Episode 132 - Digger Hargreaves

Episode details · 266 speaker turns · sound cues from context

00:00:00[music]

00:00:15Melissa Erbacher: It's episode 132 of the parkrun Adventurers, so-called because we do parkrun and we do it adventurously. My name is Mel Erbacher. My co-host name is Scotty Trickett. Scotty, welcome to episode 132. Thanks, Mel.

00:00:32Scott Trickett: Great to be here, as always.

00:00:35Melissa Erbacher: Are you having adventures?

00:00:37Scott Trickett: Look, I'm having delayed onset adventures. Is that a condition? I'm not sure. I'm not sure. But I think you're being more adventurous this week. You're adventuring to new parkruns that I want to hear about.

00:00:56Melissa Erbacher: or a parkrun, I only went to one. Yes. Sure, I can tell you all about that. I ventured back for the fourth, no, not the fourth time, the third time in September to New South Wales. How's that? I live in Queensland. Three quarters of my parkrun events were done in New South Wales last month. Crazy.

00:01:18Scott Trickett: That's a strong commitment to adventuring.

00:01:20Melissa Erbacher: It is, and a strong commitment to driving a lot.

00:01:25Scott Trickett: Is this to boost our listener audience from New South Wales? Because they're the black hole of the parkrun Adventurers.

00:01:32Melissa Erbacher: I don't think they are the black hole, Scotty. I'm pretty sure we've got a strong following in New South Wales now.

00:01:37Scott Trickett: They're just quiet, are they?

00:01:39Melissa Erbacher: Yeah, they're just not very interact-y.

00:01:42Unidentified speaker: Okay.

00:01:43Scott Trickett: So you were mobbed at Yamba.

00:01:45Melissa Erbacher: Oh, I wouldn't say mobbed. I had one of those late onset things that you had and I had a message after the event that somebody said, oh, I thought that might have been you but I had to leave before you finished because you're slow. Although they, very kindly, they didn't say they had to leave because I was slow. They had to leave because I had to take their daughter to work elsewhere and obviously finish faster than I did.

00:02:07Scott Trickett: So I spoiled it for our listeners. You went to Yammer.

00:02:11Melissa Erbacher: It's not spoiling. They were going to find it out eventually. Yep.

00:02:14Scott Trickett: Can I tell you my story of Yamba?

00:02:16Melissa Erbacher: Yes.

00:02:17Scott Trickett: The very first road trip that me and my beautiful wife took, we got in the car, as you do on a road trip, you drive. So we drive up through the middle of Australia, got all the way up to where you are, the Sunshine Coast. And then we made our way back down. And one of the towns we stopped in was Yamba and we really liked it. Like it was a really cool town.

00:02:37Melissa Erbacher: It is a cool little town. We didn't actually stay in Yamba. We stayed in Tyndale, which is about 20 minutes outside of Yamba, on a cane, a working cane farm that has got a little cane cutters barracks, which has been recently renovated into Airbnb digs. which is a little bit different and cool. But we obviously ventured into Yamber for parkrun.

00:03:06Scott Trickett: So for the simpletons amongst us, including myself, speaking on behalf of myself. So working, does that mean you have to work to...

00:03:17Melissa Erbacher: No, no, no. It means that we got to stay on the farm, which is a working farm. Like it's an actual farm. It's not just a, oh, this used to be a farm. Yeah. Like they actually have cane fields and infrastructure and equipment to harvest said cane, et cetera, et cetera.

00:03:36Scott Trickett: Okay. That makes sense. Cause you know, there's those places where you can go and you just do a few chores and they let you stay.

00:03:41Melissa Erbacher: Working holiday places. Yeah. Nah, that's not my style.

00:03:45Scott Trickett: No, I didn't think so. That's why I asked. So I'm glad we've cleared that up. So it was a night of luxury while you watched people around you work and then you went to parkrun in the morning.

00:03:54Melissa Erbacher: Well, we didn't have to watch anyone work because it's cane. It just kind of grows. So I guess, you know, there are periods where they're particularly busy while they're sowing the cane and harvesting the cane. But apart from that, you know, they've just got to wait. So it's a different –

00:04:12Scott Trickett: You're creating enemies with the cane farmers, Mel, I can guarantee you, because they just sit around and wait for it to grow. Is that what you're saying?

00:04:19Melissa Erbacher: I'm sure that's not.

00:04:20Scott Trickett: They work one day every six months?

00:04:22Melissa Erbacher: 100% what they do. I'm sure they're doing things with, you know, I don't know what they do. I'm not a cane farmer. I do live in a historic or I grew up for a large part of my childhood in teen years in a cane farming town and, you know, we used to get stopped with the cane trains running through and everything like that and the black rain in the summertime as the mill was milling the cane. But I don't think I'm making any enemies. I think you're making things up now.

00:04:52Scott Trickett: Anyway, carry on. Let's hear about parkrun. Enough about cane. We don't get a lot of cane fields down here in Melbourne. So we've probably lost my interest already. So tell me about parkrun. That's what I came here for.

00:05:04Melissa Erbacher: Well, parkrun was awesome. We went, we drove into Yamba. See, the good part about staying in Tyndale was just in case Yamba had to cancel at the last second, we could still travel a little bit further south and head to Grafton parkrun if necessary. But And fortunately, it was all go ahead when we showed up. They did warn us in the pre-run brief that it may have to be cancelled while the event was in progress because there was a lightning storm, which when we started, you could see it. And the lightning is fair enough. Fair dangerous, but obviously it was far enough away that it wasn't posing any risk to anyone on the course. But they just had concerns that perhaps it might move in the direction in which case they would have had to cancel. So I was thinking, oh, no, don't let me, like, do half this course and then find out I'm not allowed to finish it and I'll have to log it as a freedom run. But that was not the case, fortunately. Very pretty course. Runs alongside the water. I have an affinity for the events. where the courses run near water. It doesn't matter if it's a lake, ocean, a dirty puddle. It just makes me feel at home. And they had a circus tent on their course at the moment, which apparently, so we didn't actually run the normal course. We sort of ran parallel to it. Apparently, the circus folks showed up one week, a couple of weeks ago and just pitched their tent right in the middle of the course and they didn't realise until, you know, the day before parkrun Day that, oh, there's a circus there and we can't run where we normally run. Fortunately, they had time to do an alternate course, which is the one that we got to run. And it only got a little bit of a spittering of rain while we were going.

00:06:58Bruce 'Digger' Hargreaves: And...

00:07:00Melissa Erbacher: Yeah, it was threatening though. I was a bit concerned. And Scotty, I was sick as a dog. I struggled to get around that course. I was just a big congested snotty mess.

00:07:13Scott Trickett: I can hear it. I can still hear a little bit. Yeah. You'll hear a lot more in our interview later because peel back the curtain. We did that a couple of days ago.

00:07:24Melissa Erbacher: Did I sound even more congested the other day?

00:07:26Scott Trickett: Yeah, yeah. We can track your snottiness through the podcast this week.

00:07:30Unidentified speaker: You never said anything.

00:07:32Melissa Erbacher: Okay, then. Yeah, but that was my yammer trip. Very friendly volunteers. Beautiful course. Highly recommend it. Cute little town as well. So definitely pop it on your list of adventures if you're headed through or around or anywhere near it. Also, there's a great little town called Macl... Oh, no, I'm going to get this wrong. No, it's McLaren. No, it's not McLaren. Macaulay?

00:07:57Unidentified speaker: No.

00:07:58Melissa Erbacher: Oh, no, it's terrible. I'm going to have to look it up. Give me two seconds with Google Maps.

00:08:04Scott Trickett: Were you chasing your Y? Was this one of the reasons for Yamba?

00:08:08Melissa Erbacher: That was one of Adam's reasons for Yamba. It was not any of my reasons. Yeah, Adam's chasing his alphabet.

00:08:18Scott Trickett: You still Googling?

00:08:20Melissa Erbacher: Yeah, I'm still Googling. McLean. McLean. Is that what I said? No, I said McLaren the first time. McLean. There's this cute little town called Maclean, very close to Yamba as well. And it's like the Scottish town in Australia. They are sister town to a town in the Isle of Skye. But super cute. I counted more than 100 of their electrical power poles. They have painted the bottom two metres in all the different tartans of all the different Scottish clans. It's amazing. So pop into McLean. It's, yeah, it's just, and just look for the electrical poles.

00:08:57Scott Trickett: How many poles are we talking about here?

00:08:59Melissa Erbacher: More than 100. Okay. I counted more than 100 before I lost count of different tartans with the names as well of the clan right at the top.

00:09:07Scott Trickett: Okay. Well, that is impressive because when, you know, some of the towns in Australia are pretty small, they may only have two or three light poles, but over 100s, yep, I'll pay that. Well done, McLean, not McLaren.

00:09:19Melissa Erbacher: McLean, it's McLean. Now, please do tell me about your adventures on the weekend, Scotty.

00:09:24Scott Trickett: Okay, so I went back to an event that has been around for almost five years, but I hadn't been back for about four. Over those years, three and a half or something. I visited Lilydale Lake, which is the parkrun called Lilydale Lake in the suburb of Lilydale, and they've come up with the great idea to spell Lilydale two different ways.

00:09:45Melissa Erbacher: What do you mean?

00:09:46Scott Trickett: They spell it two different ways. So the town of Lilydale, the suburb of Lilydale, is spelt L-I-L-Y, Dale. But Lilydale Lake, the lake right in the middle of town, or next to the town, is spelt L-I-double-L-Y, Dale. Makes no sense.

00:10:03Melissa Erbacher: So four L's instead of three. Why? That

00:10:08Scott Trickett: Yeah, four L's. That's right, because there's an L in Dale.

00:10:11Melissa Erbacher: And there's also an L at the start of Lily. Okay.

00:10:16Scott Trickett: Yep. But that doesn't affect the parkrun at all. So it's a nice flat two lapper around this lake, this said Lilydale Lake with the two L's. So this was started by that bloke we've had on the podcast once before, Matt.

00:10:30Melissa Erbacher: Matt who?

00:10:31Scott Trickett: Yeah, so he started it. And I visited it in the early days and hadn't been back. But I wanted an adventure. But all my NENDYs are quite a long way away. And I just thought, let's recreate an adventure by visiting a parkrun that will feel like new because I haven't been there for so long. And it kind of did. And how was it? Was it very different? It was different. They started differently. The briefing was in a different spot. There were a lot more people there this time. And the lake itself, it seemed prettier than I imagined. Like I was running around because I did two laps running and then I walked a lap with the girls. And we're all commenting that it's a really pretty part of Melbourne. And we'd never given it that much credit in the past.

00:11:18Melissa Erbacher: Well, there you go.

00:11:20Scott Trickett: Rediscovery. I think parkrun has contributed to it getting prettier.

00:11:26Melissa Erbacher: It's increased the aesthetics. I think so.

00:11:29Scott Trickett: And it was a footy theme, so that was the other condition, that we had to go to a parkrun that was having a footy theme. Now, I know that is of no interest to you, as you've made well aware in the past, but it was pretty important down here in Melbourne.

00:11:42Melissa Erbacher: Why were they having a footy theme?

00:11:45Scott Trickett: Yeah, I don't know.

00:11:45Melissa Erbacher: I don't know.

00:11:48Scott Trickett: So I got to wear my Essendon footy jumper. I was let down. I thought I was going there with my ambassador because I have an ambassador because I'm an event director of juniors. So my ambassador was going. Her partner is an Essendon fan, so I thought I had some solidarity there. But he pulled out. Let me down. And then let me down twice by not showing up to juniors on Sunday. Something about man flu.

00:12:14Melissa Erbacher: It is going around. Is it? Well, that's where I got it from. Boss had it last week and we only had one phone meeting and I managed to catch it. So it must be pretty potent.

00:12:25Scott Trickett: I haven't caught it yet.

00:12:26Melissa Erbacher: But there you go. Awesome. Nice to revisit old ones you haven't been to for a while.

00:12:41Scott Trickett: It's Melbourne Marathon time. People are getting ready to run it in a couple of days' time. And we've got on the podcast this week a man, one of only six, who have run every single Melbourne Marathon, amongst many other running achievements. Welcome to the parkrun Adventurers, Digger Hargreaves.

00:13:00Bruce 'Digger' Hargreaves: Hi all, and thank you for having me on.

00:13:02Scott Trickett: Now, Digger, we're going to go to the Melbourne Marathon first simply because it's in a lot of people's minds at the moment. They're getting ready for it. And you've run every single damn one. That's an amazing accomplishment.

00:13:15Bruce 'Digger' Hargreaves: Yeah, when we started back in 1978, that thought never crossed their minds. And back in 1978, it was a $2 entry, and there was just under 2,000 started. And so here we are 41 years later, and we're down to 6,000.

00:13:34Scott Trickett: Can we go back to 1978? What was it actually like, the very first one? Because you've shared a couple of tidbits with us, but what was it like to run in the very first one? What did you have to do?

00:13:48Bruce 'Digger' Hargreaves: One is, the strange thing is I was working at Monash University and one of the PhD students came in and gave me an entry form five weeks before race time and said hey melbourne's having a marathon um like the big overseas ones let's go and do it well at that stage we're probably running three times a week four or five k at lunchtime so we did a five-week plan that somehow got us to the start line but the atmosphere was unbelievable the start was at frankston and they hired three trains to get us from flinders street down to the start. And like the camaraderie on the train and the atmosphere was unbelievable. Then you look at, I've got the old videos or clips of the old videos, and you look at them. Things like risk assessment, traffic control, that was something totally unheard of. And the drink stations were every 5k and they had water. That was a breakthrough. Prior to 1978, Any marathon in Australia was very small, maybe 20 or 30 people, and drink stations were unheard of. So we've moved on a little bit.

00:15:06Melissa Erbacher: I'm fascinated, for starters, that it costs $2 to enter, but also we're just on the tail end of something we call Streaky September Digger, and that was where we challenged everybody to run every day or walk minimum two kilometres. You've done everything. 41, or this is the 41st year, marathons consecutively. How much pressure have you felt with that being a bit of a streak, you know, after you'd done the first several? At what point did you sort of think, oh, I've done it every year, I can't stop now?

00:15:41Bruce 'Digger' Hargreaves: This year is the test because a lot of people listening who don't know me This time last year, I was lining up to be a 430 pacer at the Melbourne Marathon. I paced marathons everywhere. So doing 40 last year, just turning up for me, I've done over 150 marathons and doing a marathon was just like going to work.

00:16:04Scott Trickett: It was just something I did.

00:16:06Bruce 'Digger' Hargreaves: However, I got very sick this year to the point where I may not have survived June unless it was the intervention of a brilliant doctor that's helped me. So from over 12 months, I've gone from just, yeah, it'll be easy, we'll do the 41st Melbourne Marathon, to back in June, I was incapable of walking 10 metres unassisted. So in two Sundays' time, we are going to, so is there pressure on me to do it? I don't feel the pressure, but I'll be on the start line and we think we've got it under control, that. Just the normal runners, whether they're running 10.5, 10k or whatever, they're at their limits in the back half of the race. I cannot go anywhere near my limits and we really don't know what's going to happen. I went to Sydney three weeks ago for the half and we survived the half in one piece. and we could have gone further. But that was totally unknown territory and totally unknown medical territory for us. But do we feel pressure and do the other five of us feel like pushing someone under a tram in Melbourne? So then there's five and then there's no.

00:17:30Melissa Erbacher: Well, I was never going to go there.

00:17:33Bruce 'Digger' Hargreaves: No, no, people talk to us about that. But when you get the six of us together, what you get is genuine friendship and genuine concern and the concern this year it was um literally i only started running five k's four or five weeks ago was whether i would get to the start line in the finish line whereas for the last four years when we were seven we had Manny, and Manny had cancer and He did the last three Melbourne marathons that he finished. As far as I know, from marathon to marathon, he never pulled the running shoes on. He was too sick. But last year, we only got 5K. And unfortunately, in January this year, the cancer finally got him. So we've lost many. But even when we lost many, the thought that I'd be the next one at risk medically, because 40 years of running marathons, we're all getting old. I'm 65, and I think there's one of the guys younger than me. and four of the others are into their 80s. Sorry, not their 80s, their 70s. And I was talking to one of them during the week and he said, you're probably going to, even under-trained and sick, I'm probably going to beat them. But anyway, we'll see how that goes. But no, we don't actually think of pushing each other under-trained.

00:18:54Melissa Erbacher: Well, under-trained is better than under trams.

00:18:58Bruce 'Digger' Hargreaves: No, no, we're not going anywhere there.

00:19:03Melissa Erbacher: And I imagine 40 years, you know, it's like family now. That's longer than a lot of people have, you know, their family relationships and those bonds that get built.

00:19:13Bruce 'Digger' Hargreaves: Yeah, but that's what marathon runners are like. If you are in a training group, You spend more quality time with your running partners than you do with your marital partners. We're out on the road together for hours and talking. And then we'll probably talk about comrades later. It gets worse for a comrades runner because they train longer. So we have genuine, like my running, I have a running family. But I'm different than most. I have a running family basically on every inhabitant continent in the world, which we may talk about a bit later if we've got time.

00:19:51Scott Trickett: Digger, I'm fascinated with the early days and the very first event because it was 40 years ago, so you would have been in your early 20s. Was it true that the cut-off was three hours?

00:20:03Bruce 'Digger' Hargreaves: No, no. Prior to that, the cut-off was three hours. I have been a runner. I'm an old Bendigo boy, Bendigo YMCA Harriers boy. And as a 13, 14, 15-year-old, I used to get taken to the country marathon championships by the club. There used to be a four-mile race prior to that for under 17. So you'd get to sit around and watch the marathon. Presentations were at three hours. That was it. If you ran 3.15, they'd all gone home because there was only three 20 25 competitors back in those days in marathons in australia and um of course it was and that's just the way it was and we all thought prior to the melbourne marathon that we'd have to run three hours but that wasn't the case they just kept the last people probably i haven't checked the times but there was no cut off but they would have kept the clocks running to well beyond six hours in those days

00:21:07Scott Trickett: And so the event itself has changed a bit because back in the day, as you mentioned, it was from Frankston into Melbourne. Now we kind of run around Albert Park and along Beach Road. Do you miss the old days? Do you miss the run from Frankston into Melbourne? No, I think the world's most boring bit of road is from Frankston to Mordialloc.

00:21:26Bruce 'Digger' Hargreaves: It's got a railway line on one side and houses on the other side. It is dead straight. You can see the curvature of the earth. And you can't see the beach. The only endearing bit was once we swung around that left turn at Morty Alley. At least we were on the beach and that's when it really got good and there was a few hills to work people over, which I now miss. But I fully understand, and you look at all the races we do in Australia, the bigger races, where the race directors are under pressure with police traffic control and all that to keep And where the Australian mentality is that the car is king. But you travel the world. Like you go to Boston, you go to New York, and you go to London. They just shut the whole city down. And they do it because they understand the amount of money which the runners bring in. And I think the only city that understands that is the Gold Coast, where they just shut the place, where they race Saturday and Sunday, because they understand the economic benefits to their local community. But I'm not fully convinced that Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane and our other cities understand that.

00:22:45Scott Trickett: So why Melbourne, Digger? Because you said you're a Bendigo boy. Is that why you started with Melbourne and you haven't gone for Sydney?

00:22:54Bruce 'Digger' Hargreaves: No, no. The first five Melbourne Marathons, I lived in Melbourne. So it was my local race. And then in early 83, I moved for work reasons to Queensland. But I still have a family base in Melbourne. And it was just an excuse to go there. And I kept on doing them. It was just an excuse. There was two things. One, it was an excuse to go down to Melbourne and catch up with my mother and family and stuff like that. Just another weekend, so I coincided. And the other thing is there was an urban myth at the time that if you run a marathon a year, an immune year from heart attacks, And that was high on my list because my father died at 56 of a heart attack pre the Melbourne days. But we now know that that was an urban myth. So we just kept on trekking down to Melbourne and coincided. And my wife, who's not listening at the moment, fortunately, who's known in the running world of LSW for long suffering life, she now plans our holidays around the marathon calendar. And last year we went over and ran the Dingle Marathon in Western Ireland and I said to her, why are we going to Ireland when she told me when we were going? And she said, the Dingle Marathon's on. So she actually has a look where she wants to travel in the world, has a look when the marathon's on and then tells me that I'm going.

00:24:28Melissa Erbacher: Love it. That's the way to get your partner on board. Yeah. And she's obviously sussed it out as well because she's like, well, if I want to go someplace, obviously I've got to do something that's going to entice Digger over as well.

00:24:42Bruce 'Digger' Hargreaves: Yeah, yeah, but she's been putting up with me for 48 years, so she must have worked it out a long time ago.

00:24:49Melissa Erbacher: Now, tell me, Digger, how does somebody who running a marathon for is just like showing up to work get involved with parkrun, a little bit of a different distance?

00:25:03Bruce 'Digger' Hargreaves: I didn't understand parkrun when it first was launched in Australia. I'm also a race director and a couple of the other race directors have gone, oh, parkrun, look at this, they're going to give a free 5K run. It will kill all fun running, right? and most of them are corporate or they make money out of being race directors. What they didn't realise and what is obvious now that parkrun is actually feeding the main running boom in Australia. The running boom is dying and parkrun is now feeding that. Now, back in 2013, which was my 60th birthday, Bruce and Jill Fordyce, who... The controllers of parkrun South Africa and a close friend of mine were over, and they took me along to a parkrun in Brisbane. And if I went to a fun run in Brisbane, I would expect to recognise 50% to 70% of the people via facial recognition, and I'd expect to know 30% to 40% of them personally. I turned up at a parkrun with about 250, 300 people. I knew five other people bar the ones that are with me, and I've gone, where did all these people come from? And then so parkrun was drawing people from the pool where fun running and road running and trail running wasn't. So there was all these people. But I still just sort of went along every time I wanted a 5K hit out, did a parkrun. And then my dear wife decided three years ago that I was working too hard at work because my house was 400 metres from the office and that I should relocate to Tamborine Mountain, which is where I live and where I am now. I was a bit reluctant to the idea. I spent over 30 years putting a running base together with my training partners and my club in Brisbane. And I get up on the Tambourine Mountain and I find out there's no running club to join. And then I found out they had a parkrun. So I turned up at the Tambourine Mountain parkrun, of which I've done a few and have good fun up there and tell me a small parkrun gets 25 30 if we get 41 at tambourine mountain parkrun um panic made we've got to find the second set of tokens which we have to use normally on on the year's day in our anniversary run then 18 months ago vince who started it was the event director up here decided that he had done enough for the parkrun, and I was the obvious nomination, and I think the other runners up here decided that for me. So now I'm the event director at Tambourine Mountain as well.

00:27:52Scott Trickett: That's great. You mentioned that it's quite a small event at Tambourine Mountain, but I always hear good things, and now there is a running club in the area?

00:28:00Bruce 'Digger' Hargreaves: Yeah, and it's probably the only... Well, there may be a few others, again... I sort of form running clubs where I travel and things happen. So when I arrived up here three years ago, those that were running parkrun thought that running was turning up at parkrun, doing the 5K and going home and putting your shoes away until next week, which is what they literally did. And now we've got a – and they thought that I was crazy. I used to run the parkrun, do parkrun. And depending on what I was training for on the way home, I might do a lazy five or 10K and kick it up to 20, 25K for the day. And they just thought I was a weird person. Now, the group up here, we've probably got a club of 20, 25 runners. They're out three to four mornings a week. Two of them came to the Melbourne Marathon with me last year and those same two are coming down in two weeks' time with me. at the Gold Coast Marathon this year. I'm not sure how many were in the 10K, but I wasn't there. But I think they had 12 of them finish the half marathon at the Gold Coast early in the year at the Women's Day run. They took 19 women down where the year before they had two. And it's quite a social thing. There seems to be an awful lot of – and it breaks into two groups, like today up here – The girls that have to work, and I'm saying girls because the club's 90% girls, who have to work. We're out at 5.30 this morning and knocked out, I think, about 8 or 9K this morning. But those that don't work and have children at school, they do a 9.15 run twice a week and go to coffee shows. There's a whole new culture up here of running and socialising, which is great. I mean, it should be developed everywhere.

00:29:57Melissa Erbacher: I like that you took what could have been a difficult transition and turned it around and have brought a whole new community together, even outside of parkrun. You mentioned earlier, Digger, that you're a race director for some other events or you have been and that you also had colleagues that were the same and their opinion was that parkrun would be the death of those events and have a detrimental impact. Has that been your experience? What do you feel about that now?

00:30:29Bruce 'Digger' Hargreaves: It's the exact opposite. It's the exact opposite. Every parkrun I go to... advertises the other local runs right um that are there and um and and basically as i was saying before parkrun have found another pool of people that without parkrun they would have stayed in the gyms or whatever or and but now they they're being integrated into mainstream um road running and trail running and the other thing we're going to do and Like I've been around an awful long time. I can remember when an African valley runner won an Olympic event. It was a rare event, right? Oh, who are these guys? Where did they come from? And as time's gone on, I don't want to use a word, but the white runners from first world countries have gone, oh, these black guys from Africa are better than us. Well, they never were better than us. But what I believe we're going to see by 2024 and 2028 at the Olympics is a resurgence of men and women middle distance runners from first world countries who are not black. And parkrun is going to do that. You've just got to look at some of the times that some of the teenagers are running. And there's going to be this fantastic pool that will filter through, just not Australia. It'll be in the Europe, the UK, America if it takes off. So we'll look back. People will look back in 20, 30 years' time and go, wow, look what parkrun has done.

00:32:14Scott Trickett: People often say it's the new running boom.

00:32:17Bruce 'Digger' Hargreaves: parkrun has introduced their new running boom, and you can... And you've just got to look at the numbers here that you've got registered, right? But you go to South Africa, where it's obviously going to kick off, because South Africa's a poor country, and a lot of the people, like, when we go to Comrades, an international entry at Comrades is about US$300, which is 3,500 rand. In Australia, The local entry fee there has gone to 400 rand, which is about 30 US dollars. That is a week's pay for an average person or more in South Africa. And you go over there, all they want to do is run. And parkrunners come there and it's free, and it's free every week. You should see it. I go to Durban once a year. We talk about having 25, 30 at Tambourine Mountain. In 2017, when I was fit enough, I went to the Durban parkrun on that Saturday. There was 2,100 finished. Just have a think about the logistics and how much fun we had. Over 2,000 at one parkrun. And that run just wasn't for comrades. I looked at the numbers. They normally get 1,600, 1,700 per week. And now Jill was telling me when she was in Sydney two weeks ago that in Durban they're launching a third parkrun, and the two turnarounds, you can almost see each other. They're at each end of the Esplanade over there. But just what parkrun is doing, not only for the, Just for the average person and getting them out. And the people we see is amazing. Without parkrun, they wouldn't actually get out of bed, some of them.

00:34:02Scott Trickett: Well, we're big fans. Have you enjoyed the volunteering side of parkrun, that you're an event director? Yeah. Well, the problem, again, when you've got a small parkrun like ours, we need six to eight volunteers each week.

00:34:16Bruce 'Digger' Hargreaves: And we've got a small community. We normally have more tourists than we do locals. Right. Up here, even before I was the event director, I always did a freedom run at six o'clock, seven o'clock. So I always volunteered up here. And maybe it's something as I get older, I seem to volunteer to do some stuff everywhere. But I enjoy that. But the only thing I won't let them give me, I won't do timekeeping and I won't do scanning because people talk to me and I lose concentration and they're the two most important bits. Do not put someone with lack of concentration in your side track.

00:34:56Scott Trickett: Diggie, should we move on to comrades? You mentioned it and you mentioned your friendship with Bruce and Jill Fordyce.

00:35:02Bruce 'Digger' Hargreaves: I went over in 1998 and there's another good family story of my very tolerant wife.

00:35:12Scott Trickett: We went to Boston and we were in Boston's 100th in 1996 and

00:35:19Bruce 'Digger' Hargreaves: And then I decided I needed to do Comrades. So I said, oh, we'll go over in 98. And when we were flying back to Australia, she said, well, you've done Boston and you've done Comrades. She said, now I want to go and do the Greece and Turkey thing. I want to go and do all that. She's into all that. And I said, yeah, yeah, great, great. So we went back to Comrades in 2000, and then I went back to Comrades in 2002 with her. Then I thought I was over comrades until I met Bruce Fordyce here in Australia in 2008. So I've basically been back to South Africa every year from 2000. Literally, I have been every year since 2009. But unfortunately, Marilyn and myself haven't got to do the Greece and Turkey thing yet. So I've got to get around to that for her.

00:36:11Melissa Erbacher: Still plenty of time. The countries aren't going anywhere. No.

00:36:15Bruce 'Digger' Hargreaves: Yeah, they are, but I thought I was.

00:36:19Melissa Erbacher: Well, hopefully you're sticking around for a lot longer too, Digger. Yeah, I'm planning on that. Now, I have a vague memory of somebody once telling me that if you do, is it 10 Comrades Marathons that you get your own number, your dedicated number, and nobody else can ever have that number again? Yeah.

00:36:42Bruce 'Digger' Hargreaves: That's exactly right. And it's the same in Melbourne. But I'm only on seven. I'm trying to work out how to get the next three.

00:36:51Melissa Erbacher: And how do you pick your number? Is it the number that you first did from the very first event?

00:36:55Bruce 'Digger' Hargreaves: Yeah, from the first one. Yeah, that's right. At Comrades, you're allocated a number and they're reusing. And some people have got numbers in the 60,000, 70,000. But some... A new runner may get a number, say 5,000, if that number becomes vacant and a number's decreed vacant when it hasn't been used for five years unless it's been allocated as a green number.

00:37:24Melissa Erbacher: Is this a major motivating factor for going back? I mean, 90 kilometres in no matter what direction you're doing it in just seems like a really long way to me. So what motivates you to go back again and again?

00:37:36Bruce 'Digger' Hargreaves: It can fill up your whole day. And a lot of people... start in the dark and finish in the dark, so they get their money's worth out of the daylight all day long in Comrades. There's two sorts of people that run Comrades, those that go over and hate it and never go back, and those that go over and will do everything possible to go back. And you cannot explain what it is, but it's something like a fever, a Comrades fever. And people from all over the world, they just keep on... But you've got to go and see and experience to know what it is. We don't talk about going over to run comrades. We talk about going on a comrades journey and things like that. And what would happen to me if, let's just say, and I'm not convinced I'll ever run comrades again at the moment, that I won't be well enough to do that. But I will go back every year. It's a camaraderie. It's the friendships. Like my friend Mark Bloomfield, who is a lobbyist in Washington, D.C., he's run three comrades, and he ran his last one in 2005. He makes a trip to Durban every year just to meet up with old friends, just to be a part and just to help out. And I think I'll end up a tragic like he is. But you've got to go and experience. And people go, oh, it's a 90K. Running comrades, it's probably a little bit harder than a marathon. It's probably twice as far and four times as hard. But you're not going as fast and you train slightly different. But it's a whole different world. And like in Melbourne, in two weeks' time, they talk about 30,000 runners. But let's talk about... There's only going to be 6,000 marathon runners doing the 42K there. Last year for Comrades, they capped the entries at 20,000. The entries, the cap was reached in under three weeks in September for a June race. There's got to be something going on over there and something that people should experience. Where are we going to find 20,000 people to run a 42K marathon in Australia? And of that 20,000, I didn't, I should have checked the numbers, but there was at least two and a half thousand internationals that flew in for it. And of that two and a half thousand, I would guess 1,500 would be repeat runners that just keep on coming back.

00:40:22Scott Trickett: You've been running for a long time. I'm sure you've got heaps of stories that we could keep chatting about. We've got to let you go. We've got to let you get ready for Melbourne in a couple of weeks. How can we look out for you if we're watching? I'll be there in a couple of weeks.

00:40:36Bruce 'Digger' Hargreaves: Those that want to find me after the... There's two places to find me after the race, immediately after it, and I'll do somewhere between five and a half and six hours. If they go to the corporate tent facility, they'll find the tent. You'll love this, called Digger and Friends, right? I've got my own corporate tent. Then after that, I'll be down in Bridge Street, Richmond from 3 o'clock. I have a room booked at the Mount View Hotel and everybody's welcome to come down there and there will be about 50 of my closest friends there. Now, on the Saturday, I'll be somewhere most of the day near the Spartans' tent in the Expo and on the road, I'll be one of the other six Spartans, and we will be the only Spartans wearing yellow and black singlets. We've got distinct singlets. If you look at all the Spartan singlets, they're all different colours, which, you know, the green ones are those that have done 10, and then it goes to blue, I think, for 15, then red for 20, and so on. But the gold Spartan singlets with black printing will be one of the six. So just don't call out to me, call out to the other guys. And they'll be there. One of them, Wayne Thompson, he'll be one of the 430 pacers. And he'll be the first one in. Johnny Dobson will be next. He'll do about four hours, 45, 450 maybe. I was talking to him the other night. And the rest of the guys will be spread somewhere between five and a half hours and six and a half hours. But we'll be out there on the road. But with what we call the Brunton Avenue shuffle, which is the short course for Melbourne for those to allow the roads to be open, most of us will be on that. So anyone around the MCG precinct will see us going up and down that road three or four times, whatever it takes.

00:42:39Melissa Erbacher: Absolutely brilliant. I'm so glad that you've come back strong enough from June, Digger, to make it to this Melbourne Marathon. And we hope to see you for many, many, many more Melbourne Marathons. I'm not coming down this year myself, but it's on the agenda for future years. So I hope to see you there in person one time too.

00:43:01Bruce 'Digger' Hargreaves: Yeah, but you just don't have to do the Melbourne Marathon. See, Australia, like the marathons I like in Australia are

00:43:07Scott Trickett: aren't the Melbourne Marathon or the Sydney One or the Gold Coast.

00:43:11Bruce 'Digger' Hargreaves: I love going to little country towns like Portland and Duke and places like that and Orange where you go to a smaller race and you've got the local community involved and places like the Portland Three Bays. You turn up there and they've got Country Women's Association that organises the catering after and stuff like that. You really get in. And I think that's where real running is and where real Australia is in the country areas. I much prefer them. In Melbourne, we're in our unit. We're with all our friends and we do the live on-street thing and all that. But very few people go and do the country thing. And maybe that's partly what parkrun's done with parkrun tourism. I'm talking on and on again, sorry. But like the other week I was at Broken Hill. What a fantastic little parkrun in the red dust and just lots of fun. But marathons are the same. If you look at the marathon calendar, there's lots of small marathons spread around Australia in country town. But maybe that's where I started in Bendigo in the 60s. We're in small towns and we did small races and we had a ball and we really, and then you can get the talk, like in Melbourne, do a few people know who the race director is? Have you ever met the race director? I know the first time I ran Portland, that the race director who pulled alongside while we were running, he already knew our names. He knew the first name of every runner in the race and he stopped and spoke to us as he went past. And then he came up and greeted us after the race. But there's lots of smaller races and lots of other places to do this. Sorry about talking on and on.

00:44:57Melissa Erbacher: I don't apologise. Scotty and I couldn't agree more about the smaller regional areas and the events that they have out there, parkrun and otherwise. We... We love the local feel of all those ones. So we think you're spot on. Thank you again for joining us this week, Digger. It has been an absolute pleasure having you.

00:45:16Bruce 'Digger' Hargreaves: Okay. Thank you all. Thank you, Scott. Thank you, Mel.

Channel 5 News Crew

00:45:24Tony O'Connell: Howdy parkrunners, it's Toc reporting in for the Channel 5 News crew. I'm down at the lovely Tin Boon parkrun today and yeah, it's a bit of an interesting course. I'm at the back of the course with the tail walker Maureen and her merry band of walkers coming back up the hill. It's fair to say that you run two and a half k's down a hill and then you turn around and it's two and a half k's back up. Howdy guys, how are we all?

00:45:50Unidentified speaker: Thank you. Very gentle hill.

00:45:52Tony O'Connell: It is a very gentle hill, but it's a gradient, no less, all the way up. We've just found a headset. Oh, good pickup. Well done. Nothing wrong with my eyesight. So, guys, you're all local to Timboon. A few of you have been along since the start of the journey. We're up to Event 71 here. Quite a few walkers at this course, I've noticed. Majority of walkers. Yeah, it's really good to see people out and about walking. There's a few speedy ones up the front and then there's a really good crew at the back having a good chat as they walk along.

00:46:29Unidentified speaker: Yes. Sam hasn't really walked as fast for two weeks. We're pushing him. But you're doing well, Sam.

00:46:39Tony O'Connell: The tailgater, that's a new position, is it? You almost need to get the fluoro out for that one.

00:46:44Unidentified speaker: A lot of the young runners are school kids that Lauren and I taught.

00:46:52Tony O'Connell: Yeah, I tried to keep up with a couple of them at the start and they left me for dead in about 200 metres. So for people that haven't been to Tinboon before, give us a bit of a description about the Tinboon area generally. I think you're part of the Gourmet Trail down here?

00:47:09Unidentified speaker: Yes, Sam, you could talk about that.

00:47:11Unidentified speaker: Well, we are part of the Gourmet Trail. It's a beautiful little village tucked in behind the Great Ocean Road. And 15 minutes away. 15 minutes away. And it's a good drive past. And even faster if you're flying. But yes, it has in the last few years become a gourmet trail because we've got the most beautiful farming land. So we offer cheese, whiskey, I'm puffing, olives, strawberries. Fudge. Fudge.

00:47:47Tony O'Connell: I think you've got everything covered there. You've got whiskey, fudge and cheese.

00:47:50Unidentified speaker: Beer and wine. Beer and wine.

00:47:54Tony O'Connell: So we've got a bit of everything going on locally. Might be somewhere to spend more than a day or two. Might be somewhere to spend a week.

00:48:00Unidentified speaker: Ice cream.

00:48:01Tony O'Connell: Oh, yeah.

00:48:02Unidentified speaker: Yeah, actually, that's right. That's why we don't go anywhere.

00:48:13Unidentified speaker: The ice cream is something to die for.

00:48:15Tony O'Connell: Yeah, we've heard a lot about Timboon ice cream. It's actually been on the parkrun Adventurers Facebook page a couple of times. People have said they're going to Tim Boone and everyone jumps up and says, grab the ice cream. Must be pretty good. Yummy flavours. We went and cased it out last night. It doesn't open till 11 o'clock, so there's time for parkrun coffee and then ice cream.

00:48:37Unidentified speaker: I need to be able to go to the corner store up there and get some delicious salads from my daughter-in-law. She makes beautiful salads.

00:48:44Tony O'Connell: There's a plug for the corner store in Timburn. All right, guys, well, enjoy the rest of the walk and thanks for coming along on the parkrun Adventurers. Thank you.

00:48:54Melissa Erbacher: And we had Tok at Tim Boone. Thank you, Tok, once again for another submission. You are certainly one of our most prolific members of the Channel 5 News crew and we love your work. Also, Tok is in. He's all over the podcast this week, Scotty. We've got a question from Tok for the hotline. Should we go there? Or do you want to go to the launches and anniversaries first?

The hotline (listener question)

00:49:19Scott Trickett: No, no, no. Let's go to the hotline first. Let's keep with the Tok theme. Bye-bye.

00:49:33Tony O'Connell: Howdy, parkrun Adventurers. It's TOC. I'm out having a run in the wet in the rain down here. It's bucketing down. I've just about gone A over T on a frog. I just wanted to ask a question. What's the craziest thing you've fallen over when you've been out for a run?

00:49:49Scott Trickett: Okay, this is an easy one for me, Mel. Because the only thing I manage to fall over is myself. I can't even find an excuse. Like I can't say there's a snake darted out at me or there was a big rock or a branch. I just trip over my own feet, it seems like.

00:50:06Melissa Erbacher: Well, that's not very crazy.

00:50:08Scott Trickett: Well, but I mean, if you haven't fallen too often, you haven't come across crazy things to fall over. This is true. This is a very valid point. Yep. So sorry to disappoint you, but I can be crazy sometimes. About once a year I am. Once a year I'm crazy. All right.

00:50:27Melissa Erbacher: I'd like to meet Crazy Scotty. I reckon that guy would be fun.

00:50:31Scott Trickett: Yeah?

00:50:32Melissa Erbacher: Yeah.

00:50:32Scott Trickett: Because the normal guy is not much.

00:50:34Melissa Erbacher: No, I like the normal guy too. That's why I think like Crazy Scotty would be like an amplified version of you.

00:50:42Scott Trickett: Well, it would be funny because I'd be falling over myself as well. So you get the laughs from me being crazy and you get the laughs from me being – From the physical humor of it.

00:50:51Melissa Erbacher: Yeah, falling over.

00:50:54Scott Trickett: So take it away. Yours?

00:50:56Melissa Erbacher: Well, here's the thing. The question was when we've been out for a run. So I've never actually stacked it on a run. Touch wood. That it doesn't happen.

00:51:11Scott Trickett: Humble brag.

00:51:12Melissa Erbacher: Humble brag. However, I have fallen over while running, but I was a child and I tripped over my dog. So that's the craziest thing I've ever fallen over when I've been running. And I was... I think I was nine years old and literally I was just headed across the backyard and he was headed across the backyard too but he thought he could take a shortcut and he took me out and I ended up getting three stitches in my pinky finger. The only stitches I've – no, I can't say those are the only stitches I've ever had. Up until I had children, the only stitches I've ever had. Yeah. Yeah.

00:52:01Scott Trickett: Was this one of those scenes, if we were capturing it on video, you would have been flipped in the air?

00:52:06Melissa Erbacher: Slow-mo.

00:52:07Scott Trickett: Yeah.

00:52:07Melissa Erbacher: Big time.

00:52:08Scott Trickett: Tumbled. Oh, that would have been great to see.

00:52:11Melissa Erbacher: Yeah, it would have been totally one of those funniest home video shows where you just piss yourself laughing at the kids who've been wiped out by another kid on the swing. Yeah, they're the ones. You know, the funniest ones are always the ones where people fall over. But you only know that they're funny because people didn't properly get hurt, you know, because they would have got up again eventually after those stacks. Although, yeah, I did have to go to hospital and get three stitches because So that was a pretty big deal for me.

00:52:43Scott Trickett: I just want to put a footnote to my answer. So I've fallen over. I fell over and broke my ribs the first time when a bird swooped me. So does that count?

00:52:52Melissa Erbacher: Well, you were avoiding something. It's not like you fell over the bird.

00:52:57Scott Trickett: Exactly. So really I just fell over because I went to duck.

00:53:01Melissa Erbacher: Went to duck a magpie.

00:53:03Scott Trickett: Great questions. Keep them coming in, people, because now that we haven't put it on the bingo card for Streaky September, the questions have dried up again.

00:53:13Melissa Erbacher: Except we do have somebody laying claim to being able to call bingo, and we have not received a hotline question from them, so they must have recorded it and never sent it in. We will not pay you calling bingo until we receive your question. We have received them from everybody else. Melissa Ellis says we don't have to use hers, but maybe we'll save that one for next week, just in case nothing comes in in the meantime. Speaking of streaky bingo and streaky September, Scotty, did you make it through to day 30? I did. Streaked, unbroken.

Streaky September

00:53:47Scott Trickett: Well done. Streaked again, so I'm two for two.

00:53:51Bruce 'Digger' Hargreaves: in streaky September.

00:53:53Scott Trickett: And as I said last week, I really enjoyed it. I stopped streaking on October 2nd, which is really weird because I was all planned to go for a run, but got stuck in the garden late at night and then just thought, ah, can't be arsed. So I have enjoyed the process this time. I am going to try and work it into my everyday routine, but I'm not going to go streaking until New Year's Day. Good luck to those that do. I tip my cap, but I'm not going to be one of them. How did you finish up? Because we know that you didn't streak continuously through September, but what are you doing? Are you trying to do something? I don't know. What are you doing?

00:54:33Melissa Erbacher: Well, I caught this lurgy at the end of last week, so I was like the walking dead. And as well, after... earlier upsets in the week from Wes's vomiting adventures so I um I missed a couple of days but I'm still determined to finish Streaky September so I started catch-up days from as soon as I could start streaking again and I've got one more to go today will be Streaky September day 30 for me I know it's technically the 3rd of October but I'm counting my own calendar And yeah, so I'm almost finished. But you know what? I didn't break my chocolate or wine streak or Skittles streak before the end of the month. So that streak was left intact, which I'm very proud of. And I've only had two rows of chocolate since I – so I did break that streak on October 1st. I was like, I can have chocolate today. I don't care what anyone says.

00:55:38Scott Trickett: Did you stay up till midnight to –

00:55:40Melissa Erbacher: Oh, are you talking about the bingos or what are you doing? No, no.

00:55:43Scott Trickett: Did you start at 12.01?

00:55:45Melissa Erbacher: No, I just got up at a normal time on the 1st of October. I did consider having it for breakfast, but I didn't. I waited until a little bit later in the day. I think it was like 11 or 12 o'clock lunchtime. And I had some chocolate because I could and I didn't have to have any guilt about it. Yeah, so but I, yeah, haven't been missing the Skittles or anything like that. So I think I might have broken that habit. I'm going to try to perhaps gently avoid them for a little while. That's a lot of sugar, a lot of sugar in Skittles. But well done to everybody who did join us and made it through to the end of Streaky September Streak Unbroken and even to everybody else who, like myself, we weren't perfect. Life got in the way and, you know, stuff happens. Sometimes injuries happen and that happened to quite a few people halfway through the month. That's okay. We tried and we will try again next year, I hope. And there were also heaps of people who just did amazing things for themselves, like biggest monthly totals they've ever done or they've never struck for more than seven days in a row, let alone the whole month. So I'm most impressed with people who blew themselves out of the water, as it were, and kicked their own goals and

00:57:12Scott Trickett: Me too. It was a great streaky September this year. The group was a genius masterstroke move there, Mel, to create that.

00:57:22Melissa Erbacher: And we'll do another one next year, definitely. But we're also going to have something that happens in March next year. I think we should do some kind of streak the date, run the date thing. Okay.

00:57:36Scott Trickett: Yep, yep. Let's workshop that off air. Last week we talked about perlustration. We haven't got our stuff together just yet, so we're going to delay that for one more week.

00:57:48Melissa Erbacher: Yeah, but we only said October. We didn't say the first week.

00:57:51Scott Trickett: We might have said last week that we'd release it next week.

00:57:54Melissa Erbacher: Nobody listens to us, Scotty.

00:57:56Scott Trickett: No, they don't.

00:57:57Melissa Erbacher: Certainly nobody holds us to anything we say, I'm sure.

00:58:00Scott Trickett: So if you go looking for it, it's not there yet. You know what is out this week, Mel? Tell me. So, perlustration, ridiculous name for a survey. Christmas compendium, ridiculous name for a list, basically.

00:58:16Melissa Erbacher: Which is about festive season, not just Christmas.

00:58:18Scott Trickett: Yes. So...

00:58:21Melissa Erbacher: It's exciting because that's a big deal on the calendar for a lot of adventurers.

00:58:26Scott Trickett: Yeah, and it looks better this year. It looks like you can read it. It makes sense. It tells you which ones aren't and aren't doing it, and if they aren't doing it, it's not there. It's great.

00:58:36Melissa Erbacher: Formatting is awesome, isn't it? And also, it's telling you the times. But did you see? You can see the start times. So not only do you not have to figure out which events are yes or no from a big glut of names in just a big pile on a page, but it tells you what times they start and finish, which is going to make things so much easier as well.

00:58:58Scott Trickett: Yep.

00:58:59Melissa Erbacher: Next year, guys, if you're listening, IT people, get us a map. A map that shows us all the doubles that are possible.

00:59:08Scott Trickett: Mel, what are you saying next year? Let's make things happen this year. We know they're listening.

00:59:14Melissa Erbacher: Do you think that, yeah, but they might be listening to you, but it might take 14, 15 months to build that kind of tech. I don't know.

00:59:22Scott Trickett: I don't. There's maps already on the website. Just push a few buttons and just.

00:59:28Unidentified speaker: That's how it works.

00:59:30Scott Trickett: You think it's that easy?

00:59:32Melissa Erbacher: Yeah, it is.

00:59:33Scott Trickett: It is. I have full faith in our IT team.

00:59:36Melissa Erbacher: Okay. Well, I mean, some of them managed to do interviews on With Me Now pod, so hopefully they have some time to wave some magic wands in the ways of maps for adventurers.

00:59:52Scott Trickett: Now, the streets are also talking, Mel, about a sloth challenge.

00:59:58Melissa Erbacher: They are. Well, by the streets, you mean me because this is my item on the agenda. Something to keep me a little bit going. In Streaky September, I did something called the Peace Challenge, which is one of those virtual runs from Virtual Runner UK, which I know I've mentioned before and they don't pay me to mention it, but I just love their stuff. So I'm going to keep mentioning it. And for one of the weeks in September, I had to run as much as I could between those seven days, which was great, worked in well, helped keeping me motivated for the challenge. And I did 21, just over 21 Ks that week because I wanted to do a half marathon in total. But this month in October, to try and keep people going, there's still time if anyone is interested in registering for a sloth challenge, which will be how far can you run or walk in one 60-minute block to earn your very own sloth medal. And so pretty much you just have to GPS yourself as you would normally do and you just have to do that 60 minutes in one go on any day between the 15th and the 21st of October. And you should see the medals, Scotty. They are so cute. There's a little sloth dangling from the thing. But you know what I really love about this, and this is true of all the virtual run UK medals, is part of the proceeds go to a charity. And this race charity, nominated one, is for narcolepsy. And they'll receive a minimum of 20% of every entry fee. So I think that's well worth it. The medals, I think they're priced roughly. Like to enter, it's about 10 quid. And that includes postage anywhere in the world. So the medal gets posted to you after you submit your results online. So if you're interested, guys, head to virtualrunneruk.com. There's a whole list of all the virtual runs and races, and I think there's still about 10, 9 or 10 days to register for the Sloth Challenge. And there are three – no, 12 days to enter as of today, and there are 309 places left. So come and join me in the Sloth Challenge.

01:02:15Scott Trickett: You know what I reckon would have been a better challenge?

01:02:18Melissa Erbacher: Tell me.

01:02:19Scott Trickett: Like – See how far you can run. So they're asking you to run as fast as you possibly can. Not necessarily, but... Well, that's the challenge. I reckon the challenge would have been better if you could see how little you can run while still moving... 60 minutes. So the challenge was to start your GPS, but you had to maintain movement. You couldn't stop in one spot. But see how little you could run or walk in 60 minutes. That would be a sloth challenge. This is like the opposite of a sloth challenge.

01:02:56Melissa Erbacher: Well, see, Scotty, it's all open to interpretation. So you could see how far you could go at sloth pace in 60 minutes. And you could still submit that. And even if it was only five meters, as long as you've got it on GPS showing that it took you an hour to move that five meters, I think they'd have to accept it. Maybe somebody should try and see whether or not they get a medal for doing five metres in 60 minutes. Personally, I get bored. You know, I do like my movement to be a little bit faster.

01:03:30Scott Trickett: 60 minutes is a long time, isn't it?

01:03:33Melissa Erbacher: It is a long time to not move very fast. Have you ever tried doing, like, just slow-mo just across a room or something like that? You get bored after a couple of metres. Yeah. Well, you should try it again now as an adult because it's possibly more fun now, I think.

01:03:49Scott Trickett: Okay, so we're going to put an over-under on Mel. How far is Mel going to get in 60 minutes?

01:03:56Melissa Erbacher: Hey, yeah, maybe everybody should be – I don't want to say placing bets because we don't want to go to gambling as such. Why not? Well – Because it's not very responsible.

01:04:07Scott Trickett: Okay. So I'm going to say let's put the – There could be a guessing competition, however. Yeah, so I'm going to say, what do you reckon, 7K?

01:04:19Melissa Erbacher: I'm not going to give you any insider information. If you want to try and guesstimate what I will do, then you should go and look at any of my previous activities on Strava for the last month and gauge, you know, what kind of speeds and distances I'm doing at the moment.

01:04:34Scott Trickett: Yep, so that's why I'm saying 7K. So let's do a poll. This is the next poll. Over or under, Mel, 7K in 60 minutes.

01:04:42Melissa Erbacher: Over or under?

01:04:43Scott Trickett: Yeah.

01:04:44Melissa Erbacher: You're just trying to make it simple by having two options.

01:04:46Scott Trickett: Yeah, pretty much. That's a common betting phrase. It's the vernacular. Is it going to be over or under? Is this team going to win by this many points or under? That's how betting works. But we're not betting in this case. We're just asking a poll question.

01:05:06Melissa Erbacher: Okay. Well, I don't have to do this challenge for a couple of weeks, so maybe let's not open that poll straight away.

01:05:11Scott Trickett: Okay. So you're saying you're going to train and get in shape. Well, then the line will move to 8K then.

01:05:21Melissa Erbacher: Well, maybe you just need to give like three or four different ranges. Mel will do between this and this or this and this or this and this and then see what people guess.

01:05:31Scott Trickett: Okay.

01:05:32Melissa Erbacher: I really don't think anyone's going to care enough to vote on this.

01:05:35Scott Trickett: Well, let's find out. Let's see who's proven right or wrong. Over, under, how many people care? Is it 10 or less or more? I'm going over.

01:05:49Melissa Erbacher: Hopefully my ego does not get too tied to the outcome of this poll.

01:05:54Scott Trickett: Okay. Maybe something else we should workshop off air, so don't look out for that poll for a few more weeks, and then everyone would have forgotten about it. Speaking of forgetting about it, launches and anniversaries. Let's wrap up this week's episode with launches and anniversaries. Completely out of order. We've got two events launching this week.

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

01:06:14Melissa Erbacher: We do, and one of them is where we got the theme music from. Isn't it, Scotty? Because it always makes me want to dance every time I see the name of this park or event.

01:06:25Scott Trickett: A Charleston you're talking about?

01:06:27Melissa Erbacher: I am.

01:06:28Scott Trickett: Yeah.

01:06:29Melissa Erbacher: I don't know what kind of dance you do to the Horseshoe Bay Reserve.

01:06:34Scott Trickett: Well, because our theme music is not really in.

01:06:38Melissa Erbacher: Like a square dance.

01:06:40Scott Trickett: Theme with the Charleston.

01:06:42Melissa Erbacher: What do you think it is? I think it should be.

01:06:46Scott Trickett: Our theme music is sort of 80s inspired.

01:06:48Melissa Erbacher: Yeah, I know, but it doesn't have to be every week.

01:06:51Scott Trickett: Okay.

01:06:54Melissa Erbacher: So, in case you hadn't guessed from that, in South Australia, we have a new event called Charleston launching this weekend.

01:07:02Scott Trickett: And in New South Wales, we have an event called Horseshoe Bay Reserve parkrun. Exactly.

01:07:07Melissa Erbacher: We've got some anniversaries as well. We've got Champion Lakes in WA.

01:07:12Scott Trickett: Hemo, Hamilton Island in Queensland.

01:07:16Melissa Erbacher: Petrie, also in Queensland. Yes.

01:07:19Scott Trickett: Portarlington in Victoria. And we should make a special mention to Bushy Park in London because they're having their anniversary this weekend too.

01:07:28Melissa Erbacher: Well, it's the anniversary of parkrun, isn't it? So happy anniversary to everybody who's going to be at parkrun this weekend.

01:07:36Scott Trickett: Are you going to parkrun this weekend, Mel?

01:07:38Melissa Erbacher: Yes, I am going to parkrun this weekend, Scotty. I have a most events list to continue creating a very vast gap between yourself and myself on.

01:07:49Scott Trickett: Don't care. I'm not paying attention.

01:07:52Melissa Erbacher: Oh, really?

01:07:53Scott Trickett: Have fun at your new event.

01:07:55Melissa Erbacher: I can't wait to hear all about it next week. Are you going to a new event this week, Scotty?

01:08:00Scott Trickett: I am.

01:08:01Melissa Erbacher: Ooh. Is it an Indy?

01:08:04Scott Trickett: No, it's not. It's interstate. I'm going to New South Wales this weekend too.

01:08:11Melissa Erbacher: I think I've got an inkling where you're going.

01:08:13Scott Trickett: Excellent. You know what we should do? We should test our popularity. So where are you going? Tell me where you're going.

01:08:19Melissa Erbacher: I'm not sure yet. I thought I did know, but I think it's under advisement now.

01:08:27Scott Trickett: Okay. Because I was going to say, I'll tell you where I'm going, and then we can just check the attendance of each event and then compare which one was greater, and that way we would know who is more popular. Okay. between the two of us because more people would have gone.

01:08:40Melissa Erbacher: Scotty, we can do that on any given week.

01:08:43Scott Trickett: This week is a good week to do it, I reckon.

01:08:46Melissa Erbacher: Oh, okay. But I don't want to tell people where I'm going this week because I'm not sure yet.

01:08:50Scott Trickett: Okay. Okay, we'll save that for another week.

01:08:52Melissa Erbacher: Okay.

01:08:54Scott Trickett: Fun times ahead. Thanks for this week, Mel. Speak to you next week.