Episode 54

Episode details · 185 speaker turns · sound cues from context

00:00:10Melissa Erbacher: If I can count correctly, of the parkrun Adventurers. I am super excited. This is going to be a chocolate-fuelled episode. I hope you're all holding on. Scotty, are you here? Are you joining me?

00:00:24Scott Trickett: I am.

00:00:25Melissa Erbacher: Hooray! Welcome to the episode 54. I'm excited.

00:00:28Scott Trickett: You're excited. I'm excited.

00:00:31Melissa Erbacher: I am, yeah, it doesn't take much chocolate at this time of night to get me excited. So I'm not going to be sleeping for hours.

00:00:38Scott Trickett: So did I inspire you last week when I was eating chocolate? So you went out and brought more chocolate to eat. So I'm an influencer.

00:00:47Melissa Erbacher: Can I tell you a little secret? You know how with the pineapple chocolate, like every time I see it, I just buy a couple of bars or whatever. Yeah. Apparently, last week, Adam decided to do a bit of a reorganize of the pantry. And do you know how many bars of that chocolate I have in my pantry?

00:01:07Scott Trickett: Rough guess, half a dozen.

00:01:11Melissa Erbacher: More.

00:01:13Scott Trickett: A dozen?

00:01:15Melissa Erbacher: More. Really? I have. Are you ready for it? Yeah. 19 blocks of pineapple chocolate. And he worked it out. He looked at the expiry date and he's like, I need to eat one block of that chocolate every week for the next 19 weeks and I'm still going to be eating it past the expiry date. I was like, wow, I've really slowed down on my consumption during the summer. So I'm going to have to up the ante again.

00:01:42Scott Trickett: Chocolate's one of those things that you can risk going beyond the expiry date. I'll let you in on a secret. I actually prefer it because it goes a bit, you know, what does it do? It goes funny. The consistency changes. It goes hard. I like expired chocolate. So if you don't want it, send it down here.

00:02:01Melissa Erbacher: Well, I'll keep it until it expires. We'll forget for a moment that it's in the fluctuating heat of the Sunshine Coast Queensland summer. Maybe we'll just have to start sending it out as prizes to parkrun Adventurers for random things we ask them to do.

00:02:16Scott Trickett: Yeah. Don't mention prizes.

00:02:20Melissa Erbacher: We're not very good at sending them on time. They're coming.

00:02:22Scott Trickett: They're coming. Our prize winners are coming.

parkrun news bulletin

00:02:27Melissa Erbacher: Are you ready for some news?

00:02:29Scott Trickett: Always.

00:02:30Melissa Erbacher: All right. Well, let's get to it. Since the first event launched in South Australia in December 2012, the state has hosted 1,014 events. with 7,131 volunteers making it happen for 99,169 finishes. The magic 100,000 finishes target is expected to fall next parkrun day.

00:03:01Scott Trickett: On Sunday, legendary UK parkrunner Ron Hill didn't go for a run. On the 21st of December 1964, he did. He ran in the Olympics that year too, and in 1968. And in 1970, he won the Boston Marathon, and followed that up with another Olympic effort in 1972. For 19,032 days, he ran at least a mile every day. On Sunday, he didn't go for a run.

00:03:31Melissa Erbacher: So that's a lot of days. Did you know that equals more than 52 years of running every day?

00:03:41Scott Trickett: It's quite a streak. It's longer than my streak.

00:03:45Melissa Erbacher: You've got a streak happening. What's your streak, Scotty?

00:03:47Scott Trickett: I recently, like I just did a seven-day or an eight-day streak that I was pretty proud of. And I really, I didn't want to not run on the ninth day or whatever it was. So I can only imagine how poor old Ron felt on Sunday. Do we have a bit more info about why he didn't run?

00:04:06Melissa Erbacher: Well, I believe that on the Saturday when he went for a run. So running streaks... are an actual thing that get like the progress of them gets charted by someone. There's a whole official spreadsheet of people who are on running streaks. There are lots of other people who are doing it as well. He was winning in terms of the longest running streak in the world. And I think the next person behind him is still about 10 years behind him or something, roughly. But I believe that, yeah, he was having some heart pains. after about the first 400 metres. And to have a running streak, you have to run a minimum of a mile each day. So that's in our terms of reference, 1.6 kilometres. And yeah, I believe he was having some heart pain from about 400 metres on. And I think he decided that, you know what, if he dies, he's not going to be able to do the streak anyway. And he really kind of owes it to his family, his wife and his sons and friends, not to die. just because he was too stubborn to break a streak. I think he made the right choice.

00:05:12Scott Trickett: He's already left a legacy, you know, what I read out. A couple of Olympics, Boston Marathon.

00:05:18Melissa Erbacher: Not to mention a whole heap of parkruns in the UK. Yeah.

00:05:21Scott Trickett: Do you reckon people go up to him and say, hey, you're Ron Hill, the parkrunner? Or, hey, Ron Hill, you're the Olympian? Or, hey, you're Ron Hill who just ran for 19,000 days in a row?

00:05:33Melissa Erbacher: I'm pretty sure he gets all of those things. I've got a streak, you know.

00:05:37Scott Trickett: A running streak?

00:05:38Melissa Erbacher: No, it's not a running streak. That would require me to put on shoes every day and charge my GPS watch and, you know, go and get sweaty and stuff.

00:05:51Scott Trickett: Just checking in, are you still running?

00:05:55Melissa Erbacher: Not a lot lately. I'm mostly wogging and with a big healthy dashing of volunteering in. You may have... memories of what the heat is like in Queensland during the summertime. And I'm a bit of a wuss. And so I choose those months to volunteer and watch everybody else sweat it out.

00:06:19Scott Trickett: Okay. Completely understand that after what I've just been through. But tell us about your streak then.

00:06:26Melissa Erbacher: Well, for the last 115 days, so it's still substantial in terms of its length, in my opinion, I have played my cello every day.

00:06:40Scott Trickett: You're okay.

00:06:45Melissa Erbacher: Feeling the awe from you, Scotty.

00:06:47Scott Trickett: So how long do you have to play it to contribute?

00:06:51Melissa Erbacher: I just have to play it. So pretty much five minutes.

00:06:54Scott Trickett: Walk past it in the hall, run your fingers across the strings. There, done it.

00:06:59Melissa Erbacher: No, that doesn't count. I have to pick it up and I have to tune it and then I have to run through... some scales and some arpeggios and then I have to play some songs and then I'm satisfied. But look, this is the dedication of my streak. I have been particularly busy over the past month or so between parkrun commitments and my actual job and things like that. And I have gone to bed exhausted and realised after my brain trying to wind down for 15 or 20 minutes before sleep and just running through all the things that I haven't played that day. And so pitch black, husband's asleep, I'm lying in bed and I sit bolt upright. It's like, shit, I need to go play my cello. And I've got out of bed three times in the last fortnight to go and play my cello because I hadn't played it that day, just so I don't break my streak. That's the power of streaks and stubbornness.

00:07:58Scott Trickett: And so does this wake Adam up?

00:08:00Melissa Erbacher: yeah pretty much he's not used to it by now well no I do try to do it before I go to bed the intention is to do it while I'm awake and during the day time but it's often the last thing that I do before I go to sleep which is really nice actually because it helps separate my brain from the computer screens and all the other things that I've been doing on the computer and helps me to wind down and relax that's good

00:08:30Scott Trickett: You love your fiddling, so that's good to hear.

00:08:33Melissa Erbacher: I do. And there's nothing like fiddling before bed.

00:08:36Scott Trickett: Yeah. Now, speaking of fiddling, I love parkrun adventures. And I had one on the weekend. Do you want to hear about it?

00:08:45Melissa Erbacher: Yes. It's been far too long between adventures for you. Tell me all about it.

00:08:48Scott Trickett: So I adventured to Renmark. Now, this was due to a family holiday up on the Murray. We went up to Mildura, and the closest parkrun to Mildura is Renmark. And how often – like, Renmark is one of those events, and it's one of the locations in Australia that I don't think they're going to get many visitors because when they asked, there weren't many hands going – when they asked for adventurers, there weren't many hands going up. In fact, we were the only adventurers, I think.

00:09:17Melissa Erbacher: But they did ask.

00:09:18Scott Trickett: They did ask.

00:09:20Melissa Erbacher: That's a key question. Did they ask because you went and introduced yourself beforehand and said, hey, I'm an adventurer?

00:09:26Scott Trickett: No, no. So they do get some. We did get the, where are you from, Westerfolds? Never heard of it. Okay, so you don't listen to the podcast. But it was good, a lovely local run, small run along the river, nice and flat, but very hot. I didn't realise how hot it was up in that part of the country.

00:09:51Melissa Erbacher: It gets hot in South Australia in summer.

00:09:53Scott Trickett: Yeah, like really hot.

00:09:57Melissa Erbacher: What were you expecting? Penguins and cool breezes?

00:10:01Scott Trickett: Maybe not penguins, but a cool breeze at 8 o'clock in the morning wouldn't have gone down, or would have gone down very nicely. Instead, it was 26 degrees, blue skies, blazing sun.

00:10:12Melissa Erbacher: Oh, heaven forbid, 26 degrees. However did you manage?

00:10:16Scott Trickett: Well, the good thing is there's no humidity up there. It's just dry heat, which I think I'm better in humidity. Seriously? Yeah, it's my Thai blood. For those that don't know, I'm half Thai. You would never know by my name and my looks, but I'm half Thai, so I can handle humidity. When we went up to far north Queensland, I mean, it was hot, but I was okay. pretty sure i remember you telling me that you couldn't handle it well it was six six to twelve months ago so my memories faded somewhat you remember the blue oceans and yep well yeah anyway but this dry but red muck i've done it i've added an r to my so this is the new craze the alphabet or what is it alphabet touring

00:11:06Melissa Erbacher: Yeah, I don't know what the correct term is for it. I haven't paid much attention to it. I'm not on that bandwagon.

00:11:12Scott Trickett: Yeah, but a lot of people are. And I must, in the back of my mind, subconsciously, because I did go through my list and go, oh, I've added an R to my alphabet. Right. So that was cool. Well there you go. I forgot to tie up my shoelaces. So I was a bit bummed. I tried to run really hard and then stopped twice to do up my shoelaces.

00:11:37Melissa Erbacher: You didn't think to do up the second one the first time you stopped?

00:11:41Scott Trickett: I thought it would hold out. I could feel it getting loose. But it's only 5K. So the first one went at about 2K. But, you know.

00:11:50Melissa Erbacher: Rookie mistake. Yeah. Do you think you're self-sabotaging subconsciously on purpose?

00:11:55Scott Trickett: Maybe. Maybe.

00:11:58Melissa Erbacher: Or it might just be that you're being a lazy tourist.

00:12:01Scott Trickett: What, neglecting my shoelaces?

00:12:03Melissa Erbacher: Yeah. Oh, look, I was having a conversation on Saturday morning before the run with I asked somebody how they were doing. They're like, oh, actually, you know, I'm not feeling great. You know, I don't think I'm going to run very well today. There's something funny going on in my belly or something and my legs have been playing. I'm like, it's hot. And you're just making up excuses because you don't think you're going to run very well. And you're just preempting. And so it's just like when you don't have a great run, you'll get back at the end and went, yeah, but, you know, it's because I'm not feeling great and blah, blah, blah. People make up so many excuses.

00:12:42Paul Jude: Yeah.

00:12:44Scott Trickett: You know what else I forgot and what else might have thrown me is that South Australia is half an hour behind Victoria. So we left Victoria and got to Renmark half an hour before we should have.

00:12:55Melissa Erbacher: Oh, so you drove directly there on the day? Yeah. How many hours did that take you?

00:13:03Scott Trickett: Just a bit over an hour, hour and a half maybe. So we aimed to get there about 7.30, quarter to eight, but we actually ended up getting there at seven. And the town was dead. The town was closed.

00:13:14Melissa Erbacher: Well, it was asleep. It wasn't dead. It just hadn't woken up yet.

00:13:20Scott Trickett: But this is not something that I'm used to, but I did discover over the whole weekend that these country towns, you know, nothing's happening. At 7 o'clock in the morning, like I'm kind of used to. The toilets were locked. All the shops were locked. No one in the street.

00:13:35Melissa Erbacher: Except... 7 o'clock on a Saturday morning, that's pretty normal throughout most of the country. Is it? Stuff not to be open.

00:13:42Scott Trickett: Yeah. You know, the only people who were there was the ladies setting up parkrun, chalking the path. So we knew we were in the right place.

00:13:51Melissa Erbacher: Much better to be half an hour early than half an hour late.

00:13:53Scott Trickett: Yeah. But there you go. Big tick to Renmark parkrun. Thanks for having us on Saturday. Time now to introduce another regular segment that we wanted to introduce to the pod. Mel, I want to get better as a runner. Do you want to get better as a runner?

On the Couch with Coach Steve

00:14:18Melissa Erbacher: Well, who doesn't?

00:14:20Scott Trickett: We all want to go faster.

00:14:21Melissa Erbacher: We all want to improve ourselves.

00:14:22Scott Trickett: we're going to introduce a segment with a coach. And our coach is Australian representative, Bridge to Brisbane winner, Melbourne half winner, Two Bays record holder, and my coach, Steve Dinneen.

00:14:37Stephen Dinneen ("Coach Steve"): Thanks for having me, Scott. It's great to be here and have all the park on with you today.

00:14:41Scott Trickett: Now, you're joining us on the couch. The idea behind it is that we're all regular parkrunners. We all might be recreational parkrunners. And as I said, we all want to get faster. So, have you got a tip that a regular parkrunner could use to improve their parkrun time? Or just their running in general?

00:15:00Stephen Dinneen ("Coach Steve"): Yeah, definitely got a few tips there because I think, basically the easy way to put it, I call it the variety is the spice of life. And it means mix up your runs. So when you go for your runs, don't do the same course, don't do the same distance, don't do the same time because your body adapts to what you do. If you don't change it up, it gets used to it. So really, by mixing your runs up, you're going to do a few things. And the most important one you're going to do is make your body have to readapt and get stronger. The areas you want to work on where you mix it up will be, you know, if you're averaging as a parkrunner, you might run three times a week and you're doing on average seven kilometres a run. what you're best to do is do one easy run at 7Ks, one easy run at 10Ks, and a slightly faster run at 5Ks. And so you've got different distances, slightly different speeds, and different amounts of time on your feet. And just by doing that, you'll notice you've still got the same distance per week covered, but by mixing them up on different days, you'll just find the body starts to adapt because one's a bit faster, one's a bit longer, one's a bit slower for the recovery.

00:16:01Melissa Erbacher: Steve, can I just jump in in here? So 5k is probably the max that a whole bunch of parkrunners have ever really got to, but they do want to, you know, increase their speed at that. If 10k might be a little bit out of what they feel is comfortable or possible for now, could they do like a faster, shorter one and then the 5k and then something a little bit longer than that?

00:16:26Stephen Dinneen ("Coach Steve"): Yeah, well, I can, if the parkrunner's limit was kind of a 5k, the way I'd go about it would be do your 5K run, then the next time you're going for a run, I'd actually break your 5K run up into doing probably, I'd go out and do just a slow 3K, then I'd probably have about a five-minute walk for them to recover, and then I'd go on and do another two to 3K, so maybe up to 6Ks at a faster pace. So that way, you're only doing 6Ks, but you actually do the first three at a steady pace, have a small break so they can recover, and then go push out another 3K slightly faster, So in a way, you're doing 2 by 3K efforts. The second one's slightly faster than what they normally do, the 5K in.

00:17:08Melissa Erbacher: You're already warm for the second part.

00:17:11Stephen Dinneen ("Coach Steve"): Yeah, you're warming up. And the other thing too is if you look at it, you know, they're normally doing 5K. So they've achieved two things in that session. They've done 6K. So they've done an extra K in total distance. And they've also done 3K of that faster. And that little 2 minute, 3 minute to 5 minute break in the middle allows them to recover to be able to do that. So in the end, they're doing a bit further and And, you know, 3K is a little bit faster.

00:17:32Scott Trickett: Are we talking about variety of courses too, Steve? Because some parkrunners just love running the same course. It may be the parkrun course.

00:17:41Stephen Dinneen ("Coach Steve"): Beautiful. The easiest way of doing that is I'd do the same loop reverse. If you actually mix up the course, you can still do 5Ks. If you do your usual run, it's 5, 6K from home or parkrun, do that normally. But then if you come back another day and do exactly the same course but in the reverse direction... you'll notice it's generally pretty different. Different turns, different hills to go up and down.

00:18:04Scott Trickett: Okay. We've got a problem if we've got an out and back. Can we just explore off the track?

00:18:09Stephen Dinneen ("Coach Steve"): If you've got an out and back, that's even easier. So if it's an out and back, so it's 2.5k out, 2.5k back, have you ever heard of a Mona fartlek? I have. So the monofart leg is a 20-minute session, and it's pretty much 10 minutes out and 10 minutes back of changing pace. So what they can even do is, if it's an out-of-back course, rather than run 2K straight out, maybe what they can do is do the first K at a nice relaxed pace, do the next 500 metres slightly faster, next 500 slightly slower, and do that for 2K or K and a half out, do the same thing on the way back and jog the last K back in. Does that kind of make sense? So what you're doing is you're just changing your pace on that course.

00:18:52Melissa Erbacher: So are all these things kind of reliant on them having their own GPS watches so that they can keep an eye on their pace or can they work based on perceived effort?

00:19:02Stephen Dinneen ("Coach Steve"): I reckon the best way of doing it is probably perceived effort. And I have no doubt when you first go to do it, you're going to muck it up. Even if you're the best runner in the world, you go to these sessions for the first two or three times, you muck it up. So the easiest way of doing it is actually going out and playing. Just go out and play. Go out and you say, okay, I've got a 2.5K course out and back or I've got a 5K loop. Go off your watch. You know, normally the 5K, I do it at 6-minute K pace, so it's 30 minutes. What I'm going to do is 10 minutes at the start as a nice warm-up. I'm going to do 10 minutes at the end as a cool-down. And the middle 10 minutes, I'm just going to do a minute on, minute off. Minute on, minute off for five of them. And what's that on? At a pace that you feel like you're picking it up, but you can maintain it. And the off is obviously a jog. And most people will go out for the first of those one minutes and go too quick. But once I've done it a few times, I realise I've got to go a bit more steady towards the start and make them all even.

00:19:55Scott Trickett: Can I vouch for this, that I've been running with Steve's group for a few months now and I still muck it up every week. I think it's important not to worry about getting it right the first time.

00:20:06Stephen Dinneen ("Coach Steve"): I think you're spot on there.

00:20:08Scott Trickett: Steve's given me instructions to go out at certain paces and to do certain things and I've got it wrong every time. But I am getting better and I think everyone will get better if you just keep doing it.

00:20:17Stephen Dinneen ("Coach Steve"): If it makes you feel better, Scott, I sometimes get it wrong. I often go out there and for some reason, I don't know if I've woken up with too many happy pills, I feel like I'm better than what I am. And I go out there and I think, oh, I've gone out way too quick, too early. It's just one of those things. And the more you do it, the more you realize, okay, this is where I'm at. And the hardest thing for people to do is when you've been running for a while and you come back from a sickness or injury, you remember how fast you used to go. You're not in that shape. And your brain kind of goes to the place you used to go out. And you realize after a few reps, you're not at that pace anymore. So if you muck it up, you don't worry. You just go, okay. You know, it just gives you data. As I've gone too fast out, take it in, absorb it. And next time, I'll go a little bit slower and see how that goes.

00:21:00Scott Trickett: Good day. Before we let you go, how's your parkrun been going lately? Have you been getting out and doing some parkruns?

00:21:06Stephen Dinneen ("Coach Steve"): Yeah, I've done a couple of parkruns. I did a parkrun about a month ago. and I've been trying to get out for the last few weeks, but I'm actually going to the World Masters, would you believe, indoors in March in Korea. So I've had to spend a couple more weeks on a Saturday on the athletics track to try and remember how to run an athletics track. So once I get through March, I'll probably plan over April, May, June to get around and do a fair few parkruns around Melbourne. I've done a couple now, but I'd like to do a couple more.

00:21:34Melissa Erbacher: Sounds great. I wouldn't even know how to like run on a track outside, let alone indoors. So I imagine that's going to be an interesting challenge for you.

00:21:43Stephen Dinneen ("Coach Steve"): Well, the indoor track's only 200 meters. So it's half the length of an outdoor track, which means there's a lot more bends and a lot sharper. So you've got to actually learn to run on sharp bends. And the lanes actually are like a bit of a bike track where the outer lanes sort of start to go up. So you've got to learn to run on a bit of a gradient on sharp bends. So I'm trying to teach myself to run circles.

00:22:03Melissa Erbacher: Do you not get dizzy?

00:22:06Stephen Dinneen ("Coach Steve"): I've never run indoor. The first time I'm going to run indoors at the World Indoor Champs for the Masters, so I'll let you know in about two months. I'm just trying to get used to running on the track, and then I'll get used to running circles soon.

00:22:18Melissa Erbacher: Awesome. Well, we'll let you go now, Steve, because we don't want you to give away all the tricks of the trade in one go. We will have you back on the show. Thank you for joining us this week. We're sure our runners will appreciate getting some tips from somebody who actually knows what they're talking about, as opposed to me and Scotty.

00:22:38Stephen Dinneen ("Coach Steve"): Look, Scotty — I haven't seen you run, Mel — but I've seen Scott run, and Scott's learning and improving so much. And as I said, you guys are the ones that are getting information to the people. So thanks for having us on here. And I said if anyone has got any tips on that session and they want to message you guys, I'm happy to answer them next time I'm on about this podcast.

Meet the ED

00:23:07Scott Trickett: And we're going to continue the South Australian theme as we catch up with not one, but we're lucky enough to have two event directors join us from Strathalbyn parkrun this week. Welcome to the podcast, Paul Jude and James Clegg.

00:23:22Paul Jude: Thanks for having us.

00:23:24Scott Trickett: Strathalbyn parkrun. Remind us where Strathalbyn is and tell us a bit about your course.

00:23:30Paul Jude: Okay, so Strathalbyn is roughly 50 kilometres from Adelaide. on the Fleurieu Peninsula. Some of your listeners might be familiar with Victor Harbor, a popular tourist destination in the Fleurieu. We're roughly 45 minutes from Victor Harbour as well.

00:23:48Scott Trickett: What sort of course have you got at Strathalbyn?

00:23:50James Clegg: Yeah, Scott, we've got a ... It's mainly a bitumen path that winds its way along the side of the Angas River, quite shaded in places with the trees hanging over. You go out probably about 1.3 kms and come back probably about 1.25 kms. You head back out to the first turnaround and then come back to the start area. So it's an out-and-back course and it's mainly bitumen, as I say. Good for prams and good for everybody. There's quite a lot of room there for PBs and things like that. So, yeah, it's a great little course.

00:24:29Melissa Erbacher: Now, gentlemen, your event's been running for exactly 31 parkrun days or events, especially since, you know, you'd get to do extras some days. What was the impetus for you to start an event? Had you been parkrunning elsewhere before or you just specifically wanted to bring something to your local area?

00:24:48James Clegg: Yeah, I started running in, I think it was July 2014 at Mount Barker. I'd been running there for a while at Mount Barker where I met Paul. I realised Paul was from Strathalbyn as well, and we just got talking, became friends. And over a few beers, I think we discussed bringing parkrun to Strathalbyn. But initially, we decided that we didn't know if we could do it. And then Mount Barker started to grow. And there was over 200 people at Mount Barker because it was getting so successful. We thought we'd try and alleviate some of the parkrun traffic at Mount Barker and set up at Strath. So we got Strath going, I think it was July 2016. We got Strath up and running. But we found that we didn't really get or alleviate much traffic from Mount Barker. We actually got homegrown parkrunners. So we got new people to come to parkrun.

00:25:59Scott Trickett: This is a common story. One idea is when one parkrun gets really big, we'll just start up another one. But generally what happens is we just end up introducing a whole bunch of new people to parkrun. You guys are close to the Mount Barker team, and you guys did a New Year's Day double with Mount Barker? Yeah, we did. How was that?

00:26:20Paul Jude: Oh, it was terrific. Overwhelming, but terrific. We had a unique situation where Mount Barker had scheduled their run for 7am and we had scheduled our run for 9am. So I don't know if James mentioned before, but Strathalbyn and Mount Barker are about 25 minutes drive apart. So many people, not just Mount Barker runners or Strathalby runners, but lots of people from Adelaide and many of the various other parkruns that have started up around the state, made it their pact or New Year's resolution to do two parkruns in a day. So I think there were over 100 runners who did both the Mount Barker run and the Strathalby run. So we were completely overwhelmed when we had 179 runners turn up at our event at Strath. Considering that we usually average between 30 and 50 runners, that was just... Incredible.

00:27:26Scott Trickett: You also had a couple of fast visitors on New Year's Day.

00:27:31Paul Jude: We did, yes. Paul Martelletti, I think his name was, and Hannah Alroyd, I think her name is. They set new records at not only the Strathalby parkrun but the Mount Barker parkrun. So back-to-back records for both of them. And I certainly know Paul is from So that's a time that we need to break by an Australian runner and hopefully a South Australian runner. Anna as well.

00:28:02James Clegg: She's also from the UK. So, yeah.

00:28:06Melissa Erbacher: Were they travelling together just trying to break all the records in Australia while they're here?

00:28:10James Clegg: No, I don't think they were. We bumped into Anna some weeks prior at the Victor Harbour. But, yeah, both of them very impressive to see. to see them just glide along the course, they were very good. Didn't see them often because they were flying past us like we were standing still.

00:28:33Melissa Erbacher: Now, were you prepared for all those runners? If you're used to having between sort of 30 and 50, do you just have all the tokens in your kit for up to 200 runners on a normal week?

00:28:45Paul Jude: Oh, there was a thick layer of dust on the tokens, 100 through to 200. But a little story for you. So James, he did the Mount Barker run on New Year's Day, but then he rode his bike from Mount Barker to Strath. There was one of our other run directors, John, he did the same one. And just before James got on his bike, he sent a text to me from Mount Barker. He said, get ready. There's a whole heap coming. So I was the lone ranger back at Stratham getting the event all set up. And when I turned up there, I think it was about three quarters of an hour before we were due to start. It was already a sea of people there. So I knew we were in for a big day.

00:29:31Melissa Erbacher: And would you do it again next year, New Year's Day double?

00:29:36James Clegg: I don't think we've got a choice. I think people have told us that we're doing it again. So, yeah, we'll have to wait and see. But I don't think we've got much of a choice yet.

00:29:47Scott Trickett: One other thing we've heard about Strath is that you recently won an award for the community event of the year. Firstly, congratulations and tell us about that.

00:29:58James Clegg: Thank you. Yeah. So we got the community event of the year 2017 award. Now, I couldn't be there because I had a trip to Melbourne and did the Albert Park in Melbourne. the ceremony. I'll let you tell all about it.

00:30:22Paul Jude: Yeah, so like many places around Australia, there was the Australia Day Breakfast put on by the Strathalbyn Rotary Club, which ironically are one of our sponsors for parkrun. There was probably 300 or so people at the breakfast there and yeah, we received our award and it was really great to have A number of the young families who have made parkrun part of their Saturday morning turn up and they really felt like it's not James' award, it's not my award, it's the community's award. Everyone, although we're still a small parkrun but growing, everyone feels a sense of ownership and just looking at our volunteer roster looking forward, it's really, really really healthy there's just some great enthusiasm around and we're just really grateful that we took the plunge and jumped through the necessary hoops to get parkrun going because it's at that point where the hard work's over and it just it just ticks along and we get to enjoy it so we're very grateful yeah we've got some great people behind us now it's always wonderful to get recognition for i mean i know you don't look for it you're not doing it for the thanks but

00:31:37Melissa Erbacher: To be recognised that you're contributing to your community in such a positive and healthy way is always lovely to have that little pat on the back.

00:31:46James Clegg: Yeah, it is good to see that. It's good to have that. And I think without the Territory Director, John, without his assistance, we've been bothering him all the time. You know, he's been great as John has. We owe a lot of thanks to him for getting this up and running as well.

00:32:08Melissa Erbacher: We do love John Laurie and all his work for South Australia. He does a great job. Now, I especially like the fact that James was on an adventure, which is why he couldn't attend your ceremony for your Community Event Award. Do you gentlemen get to get out? And now, as you mentioned, your event's ticking along, so you can enjoy it. Do you get to get out and do some parkrun adventures from now on, every now and again?

00:32:35Paul Jude: Yeah, absolutely. I reckon James actually might have booked his flights to Melbourne because he knew that there was a chance he'd have to make a speech at the Australia Day ceremony, to be honest. But, no, no, it was a shame he couldn't be there because he's been the one in my ear for a number of times, a number of years, saying, oh, do you reckon we'd do this in Strath? Do you reckon we could do this in Strath? So it would have been fitting that he was there, but. Anyway, yeah, as for the crux of your question, yeah, we're at the point now where we have a group of, is it six or eight? Six. Six run directors that we sort of take it in turns of running each event, which gives us a chance to actually physically run it, which is the whole reason we found out about Parker anyway, because we went to Mount Barker to do that. So we have enjoyed the fact that it was a short-term investment

00:33:31Melissa Erbacher: intensively from us to to get it up and running but we're at that point where we can still enjoy running wonderful now we usually ask uh an ed if they've got a top three parkruns since we've got the two of you we might just get two of your faves from each of you and it can't be a home parkrun so let us have it gentlemen and tell us why you're up james

00:33:57James Clegg: Murray Bridge, I like Murray Bridge. It's an out-and-back course. Sorry, it's a two-lap course, but it's a straight course. It's got a slight hill at the end, which you don't really notice, and then you turn around and come back, and it just seems to help you. It's always good for the PBs. Set at the side of the river, especially in winter when the steam's coming off the river and it's all picturesque. I like Murray Bridge. I like Murray Bridge. I'll go to you for your next one, I would think.

00:34:26Paul Jude: Okay, I'm going to pick one in South Australia and then one in New South Wales. I will say Mount Barker. That's where I did 50-odd runs to start with. And, yeah, that's a beautiful trail out to the Laratinga Wetlands and there's an awesome bunch of people there. So well done to the crew there at Mount Barker. They just keep growing. I think they had over 200 there on the weekend. And the other one, I was fortunate enough in October last year to do a bit of a trip with my young family, which included also visiting the Blue Mountains. And we stopped in a place called Lawson in New South Wales, not far from Katoomba. And that is a crazy parkrun track there. Crazy in a good way. You're on a whole heap of fire tracks. And silly me when I decided to go to parkrun in the Blue Mountains. should have known it was going to be a challenging challenging course um one hill in particular i think i'm still still massaging the knots out of my calf muscles but um no it was a great experience i appreciate the work that people have done at the lawson parkrun yeah for my second um it's just

00:35:46James Clegg: to choose from there. Good. Mount Barker, Victor Harbour, there's some great ones out there. I think I'd have to possibly say Huddersfield parkrun in the UK, maybe one of them. That's my hometown. Great course through the park, Greenhead Park over there. So, yeah, hard to choose from.

00:36:04Scott Trickett: No, that's good. We love hearing about some international parkruns that have made your top three list. Gentlemen, thanks for coming on and sharing your story about Strathalbyn. And it's good to see the parkrun scene in South Australia is really strong and healthy at the moment. So thanks for coming on the pod.

00:36:23Paul Jude: Thank you. Thanks for having us.

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

00:36:33Melissa Erbacher: Well, there are no launches countrywide this weekend. Thank goodness. That will give an opportunity for adventures, adventures and adventurers. who want to catch up on some events that, you know, these weeks that we have two launches, I think it's a little bit unfair on the people who are trying to keep on top of events in Australia, you know. It's hard enough to try and catch up without launching two events every week. So, Parker in Australia, we thank you for not launching anything this weekend. There's four people. Oh, no, there's more than four of us. I want to keep on top of it too, but I don't get around to enough events. So they just need to slow the hell down with all the launching.

00:37:15Scott Trickett: I disagree. More launches. I'm disappointed this week.

00:37:19Melissa Erbacher: Oh, okay. Well, can't agree on everything. Where's the cake though, Scotty? Or donuts, if there happen to be donuts.

00:37:28Scott Trickett: We have two anniversaries this week. I'm going to get this wrong again. Toolern, Toolern, Toolern Creek in Victoria celebrating their second that's two years you know i went to the launch of tulon had a very minor bit when these guys were starting up and nobody explained to you how to pronounce it yes mark has explained on numerous occasions because i would say to learn that's how i would say it but And do you know what? I think we had this conversation 12 months ago.

00:38:03Melissa Erbacher: When we were talking about it. We should go back to that episode and have a listen.

00:38:09Scott Trickett: Yeah.

00:38:10Melissa Erbacher: And maybe see what our lessons were learnt. Obviously they weren't learnt.

00:38:15Scott Trickett: But Toolan Creek is celebrating their second anniversary and I would love to go. But I'm run director this Saturday. But I'm going to put that on my list to head back out there. But there's one more anniversary. Over in the West.

00:38:30Melissa Erbacher: Ooh.

00:38:31Scott Trickett: Yeah, they can talk about anniversaries, remember? Woodbridge Riverside.

00:38:37Melissa Erbacher: I know they can talk about them.

00:38:38Scott Trickett: Well, we're allowed to talk about them.

00:38:40Melissa Erbacher: Well, thank you.

00:38:41Scott Trickett: So well done, Woodbridge Riverside.

00:38:44Melissa Erbacher: Turning the big one. First anniversary. Now, we had a bit of a chat about something different that we could do to finish up the episodes lately. And or start them on the slow news weeks. We had a bit of news this week, so we decided not to do it this week. But, Scotty, you made some big promises that you would have an awesome joke for me.

Running joke segment (unnamed)

00:39:09Scott Trickett: I don't think they were big promises. She said, have you got a joke? I go, yeah, I've got a joke.

00:39:18Melissa Erbacher: I remember it differently. So I have high expectations. But fortunately, nobody else knows that this is coming before now. So their expectations are probably quite low. So come on, hit us with it. Here's my joke. Is it a running joke?

00:39:32Scott Trickett: Kind of, kind of. And if you've run at Westerfold, you might have already seen it because we have jokes out on the course. So if you're listening and you've heard it before, just laugh along anyway. But did you know what Bruce Lee's favorite drink is?

00:39:48Melissa Erbacher: Bruce Lee. I'm going to regret this. No, I don't. What is it? What's up?

00:40:04[laughter]

00:40:04Scott Trickett: Get it?

00:40:06Melissa Erbacher: Yeah, I get it. Funny, isn't it? You said it was a good joke.

00:40:10Scott Trickett: You laughed. I'm still laughing.

00:40:13Melissa Erbacher: And I've heard it before. If I don't laugh, I'll cry situations.

00:40:22Scott Trickett: Anyway.

00:40:23Melissa Erbacher: Okay.

00:40:23Scott Trickett: Give us yours.

00:40:24Melissa Erbacher: If anybody... I don't have a joke. If anybody thinks you can... And I want to hear running jokes, okay? If anyone has a good running joke, please... either record it and send it to us. In fact, that would be great because nobody would be able to deliver it like you can. Or get in touch and we will invite you on the show to record it for you. And or if you don't want your voice out there, The third and final option is that you can just email us the joke and we will try to deliver it with such skills as Scotty has just demonstrated for you.

00:41:02Scott Trickett: I've set the bar anyway. So you know.

00:41:04Melissa Erbacher: Yes, you have.

00:41:05Scott Trickett: It's probably best if you record it yourself.

00:41:07Melissa Erbacher: It's far too low to limbo beneath that bar. So the only way is up from here, I'm pretty sure. Somebody wrote that in chalk on your path.

00:41:18Scott Trickett: No, we made signs.

00:41:20Melissa Erbacher: Oh, my. So you can reuse them.

00:41:24Scott Trickett: But that one didn't get used much, so I made these signs when we started.

00:41:27Melissa Erbacher: I wonder why.

00:41:29Scott Trickett: Three years ago. And, you know, there's a couple that if you've been running at Westerfolds every week for three years, you're probably a bit sick of these jokes. But the Bruce Lee joke, the signs have disappeared, so that hasn't come out for a while. Oh.

00:41:47Melissa Erbacher: Somebody's sabotaging your Bruce Lee jokes. I wonder what their motivations could be for that.

00:41:52Scott Trickett: Who knows? It's funny though.

00:41:57Melissa Erbacher: You keep telling yourself that. Shall we go?

00:42:02Scott Trickett: Yeah, let's go. Let's go. All right. Sorry we're late this week. We know we're late because we're actually recording this the day after we usually release. So sorry. We did warn you last week. Next week, we're going to be spot on.

00:42:17Melissa Erbacher: Now you're making promises.

00:42:18Scott Trickett: I'm excited for next week already.

00:42:22Melissa Erbacher: Excellent. It will be a good show, actually. I know who the guests are, so that's exciting. Great.

00:42:32Scott Trickett: Tell me off air. See you, Mel.

00:42:34Melissa Erbacher: See you, Scotty. See you.

00:42:54Scott Trickett: Who are our guests next week?

00:42:57Melissa Erbacher: I'm recording and Adam walks in and goes, can I take my clothes off now? It's like, yeah, you can have a shower. Well, I'm pretty sure...