There's lots of different ways you can be motivated to run. I found one during the week through a website and through a running buddy of mine called Who I Run For. So I thought we'd get the founder on the podcast to have a chat about it. Welcome to the parkrun Adventurers, Tim Boyle.

00:16:59Tim Boyle: Hey, how's it going?

00:17:00Scott Trickett: We're great. Tim, can you explain the concept and the idea behind Who I Run For?

00:17:08Tim Boyle: The concept is pretty simple. What it is, is it's runners and other athletes doing their exercises, logging their miles, logging their workouts for those who are physically unable to do so, or those who struggle with that kind of workout or scenario.

00:17:31Scott Trickett: And how did it come about? How did you get the idea to start it?

00:17:36Tim Boyle: I had given up smoking. I was a two and a half pack a day smoker. And I'd given it up and took up running. What ended up happening was I was starting to get injured. The weather was starting to change and get colder. Here in Fargo, North Dakota, in the U.S., the winter, it gets down to anywhere from 10 to 20, 30 below. Fahrenheit and I was starting to lack motivation with the injuries and the cold coming up. And I, I did a search on Google to find some inspirational running quotes. And I found one that said, I run because I can. And when I get tired, I remember those who can't run and what they would give for the simple gift we take for granted. And to me, I thought that was something absolutely profound. And so I posted it on Facebook and, uh, a guy that I had become friends with, uh, had commented on it saying that I could run for him anytime. His name is Michael Wasserman and he's now 55 years old. He's got down syndrome and he's in a wheelchair. So that's how it all started with me just looking for more motivation other than your typical do it for your health and do it for this and do it for that. I wanted to do it for someone else and hopefully inspire him to not be better but let him know that I was out there and I was thinking about him every step of the way.

00:19:02Melissa Erbacher: Tim, how does that manifest in terms of you're running for somebody but how do you keep them involved through your running journey?

00:19:11Tim Boyle: What we do is once I do any kind of workout like let's say today I did a two mile run on the treadmill and once I'm done I'll snap a little selfie of myself and I'll post it on our Facebook page at Facebook I Run for Michael. And I'll post on there and I'll say, hey, Michael, today my run was a little tough, lost a little of my conditioning, but I thought of you and how much you smile at your Santa Claus doll that you have. And I post it on Facebook and I tag him and I tag his mom so they both can see what I did for him today.

00:19:48Melissa Erbacher: And this includes when, so that's obviously a treadmill run, but when you go out and you're training for larger events and things like that, do they ever get an opportunity to go along and actually see you at your runs?

00:20:02Tim Boyle: A lot of the buddies do, but with Michael, it's very, very hard for him to travel. So I did fly out to California and met him about a year and a half ago. and hung out with him for the day or for two days and got to know him face to face. Uh, a lot, there's several buddies that, that have traveled to go to races. Um, and that's, that's absolutely something spectacular to see is when, when you get someone pushing someone in a wheelchair, that's usually provided by one of our partner groups called Ainsley's Angels of America. To be able to push their buddy in a race and watch them cross the finish line together, it's absolutely amazing.

00:20:47Scott Trickett: And this may be a silly question, but what if the buddy don't get to do that? What do they actually get out of it by interacting through Facebook with their buddies?

00:20:59Tim Boyle: They still get the interaction because we require all of our runners to post at least three times a week, whether they run or not. and tag the buddy and the parents. And what they get out of it is they know that there's somebody out there outside their immediate family that cares about them. A lot of times these families, they feel very, very isolated and very alone because people don't understand. And you'll find that even their family members will kind of back off because they just don't understand what the situation is. And what this has done is it's opened up that cocoon to spread the awareness and spread the caring outside of their family so now they don't feel so isolated they no longer feel like there is there's nobody out there that cares about them because now there is now there's a whole group of people that care about them it's not just their their running buddy that that cares um people in the group will always comment on other people's posts saying, you know, great job. Oh, your buddy is so amazing. And so now we have created a family of 42,000 people.

00:22:09Scott Trickett: Yeah. Okay. That's pretty powerful. And I guess the, the able-bodied person gets fantastic motivation out of it because they're motivated to keep running for their buddy.

00:22:21Tim Boyle: Absolutely. When, when I first started doing this, My main goal was to motivate Michael and to inspire him and to make him feel great. I didn't realize how amazing it was going to make me feel for doing it as well. I remember crossing the finish line for my first half marathon and the very first race I ever ran. There were tears. I never, ever expected to have tears in my eyes crossing a finish line or anything of that nature. It's just such... such an inspiration for me knowing that I'm able to do this for somebody, somebody who wouldn't complain about all the pain and all the hard training that we had to do to get to where we were at. They would do it and they would do it with a smile on their face. And so that motivates me to push even harder.

00:23:14Melissa Erbacher: Tim, you've got a large amount of people now involved in your organization. Can you tell us a little bit about how the Matching Buddies works?

00:23:23Tim Boyle: Well, the Matching Buddies is actually a fairly simple process. People go onto our website, whoirun4.com, and then they click the Match Me link, and you can choose to either be a runner or to be a buddy. And you sign up on our forms, which takes literally maybe two minutes max. And then the forms go on to spreadsheets. And then our connection coordinator, Carol Dublin, she gets the names off the spreadsheets, matches them together, and then posts the match so that the people know. It's relatively simple. We never match based on location. So like if there's somebody in Australia, like let's say Sydney, and they wanted to run for a buddy in Sydney, we don't do that because that limits the amount of awareness that gets spread. we've always believed that it happens the way it happens for a reason. And so we just match based on our list.

00:24:20Scott Trickett: One of the problems you do have is you've actually got more runners signing up, haven't you?

00:24:25Tim Boyle: Yeah, we, we have right now, I think it's about 2,500 runners waiting and the wait time that they're, they're having to spend is about about six months between six and seven months. Um, but that actually turned out to be a better thing than I thought it would be. Um, when I first started, When I first started the organization, I didn't have a whole lot of knowledge about families or anything dealing with special needs. I just knew that it felt really good for me to be doing this. And so when I first started it, I thought there was going to be the families of children with special needs just flocking to sign up. And I thought that they would have to wait for runners because I thought runners would be going, well, I don't know. This doesn't really seem like a good idea, but it was flip-flopped. The runners just jumped on board to absolutely love the idea. And the parents, I didn't realize, were very, very protective and very, very guarded. So them signing up was a lot harder than it was for the runners. So it actually ended up being a really, really good benefit because the parents The children and families of children with special needs, they go through their lives having to wait for answers, wait for diagnoses, wait for pretty much everything in their life. This shouldn't be one more thing that they have to wait for. And it turned out perfectly that they get matched within a day or two.

00:25:56Melissa Erbacher: Now you've got people running for people with special needs, but you also have people running for their families and for people who've passed away. Is that correct?

00:26:07Tim Boyle: That is correct. We found that there was a real need for families like siblings because the siblings oftentimes kind of feel excluded because so much time is dedicated to their brother or sister that has special needs. We saw that there was a real need for them to feel included. So we created a group just for them too so that we'll have runners running for the siblings. And then one of the things that I didn't anticipate was our children and adults passing away. And so we felt that there was a need for that to continue. We created a separate group for that because it's a little bit more somber. It's still very, very special, but it's got a different feel to it. As a matter of fact, the lady that I chose to be the executive director of that group her son passed away. So it's run by somebody that has been there that knows the grieving process. We've also included one for military because a lot of times military feel like they're, once they're wounded or they suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, they feel invisible. And so we wanted to bring that to awareness too. And it's not just our military, it's any military. because war is war and it's something that isn't confined to just one region. Post-traumatic stress disorder affects everybody. We just felt that there was a need for that as well.

00:27:44Scott Trickett: These are all cool ideas, Tim. What about you? You're the man who came up with the idea. Everybody can come up with an idea. You've put it in to practice and you've set up this. Do you sit back sometimes and go, wow, this is happening. I'm helping all these people.

00:28:02Tim Boyle: Oh, all the time. Like I was telling you before we started the interview, I never in a million years would dream that I'd be doing a podcast for somebody in Australia. I never ever thought that I would have organizations like Angels of America being a partner, being able to be very, very, very close friends with the founder of that organization, to be in all the magazines, the It's very, very surreal. I still look at some of them and I think, that's actually me. It's very humbling to know that I've created an organization that has affected so many people. There's often times I just sit back and I can't really say anything because I don't have words to adequately describe what I'm feeling.

00:29:02Scott Trickett: What about parkrun? Have you ever heard of parkrun?

00:29:06Tim Boyle: I hadn't until you had contacted me.

00:29:10Scott Trickett: We need to bring it to the States. Maybe we could start one in North Dakota, where you are.

00:29:15Tim Boyle: Yeah, you just let me know how and we'll get working on that.

00:29:18Scott Trickett: Well, it's a similar thing. It's driven and built up by the community. So we, you know, it gets back to that idea of one man had an idea, but the community takes it somewhere, you know, far beyond, you know, one person ever could.

00:29:33Tim Boyle: Yeah. It's, uh, with, with, I run for it. I honestly got really, really lucky. Um, I had an idea that really, really struck a chord. Um, and I'm guessing that that parkrun that just hasn't hit yet because there just hasn't been enough, uh, American exposure to it. You know, we've had a lot of stuff going on here. We've had the elections, which was very, very tumultuous, to say the least. And we've just had the buildup to the elections for the last year. And just a lot of things just kind of stagnated because of those. But now that it's over, I can see organizations like parkrun becoming bigger. because people are now looking for things to ease their mind, to give them a better lovey-dovey feel instead of all the hate that's been spewing all over Facebook.

00:30:32Scott Trickett: It's great to hear about what you've created, and hopefully some of our listeners will be driven to sign up for whoirunfor.com.

00:30:42Tim Boyle: Well, thank you so much for having me. I'm truly blessed and honored to be here.

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

00:30:56Melissa Erbacher: Yet another Victorian launch this week and I'm pretty sure everybody loves the name of this parkrun, Cohuna. Or is it Kahuna?

00:31:07Scott Trickett: No, this one's Kahuna. The big Kahuna. It is Kahuna.

00:31:10Melissa Erbacher: The big Kahuna.

00:31:12Scott Trickett: In a tiny little town called Cohuna.

00:31:14Melissa Erbacher: Are you going to be heading along to that one?

00:31:16Scott Trickett: No, I'm not. No, we discussed this last week. I'm not a week two kind of guy.

00:31:21Melissa Erbacher: I know, I know. You're the week two kind of guy. That's fine. Well, there's also anniversaries going on all over the country. Airlie Beach, the boss will be eating cake tomorrow. No, not tomorrow because we're definitely not recording this on Friday. The boss will be eating cake at Airlie Beach this weekend. We've spoken to Steve and Brenda from Bunyaville in Queensland who are celebrating their third anniversary. What's going on in New South Wales, Scotty?

00:31:54Scott Trickett: We've got Lakeview also celebrating their third. Mount Gambier also doing their third. Wow, that's gone by quickly. I remember I went to their first anniversary. And Torrens, the very first event in South Australia, are celebrating their fourth.

00:32:11Melissa Erbacher: It's a big weekend for anniversaries.

00:32:14Scott Trickett: Yep, certainly is. It's time for Club Corner.

Club Corner

00:32:17[music]

00:32:18Unidentified speaker: Club Corner.

00:32:29Scott Trickett: We're all about helping each other out on this week's pod. We've already chatted to Tim from Who I Run For. Now let's speak to a group, a running group, who also give up their time to help others achieve their running goals. We are now joined by Enrique from the Achilles Group. Welcome to the pod, Enrique.

00:32:51Enrique Suana: Thanks. Happy to be here.

00:32:53Scott Trickett: Can you explain exactly what the Achilles Club is and what they do?

00:32:58Enrique Suana: Sure, no worries, Adam. Achilles is a club primarily focused on helping people with disabilities take part in events such as parkrun, various different events such as marathons, half marathons, all distances. We primarily focus on people with disabilities around vision impairment. We definitely help people with all different types of disabilities. Achilles was founded in America, Achilles International, and has... various different chapters around the world so we're from the there's an australia chapter where you've got um different chapters in sydney and melbourne um primarily myself i'm from the sydney chapter itself but we really focus on helping people with disabilities take part and break down i guess that that isolation that could happen from disabilities themselves and to take part in events such as parkrun and other various running events We have people with disabilities who are paired up with a sighted guide or a guide to be able to aid in these events. So you've got your fully abled guide who's responsible for making sure that the person with disabilities is taken care of during the run. The activity itself revolves purely around the person with the disability. So the guide is merely there to be able to assist, to be able to provide to the needs of the person with the disability. And so we're tethered together or in some instances we'll sometimes hold hands to make sure that if there's any type of hazard coming up or if you've also got other people with, I guess, varying degrees of vision loss, sometimes they have slight vision to be able to see so they don't need a tether as such to run and whatnot.

00:34:45Melissa Erbacher: As part of what your club does, do you provide training to people who would like to be guides? Because I imagine it's not just a, you know, you need a bit of a crash course in, well, forgive the pun, that's a terrible expression.

00:35:00Enrique Suana: No, absolutely. Look, one thing that I will say about Achilles, so personally for myself, I've been a guide for about four years now. Guiding isn't something that's for everyone. Runners, I've got no shame to admit, I've been a runner for a long time. Runners can be very selfish people. So it's really important that This type of activity is all about the person with the disability. So all personal goals and objectives from the guide's point need to be put aside for the period that you are guiding someone and participating with them in this type of activity. There is training that is provided. We have a lot of people that will come to a session to be able to get an understanding of how it works. And then obviously they're subsequently invited to further sessions. We never turn anyone away. We're absolutely more than happy to have people come down and join us for Achilles training. And if it's for them, they'll continue on. But if it's something that perhaps maybe didn't feel right or isn't for them, then we'll keep in touch, yeah. But yeah, we definitely do provide training and make sure that the person with disability, well, the guide knows of any type of impairment, any type of medication, any type of hazards, anything that may need to be communicated through the course of the actual activity itself. to make sure that the person with disability is always safe.

00:36:26Scott Trickett: I guess it's a lot like pacing. When you're pacing, you have to be comfortably faster than the people you're pacing. Absolutely. Is that the same with being a guide?

00:36:35Enrique Suana: Absolutely, yeah. That's exactly right. So to basically be a guide, you need to be, I guess, depending on who you're paired up with, you need to have a certain level of, I guess, of competency with running. So to give you an example, I did the Boston Marathon this year with a gentleman called Stephen Green, who I do a lot of running with personally myself. And to put a marathon as an able-bodied runner by yourself, you've obviously got to focus on yourself, you've got to focus on the target you want to get to, and you focus on your gels and your hydration, I guess, throughout the run and making sure that you don't burn out. When it comes to guiding, you've got to obviously focus on number one, the vision impaired or person with disabilities welfare. So making sure any type of bumps, any type of tree root, anything that's on the ground is known. And in the instance of making sure that medications are administered, making sure that you've got gels, water. So being able to juggle all those tasks throughout the race is really important. You've also, obviously, if the person's going for a time, then you are a pacer as well. So, essentially, it's a combination of pacing, guiding, administering gels and medications, and ensuring, obviously, at all times, the welfare of your runner.

00:37:54Scott Trickett: So, what do you do if someone comes to you and says they want to do a sub-three-hour marathon? Is the club big enough to accommodate that?

00:38:01Enrique Suana: Oh, look, personally, myself, no. I probably couldn't, no. We have different, I guess you could say, connections to be able to find someone that could do that. Interesting you mention that. In 2015, I think the Boston Marathon, the fastest vision-impaired runner finished Boston in 2 hours and 45 minutes, I think it was. So you can imagine how fast you'd have to be to be the guy for that. But it's a bit of context, I guess, for you.

00:38:29Scott Trickett: Yeah, well, now bringing it back to 5K distance, which is a bit easier, at parkrun now we've introduced the visually impaired aid as a volunteer position, and I've seen more and more of your members taking that up. How have you guys used parkrun?

00:38:45Enrique Suana: Well, personally, I've seen parkrun as a wonderful way to be able to introduce people who have come to us walking, for example. So you've got... vision impairment, vision loss and what not can be a very isolating thing for people so you will find people will sometimes struggle to be able to to be able to break those barriers of being able to do things that they previously did if they've lost their vision. So parkrun is a fantastic mechanism to look at graduating, I guess you could say, from your walking activities that you would do with someone into then taking up a shorter distance type run to be able to get your bearings with running if that's where you want to go. If you just want to walk it, that's one of the wonderful things about parkrun as well is that you can walk those events as well. And the most important thing is being able to take that person out and being able to show them that there are events and there are things that they can take part in, I guess, in the running community such as parkrun. So they definitely have helped. They definitely are good events that happen every single week where you've got a really good community spirit. You've got a lot of people that will be there at the end also cheering you on and making sure that no one's got left out, I guess you could say.

00:40:00Scott Trickett: Enrique, I think what you're doing is fantastic. I've had first-hand experience with your club. All the members are doing an awesome job. We should let people know about this volunteer position within parkrun as well. I know a lot of people don't like to give up their run, so this is a perfect way to do it. Get in touch with Achilles and see if you can be paired up with someone to run with.

00:40:24Enrique Suana: Absolutely, yeah. I mean, look, like I said, we welcome people from all backgrounds that enjoy walking. It's a fantastic way to give back to the sport that you love, I guess you could say. And that's the way I look at Achilles, volunteering myself. So it's definitely something that I enjoy. I love running. And then to be able to give something back, it's a fantastic thing to do as well.

00:40:49Scott Trickett: Do you know, at this part of the podcast last week, I asked for iTunes reviews.

00:40:55Melissa Erbacher: And?

00:40:55Scott Trickett: We got some.

00:40:56Melissa Erbacher: Some? That indicates plural. Yeah. More than one.

00:41:00Scott Trickett: So thank you, people. You do as I say. So this week, what I'd like you to do is to deposit. No, I'm not in it for the money. But that was great. Thank you. We got a good response. We won't ask you again for a couple more months.

00:41:17Melissa Erbacher: Probably.

00:41:18Scott Trickett: Everyone's free this week to go and enjoy your parkruns over the weekend. Plan your Christmas and New Year parkruns in the coming weeks. Mel, thanks for joining me for episode 47. You coming back for 48?

00:41:32Melissa Erbacher: You're most welcome. Well, who else will you get on the show if I'm not here? Half the people we speak to have never heard of us. Probably more than half, I think. We should try to figure, we should have started charting this from right from the beginning, January 2016. We should have actually recorded the answers of the people that we asked to be on the show about whether or not they had heard of us before we got in touch.

00:41:57Scott Trickett: You know what I said, there was no homework. There's homework for you this week. Tell people about the podcast. Tell your friends, if you're listening, tell your friends, share it, you know. It's worth a listen. I know everyone's time poor, but... Well, we think it's worth a listen.

00:42:13Melissa Erbacher: Make a couple of podcasters happy. It doesn't take much, believe me.