Episode 60

Episode details · 263 speaker turns · sound cues from context

00:00:12Melissa Erbacher: Welcome to the Diamond Edition of parkrun Adventurers. It is episode 60. I'm excited. Scotty, are you here with me? Are you excited?

00:00:24Scott Trickett: I am. Can you hear me over my diamond necklace?

00:00:28Melissa Erbacher: Oh, is that what was all tinkling in the background?

00:00:31Scott Trickett: Yes, with my diamond earrings and a diamond headband. I've gone all out tonight.

00:00:38Melissa Erbacher: Have you got a diamond encrusted purse to take that stuff outside?

00:00:42Scott Trickett: Oh no, I didn't think that far ahead. I thought the necklace, earrings and headband was enough for our 60th episode. I just wanted to try and match you.

00:00:53Melissa Erbacher: I can imagine you're all sparkly. So what are we going to get up to? I don't know.

00:00:59Scott Trickett: Did you have a diamond worthy adventure on the weekend?

00:01:03Melissa Erbacher: Actually, I had a better than diamond worthy experience on Saturday.

00:01:11Scott Trickett: We'll save that for another episode maybe. No, let's hear it now. What happened?

00:01:18Melissa Erbacher: Okay, so for those of you who listen fairly frequently, you would know that my home parkrun is Kiwana and that I've been there a lot lately. And I was there again on Saturday, but for the first time, In four and a half years, I got to meet, in fact it's for the first time in forever, anyone got to meet a newly hatched loggerhead turtle on its way down to the ocean and it was the last of its clutch and it was just the tiniest, most precious little thing and it was just making its way down to the ocean before parkrun started. It was absolutely magic. Worth more than diamonds.

00:02:04Scott Trickett: So this was before everybody got there?

00:02:07Melissa Erbacher: No, no. There were a lot of people there. And to be honest, the run started about five minutes late because I got distracted before I was supposed to be briefing the volunteers. run director but I got distracted by this turtle and I was like this doesn't happen this is the end of the turtle hatching season and I can't believe there's still one left and the rest of his clutch had kind of gone over the previous couple of nights and there were a bunch of turtle care volunteers there making sure that He was able to get out, hatch himself and make his way down to the ocean undisturbed. It was literally just magic. So yes, there were a whole bunch of other parkrunners who also got to see him and we got a little video and we've got some photos and stuff which we posted on the Facebook page. But he was just so little and so precious. And did you know only one in a thousand make it to adulthood?

00:03:06Scott Trickett: I did. I recently watched a documentary about up north how they've recreated an island because with the rising levels of the ocean, the island that all these turtles are hatching on is disappearing. But at the back of my mind I was thinking...

00:03:22Melissa Erbacher: So they had to make one because they always return to the same place that they were born to lay their own eggs as well.

00:03:29Scott Trickett: Exactly. And all this effort's going to protect these, which is fantastic, but the rate of survival is really low.

00:03:36Melissa Erbacher: It is, but I reckon this little guy, I think this was the one in a thousand.

00:03:41Scott Trickett: No doubt.

00:03:42Melissa Erbacher: Did you have any adventures on Saturday? Diamond-worthy adventures?

00:03:45Scott Trickett: I didn't have any turtle adventures, but I crept one event closer to you on the most events table.

00:03:52Melissa Erbacher: Yeah, I saw that. You were being very sneaky and quietly doing it.

00:03:58Scott Trickett: You could blame my wife this week, although we were always going to go visit a new event this week. But sort of on the way there... We got sidetracked and ended up at a really flat course by the beach as opposed to where we were heading, which was a hilly course in a park.

00:04:19Melissa Erbacher: Okay, so did you just sleep in and you left late and sort of had to divert? Or what made you change your mind en route?

00:04:27Scott Trickett: Well, I went to Chelsea Bicentennial. Chelsea starts with the letter C. And my wife is motivated to becoming a pirate.

00:04:38Melissa Erbacher: Ah, love your work, Bonnie. Excellent.

Facts in a Haystack

00:04:43Scott Trickett: And so Ian followed through with our stats that we asked him last week. So we have the final figures.

00:04:51Melissa Erbacher: We do, but before we get to those, what are your stats in terms of how close are you to the Pirate Club?

00:04:58Scott Trickett: Well, I haven't looked. I don't know. Maybe I've got... I know I've got one, two, three, three C's. I know I've got an R, so I'm not there.

00:05:10Melissa Erbacher: Okay, you've got a few more C's to get.

00:05:13Scott Trickett: I'm one step closer after Saturday.

00:05:17Melissa Erbacher: Okay.

00:05:18Scott Trickett: But can we reveal now?

00:05:19Melissa Erbacher: Yes, go for it.

00:05:21Scott Trickett: There are 50 pirates in Australia.

00:05:25Melissa Erbacher: Currently?

00:05:26Scott Trickett: Yes. 34 males, go males, 16 females.

00:05:33Melissa Erbacher: That's an interesting distribution.

00:05:35Scott Trickett: And Ian's even broken it down by state. So we've got one in Tasmania.

00:05:40Melissa Erbacher: Which is pretty impressive considering none of the events in Tasmania begin with a C or an R. That's a real adventurer.

00:05:49Scott Trickett: We've got four in South Australia, five in Victoria, nine in New South Wales, eleven in WA. That's obviously because of all their C events.

00:06:01Melissa Erbacher: Yeah, but they don't have seven. Oh, no, no, they do have seven. No, they don't. They don't have seven in WA.

00:06:08Scott Trickett: Well, people adventure.

00:06:10Melissa Erbacher: They do.

00:06:11Scott Trickett: Well, there's more pirates in Queensland with 20.

00:06:15Melissa Erbacher: Yeah, that's because we've got seven. Mind you, there's still fairly... Seven seas, that is, and a couple of ours to choose from. They're still fairly spread apart, our seven, so... The distance between Cairns and Coomera, for example, that's a fair hike. So I'm going to sneakily get a Victorian one in instead of traipsing up to Cairns, I think. And then I can try and get my last couple of seas in Queensland, sort of down toward the coast Brisbane area.

00:06:48Scott Trickett: So you're not included in that 20?

00:06:51Melissa Erbacher: I am not in the 20 in Queensland, nor am I in the 16. females so i've yeah i've got four c's and two r's but you only need one r and um yeah but i'm not too far away i i should mention at this point that i'm still one ahead of you in the most events table as well for those that are counting yeah well i'm going back home this weekend so i'm not going to make make it up this weekend but i've got some adventures planned Okay. Well, I'm sure I'll see you coming on the most events, leaderboard Scotty. I'll be keeping an eye out for you. But there was another couple of people, adventurers, who had a bit of an adventurous weekend. Do you want to let everybody know about that?

00:07:38Scott Trickett: There was. Our national parkrun super-duper fastest time was broken on the weekend by our Olympic team member, Liam Adams. He went down to Maribyrnong. And smashed out of 14.22. Wow. Would also like to mention Charlotte Wilson. Also broke the course record there at Maribyrnong. The female course record. What a dynamic duo those two are. And I had the pleasure of catching up with a brief chat with Liam before he headed off to Uganda for the World Cross Country Championships. Did you go down with the aim of breaking the record, or did you just go down for a hit-out run?

00:08:25Liam Adams: It was more of a hit-out run. At the time, I was thinking, if I could run close to my training partner's course record, that would be a pretty good hit-out run leading into World Cross Country Camps. I managed to do that, and I wasn't aware that I'd run Westcott's record, so I was a bit shocked at that.

00:08:46Scott Trickett: So you're all ready for next week? Next weekend is the World Cross Country?

00:08:50Liam Adams: Yeah, yep. I got some solid good weeks in over the last few weeks and got quite a bit of some good consistency. So, yeah, I'm definitely ready for it and actually looking forward to it. So I'm back in shape, I believe. I hope so.

00:09:08Scott Trickett: Officially, this was your first ever parkrun.

00:09:10Liam Adams: I've done a couple of parkruns, and usually I don't have my tag, so fortunate enough, yesterday I did have my tag.

00:09:19Scott Trickett: Are you aware that people are watching you? Like, when you come down to a parkrun, are you conscious that people are going to watch your time and think, oh, Liam's not running too well, he did a 15.10? Or you don't worry about that stuff?

00:09:35Liam Adams: Well, sometimes, yeah. Sometimes I might, and I guess... there was a period where I was coming back from an injury and really struggling with getting back into the training and I thought I'd use the parkrun to try and get myself a bit more motivated and get a bit more of a stronger effort out of my run and yeah, I probably ran about a 15.10 for one of my first runs back in the parkrun and I guess I was a bit aware that some people might be looking at it and think that way, but I wasn't really too fast. It was mainly a case of I just forgot my tag more than anything.

00:10:17Scott Trickett: And when you come back from the World Champs, is parkrun going to be more of a focus for you or are you just going to still treat it as a casual bit of fun?

00:10:25Liam Adams: More of a casual bit of fun. I think every now and then I'll probably try and use a parkrun race as a little tester and see where I'm at and try and run even faster than what I did yesterday. So I think it'd be more so just a bit of fun and a bit of, um, like as a training session and stuff like that.

00:10:49Scott Trickett: Last one, Andrew Baddeley's got the world record at 13:48. Yeah.

00:10:52Liam Adams: Uh, yeah, that is very, very quick. I remember hearing about that and, uh, how he broke Mottram's record of 14 flat, I believe. Um, yeah, Yeah, that's very quick. That's the type of time that you run on the track. He must have been absolutely flying that day. Yeah, I don't know. It'd be very tough to go sub-14 on road, but who knows? Maybe we might try and give it a crack at some point.

00:11:26Melissa Erbacher: How's that? Well done, Liam. Nothing like a little bit of friendly competition to encourage you to break a four-year-old record accidentally. Nice job.

00:11:37Scott Trickett: And you know what he did? He broke it by one second.

00:11:40Melissa Erbacher: Which is perfect. It is. Because you don't want to overdo these things.

00:11:44Scott Trickett: No. So plenty of room to just break it by one second next time when he comes back. Then we'll keep talking about it.

00:11:54Melissa Erbacher: Because people have that kind of control when you're running sub-15 minimark runs.

00:12:00Scott Trickett: It was interesting, a couple of the on-hand reports said, of just watching Liam, like what that actually looks like to run that fast. We see it on TV at the Olympics and various events and Nitro and stuff. But when you're actually seeing it at parkrun. In the flesh. Oh, boy. Yeah.

00:12:20Melissa Erbacher: Yeah, I bet that timekeeper's happy it wasn't a 59-59 day.

00:12:25Scott Trickett: Could you imagine?

00:12:25Melissa Erbacher: Yeah, I could actually. And you'd be getting the angry email from the first finisher saying, this was actually my time.

00:12:37Scott Trickett: Yes, can you adjust the records? No, we can't.

00:12:41Melissa Erbacher: It wouldn't be fair to everybody else. Come back and try it again next week or when you get back from Uganda.

00:12:49Scott Trickett: He was actually pretty chilled about it. So he didn't really know he did it. And didn't really go out to do it. So I think he's got a bit left in the tank for another assault.

00:13:00Melissa Erbacher: We'll see how many people take that as throwing the gauntlet down now. They might be all headed to Maribyrnong.

00:13:10Scott Trickett: Yeah.

00:13:10Melissa Erbacher: Now that it's the fastest course in Australia.

00:13:12Scott Trickett: It already had a reputation of being one of the fastest. So get along to Maribyrnong if you want to run fast. It's where I've got my PB. So Liam and I have got so many things in common. It's ridiculous.

00:13:27Melissa Erbacher: Yeah, you better be careful. You might be mistook for twins, mistaken for twins.

00:13:34Scott Trickett: Yeah, maybe not. A couple of weeks ago, one of the big events that kicks off the trail running season took place, and it was the Six Foot Track Marathon. Very big, popular event. And the female winner this year was Marnie Ponton, and she's joined us on the podcast this week. Hi, Marnie.

00:14:09Marnie Ponton: Hi. How are you going? Good. We're good.

00:14:12Scott Trickett: Firstly, congratulations on your win. It was a couple of weeks ago now. Have you recovered? How's the recovery going?

00:14:19Marnie Ponton: Yeah, the recovery's going really well. I think... The first two or three days was difficult to move. Couldn't really walk. But after day four, I was good to go. Just doing some easy running and then back into full training on Monday. Yeah.

00:14:36Scott Trickett: So six foot. I've heard a lot about it. It's a trail run. It's completely trail. You do some river crossings as well. There's plenty of elevation. Can you just describe the type of run it is for our listeners who might not be familiar with it?

00:14:50Marnie Ponton: Yeah, so it's, yeah, it is a trail race and it has a lot of downhill but a lot of uphill in it as well. I can't remember the exact elevation. I guess the good thing or the different thing about six foot is that it's kind of the terrain is as it is that you can run hard on it but there's nowhere that you can go easy on it and that's why I think road runners and trail runners kind of meet and that's what's so cool about six foot. It's not like a kind of a mountain goat kind of course and it's not a road course. It's kind of where those two kind of specialties meet, which is, yeah, really, really cool. But lots of uphill, lots of downhill and lots of battering on the body.

00:15:36Melissa Erbacher: Do you know where it gets the name from? Because every time I hear six foot, I think of Bigfoot and Yetis and all those sorts of things.

00:15:44Marnie Ponton: Yeah, I think it's the original, I think it's the original trail to Jenolan Caves and it's, I know, I think it's to do with the size of the carriage that had to go through there. I'm not too sure, but it's, yeah, it's to do with the... Actual when it was first formed, I think, yeah. I have read the history, but not recently.

00:16:05Melissa Erbacher: That's all good. And what about the distance? What kind of distance are you looking at?

00:16:11Marnie Ponton: So the race itself is 45 kilometres. So... I guess it's classed as an ultra because it's over that 42.

00:16:19Scott Trickett: So, yeah, 45. And is that a bit longer than you're used to? What's your background?

00:16:24Marnie Ponton: So my background is actual when I was a junior to early 20s or late 20s. About mid-20s, I did steeplechase on the tracks. I've actually come from the track. But I also did a bit of mountain running as well. And kind of in the off-season when cross-country would be, I'd do mountain running. So as far as distance, it's a lot longer than I'm used to, most definitely. I had a few years off while I kind of focused on the family, having kids, and I've only just got really back into running probably the last year and a half. And I'm up in the Blue Mountains and there's a – I guess I've always wanted to kind of progress to that marathon distance and there's really good training opportunities up here. And I met up with Brendan and – The rest is kind of history now. I'm focused on doing the marathon type distance. Definitely not what I'm used to. It took a bit of training to get there.

00:17:25Melissa Erbacher: Just to ask, it might be a really stupid question, is steeplechase the same as hurdles on a track? Is it just a different name for the same thing?

00:17:33Marnie Ponton: No, different. So steeplechase is you have four wood barriers. They're 76 centimetres but they're the non-movable barriers that extend across a few lanes of the track and it's run over 3,000 metres and then there's obviously the fifth jump is a water jump at the um uh generally at the corner of the track so it's more aligned with what the horses actually do in steeplechase one water jump per lap and and the rest of wood there's three four other wood jumps and you yeah and it's a middle distance event so lots of strength and that's why um it's kind of enabled me to be able to run hills i think yeah

00:18:18Melissa Erbacher: It never ceases to amaze me the random things that people make up to do, you know. It's not hard enough to just run on a track. Let's put a couple of jumps that aren't going to move so you'll totally cane your legs when you're trying to get over them. And, hey, let's put a water one at the end just, you know. It's a great event. I recommend everyone try it. It's awesome. I think that would be particularly fun. Yeah. That's my kind of track event. But I digress. So you've been training with Brendan. How long have you been training with him for?

00:18:54Marnie Ponton: Well, I noticed on Facebook we've been friends for one year. So I think – so I met him at Six Foot last year. I had only been getting into running probably a few months before Six Foot last year and – I had a few injuries and I met up with him at the finish of six foot because I watched it because my brother did it and said, I want you to coach me. So I think kind of he's been coaching me for pretty much smack on a year, yeah, 12 months.

00:19:27Melissa Erbacher: And first year out and you come home with a bit of shiny bling.

00:19:31Marnie Ponton: Yeah, very excited, very excited. It was kind of one of those races that I missed out on. I really wanted to do it coming back into running. I missed out and I really wanted to win it, kind of make amends for last year.

00:19:46Scott Trickett: Has Brendan been taking most of the credit for training you up after being with you for only 12 months? Probably.

00:19:54Marnie Ponton: I don't think so. I think he's – I'm happy for him to take the credit, but no, he's very good like that.

00:20:06Scott Trickett: The Up coaching crew is doing really well lately. Yes. Brendan loves parkrun, and I imagine he's sent you out to do a few parkruns over the past 12 months. How have you found them?

00:20:18Marnie Ponton: Yeah, great. So I've only done – I run the Regatta Centre. That's got a parkrun. There's also a new one because I live in Glenbrook, so the base of the mountains. There's a new one at Nepean parkrun, which is cool. Also Lawson parkrun I've done and also I go to Canberra a lot so I do Gungahlin parkrun. We use parkrun as a test of where our training's at with our speed and, yeah, I think parkrun is always programmed into my program. I don't necessarily do them every week but every few weeks I definitely do and I think, yeah, it's a really amazing race to be able to just, you know, if you need to knock out a 5K race you can just go down to your local event, which is awesome.

00:21:07Scott Trickett: There's a bit of variety in those parkruns you mentioned. Penrith Lakes is dead flat. Good Garlands around the big lake there. So you get a bit of variety at least. Lawson, a trail parkrun.

00:21:20Marnie Ponton: Yeah, it's a trail parkrun. Penrith, they alternate. They've got multiple courses. The Regatta Centre, it's definitely my favourite. It's my favourite if I want to go out and run as fast as I can. I definitely love to do the The lap of Regatta, I think it's, yeah, it's one of my favourite.

00:21:36Melissa Erbacher: And so what's next? Marnie, you've just, you know, cleaned up at six foot. How do you follow that?

00:21:44Marnie Ponton: So I guess we're using six foot as kind of a strength building phase and now the focus essentially is just purely on the road marathon and seeing what I can run. Now that I've had a year of training under my belt, a huge kind of, endurance build up and strength build up now it's to the road and seeing what i can actually produce over that marathon distance so gold coast is the next um next a race that i'll be looking at doing

00:22:16Melissa Erbacher: And you've been building up your endurance, your strength all this time. So will your training alter slightly now that it's going to be more aimed at the road or will you continue doing roughly what you were doing and just change your shoes and what you're running on?

00:22:32Marnie Ponton: No, there's a big change. Brendan is really focused on specificity. So whatever you're preparing for, you kind of run over that that particular specialty. So I'll just be on the road, a lot more longer repeats, a lot higher intensity and not as many hills, but still doing some trail. But yeah, the focus will be purely on, I think, mostly running on road and longer repeats, higher intensity, most definitely. With trail running, the intensity is not as high, obviously. So yeah, a lot more about hitting pace brackets.

00:23:13Scott Trickett: Marnie, that all sounds full on. So you've got a hard couple of months coming your way. Good luck heading into Gold Coast. We'll keep an eye on you and hope you do well there.

00:23:24Marnie Ponton: Thank you. Thank you.

Meet the ED

00:23:48Melissa Erbacher: We haven't been to Tassie for a little while, so we're a bit excited now by our next guest who is joining us. He is the event director at Devonport parkrun. His name is Ben Brockman. Ben, welcome to the podcast.

00:24:03Ben Brockman: Yeah, thanks, Mel. Thanks, Scott. Thanks for having me on.

00:24:06Melissa Erbacher: So tell us, what's the latest from Tassie? We haven't been down to visit you guys in a little while.

00:24:12Ben Brockman: Yeah, I guess it's all good. Business as usual in terms of parkrun, I think, as far as Devonport goes at least. So, you know, we're getting some big numbers through the first part of the year, which is really, really exciting across all three events, I think. So, yeah, it all seems to be going pretty nicely at the moment.

00:24:29Scott Trickett: But it's not actually business as usual for you on the weekend, is it, Ben? Because you had to cancel.

00:24:33Ben Brockman: Well, yeah, we did, actually. We did. Yeah, so not business as usual at all.

00:24:37Scott Trickett: What do you do when you don't have parkrun to go to on a Saturday?

00:24:40Ben Brockman: Well, I'd normally find another one, but Launceston, of course, is an hour away. But this week I opted for the sleep-in and the breakfast at the local cafe. So I missed a parkrun this weekend, which was a shame.

00:24:56Scott Trickett: Was the sleep-in worth it?

00:24:57Ben Brockman: Oh, it certainly was, yeah.

00:24:59Scott Trickett: Really?

00:24:59Ben Brockman: There's been a lot of running lately, so it was nice to have a sleep-in. It was a real shame to miss parkrun. I'm trying to, you know, avoid missing parkrun too much, but... It was a nice sleeping.

00:25:12Scott Trickett: Well, tell us about your journey to get Devonport up and running and to where you are now. Have you enjoyed the experience?

00:25:19Ben Brockman: I certainly have enjoyed the experience. It's been brilliant to be involved with parkrun. So I guess I first became aware of parkrun, you know, a lot of years back listening to Marathon Talk with Tom and Martin. And so, of course, they were always talking about parkrun. So I was wondering what this amazing thing they were off to every Saturday morning was. And then it wasn't long after that that the Launceston parkrun popped up in my Facebook news feed, and that was going to be launching soon. So I headed out to Launceston for the launch of that back in, what would have been November 2012, I think. Yeah, and so, you know, I got out and did a couple of runs in Launceston. But, you know, it's an hour away, so I certainly wasn't heading out every Saturday morning. But, you know, there wasn't one in Devonport, so that sort of led to the, bit of interest in setting that up and you know that's always a bit of a slow process I think to start off with until you know I got together with a group of you know other people that really came to see a parkrun start up in Devonport and then things flowed from there so you know we launched back in May 2015 so it's been you know a really exciting thing to be involved with since then for sure.

00:26:30Melissa Erbacher: Your parkrun's got a name that gives a bit of a clue as to its location in terms of geographically in a town or what might be there. Can you tell us a bit about your course?

00:26:44Ben Brockman: Yeah, so it runs all the way along the waterfront. So we basically start at the local surf lifesaving club and we basically follow Bass Strait for the first kilometre heading east. Then we turn at the mouth of the Mersey River and head for another 1.5km there until we hit the turnaround point. And so the Our turnaround point is basically opposite where the Spirit of Tasmania comes in, the ferry that goes between Melbourne and Devonport. Yeah, so then we just spin around and head back. So it's just an out-and-back course, which is great. So plenty of high-fives and encouragement out on course, which is great. And, you know, not too complicated for the visitors either. And, you know, right beside the water the whole time. So we think it's pretty scenic as well, which is great.

00:27:31Melissa Erbacher: I was lucky enough to do a freedom run of your course. Gosh, it must have been a little over a year ago now or almost a year ago. And it was a little bit windy when I went. It was pouring rain and I had horizontal wind pushing the rain in sideways. So there was no chance that I was not going to get absolutely saturated by the end of it. Does it have a bit of a headwind being on the water most weeks or is it not usually so bad?

00:28:01Ben Brockman: Yeah, I think you picked a pretty rough day that day. I think I offered to have a run with you, but luckily you were running in the middle of the day and I couldn't get out of work, so I didn't have to run in that rubbish weather. We did. That was great. Look, yeah, it's often a headwind, usually in that last K, as you're heading west again towards the finish line. You know, some days it's not too bad, but there's usually a little bit of breeze, which is good just... test us all out, make sure we're nice and strong in that last kilometre. It's always beautiful, though. You know, it can be sunny and, you know, look pretty. Just there's always a little bit of a headwind, often a little bit of a headwind. I won't say always, but the wind's usually thereabouts. So it's a pretty exposed sort of a course, but beautiful, though.

00:28:47Scott Trickett: And what about the people of Devonport? Are they aware of parkrun? Is it popular amongst the town or are you still growing?

00:28:54Ben Brockman: Yeah, we've been growing pretty consistently since we launched, um, which is sort of surprising that we've kept, kept on growing. Um, I guess that's the same with, you know, probably most parkruns about the place. Um, and so what the town, the population town, I think it's about 25,000 people and we've got something like 1800 registered runners, uh, averaging one 50, I think. But, um, over summer we've been getting well over 200 each week. So, uh, you know, we seem to be growing all the time and, um, You know, most people I talk to around town seem to have had some sort of awareness about parkrun at least, which is really, really exciting that, you know, the town seems to have got behind it. And, you know, it's great. I'm really, really impressed with the way that Devonport's got behind parkrun. So, you know, it's really exciting.

00:29:40Scott Trickett: It is exciting. I've got the feeling Tassie's about to blow up, as in more events. People are going to be hearing and talking more about parkrun around Tassie. Do you know any of the inside word? Are we going to see some new events down in Tassie?

00:29:53Ben Brockman: soon yeah i've not heard anything formal i don't think uh i haven't spoken to chris for a little while chris tim's the td down here uh i know there's a few events in the works i think there's about six events in the works at the moment so uh hopefully we can see those up and running soon and um yeah i think there's certainly plenty of interest in parkrun with you know got lots of running events and you know a lot of runners in tassie as well uh so i think there's plenty of scope for it to um to be a really big thing. And, uh, particularly along, you know, the Northwest coast where I am, we've got, uh, what probably seven or eight little towns that are all separated, you know, I guess in, in Melbourne, that all be suburbs and you might not see as many parkruns through there. And even, you know, probably Launceston and Hobart are a bit the same, but we've got all these little towns across the coast here. So I think, you know, there's plenty of scope for each of those to have their own event, which would be, uh, you know, really cool to say. And I think, um, Yeah, I think there's certainly interest in people doing those events as well. So hopefully we can get those up and running, get the required funds to get that happening and, yeah, see some more Tassie events.

00:31:01Melissa Erbacher: I am super impressed that of a town that has a population of 25,000, you've got 1,800 registered participants. I mean, that's like 14% of your population, which has got to be pretty impressive in terms of, you know,

00:31:20Ben Brockman: nationwide what the percentages are of local populations that are participating in parkruns so great job there ben yeah it's pretty exciting i'd love to see some uh some ian hay stats on um registrations related to uh to town populations i think it'd be really interesting to see um and i think some of those regional events would probably have uh bigger percentages i guess than um than some of the big city ones but yeah you know we're certainly excited by um you know how well the devonport community's got behind parkrun and you know lots of walkers lots of runners um which is great to see now you do have only three events currently in tasmania are you a statesman yeah i certainly am i think i've uh I've done each event. I think Launceston I've done the least amount of times. I've done that six, I think. So I would have been around the state at least six times. And I've probably done – I would have done over 10 in Hobart. I've got lots of family down in Hobart. So if I'm not running or volunteering in Devonport, I'm often down there. So, yeah, and then 20-something runs in Devonport. So, yeah, certainly a Tassie statesman.

00:32:28Melissa Erbacher: And have you hopped over to the mainland to do some adventures over this way?

00:32:32Ben Brockman: Yeah, I've done a couple of runs. I've only done one event officially. I've done Albert three times, three times I think now, maybe four, including the Nitro parkrun a few weeks back. I did Coburg parkrun before the Melbourne Marathon, but somehow as I was navigating my way onto the tram, I dropped my barcode. So that was an unknown runner there for me that day, which is a shame. But yeah, so I've had a couple of runs on the mainland, which is great.

00:33:03Melissa Erbacher: Oh, it hurts when you forget your barcode, doesn't it? My husband forgot his barcode a few weeks ago at Kawana and there was no way I was adding him into the results.

00:33:12Ben Brockman: That's right. It's no barcode, no result. That's the way it is. So we've all got to play by the rules, don't we?

00:33:18Melissa Erbacher: Exactly. But of all your little travels around, have you got a top three that you can give us?

00:33:25Ben Brockman: Yeah, so if I'm allowed to include it without adding an official time, Coburg is definitely right up there. I know, Scott, you had that in your top three last week. It's just a beautiful course. There's a really nice feel to the event as well. You know, we've obviously grown a fair bit and we're getting a couple of hundred people each week, so it's nice to be there with 60 people that are all friends. And, you know, we went back to the cafe afterwards and there must have been, you know, 15 of us in there or something like that. It's one table and that's a quarter of the event was all sitting there, um, afterwards having a coffee. So, uh, just a great field, just a great day. And, um, you know, it's nice to sort of just jog around and enjoy the scenery, uh, before we race the next day, which is really cool. Uh, I've done a few international runs as well. Um, with a couple of times when I've been over to, uh, to England. So, uh, definitely have to put bushy parkrun, uh, on the list there as well. Um, you know, it's certainly really, really exciting to, To get across to the home of parkrun and have a run around at Bushy, that was certainly an awesome experience. And I think I'd have to include a Tassie parkrun as well. I couldn't not. So Hobart parkrun, I think, is a really, really beautiful course. Challenging, being hilly, which we don't get at Devonport or Launceston. And, you know, growing up in Hobart, used to run around the dam there a lot. So, you know, really excited to get back to run a parkrun in Hobart every now and then.

00:34:51Scott Trickett: That's a pretty handy top three there, Ben. To add Bushy in the list, that's a bit of a privilege. Thanks for coming on the podcast and sharing your adventures from Devonport. Hope to catch up with you next time you're in Melbourne to run a marathon.

00:35:04Ben Brockman: Yeah, sounds great. I'll be up on the Gold Coast or the Sunshine Coast in a couple of weeks' time, so hoping to add Kawana to the list in a couple of weeks.

00:35:14Melissa Erbacher: Be sure to let me know when you're coming and I'll make sure I'm there.

00:35:16Ben Brockman: Yeah, I certainly will do.

Channel 4 News Crew

00:35:29Paul Kitching: Good morning, Scott and Mel. This is PK underscore PK or Paul Kitching checking in from Mount Barker parkrun in South Australia. It's been a while, so I thought I'd send you through a bit of a roving report because it's our third birthday. And excuse me, what a great morning it is. Sorry, just having a few gulps of water before we set off. I've just come over and found a quiet spot to say g'day. It's great to see so many people getting amongst our green theme. We decided to go with the theme of green because, of course, it was St Patrick's Day yesterday, the 17th, and we figured that a lot of people would have... Something green to wear. And sure enough, I've seen, Mel, you'll be very pleased to know, there's lots of people dressed up. There's someone in a onesie I see. There's someone wearing a tutu. Lots of war paint going on. I myself have got a green headband, green war paint, and a green t-shirt promoting a mate who's doing an awesome bike ride across Australia called the Indian Pacific Bike Challenge. Yep, sorry, not such a quiet place. I decided to come out to the car park, sorry. A car going past there. Anyway, so yeah, where am I? It's an awesome... I know where I am. I'm in Mount Barker. And it's our third birthday. I'll try and make some sense soon once I've had a run and a coffee. But lots of things to celebrate today as well as our third birthday. But we'll let you know about those real soon. Happy parkrun Day, everyone. We'll chat after the run. Cheers. Well, that was a lot of fun. We are now at the cafe after the run, you know, the most important, well, not the most important part, but one of the equally as important parts of parkrun as the run or the taking part in it. I need a coffee, clearly. I've got Charlie Butler here. Charlie is one of our excellent volunteers who takes photos and video. Charlie, g'day.

00:37:17Charlie Butler: Hi, how are you doing?

00:37:19Paul Kitching: Great. And now, mate, tell me, what were you doing today? I saw you had a bigger camera with something fluffy on top. What were you up to today? Tell us all about it.

00:37:27Charlie Butler: So today I was doing a video in recognition of the third birthday. And the fluffy thing on top of my camera was a microphone.

00:37:35Paul Kitching: Awesome. It didn't look alive, so I'm glad it stayed where it was. Well done.

00:37:38Charlie Butler: It's often been confused for a furry hamster.

00:37:43Paul Kitching: Mate, you've been doing some great things. Thank you for all the awesome photography. We have some great photos. I know lots of parkruns have, most parkruns have awesome photographers. You've also recently been involved with some other video work. Tell me more about that.

00:37:58Charlie Butler: So recently I was involved in Tropfest Junior, which is a short film competition in Australia. I was one of the 16 finalists. Unfortunately, I didn't win anything, but it was a great experience.

00:38:09Paul Kitching: Mate, I'm sure it was awesome. I'm sure it's just the beginning of a great career for you. So well done, mate. We're going to go and chat to some others. But thank you so much for everything you do for parkrun here at Mount Barker.

00:38:17Charlie Butler: Awesome. Thank you. I'm very happy to be involved.

00:38:20Paul Kitching: Good on you, Charlie. What a legend. Let's go and find some other legends. Okay, so I've found some other parkrunners. We're actually at the cafe after our third birthday, and I'm here with Tracy. G'day, Tracy.

00:38:31Tracy: Hello there.

00:38:32Paul Kitching: Tracy is my sister-in-law, one of the many people that I've convinced to join our cult, I mean our clan here up Mount Barker. It took a while, but we got you going, and now you're addicted, I believe.

00:38:46Tracy: Absolutely. This is number 22 or 23 for me. Awesome.

00:38:51Paul Kitching: And you've brought other people as well?

00:38:53Tracy: Yes, I've brought my partner, friends, cousins, yeah, a whole slew. At least eight that I can count.

00:39:01Paul Kitching: I love it, I love it. Yeah, we were pretty pleased today. We actually hit our record, 290. Woo! Smashed it. Smashed it. I think the last one was 240-odd. Yeah, so really smashed it today for our third birthday up here. What brings you up here? Because like a number of all our friends, we travel quite a distance to get to parkrun. Why did you come to Mount Barker?

00:39:20Tracy: Got to come where the family and friends are. It was lovely to do a bit of parkrun touristing last week and we took a dozen or so of us down to lovely West Beach. But yeah, got to come back home for the home run.

00:39:33Paul Kitching: Indeed. Yeah, we do love it up here. The community is beautiful and we had a nice celebration. We're now having fun in the cafe and eating lots of cake that we totally deserved.

00:39:44Tracy: Totally smashed.

00:39:44Paul Kitching: Totally smashed. And we had pacers today. I was the 40 pacer. I don't want to talk about the fact that I came in at 41.

00:39:50Tracy: I don't want to talk about that either. My PB ran off into the distance. See you.

00:39:58Paul Kitching: Anyway, we all had a lot of fun. I'm going to go and chat to Greta in a minute. Once she's finished smashing all the results through the computer. Nice. Nice. And we'll see how we...

00:40:07Tracy: Hanging out for that email.

00:40:08Paul Kitching: Hanging out for the parkrun email. All righty. Thanks, Trace.

00:40:11Tracy: Thanks, Paulo. Bye.

00:40:13Paul Kitching: Okay, now I've saved the best for last, of course. I've got Greta Wilkinson. G'day, Greta.

00:40:19Greta Wilkinson: Hey, Paul.

00:40:19Paul Kitching: How are you going? I'm great. Greta is one of our excellent run directors here, but not only a run director, also the co-event director, and recently, I believe, the new territory, one of the, sorry, joint territory directors here in South Australia.

00:40:33Greta Wilkinson: Yes, that's it.

00:40:34Paul Kitching: Congratulations. John Laurie's been doing... an awesome job and it continues to do a great job and John was there with us today. But South Australia is growing, the parkrun community is growing and so I think We needed to have someone else to join the fold. That's basically what happened.

00:40:50Greta Wilkinson: That's it, yeah. We're getting really busy and there's lots of new parkruns wanting to start up. So there's three territory directors now, John, myself and the lovely Lorraine.

00:40:58Paul Kitching: Of course, Lorraine. Sorry, not forgetting lovely Lorraine, of course. So Lorraine, Greta and John are all helping us parkrun adventurers and fans enjoy everything every week. And today, celebrations, how did it all go?

00:41:13Greta Wilkinson: Oh, it was fantastic. Yeah, it was brilliant. So we had our third birthday at Mount Barker. Lots of people dressed in green. It was fantastic. We also celebrated Cormac, one of our junior runners. He did his 100th parkrun today. So we put on a good celebration.

00:41:32Paul Kitching: Sure did. Yeah, 290 people here. A record turnout for us again. And we're also pleased to get a little something in the post this week thanks to the money raised.

00:41:42Greta Wilkinson: We did. We got our defib this week, which was fantastic. So, yeah, we raised the money through donations. So thank you to everyone who donated. So we've now got a defib. Yeah, which is brilliant. Fantastic.

00:41:54Paul Kitching: It's a great parkrun. You've been involved with parkrun for a while now, no doubt?

00:41:58Greta Wilkinson: Yeah, a couple of years and about a year doing event director, but a couple of years involved in parkrun. So, yeah, just love it. It's the best way to start the weekend.

00:42:08Paul Kitching: It sure is. Well, it's great to see you and all your family out here. It's wonderful. That's another thing that I absolutely love about Mount Barker is there's so many families that come up here and all the kids and the parents get involved, which is so good to see. And congratulations also on the award that John gave you today for your contribution to the community, because you certainly do a lot of the, as a lot of the RDs and event directors and territory, they do so much work behind the scenes that we don't even see, too. to bring us this every week. So thank you so much on behalf of parkrun for everything that you do.

00:42:38Greta Wilkinson: Thank you. It's an absolute pleasure and I must admit it's one of the things that really gives me a lot of joy.

00:42:43Paul Kitching: Thanks so much. That's us out of here. We've had a great day today. Thanks Scott and Mel. You guys keep doing awesome things as will we and here's to many, many more awesome weeks at parkrun. Cheers. Bye for now.

00:42:55Scott Trickett: Thanks again PK. Loving your work. Some great interviews and I'm impressed with old Charlie. Charlie's our 14-year-old cinematographer at Mount Barker, producing some fantastic videos. Have you seen them yet, Mel?

00:43:15Melissa Erbacher: I don't... Wait, did Charlie do the... No, not the mannequin one.

00:43:21Scott Trickett: Charlie did that, but he's produced a couple more over the past couple of weeks. So if you want to see some really snazzy parkrun videos, head to the Mount Barker Facebook page.

00:43:31Melissa Erbacher: I will do.

00:43:32Scott Trickett: And you'll see Charlie's work. Now, once again, no launches this week, but we've got a couple of anniversaries. And where are they, Mel?

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

00:43:40Melissa Erbacher: They are at the place that people get called Mangy Muppets, which is in WA at Mangy Muppet parkrun. They're celebrating their second anniversary. And Riverway in Queensland are celebrating their fourth. That's going to be great. I was at their second anniversary and it was a very toasty weekend. Good fun though, dressed as a Ninja Turtle.

00:44:07Scott Trickett: I've freedom ran Riverway and I reckon it's one of my favourite parkruns that I've run.

00:44:12Melissa Erbacher: They've altered the course just a little bit recently. So you'll have to head back up. Oh, yeah. It's much simpler. It used to be a little bit convoluted, the map. I mean, it makes perfect sense if you're not super fast and you're just following the people in front of you. But if you were trying to do it as a Freedom Run, I'm surprised you didn't get lost actually when you were doing it.

00:44:35Scott Trickett: No, I did.

00:44:36Melissa Erbacher: Oh, okay. Well, there you go. Now it's much easier to follow, so you probably wouldn't get lost.

Social Adventurers

00:44:44Scott Trickett: In last week's episode, we were all over Twitter. This week, I've chose Instagram as our social media platform of choice to dissect from the past few weeks.

00:44:55Melissa Erbacher: And we've had heaps.

00:44:57Scott Trickett: We have. Let's pick out some highlights. What have you got for me?

00:45:00Melissa Erbacher: Well, we had Tesla Fox, who said, a new parkrun adventure for the first time in a while at Darebin. And this was quite a sight to see. Heading off on my warm-up run. Pretty happy with how my pacing went for the parkrun proper. Did you see this photo, Scotty?

00:45:17Scott Trickett: I did. So this was a photo of four hot air balloons on the oval next to where Darebin starts. Firing up for the morning.

00:45:25Melissa Erbacher: I guess because you guys are still daylight savings down that way, the lighting was beautiful behind the hot air balloons as well. And they've got the whole, you know, Flame lighting up the balloon situation going on. So pretty cool.

00:45:41Scott Trickett: Yep. Dr. Scott Watkins spent the morning doing a free 5K run with the Soul Flyers pitching parkrun career to local running legend Jim Bates. So the president is trying to get parkrun career up and going.

00:45:57Melissa Erbacher: I reckon he's got some personal interest in doing that.

00:46:00Scott Trickett: I think he has too. I think he wants to run a parkrun every week. He's over there.

00:46:04Melissa Erbacher: Yep. It's a worthwhile cause. Keep it going, Dr. Scott. Macalicious21 said, Awesome moment this morning when I was able to unveil a brand new defibrillator to my parkrun at Lilydale Lake. Thanks to everyone who contributed via the crowdfunding campaign, especially Yarra Ranges Athletics Club, who matched donations during February and contributed $505 towards the $2,000 total. How awesome is that for a local athletics club to pitch in?

00:46:37Scott Trickett: That is great. The Defibs for parkrun campaign is going well. It's definitely a success.

00:46:43Melissa Erbacher: It is. It's good to see more Defibs getting out there.

00:46:46Scott Trickett: Big Running Bear had a great morning to get out and do my first international parkrun at Western Springs in Auckland, a scenic and winding three laps around the lake with plenty of friendly locals and wildlife. Good adventuring, Big Running Bear.

00:47:03Melissa Erbacher: Yeah, I need to get over to New Zealand. I think that's where, that's possibly where my first international parkruns are going to happen.

00:47:11Scott Trickett: Up and Active AU. They spent the morning doing a nice 5k run measuring the proposed Bright parkrun course. The perfect location for an out and back. This is some more exciting news.

00:47:24Melissa Erbacher: It is. Would it snow in Bright in the wintertime?

00:47:28Scott Trickett: Look, I don't think it would snow. I think it would get very cold.

00:47:32Melissa Erbacher: Okay, is it a little bit too low down? Because this, Bright is very close to where we took our dogs for our snow adventure a few years ago. I mean, we did drive up the mountains and stay in Dinner Plain at the Alpine Village there. But I would have thought you'd get snow in Bright too. And so, because do we have any parkruns in Australia that get snow in the, oh, Armidale did once. That was a bit random though. There in New South Wales. I think it was a bit freaky. And, of course, Stanthorpe. But it would be cool to have an event that legitimately, regularly gets snow during the winter in Australia.

00:48:11Scott Trickett: Look, I'm no expert on Bright's climate, but I don't think it would be a regular thing to get snow there. But let's just hope it gets off the ground.

00:48:23Melissa Erbacher: Athletic Powerhouse. Had a post arriving at Nambour parkrun. Woo! Nambour is one of the faves of our parkrun adventures, isn't it?

00:48:34Scott Trickett: Everybody wants to get to Nambour, don't they? Now, here's another one. Iconic Trails had a fun day out in Cleland. Cleland parkrun views. Roos needing a rescuing. And hills. Plenty of hills. Now, I had a look at the list of events and Cleland parkrun is not on there.

00:48:53Melissa Erbacher: It's on... It's... It's in development, and I would pronounce it Cleland, because it's not got two E's.

00:48:59Scott Trickett: Cleland.

00:49:00Melissa Erbacher: Yeah, wouldn't you?

00:49:01Scott Trickett: Okay, Cleland. Yeah, why not? Cleland parkrun. So, yes, if you want to know where all the future parkruns are coming, check out our Instagram account, because so far we've already launched Korea, Bright, and Cleland.

00:49:20Melissa Erbacher: And they're not on the map yet, officially.

00:49:25Scott Trickett: But people are excited. And wrapping up Instagram, the Run Beyond Project. They were at Rhodes parkrun, and Rhodes parkrun is always in need of volunteers to ensure each run goes smoothly. Today, David Criniti, founder of the Run Beyond Project, did his bit and gave back to the Rhodes parkrun event. A big thank you to all those who give back to their local parkrun events by volunteering. This amazing initiative is not possible without your help. This is correct. And good to see the Run Beyond Project still going strong and still giving back to parkrun.

00:50:02Melissa Erbacher: Well, it's lovely to have social media back on the board. I like your idea of just choosing a particular one to focus on, not trying to spread ourselves too thin. Perhaps next week it'll be Strava because, let's face it, if somebody doesn't tell me what's going on, I've got no idea what's going on on Strava.

Strava Club update

00:50:23Scott Trickett: You know what? I checked into Strava. I'll give you a little preview to next week. If you want to get on that leaderboard, my God, you've got to run.

00:50:30Melissa Erbacher: Yeah?

00:50:31Scott Trickett: I think last week.

00:50:31Melissa Erbacher: We've got some serious Ks happening.

00:50:33Scott Trickett: If you wanted to get in the top 100 of the parkrun Adventurous Strava Club, I think you had to run like 35, 36 Ks in a week.

00:50:40Melissa Erbacher: Oh, so that's on the low end.

00:50:42Scott Trickett: Yep. If you do 30 K, you don't even crack it.

00:50:46Unidentified speaker: Huh.

00:50:47Scott Trickett: So you wouldn't appear, Mel, I'm guessing.

00:50:49[laughter]

00:50:49Unidentified speaker: Ha, ha, ha.

00:50:51Melissa Erbacher: Don't I still come up in a news feed if I do a run, though? I just don't go on the leaderboard.

00:50:56Scott Trickett: Yeah.

00:50:58Melissa Erbacher: I've never been on leaderboard, so I'm not particularly fussed about that. But people could still check me out in the club.

00:51:04Scott Trickett: Yeah.

00:51:06Melissa Erbacher: Yeah.

00:51:06Scott Trickett: Let's do all that next week.

00:51:07Melissa Erbacher: Were I to upload any of my runs. Yes.

00:51:11Scott Trickett: That's one club. That's the Strava Club. Should we bring back Club Corner?

00:51:15Melissa Erbacher: Yeah, we've got a bit of a, yeah, let's do it.

Club Corner

00:51:27Scott Trickett: It's time to bring back Club Corner for the 2017 year. And we're going to start off with one of the coolest sounding clubs and have a chat to Nick from the Wooters. Woot, woot, Nick. Woot, woot, woot. I tried with the Woot. I'm not a wooter, but I am familiar with your brand. Tell us a bit about the Woot Woot for starters.

00:51:52Nicholas Stabler: All right. Well, it kind of... I was just a bunch of friends messing around one day. We kind of already had the name, the Wooters. And I don't know, there's a well-known brand that sounds quite similar to Wooters. And we realized that we might be able to maybe borrow their, well, logo for a bit, get some shirts printed and have our own little running club formalized. So then from there, we kind of, because the O is around the L's eyes, we have one of our friends just kind of said oh we could put a like do the okay symbol with our hands put it up to our eyes i don't know it just kind of came out at that point it was like if you can visualize that i don't know if you can visualize it but yeah we don't need to visualize because this one's all about the sound i think you're one of the few running clubs that actually has a sound that you make yeah it's quite recognizable too and i think it kind of brings people together you often see people running past and saying like saying it to each other and yeah kind of Especially at parkrun, it's quite noticeable.

00:52:53Scott Trickett: Can we go back to the logo and the name for a second, Nick? You mentioned that it closely resembles another brand, a little bit of a controversial brand. How does that sit with all your Wooters?

00:53:08Nicholas Stabler: Well, yeah, I think it's kind of a bit of a joke, really. Like, it's kind of a... We haven't thought about it too hard, I would say. We used to have a very similar shirt, like it was the white shirt, and it was almost exactly the same, although in singlet form. And then, yeah, we did a bit of a redesign of that a couple of years ago, and that was to bring out the orange and make that the dominant colour. So, yeah, I guess if you don't look too closely at it at the moment, you kind of just see the orange.

00:53:39Scott Trickett: Yeah, no, so you'd never know. So we're moving away from that connection.

00:53:42Charlie Butler: Yeah, I guess we are...

00:53:45Nicholas Stabler: A little bit. It was, we kind of toyed around with using other logos and things at times as well. And I guess it's just so good to have the owl with the O around the eyes.

00:53:56Melissa Erbacher: And where does the owl come from? So why, why owls and wooters?

00:54:00Nicholas Stabler: I don't know. Why did this other brand use it? I'm unsure, but it just kind of stuck. And then like, we've just kind of gone with the owl theme a little bit and there's been all kinds of crazy little owls. I guess memes happening throughout the group. And then also we've had like a little owl toy that we've passed around at times while running. And I think there used to be like a little owl trophy that somebody bought at an op shop somewhere. And that was going around for a little while. It became kind of a thing.

00:54:30Melissa Erbacher: This is probably me showing my naivety. Does the other brand use an owl as well?

00:54:37Nicholas Stabler: I am quite sure we just took the logo as is and changed an H to a W. Okay, gotcha. I hope this doesn't go out to many people here.

00:54:47Melissa Erbacher: No, no, that actually makes sense to me because for me, owls hoot. Yeah, that's right. As opposed to wooting. So I can understand where they made their connection from. Yeah. Yeah, I'm probably going to get laughed at a lot about not knowing that in the first place. That's okay. I used to live in what we call the pubic triangle in Scotland and it was between three such establishments as the one that we're talking about in an apartment block. I didn't live in one of those establishments, but yes, there was a nice little triangle of them where I lived. So you would think I would know better, but I don't. I like that you've adapted something that already exists and changed it to your needs. Now, I would like to go back to the sound. It might make more sense at parkrun because you're runners and other people would be aware of your club. Are you ever just like running around the street and see somebody that you recognize as a fellow club member and you just woot at each other and there are random passers-by who just wonder what the hell – happened?

00:55:56Nicholas Stabler: I would say all the time. I literally had that happen to me this afternoon when I was running. I ran past someone, knew they were a member. We both weren't wearing the shirts, but we went to do the woot woot. High-fived after that as well. And then on our way, like didn't even really stop. It was just a little acknowledgement and yeah, kind of it's that community feel, I guess.

00:56:17Scott Trickett: So you're a fun club. That's the vibe I'm getting. That's the vibe of the club, just to have a bit of fun. Don't take running too seriously.

00:56:24Nicholas Stabler: Yeah, that's right. We've got a whole range of members. Some of them are quite fast and quite competitive. And then we've got some other kind of walk slash runners. And then everybody in between, I guess. There's kind of, yeah, a whole range. But a lot of our events are geared a little bit more towards having a bit of fun. We do have a weekly interval session, which we have called Wootervals, which is short for Wooter Intervals. that's been running for a few years on a Monday evening and that just kind of, yeah, brings a whole range of people. So we've kind of adapted that so that it's not just, you know, fast runners shooting off everywhere. We run it based on time. So everybody runs the same amount of time. But, and, you know, they go different distances and things like that, but we try and do it in ovals and things like that. So nobody gets too far away from each other. Yeah. So we're kind of really aiming at the, everyday runner, but yeah, we've got all ranges.

00:57:24Scott Trickett: And you're based in Newcastle. Do you have members around the country?

00:57:28Nicholas Stabler: I think there are kind of people who have come to Newcastle or heard about it via Newcastle and then have bought singlets or something like that and do run around at some of the other events. But I would say most, like the majority of members are in Newcastle. Yeah. It seems to be kind of a thing that Actually, people who arrive in Newcastle and maybe don't know too many people look up running clubs in Newcastle or running in Newcastle and find us either on Facebook or our little website that we put together quickly. And then, yeah, kind of come along to maybe one or two of our events and get to know a couple other people. It's kind of one of those ways that people form networks, I guess, when they get to a city.

00:58:12Melissa Erbacher: And so what do people have to do if they want to join your club? What do they have to do to get in on the officialdom of it?

00:58:22Nicholas Stabler: There isn't too much to kind of join. You just request to join the Facebook group that we've got going there. And we're not super active in approving people, but it normally happens at least once a week, if not more often than that. And then we do a bit of a welcome to everybody who's just joined. And yeah, you're You've got to get the Woot mastered, I guess, which doesn't take too long, but does require enthusiasm. So that takes a little practice, especially while you're running along and maybe puffing a bit. And then, yeah, basically you're a Wooter. We do do a shirt or singlet order, I guess, once a quarter. I think that kind of happens. But, yeah, you come along to the events. You change your parkrun club to Wooters. Yeah, it's kind of an unofficial type thing. If you claim you're a Wooter, then I guess we just say you're a Wooter.

00:59:13Scott Trickett: Well, no barrier to entry. That's good. So anyone can be a Wooter. Nick, thanks for joining us on Club Corner this week, this month. And good luck with the Wooters. Woot, woot.

00:59:24Nicholas Stabler: Yeah, thanks, guys. Woot, woot, woot.

00:59:28Melissa Erbacher: That was our platinum. No, it's not platinum. It's diamond. That was our diamond edition of the parkrun Adventurers podcast.

00:59:36Scott Trickett: I think it was worthy of a diamond episode. Next week will be 61. Is it worth even looking up what 61 would be? I don't think they make it.

00:59:49Melissa Erbacher: No, they would. It would be something like plastic grocery bag or something like that. They have some very random, very random things. But yes, no, I'm not sure 61 is a milestone. buy any people like to make the round numbers milestones have you noticed you know it's it's never the 61s that have their day in the park no you're right there's not a 61 milestone shirt could be we could take it that way though maybe the first parkrun adventurers shirt has to be a random number that we just choose our favorite episode what's been your favorite episode so far oh i wouldn't know what the number of it was I'm not sure. We've been doing this a long time now. Or it feels like a long time.

01:00:38Scott Trickett: Not really. It's only 16. See you all next week.