Episode 90

Episode details · 219 speaker turns · sound cues from context

00:00:15Melissa Erbacher: Episode 90 is coming at you from two places in Australia. Not just Queensland, Australia. It's coming from Victoria and Queensland. It's parkrun Adventurers. I'm Mel. I'm joined by my fabulous co-host, Scotty.

00:00:32Scott Trickett: You think I'm fabulous, Mel? Thank you.

00:00:34Melissa Erbacher: You're fabulous today. Good. Absolutely fabulous.

00:00:38Scott Trickett: You obviously can't see me.

00:00:43Melissa Erbacher: Well, I can only go by voices, so you sound fabulous today. The last couple of weeks you've sounded a little bit lurgy-ish, but this week you sound like you're 100%.

00:00:55Scott Trickett: Good, I am. I'm 100% and you're right, feeling fabulous. You asked how I – well, how was my weekend? Remember a couple of weeks ago I went top five when I took Kasia to PAX? Yes. We had a great weekend. I think I've given it another shake. I think I've had another top five weekend.

00:01:16Melissa Erbacher: Wow. How do you top PAX?

00:01:20Scott Trickett: I survived my run directing return at Westerfolds. That was lots of fun. Didn't make any mistakes. Everything went smoothly. Got to meet a couple of first-timers, which you completely miss. when you're out of the volunteering loop. And that's always exciting. That fresh person that comes to parkrun for the first time has no idea what's going on and what they're about to embark on. So I got to meet a couple of those people. And then on Sunday, we had our local fun run. I talked about this last year on the pod, and I won't go over the victory of the Westerfoldians because it's more than a victory now. It's a domination of that event. Three-time champion in the team competition. But, again, my weekend highlight is linked back to my daughter, Akasha. She won. She won the female under-16 6K event.

00:02:19Melissa Erbacher: Far out. That's amazing.

00:02:21Scott Trickett: Well, we thought it was amazing too and completely out of the blue because Kasia is not a runner. She's a parkrunner, but I wouldn't classify her as a runner. But on Sunday, she took off. She dropped her mum, so she was running with Yvonne and mum couldn't keep up, which doesn't work a parkrun, but when you're in a race, it's fine.

00:02:46Melissa Erbacher: Okay, and so she saw red and that was it. She's going for it.

00:02:50Scott Trickett: Well, to this day, I still can't understand why she was motivated to run hard on Sunday. I think she had a bit of pride that she was representing the Westerfoldians and she wanted to do well for the team. Or maybe she's just got it in her. She just wanted to run fast and she did. And we were beyond happy, beyond happy for her

00:03:12Melissa Erbacher: And for six kilometres as well. Yeah.

00:03:15Scott Trickett: So I think that was the tipping point as well. I think she made up a lot of ground in the last kilometre, or the last kilometre and a bit. Top morning. Top morning. And she was really happy. So, again, Kasia very confident. Quiet, I wouldn't say shy, but she's just a quiet, reserved little girl. But she told us afterwards, Mummy and Daddy, I know you can't tell, but I'm really happy on the inside.

00:03:37Melissa Erbacher: Oh, bless her.

00:03:41Scott Trickett: And so it blew all this. I think this is what parkrun can do for competitive races that we have on Sundays. So while we de-emphasize the fast and the winning at parkrun, we can replace that on the Sunday afternoon or the Sunday morning with the events that we entered into. And so Yvonne and I were very proud. We were very happy that she had this moment where she was in the limelight and she was happy to be in the limelight.

00:04:13Melissa Erbacher: She's not even 10 and she's already got a running trophy. You can never say she's not a runner again. No, no. That's amazing. Well done, Kasia.

00:04:22Scott Trickett: Yes, well done. My little Kasia. I had a shocking run, but this is the way of Scott Trickett these days. I'm not sure if I was built for running, but since my fall two months ago, I think I've lost it, Mel. I don't think I'm ever going to get it back.

00:04:39Melissa Erbacher: Do the ribs still hurt when you run? They do. Oh, they do.

00:04:44Scott Trickett: I got to eight kilometers and I really hurt to breathe.

00:04:48Melissa Erbacher: That's a long time. You know, you might have broken them to the extent that a couple are sticking into your lungs or something. You really should go to a doctor. I know I've said this before, but let them scan it. I don't care if you think that they're not going to be able to do anything about it. Maybe they can.

00:05:06Scott Trickett: We're beyond the doctor stage, I've told you. It's not going to happen. I need something to rely on, to blame for my poor performances. And not being able to breathe is that excuse at the moment.

00:05:22Melissa Erbacher: Okay. Well, I'm done listening to your excuses.

00:05:26Scott Trickett: But while I'm going in one direction, I saw your Strava from the weekend. You're going in the other direction. You had a speedy parkrun.

00:05:35Melissa Erbacher: Yeah, I saw your little smart-ass comment, speedy, on my Strava on the weekend.

00:05:41Scott Trickett: It wasn't smart-ass at all. I thought you were getting quicker.

00:05:43Melissa Erbacher: Well...

00:05:46Scott Trickett: No?

00:05:47Melissa Erbacher: Well, the thing is, see, I started a little bit late because I took a wrong turn and I got to parkrun late and literally pulled up as everyone was running away. So I had to unpack Wes and the pram and run back to the start and then run for the first kilometre to catch up to the tail walker so I could get my token and have my run done and counted by the end of the morning. So... Yes, I went a little bit faster than I have done previously. Which brings me to... I would like to talk about pram running. Because, I mean, I don't have to do it very often. And obviously I've only just really started doing it. And one thing I've noticed is courses that I previously thought were flat actually have undulations that I don't appreciate. But I've always had a lot of respect for people who push prams. And... This is the first time that I've actually done it with little bits of run. I didn't run the whole way. I was walking it. So walk, jogging. But I don't know, there's something, I need some tips on technique. Did you used to run with Kasia in a pram when she was little?

00:07:00Scott Trickett: No, avoided it completely. Never done the pram running.

00:07:04Melissa Erbacher: Okay, well then this one's out to the listeners. Please let me know what you do because I was all tight up in my shoulders and I'm pretty sure I was running like the hunchback of Notre Dame trying to push the pram. And every time I noticed it, like I was getting pain across my back and stuff and I was like, oh... yeah I'm pretty sure I need to be a little bit loose and my shoulders need to be down or back or something but you know and my hands were sweating on the handle and I'm just like how do people do this there's got to be a technique that I'm missing here am I too short for my pram am I holding it too close do I need to be more vertical or diagonal or something I've got no clue. We need some expert advice.

00:07:48Scott Trickett: Why don't we get Coach Dinneen back on? Let's have him on next week. He's got a little one. I'm sure he's run with a pram before, and I can often know advice. So let's get the coach on next week.

00:08:00Melissa Erbacher: Okay. That sounds like a plan. And maybe we can try and track down a super-seasoned pram runner like Gavin Matheson. And maybe he could join us too.

00:08:08Scott Trickett: There are plenty of them out there. I know there's a speedy guy out at Darebin who's like doing 18 minutes or something with a pram and not puffed at the end. So I agree with you. There's a technique. But don't sell yourself short, Mel. Don't sell yourself short. You know, you had a good run on Saturday. You ran. So what motivates you is not being left behind.

00:08:34Melissa Erbacher: Yes, well, and also there was, and this is something that sort of links back to what you said about you don't know what motivated Kasia to go fast and she just left Vonnie behind. But there was a lady toward the back who was really, she was walking with her son and you could tell that she had been trying to encourage him to run and things like that. But I, being a back of the packer, often come across people trying to, encourage their kids to go a little bit faster in the nicest possible way but the kids have already you know decided my legs are tired my toe hurts it's been hurting for four weeks and why would I want to run that kind of thing so I kind of helped her a little bit which forced me to run a bit more in that last kilometer as well in terms of you know challenging him to say oh look you know we've we've been chasing you down it's taken us four kilometers to catch up to you you're doing so well and you know you just got to keep going you can't let us beat you now and all all the the nice sort of um reverse psychology type things that you you do to challenge kids without basically trying to drag them along crying in those last few kilometers but all those things that you do to bribe them to go just that little bit faster and Tell you what, I don't care how much they complain. They still have the energy legs and they can still put it on when they want to, can't they?

00:10:00Scott Trickett: Absolutely. We've had many a parkruns where Kasia's been complaining, crosses the finish line and she's running off to the playground. She's got all this energy. Again, it gets back to motivation, Mel. What motivates you?

00:10:13Melissa Erbacher: Yeah, maybe we need to talk to some of the kids as well without sort of letting them know that we're trying to get in their heads to see what,

Kelly Hodges nutrition Q&A (segment not given a name on air)

00:10:23Scott Trickett: we can do to get them to go faster a conversation for another podcast perhaps a couple of months back we had kelly hodges on she was giving me some advice or both of us advice on diet and nutrition and we teased it last week and we're delivered welcome back to the parkrun Adventurers, Kelly ah thank you i'm very happy to be back We're happy to have you back and we're happy that we've got some questions to ask you. The first one is very dear to me because I'm a believer. I'm a believer in the coconut oil myth. So one of the questions we had is why is coconut oil all the rage when it's so high in saturated fat? Doesn't that make it bad for you? Please tell me.

00:11:15Kelly Hodges: Oh, right. Awesome. I love this question because coconut oil is honestly everywhere. Even just yesterday, I did a post about coconut oil and I've made it into deodorant and I've made it into a muscle relaxant and I've made it into a face cream. So coconut is honestly everywhere. So this is a really, really good question. I guess what we first have to have a look at is the background of fat because everybody is really afraid of fat. And what we need to do is understand where this has come from and if we actually need to be afraid of fat. And so for fat, Dr. Ancel Keys, have you guys heard of him? Yes. Oh, very good, Mel. Have you, Scott? No. No. All right. So Dr. Ancel Keys, he was a scientist who made the claim, fat makes you fat. So he's a really, really well-known researcher, and he was in charge of creating calorie-dense meals for the soldiers of World War II. And so he was very well respected. So after completing his work with the soldiers, he wanted to research the factors involved in heart disease, which led him to the Seven Countries Study. So the now famous study, it looked at all the data on the diets of a selection of different countries, And what he came to show is that the more fat you have in your diet, the higher the rate of your heart disease. So the higher the likelihood of getting heart disease. And along with heart disease came weight gain. And so everybody got very afraid and he made that claim, fat makes you fat. And that gave uproar to the whole commercial marketing of low fat, no fat, reduced fat. And so for the next five decades, everything went low fat. So whether it was yogurt or just absolutely everything, ice cream, anything that had an ounce of fat was then made lower fat. And so what you can actually see though, because what was not published and it was only published many, many years later, when it was too late, was that there weren't actually seven countries in that study. There were 22 countries. And so when there's 22 countries in the study, and when you plot all the information from the 22 countries with how much fat did they eat and what's their heart disease risk, you can't actually see any correlation. And so therefore, the conclusion is that any relationship between dietary fat consumption and cholesterol or obesity, it makes it very difficult to show the relationship between heart disease. So what I'm saying here is that Dr. Ancel Keys, he said fat makes you fat. Everybody believed him. But when you put his whole study together, there was no science to prove that. It's not a very convincing argument. In addition to this, well, first of all, three decades following the low-fat bandwagon, what the U.S. found was that dropping fat in their diet actually landed the population with waistlines double the size in just three decades. And so everyone was getting fatter. There's actually also just been a study released just last year on PubMed, and the title is The Evidence for Saturated Fat and for Sugar Related to Coronary Heart Disease. But what it even says in here is that some food sources of saturated fatty acids may pose no risk for coronary heart disease or possibly even be protective. With fat, everybody back in the day was all taught fat makes you fat. Fat gives you heart disease. Fat sticks to your arteries. And so everyone stayed away from fat. But what we've now learned and what's coming out more and more and more and more, thank goodness, in the research is that it's not saturated fat. So it's not your coconut oil. It's not your butter. It's not your fat on the steak or anything like that. The things that cause weight gain, the things that cause heart disease is more looking at your trans fats, which is your – which is your processed fats, your human fats. So things like deep frying or processed foods or your cakes and pastries, which have used hydrogenated oils. So it's your trans fats and the sugars, which are causing weight gain and heart disease. So to answer your question in a very roundabout fashion, coconut oil is fine for you to use. It's the rage because I don't know why it's the rage. It tastes great and it does so many different things. But, no, it's not bad for you. Like with everything, whether you're using it as an oil or – or for cooking or anything like that, just make sure you get a variety in your diet, but there's no reason to think that coconut oil is bad for you.

00:16:56Scott Trickett: Well, thank goodness for that. I'm relieved because, as I said, we use it in our cooking. We love it. I use it as an aftershave. I drink coconut water by the gallon.

00:17:06Kelly Hodges: He does have so many uses. Can I actually, there's a whole heap of benefits with having fat in your diet. Can I just run through some of them just so that I don't want people to be afraid of having fat in their diet?

00:17:22Scott Trickett: Go for it. I'm sure people would be wrecked to hear that they can have fat in their diet.

00:17:27Kelly Hodges: Yes, so some of the benefits of fat, I won't go through all of them, but some of the major ones, the one I love the most is that it increases your fullness. So when you consume fat in your diet, so whether that's coming from avocados, nuts and seeds, oily fish, coconut oil, butter, the fat on your steak, when you have that sort of fat in your diet and you're consuming it, it increases how full you feel and it makes you feel fuller for longer. which therefore over time means that you're going to eat less, which is great for weight loss. The other thing that it does, obviously, healthy glowing skin and strong nails. It helps to absorb fat-soluble vitamins. So vitamins A, D, E, and K all need fat in your diet to be able to be absorbed. It helps with your brain development. Your brain is over 50% fat. And so it helps with your cognitive abilities through the day, whether that's concentration, memory, recall, exams, under pressure, that sort of thing. It also helps with hormone production, which is really important. So that's things like your testosterone, estrogen, but then also insulin, which helps with sugar. And so it supports the immune system. It has a whole huge amount of benefits. And that's honestly just touching the iceberg over there. So with fat, I just really, really want to urge people to not be afraid of fat.

00:19:04Melissa Erbacher: So Kelly, not be afraid of normal fat, but steer clear of the trans fats.

00:19:09Kelly Hodges: Yes. Awesome. So yeah, just stay away from processed fats. Anything that's been man-made or man-manipulated, then that's classed as processed. And they're the ones that you want to stay away from just because it causes inflammation. It can cause plaque on your arteries, which ultimately can lead to heart disease.

00:19:31Melissa Erbacher: Okay, awesome. I think there's a lot of people out there that are going to be very excited and rushing on out to load up. Which brings me to our next question. What's the difference between a serving and a portion?

00:19:45Kelly Hodges: Oh, that's a great question. The difference is actually I don't think that there is one. And so when it comes to a portion and a serving, to the best of my knowledge, you can use those words interchangeably. And so whether you're having a portion of something or a serving of something, they're both the same thing. Okay, great.

00:20:07Scott Trickett: I've got the next one, and this is also really relevant to me. Eating before a run, yes or no, which is the best approach? Because I can tell you I never eat before a run, a race or even parkrun, but I know a lot of my mates couldn't not eat before a run. Who's right?

00:20:29Kelly Hodges: Well, I guess it depends on the person, but also it depends on the distance and your fitness level. Okay. I guess the fitter you are, the less you would have to eat. So for example, yourself, Scott, who's been running and you always do your parkrun on your Saturday, so you're quite used to the five kilometre distance, you might not find that you need that sort of energy before a run. However, if you haven't been exercising for the past 15, 20 years, you're really new into it and you're trying to do a five kilometer distance and you may want something in your system just to give you a bit of extra oomph on your morning but what it what happens is that your body already has glucose in the bloodstream which it uses for energy so if you're running a short distance kind of a short to medium distance say anywhere up until about 10 12 kilometers There's generally no need for food before you run. If, however, you're running a longer distance or you find that you're not quite as fit and you're needing some extra fuel in your body, anything over generally about 12 kilometers, you may benefit from a snack beforehand. Some people really benefit from a snack beforehand. Other people, they may react to the food. They don't feel as well. They feel a bit heavy and they just don't want it. it does actually come down to the person, down to the fitness levels and down to the distance that you're running.

00:22:08Melissa Erbacher: Awesome. Kelly, I've just got one last question from another listener who said that they're running to lose weight and should they avoid carbs?

00:22:19Kelly Hodges: No, no one should avoid carbs. So carbs aren't the bad guy. And so with carbohydrates, too much carbohydrates, which are broken down into sugar, can definitely make it harder to lose weight. But at the end of the day, everybody needs some carbs in their diet. Perhaps Western society as a whole, most of us are having too many carbohydrates in the diet. So I guess when you've got your meal... you're wanting to make sure that no more than 25% of your meal is carbohydrates. So carbohydrates, for those who don't know, it's found in things like fruit, your starchy vegetables, so that's potato and your corn. It's also found in bread, in rice, in pastas. And so when you're eating those foods, only maximum of 25% of your meal should be carbohydrates. If you want to have less carbohydrates, that's no problem, but you need to make sure that you are having additional fat in your diet to compensate. So should you avoid carbs? No, please don't avoid carbs. If you're trying to lose weight, The one thing I could always encourage people to do is eat more veggies, eat more of your free veggies. So 93% of Australians don't meet vegetable requirements. And one, so veggie requirements is five serves a day. One serve is equal to one cup of raw or half a cup of cooked. So if you're only having salad, you need five cups of salad in a day. And 93% of Australians aren't getting enough veggies. So if you were to increase your veggies, this is just a nice, easy way to fill you up and without costing you too many calories, but then also you're not avoiding any major food groups like carbs. So rather focus on what you can put in rather than what you can pull out.

00:24:31Scott Trickett: Kelly, I've got a question from me, from Scott from Research. Yes. One of my running mates, how far do we take the portion control and the inclusion of fats? Because one of my running mates measured out all his food when he was running, preparing for their marathon. And like a portion of nuts would be a handful of nuts. Now, if I eat nuts, I probably eat a couple of handfuls. Do we take it to the next level or are we all overestimating our portion size? Can we benefit from measuring stuff out?

00:25:03Kelly Hodges: Well, you know, everybody's so different in this respect. For me, I really, really dislike measuring things out. I don't like weighing things. For me, I prefer to have a visual kind of representation of my plate. So if I've got my plate there and I've got no more than 25% carbohydrates on it, I know that I need to fill up half my plate with veggies and the remaining quarter can be a source of protein. And so for me, I never weigh or measure or anything like that just because I find that – I don't know. I don't enjoy doing that. It's too finicky for me. But then for other people, it works really, really well for them because it kind of gives them that peace of mind. They know exactly how much they're getting, how much they're going to be expending through the day. They know exactly what's going in and out. So it depends on the person. If you're having something like nuts and most people, other than the people who are very good and they only take the one handful of nuts, which is one serve size, um, If you're having something like nuts and let's say you do have your two handfuls, because it's a fat, all those benefits are going to stay in your body. And so it doesn't matter if you're having two handfuls on one day and then no nuts for a few days and then another two handfuls. It doesn't matter whether you're doing that or if you're religiously having a little handful every day. It doesn't matter how you spread that out. Does that make sense?

00:26:38Scott Trickett: It does and that's a relief.

00:26:40Kelly Hodges: Yeah.

00:26:41Scott Trickett: Thanks for answering that question. Everyone's different is the answer really, isn't it?

00:26:45Kelly Hodges: Yeah, that's it because honestly for me I hate measuring things but then for others I know that they would die without measuring things and it just gives them that peace of mind. So it is whatever works for the person.

00:26:58Melissa Erbacher: Well, Kelly, what works for me is I think I'm going to have to start eating before we have you come on the show because I'm hungry now and I want to go eat a big bowl of pasta and veggies. Possibly a little bit better than my tropical pineapple chocolate, which I snacked on before we started.

00:27:18Kelly Hodges: Oh, that does sound lovely though.

00:27:24Melissa Erbacher: Thank you for joining us again. You've given us a lot of food for thought, pun intended.

00:27:30Kelly Hodges: Very good, love the pun.

00:27:32Melissa Erbacher: And we look forward to having you back again next time.

00:27:35Kelly Hodges: Yes, yes, that would be great. Look forward to chatting to you guys again soon.

Meet the ED

00:27:56Melissa Erbacher: Our next guest joins us all the way from the sunny southwest of Victoria. She is the event director at Warrnambool parkrun and her name is Courtney White. Courtney, welcome to the parkrun Adventurers.

00:28:10Courtney White: Thank you very much. It's great to be here.

00:28:13Melissa Erbacher: And we are excited to have you. I have seen video footage of your course, at least 10 seconds of it, which looks absolutely stunning. Can you tell us a little bit more about, you know, what people could expect if they head over to Warrnambool for a parkrun?

00:28:29Courtney White: Yeah, look, I think it's pretty stunning. I'm a little bit biased myself. Our course is located at Lake Pertobe in Warrnambool. So it's based around a lake environment. So we cross a couple of bridges that go over some beautiful waterways, joins up with an existing footpath, gravel footpath that runs right around the back of the lake. It's an out-and-back, so you run to the 2.5km marker, turn around and come back exactly the same way back again. Quite scenic. There's some beautiful willow trees and beautiful grasslands as well at the back of the area.

00:29:03Scott Trickett: Courtney, I was lucky enough to freedom run your course earlier this year and I got lost. There was a junction where I could have turned left or right and I went left. But it was beautiful because I ran around the lake on the grass bit and got to share my run with lots of bird life. There's lots going on in that lake.

00:29:24Courtney White: There is. There's lots of different twists and turns you can take when you're not marked on it if it's outside of a Saturday morning and there's no markers. Yeah, there's lots of bird life. There's a kangaroo that sometimes posts – a wallaby that sometimes posts its head about too. There's a few cheeky birds that tend to sweep us when we're setting up the course at 6.30 in the morning. That's not particularly fun. But, yeah, pretty – very beautiful.

00:29:47Scott Trickett: It definitely was beautiful. I did actually correct myself. So I ended up doing, I think, a 7K Freedom Run that day.

00:29:53Unidentified speaker: Oh, okay.

00:29:54Scott Trickett: It was lovely. Lots of bridges and you're coming up to your anniversary. You're celebrating one year at Warrnambool parkrun. That's a bit exciting.

00:30:03Courtney White: That is, yeah. So I can't believe it's been 12 months already. It feels like it's just flown by. But yeah, we're really looking forward to celebrating our first anniversary at Warrnambool parkrun this Saturday.

00:30:14Melissa Erbacher: And Courtney, how did you get involved with parkrun then? What's your parkrun story?

00:30:21Courtney White: Well, it's my sister's fault. I was introduced to parkrun through her. She was kicking gold with her health and fitness. And my hometown is Inverloch in the other side of Victoria, about five hours from where I am in Warrnambool. And I got dragged along to parkrun in Inverloch with her. And I thought typical sibling rivalry that I thought if I can keep up with her the whole way, then I'll just beat her at the finish line. But unfortunately, she left me for dead. So I thought the only way I can beat her now is to go back to Warrnambool and start another parkrun somewhere else. And I did that about 12 months later.

00:30:59Scott Trickett: That's taking sibling rivalry to the next level. Is she jealous now?

00:31:03Courtney White: It is a little bit, yeah. Oh, she's still doing very well at Inverloch, so we'll give her that.

00:31:10Scott Trickett: And so what have been some of the highlights of one year of Warrnambool parkrun? What's the crowd like at Warrnambool?

00:31:18Courtney White: Yeah, look... I think a highlight for me has definitely been getting to know some of the members of my local community. We have some really, really lovely people that come and attend our parkrun every week. We just celebrated our first 50 milestone for one of our walkers. So our first person to complete 50 parkruns was Tom, and he's one of our regular walkers. He's missed, I think, two events in the last year. So getting to know people like Tom... and lots of all of our other locals that are just really excited to be part of a passionate community that really get behind us at Warrnambool parkrun.

00:31:59Scott Trickett: One thing Warrnambool is known for, it can get a bit cold and windy. Have you had a couple of frosty winter parkruns?

00:32:07Courtney White: Yes, windy Warrnambool, as we're well known. We've been pretty lucky, actually, touch wood, in the last 12 months. Winter, obviously... dark and gloomy times. But most mornings, the rain seems to have held off. I think the rain gauge just seems to know that it's not allowed to rain until about 9.30. So we've had a couple of drizzly mornings and a couple of cold, certainly some colder mornings with a nice sea breeze. But overall, we've been pretty lucky with the weather these last 12 months, I definitely would say.

00:32:39Melissa Erbacher: Have you been to – I know you've obviously been to Inverloch, but have you been to many other events?

00:32:46Courtney White: I've done a few, not a lot. I've tried to get to all the ones in my local area around the southwest bit. So I've done Timboon and Hamilton and Port Fairy. My family is obviously, as I mentioned with my sister, my family is quite involved with parkrun. So we like to see if we can always get in a parkrun when we're away on holidays, like we did last week in Bendigo whilst we were travelling. We left a day early just so that we could get a parkrun in. So I've done a few, but always love to do more.

00:33:17Melissa Erbacher: And has your sister been over to contest you at Warrnambool?

00:33:23Courtney White: She came on our launch day, yeah. My sister and both my parents came up to support us on our launch day. So she has done Warrnambool parkrun in a pretty good time too.

00:33:33Scott Trickett: Courtney, good luck on Saturday. The first anniversary is always lots of fun. Thanks for coming on the podcast and telling us all about your event down at Windy Warrnambool.

00:33:43Courtney White: No worries, guys. It was great to talk to you.

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

00:33:57Melissa Erbacher: So we've just established, speaking to Courtney, that at Warrnambool we've got an anniversary this weekend, but we've also got anniversaries at a whole bunch of other places, including Albert Melbourne in Victoria.

00:34:10Scott Trickett: Karkarook, also in Victoria.

00:34:12Melissa Erbacher: Big weekend for you Victorians. Calamvale in Queensland, the 100th event to launch in Australia.

00:34:20Scott Trickett: Nambour in Queensland, so equally big event. No, big weekend. No, no, no, we win. We got three. You're two. Yep, we win. Mel, can you tell me about launches this week? I know we've got a couple. And there's a new one in WA. Where's that happening?

00:34:38Melissa Erbacher: Whitfords Nodes in WA.

00:34:42Scott Trickett: That's a funny old name, Whitford's Nodes. It sounds very British or something, doesn't it? Does it? What's a node? Is that a landform? Is that something on your skin?

00:34:54Melissa Erbacher: Isn't it an electronic thing, a node?

00:34:58Unidentified speaker: Hmm.

Word of the week

00:34:59Melissa Erbacher: This node could be our word of the week. We didn't mention what our word of the week was from last week. And even though we did manage to stumble across it on Google, it wasn't until other people mentioned it that it sounded right. And I believe the word was space hopper.

00:35:14Scott Trickett: Apparently. I think we mentioned it last week. It still doesn't sit comfortably with me. When we launch our range of space hoppers, they're not going to be called space hoppers. We're shaking up the space hopper market.

00:35:26Melissa Erbacher: Are you going to have this conversation with me?

00:35:28Scott Trickett: I'm having it right now.

00:35:29Melissa Erbacher: Do I not have a say?

00:35:35Scott Trickett: Look, there's one more launch. There's one more launch.

00:35:38Melissa Erbacher: And that's another one that I'm going to get to before Christmas. It's Lota in Queensland.

00:35:44Scott Trickett: Lota or Lota? Sounds like a lot of fun.

00:35:47Melissa Erbacher: It's Lota.

00:35:48Scott Trickett: Lota. That's a shame.

00:35:49Melissa Erbacher: Yeah. It's not a shame. It could still be a Lota fun. It could be. You just sound a little bit more Scottish. It's a Lota fun. Or Irish. Irish.

00:36:01Scott Trickett: I think you're Irish there, Mel. Yeah. If you're Scottish, I wouldn't have understood you.

00:36:08Melissa Erbacher: Well, that depends on which part of Scotland I'm from.

The Perlustration (annual listener survey)

00:36:12Scott Trickett: Speaking of a Lota fun, our Perlustration wrapped up a couple of weeks ago and we promised we would give you the feedback and we keep our promises. If that's one thing we do, we say a lot and we deliver. Yeah.

00:36:28Melissa Erbacher: It might take a long time, but we do get there in the end. So do you want to start, Scotty?

00:36:35Scott Trickett: Let's do. Let's question one. Let's just go through it. We asked you 11 questions and we're just going to analyze them and share the data with you. We had a great response, double the response from last year.

00:36:49Melissa Erbacher: Which is pretty awesome. We were excited about it.

00:36:52Scott Trickett: First question. So this was a state of origin question. Where do you parkrun? So we slipped this in there purely for a competition between me and Mel. And I'm pleased to say Victoria and Queensland came out first and second.

00:37:08Melissa Erbacher: I'm pretty sure we didn't slip this in as a competition between you and me. Not everything is a competition between you and me. We kept a couple of the questions at the start of the Perlustration, the same as what we had in 2016. Because how can you measure performance over time if you don't ask the same questions?

00:37:28Scott Trickett: This is true. But Victoria 1, so most of our listeners come from Victoria.

00:37:39Melissa Erbacher: No, that is not accurate necessarily. Most of the listeners who fill out a survey come from Victoria.

00:37:47Scott Trickett: Okay, that's how we're looking at it.

00:37:48Melissa Erbacher: So you might be a big state for survey filler adders. In which case, you can win that competition. That's fine.

00:37:57Scott Trickett: But it's a nice reflection of where parkrun is at. And I joked with Simon last week that we don't get a lot of engagement from our New South Wales crew. And that was also evident through our survey when they came in fourth behind South Australians. Even though it's not a competition, but it's just good to find out where our parkrunners who fill out the survey are from.

00:38:22Melissa Erbacher: And we had a few internationally too, which is great to see.

00:38:27Scott Trickett: Question two. How do you listen to the podcast? A returning question from last year as well. And also important that we left Stitcher in there as one of the answers. Because zero people. No, nobody listens on Stitcher. Which is a sharp decline from last year's one.

00:38:49Melissa Erbacher: Is it? That's all right. Most of you are on iTunes, which means that we need to be having more reviews received on iTunes, please and thank you. I'll go to question three, shall I?

00:39:04Scott Trickett: You shall.

00:39:06Melissa Erbacher: This one was very important because we wanted to see what the level of adventure-ness was out amongst our adventurers. And so we asked how many different events you've been to and gave you a whole bunch of ranges. So the winner or the one with the most people answering was between 21 and 50 events, which shows that most people who answer our surveys are on the most events list.

00:39:35Scott Trickett: That's a good adventurer, I reckon. That's what I... If you're getting to 20 events and you're on that most events list, you're an adventurer by definition.

00:39:44Melissa Erbacher: You are. And there were a lot in the 11 to 20 and the 6 to 10 range as well. So I think that's a lot of up and comers. People who are new to adventuring or potentially live in more remote areas but are still keen to get out there and do it. So yeah. Good to see you guys. What I probably should have offered was a zero or less than one because it would be interesting to see if we've got any listeners who've never been to a parkrun. They might be out there, Scotty. Should pop that one in for next year.

00:40:14Scott Trickett: That's what I was going to say, something for next year. And we had a good representation of parkrunners who have done international events. 25% of you have visited international events, which is pretty good. I would have thought it would be there so high.

00:40:30Melissa Erbacher: Well, that's awesome considering like 50% of the podcast hosts have been to international events. So way to represent, guys. Good job.

00:40:42Scott Trickett: But we're still winning that medal because 50 is more than 25. So we're still – we won that one too.

00:40:49Melissa Erbacher: We won that one together for a change.

00:40:52Scott Trickett: Question four was really interesting. So this is where we get to the guts of what we wanted to know, where we can take the podcast in future episodes. And it was, what type of guests do you like to hear on the pod? And I've got to admit, I was quite surprised with the top answer being regular parkrunners doing irregular things. A pretty clear winner. Pretty clear in front of our parkrun event or run directors, which is good, which confirms that you like to hear podcasts. from our EDs around the country and you like to hear from the different events around the country. So we're not wasting our time with that.

00:41:29Melissa Erbacher: Absolutely not. Now, question five, we're going to come back to later because that one has just brought forth a bounty of goodies that we want to digest. So we'll come back to that one later, but we'll skip it for now and head on to question number six. And that was, would people like to see parkrun Adventurers merchandise.

00:41:52Scott Trickett: Were you surprised?

00:41:55Melissa Erbacher: Um... Well, I don't know. It was an honest question, so it could have gone either way.

00:42:05Scott Trickett: 61% of you would like to see merchandise. 38% couldn't care less. The follow-up question produced even more interesting results because... Would you buy parkrun Adventures merchandise? 66% ticked shut up and take my money or would pre-order the heck out of it, which is more than the 61% who said they would buy it or would like to see it.

00:42:35Melissa Erbacher: And interestingly, we had the same amount of responses from this and the previous question. So, yeah. Some people said, meh, they don't care about seeing the merchandise. But when it, you know, if it was available and they could buy it, more people said, yeah, okay. You guys are enigmas.

00:42:54Scott Trickett: Still doesn't answer the question whether there is actually going to be parkrun Adventurers merchandise. But it was an interesting question to ask.

00:43:04Melissa Erbacher: Yes, we have to find out what, you know, whether or not space hoppers and leg warmers are really what people want. So that's a question for another survey, another Perlustration. Shall we pop on to question eight, Scotty?

00:43:21Scott Trickett: Which was a competition.

00:43:23Melissa Erbacher: Which continues to be a competition.

00:43:24Scott Trickett: Yes. Who do you think will reach 50 Aussie parkruns first? Now, I teased this a couple of weeks ago, and I think I might have read the stats wrong.

00:43:35Melissa Erbacher: Well, if you didn't read the stats wrong, possibly more answers came in afterwards that swung it in a different direction.

00:43:41Scott Trickett: Maybe. Maybe. Because I won. Well, no. That's not true either. No, you didn't. Actually, 46% of you think it's going to be a tie.

00:43:55Melissa Erbacher: And that was the biggest answer. Most people think it's going to be a tie, followed by 32% think Scotty has got it in the bag, and then only 21% sort of thought, yeah, Mel might have it, so... That's interesting. It's very interesting.

00:44:15Scott Trickett: Almost half our audience who fill out the perlustration have faith in our organisation skills, Mel, to coordinate that sort of thing happening. I'm impressed. They've got faith in us.

00:44:28Melissa Erbacher: Yeah. Or, yeah, I can't really... I don't know what to extrapolate from that one, to be honest.

00:44:36Scott Trickett: Well, let's go to question nine because this one hurts me. It's all yours.

00:44:39Melissa Erbacher: This one hurts you? It does. Which would you prefer? More Game of Thrones talk or more NFL talk? Now... Far and away, the most responses came in for the what now? So we're going to assume that you guys don't know about Game of Thrones or NFL, in which case, what rock have you been living under?

00:45:04Scott Trickett: Well, I take it it's our obligation to inform our audience about these topics because clearly they don't know enough about them. But to get a, you know, I'm crushed, 5%.

00:45:21Melissa Erbacher: said tom brady is the goat everybody else was a game of throners there was 31 of you who were fully for game of thrones so you are my people we will stay strong together question 10 this one puzzled quite a few people But funnily enough, fewer people skipped it than skipped other questions. So everybody was willing to weigh in.

00:45:51Scott Trickett: And the question was, what is your favorite type of frog?

00:45:54Melissa Erbacher: And who's the biggest loser, Scotty, in this department?

00:45:57Scott Trickett: This blew me away. Have you people ever seen a golden mantella?

00:46:03Melissa Erbacher: Obviously, they haven't.

00:46:04Scott Trickett: Well, they can't answer back now because...

00:46:08Melissa Erbacher: one one less than one percent what i find is really interesting is that the the frogs the four out of the six that aren't fictional all scored the lowest and most people were fans of kermit the frog who i know is not your favorite frog And then after him, so how many people voted for Kermit? That was 41% voted for Kermit. And then after Kermit, 26% voted for Jeremiah.

00:46:43Scott Trickett: Baffles me. Baffles the mind. And tell me, Mel, why did we ask this question?

00:46:50Melissa Erbacher: Well, because it's important. I think, well, it doesn't baffle my mind. I think it is. is a perfect illustration of the kind of listeners that we have, is that most of them do not live in the real world. And they much prefer to be able to sing songs or, I don't know, Kermit the Frog? I don't know why Kermit. They like the Muppets.

00:47:20Scott Trickett: Maybe.

00:47:22Melissa Erbacher: I'm sure psychologists would be able to give us much more in-depth information

00:47:26Scott Trickett: answer about what this says about our listeners out of all the questions we asked that question is going to shape the direction of the podcast moving forward i think i can categorically say that at least so thanks for responding we certainly won't be interviewing any golden mantellas in the future so much hate

00:47:46Melissa Erbacher: So much hate.

00:47:48Scott Trickett: For the golden mantella.

00:47:49Melissa Erbacher: Well, maybe it's not a representation of the hate for the mantella so much as it's a representation... Oh no, you're totally going to use that later. Just use it now. As a representation of the love for the other kinds of frogs.

00:48:09Scott Trickett: Question 11. Should we come back in 2018?

00:48:15Melissa Erbacher: That one was split pretty evenly. Yeah. Between people wanting us to at least get to 100 episodes and people wanting us to keep going to infinity and beyond. Do we have good news for that one person who said that they've had their fill, Scotty?

00:48:33Scott Trickett: No, we don't. Sorry, buddy.

00:48:36Melissa Erbacher: Actually, we do. Because you know what? You don't have to listen anymore. Nobody is forcing you to download our podcast.

00:48:43Scott Trickett: This is true.

00:48:44Melissa Erbacher: You can stop right now. This is the good news.

00:48:49Scott Trickett: But there's more good news. I can guarantee, Mel, unless I get hit by a bus or something horrible happens. Don't say things like that. We will get to 100 episodes. That I can guarantee. And we're not going to do two episodes a week. So we are coming back next year.

00:49:09Melissa Erbacher: Well, that's the answer to that question anyway. We will be back in 2018. Don't get hit by a bus, please, Scotty. Or some other such equivalent. Terrible disaster. Now, we promised we'd come back to question five. Do you want to start with this one?

00:49:25Scott Trickett: If the parkrun Adventurers could interview anyone, living or dead, who would you like us to interview and why? Where do we go, Mel? We had people did nominate dead people.

00:49:38Melissa Erbacher: Well, yeah. Was that a surprise to you?

00:49:42Scott Trickett: No, it wasn't, actually. No. No. It's going to be a struggle for us. Mel, could you give us an example of some of the dead people that were suggested as future interviewees?

00:49:53Melissa Erbacher: Well, there's a whole bunch of them that are runners, but a few people have done some musicians. So I'll give you the top three responses to start with. So the most popular request for someone who's passed away was Cliff Young. Because I'm sure people will remember Cliff. He's an Australian runner who was famous for having a shuffle. And he was a farmer and came from out of nowhere to do some amazing feats in long distance running. So he was the most popular request. Followed by the late, great Ron Clarke. another runner. And just to mix it up a little bit, we had multiple requests for Elvis also.

00:50:38Scott Trickett: Elvis is very popular. I never got it myself, but people wanted to know if he did do parkrun, would he have lived longer? And maybe he could still be with us, which I know would make a lot of people happy.

00:50:51Melissa Erbacher: But then, you know, we also had some interesting things like Richard Burton, the explorer, not to be confused with the actor, Richard Burton was best known for his achievements including a well-documented journey to Mecca in disguise at a time when Europeans were forbidden access on pain of death so I don't believe he died as a result of that but he has obviously passed away Pheidippides the Greek courier who's yeah who's responsible for marathons you know that would be great to ask him questions and this is what I loved I loved the whys that people gave for why they wanted to talk to different people. We had somebody requested Sir Charles Kingsford Smith because they admire his achievements and they shared some information. So it was a learning experience for us too. They mentioned that when he was preparing for his transatlantic crossing, he would run half marathon distances to prepare his body and increase his mental stamina endurance for the arduous long leg sectors. And did you know, Scotty, before this, that he also landed aircraft at Crissy Field in San Francisco?

00:52:03Scott Trickett: Of course I did. Everybody does.

00:52:06Melissa Erbacher: Oh, well, I must be the dunce then. I didn't know that.

00:52:10Scott Trickett: No, I didn't know it either. So you're right. We got an education. It's fantastic. Let's move on to people that we actually can get on the podcast. And far and away, streets ahead, was our local legend, Rob de Castella. as our most wanted interviewee.

00:52:31Melissa Erbacher: So many people requested Rob.

00:52:34Scott Trickett: I reckon we can lock Rob in. Rob's coming on.

00:52:39Melissa Erbacher: Well, if he agrees. We'll certainly ask him for you guys, okay?

00:52:43Scott Trickett: He'll agree. Trust me, he'll agree. So that's good to know. So we'll have Rob on soon. PSH came in second. Lots of people want to hear from him again. We did have him on at the end of last year. We'd love to get PSH back on. Nothing's stopping us from doing that.

00:53:00Melissa Erbacher: I think we'll have to make that happen as well.

00:53:02Scott Trickett: A couple more, Mel, that jump out?

00:53:05Melissa Erbacher: Yep, there was a tie for the third place between Steve Moneghetti and Mo Farah. The word legend got bandied around quite a lot when people said why these people wanted to be in. But let's just pick a few different ones. So last week or the week before, I think you mentioned somebody wanted Sophie Monk on. We did have somebody else mention not Sophie Monk. So as those two kind of balance each other out, we will not be asking Sophie Monk on the show.

00:53:44Scott Trickett: There were lots of runners, weren't there? So people nominated lots of runners, which was... kind of in contrast to how they answered the other question that they don't really want us to speak to fast runners. But, you know, Roger Bannister, Jess Trengove popped up on the list, Brad Beven. These guys are fast.

00:54:03Melissa Erbacher: No, isn't Brad Bevan a cricketer?

00:54:05Scott Trickett: Is he? No, he's a triathlete.

00:54:10Melissa Erbacher: Oh, I thought Brad Bevan a cricketer. No, maybe I'm thinking of a different Bevan. I must be. Well, that's all right. There's that whole education thing popping up again. This one I had to ask Scotty about. I sent him a message a bit early and saying, Zatopek, is that the horse? Because Zadapek is a brown 13-year-old horse from Ireland that's been trained by Miss S.O. Sullivan based in Cork and was sired by the stallion Tamez out of the dam Tamez. and managed to win one race in his career so far. So only one race, but it has since concluded. And I thought, okay, well, somebody wants us to talk to an animal, but no. Apparently, Scotty thinks, who do you think it is?

00:54:56Scott Trickett: This is Emil Zatopek, who was a very famous runner back in the day. He's one of Ron Clarke's rivals. There's a famous story of Emile giving Ron his medal from the Olympics because Ron missed out and because Emile respected Ron so much. So yes, I don't think it's the horse. It would be a bit of a dead interview.

00:55:21Melissa Erbacher: Even though the horse is still living.

00:55:22Scott Trickett: Yep.

00:55:24Melissa Erbacher: One of the few to make it out of the racing industry, still alive.

00:55:27Scott Trickett: We did get a lot of parkrun. There was a bit of a parkrun theme to some of the responses as well. Neil Barnett was one that came up. So anyone who follows the most events list here in Australia will see Neil's name at the top of that list. And I'd say he's a little bit of an enigma. If anyone knows Neil, we'd love to have a chat to him, find out why he does what he does. He clearly loves getting around to different parkruns, but I've never met him. Have you met him, Mel?

00:56:00Melissa Erbacher: No, not that I'm aware of. No. He certainly hasn't introduced himself to me, so if he's run at one of the events I've run at, I couldn't tell you.

00:56:11Courtney White: But I mean obviously he loves to get around to the different events so we would love to have a chat to him.

00:56:17Melissa Erbacher: Now we're not going to give you the full list of all of them because there were several people in there who voted for being surprised. They want us to surprise them so we're going to hold back and we're not going to let you know everybody that got nominated because we still want to surprise you guys sometimes and find some of those people. So got heaps to be going on with you know literally hundreds of different people named. So, you know, there could be another couple of years worth of podcast if we interviewed all these people. Just quietly putting it out there, Scotty.

00:56:56Scott Trickett: That's good. That's good to know that we'll never run out of inspiration. So that's our perlustration done for another year. Thanks so much to all of you. We really do appreciate it. We love going through the results.

00:57:12Melissa Erbacher: Yes, thank you.

00:57:13Scott Trickett: And learning more about what you guys think of us and the podcast.

TomTom Adventurer giveaway draw — Elle Fisher

00:57:18Melissa Erbacher: And so everybody who entered our TomTom Adventurer Extravaganza giveaway, their name has been put on a big wheel. Okay, and so we're very serious about this. This competition is a big deal. So we had to get in a big deal to spin the big wheel and find out who won.

00:57:44Scott Trickett: And for complete independence and fairness, we're bringing in Renee Gimbert to spin the wheel for us. Welcome back to the pod, Renee.

00:57:54Renee Gimbert: Thank you.

00:57:55Scott Trickett: Now, you've got the big wheel with all the names on it. I do. And all the people who went through the very rigorous process task of entering the competition that was by letting us know one of the answers to their questions are you ready yeah it's like a big wheel of fortune wheel it is mel and i can't see the wheel you're in complete control of the wheel so whenever you're ready give it a spin and let us know who wins all right it's spinning quite fast and it's psychedelic and very colorful

00:58:32Renee Gimbert: And it's going slower. And the winner is, drumroll, Elle Fisher.

00:58:47Scott Trickett: Elle, not to be confused with Mel.

00:58:49Melissa Erbacher: No, it's not my pseudonym. I didn't enter the competition under an alias. Definitely somebody else.

00:58:57Renee Gimbert: Well done, Elle.

00:58:59Scott Trickett: And well done, Renee. Thanks for being our spinner.

00:59:02Renee Gimbert: Thanks for having me for the most exciting segment. See you.

00:59:08Melissa Erbacher: And that about wraps it up for episode 90. We're out of the 80s. We're into the 90s. It's going to be a very nondescript decade of outfits. But before we get to the outfits, we've got to get through Naked November. And this weekend coming is the International Day of Running Naked, the 18th of November. So make sure you get in on that action. Will you be running naked this weekend, Scotty?

Naked November / International Day of Running Naked

00:59:33Scott Trickett: Look, I'll give it a shot. Yep, I'll give it a shot. Bit tough on old Elle. We've just given her a watch and now we're told her she can't wear it.

00:59:42Melissa Erbacher: Well, I would be very surprised if you managed to get it in the post before the weekend.

00:59:49Scott Trickett: So little faith, Mel. So little faith. With that, let's wrap up episode 90.

00:59:55Melissa Erbacher: And I'll meet you again for another chat next week, shall I?

00:59:58Scott Trickett: You shall.