Episode 137 - Dane Bird-Smith

Welcome

00:00:17Scott Trickett: Episode 137 of the parkrun adventurers, which dictates that it's my turn to do the intro. My name is Scott Trickett, and I am your co-host.

00:00:28Melissa Erbacher: You can't skip out, I said. You can't skip out on it this time. Last time you got a whole other co-host just to avoid having to do the intro for one episode. I did.

00:00:36Scott Trickett: So it's been like a month since I've had to do this, so excuse me if I'm a bit rusty. But welcome, Melissa Erbacher.

00:00:48Melissa Erbacher: Thank you, Scott Trickett.

00:00:50Scott Trickett: Now, we are the parkrun adventurers, so I always like to talk about parkrun, but I want to talk about my adventures first up because I think you've got a tale to tell about yours this week.

00:01:01Melissa Erbacher: Yeah, I might have to get you to be a bit of a counsellor on a couch. I need to pull up a couch and just work through my issues about my experience. So maybe we'll just, let's just go to some light-hearted, happy experiences first. And yes, let's please hear about your parkrun adventure.

00:01:18Scott Trickett: Okay. Well, as mentioned last week, I was heading back out to Point Cook. It's a parkrun I've been to a couple of times before, but haven't been for a number of years. And this was an event that started roughly around the same time that Westerfolds did. So it has a lot of similar history, been around for about five years. So they were doing their 250th event. So there was a lot of familiar feels going on out there. There was lots of people that We're very familiar with each other. You could tell there were lots of members of local running clubs. We obviously have been created out of that parkrun event. We've got the Point Cook Runners. I'd be curious. I should have asked, actually, if they existed pre-parkrun. We had a couple of locals celebrating their 200th run, and they kindly donated money. Maxine and Sean kindly donated a PB bell, quite to the surprise of the event team. And it was a bit weird. So the Event Director, Craig, got up, did his run briefing. Great, very welcoming. Where's a purple suit, Mel? Gets in costume.

00:02:22Melissa Erbacher: Like all the time or just when?

00:02:23Scott Trickett: Yeah. I think just when he's Run Director, he dons the full purple or aubergine suit.

00:02:29Melissa Erbacher: I love it. Sounds awesome.

00:02:31Scott Trickett: Yeah. Looks good. Looks stylish. And you'd think it would be hard to pull it off. But kudos to Craig. He manages to do it. So he does his pre-event brief. All good. And then Maxine and Sean get up and do a little speech. And I'm thinking, oh, that's a bit, I'm not sure.

00:02:49Melissa Erbacher: It's not usual. It doesn't happen often.

00:02:51Scott Trickett: Not sticking to script. Yeah. But they were really good. They just briefly said, we love parkrun. We love getting around. They're real parkrun adventurers. They've done every parkrun here in Victoria, so they're statesmen. And then they pulled out this bag and said, we want to donate this gift to parkrun, to Point Cook parkrun, because it's our home and we've seen it at other events and it works really well. And so they'd made up this PB bell that was all on brand, which was great. And it was a really nice touch.

00:03:20Melissa Erbacher: So I want to know about this bell. Is it one of those like counter ones that you ding, ding, ding? Or is it one with a handle that you have to pick up and like shake?

00:03:29Scott Trickett: No, no, no, it's mounted on a bit of board, so you have to, it sits there on full display, and then you'd have to go over and give it a big ring. I didn't, because I didn't PB.

00:03:39Melissa Erbacher: Far out, that sounds like a very involved bell.

00:03:45Scott Trickett: Yeah, it's really nicely done. It was a nice touch. So, yeah, Yvonne and I continued our bad parenting behaviour. So Kasia has got a sore foot, but we made her do a kilometre out. So I ran for four kilometres and then walked back the last kilometre with Kasia. So we did sort of that tandem swap over. So Yvonne has still got a 4K parkrun. I got a 4K parkrun and a 1K walk on Saturday.

00:04:13Melissa Erbacher: Okay, she's got a sore foot.

00:04:16Scott Trickett: She did. She hurt herself at the Run for the Fireys, the event from previous week that the Westerfoldians won for the fourth time. Got all the trophies, yep.

00:04:25Melissa Erbacher: Even though there were no trophies. But did she hurt herself last week because she was trying to –

00:04:32Scott Trickett: defend her title because she'd won yeah she did so she rolled her ankle yeah she rolled her ankle early on but as a true Westerfaldian warrior still finished she pushed on finished and we know we worked out she did a 27 minute 5k at that event which would absolutely obliterate her parkrun PB And so I'm trying to work out, like, what is it that makes her run 27 minutes by herself in a fun run, but she can't get anywhere near 30 minutes at parkrun running with her parents?

00:05:03Melissa Erbacher: Because it's a race, Scotty.

00:05:05Scott Trickett: It is. It's a race.

00:05:06Melissa Erbacher: It's not a run. And parkrun's a run or a walk.

00:05:09Scott Trickett: Yeah. It's going to be interesting. So she's going to turn 11 next year. So she has the opportunity to run by herself. It's going to be interesting to see if she wants to. And if she does, she'll drop her mum. But she'll be nipping on my heels pretty soon, I imagine. And I can't wait. I can't wait for that. But we did have one fail.

00:05:30Melissa Erbacher: Okay.

00:05:31Scott Trickett: Remember, I'm trying to get my mother-in-law to come.

00:05:34Melissa Erbacher: Oh, no.

00:05:36Scott Trickett: Didn't come.

00:05:38Melissa Erbacher: Why not?

00:05:40Scott Trickett: Well, she wasn't feeling well.

00:05:42Melissa Erbacher: Okay.

00:05:43Scott Trickett: But this is strike two. Well, I'm not going to say strike. That's a bit harsh. But we've made two attempts to come over to the west and, yeah.

00:05:53Melissa Erbacher: Well, she went the first time, didn't she?

00:05:55Scott Trickett: She did. She did, but she's missed the next two.

00:05:58Melissa Erbacher: Oh, okay.

00:05:58Scott Trickett: So it's a work in progress, that.

00:06:01Melissa Erbacher: Look, those are still, I think, you know, one in three isn't bad.

00:06:05Scott Trickett: So that was my parkrun day.

00:06:07Melissa Erbacher: Okay.

00:06:08Scott Trickett: How was yours?

00:06:10Melissa Erbacher: Well, it wasn't a parkrun day, as it turns out. It was a... Where do I start, Scotty? Where do I start? So many emotions. Yeah, I have been up and down on a roller coaster all week. And you know what? I actually handled it really well on Saturday and thought, oh, you know, these things happen. But then just it's just stuck with me and it's just I've probably been overthinking it about it and just, yeah, okay, so I need you to help me get some closure, to talk it out. To just move on from the travesty that was my last. It was supposed to be my parkrun birthday, Scotty. Yes. It was supposed to be my birthday.

00:06:54Scott Trickett: Not all birthdays go to plan. Sometimes they're just crap.

00:07:01Melissa Erbacher: So this is what happened on Friday. We fly to Hobart from Queensland and we stay the night in Hobart. There's a few different events in Hobart. There was talks about the fact that one of the events would be cancelled because of the access, like the actual road access getting there, was being, the highway was being closed off due to bridge works. The government or whatever are building a new bridge. However, that got cancelled. The highway works got cancelled, because of the forecasted high winds, like cyclonic sorts of high winds, where it was going to be too dangerous to operate the cranes to put the new pylons in or whatever they're doing for the bridge. So that got cancelled, which meant, yay, parkrun was back on. That should have been the indicator number one. The flight, even coming into Hobart for about the last 20 minutes of the flight, we had shocking... And it was all to do with those high winds, I imagine. I was physically sick by the time we landed. Wes didn't want to be on Adam's lap, so he had to be in my lap. And you know how when you think you're going to vomit, like your temperature rises and you get this extra slime in your mouth and everything. And I was so hot. And then I've got this 10 kilo bag of heat just like clutching to me. And to stop him from having difficulties with the turbulence, I I had to do this little bouncy, him bouncing on my lap like he's riding a horse and sing him a song. And I was doing that for 20 minutes. And so I was overheating as well and just felt absolutely awful by the time we landed. And then, of course, Gale Force winds all throughout Hobart the night before. But we checked the website. We checked the Facebook page. Geeveston is a 50-minute drive south of Hobart, and they didn't seem to be having any of those sorts of issues down there. So they're like, yep, yep, we're all good. We're going ahead, which was a relief because we thought, okay, well, maybe the weather isn't amazing up here. And the wind even kept us up during the night on the Friday night quite a bit. But we didn't have any trouble getting up early enough to go. Obviously, the event doesn't start till 9am down there. And we also had gained an hour from Queensland or No, we hadn't. We lost an hour because we had to get up an hour earlier. Fortunately, however, Wes has been training us for the last six weeks on daylight savings time, and we've been getting up between 4.30 and 5 a.m. anyway. So we're starting to get quite used to that. No problem. Got in the car, did our drive down. The weather was shocking on the drive down. Gale force winds, lots of rain. And we're like, it's going to be okay. It's going to be okay. Geeveston's 15 minutes away. It's, you know... The rain might stop in five minutes or ten minutes. It might stop five minutes or ten minutes away from Geeveston. Rain itself doesn't usually stop a parkrun. It'll be fine. What we didn't do was actively check the Facebook page while we were in the car. Not sure how much of a difference it would have made, but when we arrived at Geeveston, there were no flags whatsoever. there were a couple of people over underneath the shelter. It actually, and I should point out that about five minutes outside of Geeveston, the rain stopped and there was a rainbow and brilliant blue sky and everything was good with the world. We literally drove underneath the rainbow coming into town. So it was like, oh, this is okay. This is okay. We don't have to worry about the fact that we're bad parents and Wes hasn't got any kind of rainproof protection over the travel pram that we use and I was thinking oh can I rip up one of those shopping plastic shopping bags and drape it over his legs just to stop the water getting through his blanket and all these sorts of MacGyver type things that you think I'm not not doing this run because it's bad weather and my son is going to get exposed to it um turns out taken out of my hands the event was cancelled which many of our listeners will already have been aware of because they may have seen my Strava Freedom Run on Saturday morning um we got there about 25 minutes before it was due to start but we were still an hour away from the closest parkrun so there was no chance we were going to get to another one and other events in um Hobart had already been cancelled anyway because they were having similar issues can't fault the team can't blame the team at all they cancelled because of safety concerns with the high winds there's a lot um Geeveston parkrun runs along like a creek that's got a lot of uh very well established uh eucalypt trees which are known for dropping very big heavy branches in these sorts of circumstances and so it was for the safety of the participants that they decided to cancel um They were very kind though and they still explained the course to us in amongst all their cautions to not do it. They still explained it, myself and Adam and three other people, two of whom were from Queensland as well and another gentleman who had driven down from Hobart. We all did a freedom run of the course. But no credit for me. No Compass Club for me.

00:12:52Scott Trickett: So I want to go back. So describe the feeling. You must be anticipating on the drive down that this is not looking good. You arrive and it's deserted. There's no flags. Is your immediate thought to check your watch and curtail back to Hobart and try and make a parkrun there?

00:13:12Melissa Erbacher: No, not really, because we knew how far away we were and we were actually told all the other events in Hobart had been cancelled. There were two that actually did go ahead. But, yeah, trying to get back there. It would have been dangerous. I mean, you certainly couldn't speed. We would have got there too late. I'm not finishing courses in any kind of time at the moment where I would have potentially overtaken a Tail Walker. So even, you know, if we'd started half an hour late somewhere else, there's no chance I would have caught the Tail Walker. So, yeah, that didn't really enter my mind. It was... And the feeling with the driving down, you know, because of the post on Friday night and because I'm just, I think, the – well, I can't say the ever optimist because I have not been very optimistic this week – I just always assume I never look at weather forecasts and things like that. Like if I'm planning on climbing a mountain on a weekend or on a day or whatever, and it might be weeks and weeks in advance, even the day before, even the morning, I don't bother looking at forecasts. I just assume that because I have made this plan, everything is going to be sunshine and roses and perfect. And like 99% of the time it is. So I guess that's, you know, my own experience, been to an event that's been cancelled due to the weather before even on the Sunshine Coast like we have cancelled the events ourselves a couple of times during like cyclonic weather and things like that but I've never I guess you know travelled elsewhere and I guess it just depends on the planning like literally months ago when we planned the trip I actually got in contact with a couple of the event ambassadors in Tassie and asked them, did they know, for starters, whether or not there were any planned cancellations? Because I know lots of places have local festivals and things and they know ahead of time if something's going to be cancelled. And then I asked what the likelihood was was of it cancelling due to weather like was it one of those events that's likely to flood does it cancel frequently because the course gets inundated with water or other kind of environmental things like that so this is the most planning I've ever done with any of that sort of thing I looked I mean obviously Geeveston hasn't been running has Geeveston been running for a year I think I, no, I looked at some other events sort of roughly this time of the year, last year in Hobart, to see whether or not there'd been any cancellations and what the weather forecasts were generally like in November and whether or not it was like, it's not like it's peak rainy season or peak any kind of season. You know, it's just a middle of the range type season. Yeah, you know, I did my due diligence in that respect and that might have been one of my faults because potentially, like, I've travelled all these other places and just blind luck, you know, have managed to miss annual cancellations by one week and I wouldn't have known any better, you know. I could have just made it that week. So I guess it's one of those experiences where over time you do check more things. But, yeah, even if I had sat, in the car with Facebook, refreshing the page, refreshing the page, just to make sure that they hadn't cancelled. I don't think I would have had time to turn around from where we were to drive back and get a parkrun in anyway. And the whole point was we went there for our compass points. And this was really devastating because Adam would also have become a navigator too. We would have been the first two that I'm aware of to have become a navigator. And that just dawned on him on the drive there. So for the first time, he got excited about it, you know. He comes along on my crazy adventures so often, many times dragged, not always willingly, but he comes along and for the first time he's like, that's actually really cool. And so when we got there and it was cancelled and he was disappointed and I was disappointed and it was just like, oh.

00:17:46Scott Trickett: Okay, so let's look at the positives.

00:17:48Melissa Erbacher: There's a fabulous place in town to have breakfast post-parkrun. If you're ever in Geeveston, I think Adam rated it as the best post-parkrun breakfast he's ever had, even though it wasn't post-parkrun. Mine was good too. That's...

00:18:01Scott Trickett: That's good. No new event on the most events list. So that's a positive. Tasmania, I hear, is – oh, sorry. Sorry, we're talking about you now. So – The thing is that puts more pressure on the rest of my year as well.

00:18:16Melissa Erbacher: So that's two goals under jeopardy of my New Year's goal. Well, for starters, that's one just not going to happen. You know, there's no way I'm getting back to Tasmania. by the end of this year to become a navigator. So, boom, there's one of my New Year's goals just done, gone, dusted.

00:18:34Scott Trickett: But I hear it's a nice place. Like, I've never been.

00:18:37Melissa Erbacher: It's very pretty.

00:18:38Scott Trickett: Yeah? Yeah. Weather's great?

00:18:41Melissa Erbacher: The weather was not amazing. Okay. The only redeeming quality about the weather for the whole of the weekend that we were away is that it actually snowed on Mount Wellington. Okay. I kid you not, November and it's... There you go. And this was where we managed, like we were driving back from Geeveston and Adam's like, is that snow? Is there white on top of Mount Wellington? Is that actual snow? And I said, I think it is. And so we decided to take a drive up just to check. And of course the high speed winds were still ridiculous and the temperature was like... negative 10 or something stupid and Adam's in his running shorts Queensland weather style Wes we didn't take any shoes with him because in Queensland he wears like thongs if he wears shoes otherwise he just goes barefoot everywhere But we had socks, but they got wet at parkrun. So he had no socks. So parents of the year, you think you're bad sending your daughter around the course with a sore foot. I got my 17-month-old son out of a car and made him sit and have photos taken in the snow with no shoes or socks on and nothing but a singlet T-shirt and hoodie and his shorts. That's okay.

00:19:57Scott Trickett: Yeah. Mel, he's not going to remember. If I know anything about my years of parenting, they don't remember this time, but you've always got the photo now.

00:20:04Melissa Erbacher: Yes. Well, look, and this is the one thing that, you know, I told Adam, no, no, you and Wes stay in the car because Adam said, how about I go build a snowman and then we'll all get out and we'll have a photo taken with the snowman. And I said, well, you can't do that because you're going to have to carry Wes. and you're going to have freezing hands. So I had to get out and build the little snowman to take the photo with so that Adam didn't freeze Wes. But he wasn't – Wes was not particularly happy about the situation. We got a slight smirky smile, I think, out of him in the photos. But it was – that was fun. It was fun. It was fun being crazy in the cold and making a snowman and taking a photo with our son. So that was probably the highlight of the weekend. Yeah.

00:20:53Scott Trickett: Great. The flight back, was that good?

00:20:55Melissa Erbacher: Did you see a good movie? No, I'm reading a new book actually.

00:21:01Scott Trickett: Why would you be reading a new book?

00:21:02Melissa Erbacher: Because we've got a bit of a special guest coming on the show next week who happens to write some book type things and I am reading some of his work at the moment.

00:21:15Scott Trickett: That's a good idea. Speaking of special guests, Mel, let's go to ours for this week. Thanks for that recap. How did I go as counselling? People tell me I'm a good listener. I didn't say much. I was listening.

00:21:26Melissa Erbacher: You were listening. Yeah, I don't know whether or not – maybe I just feel better for talking about it. I don't know. I've got some learnings. Before we go to our special guest for this week, I've got some learnings, and that is – Check the Facebook page a lot and another learning is maybe don't make it, I don't know, so important because it felt like a really important weekend. I didn't even get cake for my birthday, Scotty. I went to the local bakery and none of the cakes were blowing my skirt up. So I was supposed to have one cake for me and one cake for Nicola and happy birthday for last week, Nicola. I think your parkrun day was better than mine. Yeah. Yeah. So, yes. Somebody mentioned maybe we should create a club for people who travel long distances and have their events cancelled. I don't think I know anyone who's going to want to be in that club.

00:22:27Scott Trickett: Hey, well, Schultz, we know Schultz made it all the way to Doomadgee in the early days and then they cancelled.

00:22:33Melissa Erbacher: Yeah, but he still got Cloncurry parkrun in the next day. They cancelled the day before, so he had some notice. I think I outdo you, Schultz.

00:22:42Scott Trickett: You might on this occasion.

00:22:44Melissa Erbacher: Yes, but learnings, yes, just keep up to date with the Facebook pages. It might save you a lot of grief.

00:22:52Scott Trickett: We're always learning. Music We all know that parkrun is for walkers. We welcome walkers. We embrace walkers. So this week on the pod, we're going to have a chat to one of our fastest walkers, if that's a thing.

00:22:53[music]

Interview Dane Bird-Smith — Australian Olympic race walker, bronze medallist, Rio 2016; Commonwealth Games gold…

00:23:10Scott Trickett: Welcome to the parkrun adventurers, Dane Bird-Smith.

00:23:14Dane Bird-Smith: Hey, g'day guys. Yeah, good to be on here. It's usually known for my walking around the place, but yeah, touch up with the parkrun occasionally as well.

00:23:23Scott Trickett: We're going to get to that. So for our listeners who don't know who you are, you're our best. You're an Olympian. You've won a bronze medal at Rio. You're getting ready for your next event over in Portugal. Is that correct?

00:23:38Dane Bird-Smith: Yeah. So yeah, going, listing off the career, yeah, bronze medal in the Rio Olympics, Commonwealth Games gold champ, gold medal and Commonwealth record there. So yeah, things have been Things have been going really well and at the moment I'm in a little bit of downtime, which is great. I've had some time to do a little bit of running before I head across to Portugal for two weeks and, yeah, and that'll kind of wrap up the 2018 season for me.

00:24:06Melissa Erbacher: So as part of your training for the walking, you also run or you just do that for your own, you know, interest and enjoyment?

00:24:14Dane Bird-Smith: No, basically since probably lead up into Rio, I haven't actually done anything, basically any running at all, potentially maybe one jog or run each month. It's only been in this last couple of weeks, last four weeks or so, I've had some real downtime from the race walking just to kind of chill out, wind down the 2018 season. And that's when I just got in touch with two other blokes from Brisbane and just, yeah, got into a little bit of running shape.

00:24:45Scott Trickett: So let's go there first, Dane. So you went along to parkrun on the weekend, you had a couple of your teammates, training mates in tow, and you ran a really decent time, but managed to finish third. So you're a quick walker, but you're also a damn quick runner as well. 15.21, I do believe was your time?

00:25:02Dane Bird-Smith: Yeah, yeah. So yeah, just as I said, in this downtime, I've caught with these other runners and I did a 1500 metre classic that week with them and ran a 3.54. So that was pretty handy. And then I just went back into regular training. They didn't really tell me that they were going to have a crack at this at a parkrun record on the weekend. And I got invited the night before, went along and they absolutely crushed it. But yeah, they, they left me behind in the last K cause I think the legs were still a little bit dead from a couple of sessions I had earlier yet the day before. Yeah, it was, it was really fun just getting in amongst some parkrun and having these two guys to run around with and, I have kind of a real challenge against my – I can step onto the start line anywhere in the world and know that in race walking I'm probably going to be one, two, or three. Whereas I step on the line for a run, it's totally unknown. I've got no idea. It's really exciting. I've really enjoyed it.

00:26:08Melissa Erbacher: So a whole bunch of our listeners either tripped over their shoes or fell off their chairs when you said you hadn't been running and then you just pulled out a 15-minute odd run at a parkrun last weekend. Race walking obviously keeps you in really good fitness. Can you sort of explain for the people who don't really know and I'm not sure I fully know, what is the difference between race walking and running? Because I'm sure you must be walking faster than I run.

00:26:38Dane Bird-Smith: Yeah, so it's always been really fun to kind of mix up in the fun runs and the parkruns with some race walking because it really shows the general public just how quickly we go. So obviously the technique with race walking is landing on a straight knee with your lead leg and landing that lead leg before the trail leg comes off the ground. So kind of keeping that contact phase. Obviously this is judged by judges throughout the race. There's no judges in a parkrun, but I can say that, um, think it was at the start of 2018 I did a parkrun up in Mooloolaba and I actually race walked it and I walked in 1846 for the 5k so it was pretty quick as well and I took out a lot of runners that day um you can you could say maybe I wasn't so welcome to come back to that parkrun as a race but um but it was really good fun and it's um yeah it's something that really kind of boggles the mind when you see just how fast I can go it's you know it's sub four minute k's at over a 5k distance it's maybe 355s 352s it's pretty quick Did you win on that occasion, Dane? oh no no there were a handful of really really good runners there they all ran you know around 15 minutes um I think triathlon Australia was there as well um managed to scalp one or two of the female triathletes which was pretty good and um yeah otherwise I think I finished about 11th yeah so are the other parkrunners curious because they it obviously looks different race walking the running do they come up and ask you know who are you what are you doing how do you do it so quickly yeah yeah 100 I mean um I think I think what's been so great about um having the commonwealth games in in gold coast was that it raised the profile of my event um and a lot of people saw me and now they see me out training along coronation drive along Brisbane and they see me turning up to the Brisbane road running. They see me turning up to what parkruns as well. And, you know, it's, it's really great that I'm getting this kind of profile that race walking isn't just, you know, the, the kind of oddity sport or the oddity event of track and field. It's, it's something that anyone could do. You can do it out on the road. It's just as easy as going out and doing a parkrun. And in a lot of cases, it's a lot better for your body. Um, You know, all those people out there run with their busted up knees, hips or ankles. You know, race walking could be that alternative without the body impact of, you know, when you run and you have a stride that's got some airtime, you land a lot heavier and race walking takes a lot of that out, but it keeps your cardio and your fitness up. Yeah.

00:29:20Melissa Erbacher: How does one get into race walking? I do appreciate that you've got a little bit of a family history with, with the event. Um, but that, that can't be the only way that people sort of really get interested. Did you, did you get into it because of family or did you just decide that, you know, race walkers have better looking bottoms than runners?

00:29:40Dane Bird-Smith: Oh, I wouldn't know about that. I'd say our glutes are probably the same as a distance runner. Definitely not in the sprinting zone though. But, um, No, I got into race walking when I was in high school. I was always one of those guys who I used to take the mickey out of it when my dad was doing it and when he had his squad. I'd do the Kath and Kim hip roll and that was all good fun. But when I was 16, I was at a school athletics meet and I was just finishing up. I'd run just about every event under the sun, throwing jabs, jumps and long jump, all that. And the school teacher came up and said that she's entered me in the 3K walk. I had to finish the event. And if I managed to finish, the school would get enough points to win the championship for the day. So here I go. I lace myself up, jump out onto the track and ready to do a 3K race walk that I've never, ever tried in my life. And I finished third out of three guys, um, I was actually six minutes behind, so I got absolutely hammered over a 3K.

00:30:44Melissa Erbacher: Still a podium. It still counts.

00:30:46Dane Bird-Smith: It still counts. Still a podium. Yeah, but, you know, coming in third, got me to district level, so I went and raced there. And, you know, I hadn't yet told Dad about this yet because he was a dual Olympian in the race walk himself back in the day. So I didn't want to tell him that I was race walking. I wanted to kind of train in secret on my own so that when I reached the regional level, I'd go up against his own athletes that he was coaching and I'd be able to give them a real surprise and see if I could give them a run for their money as well. And yeah, and it all kind of snowballed from there. I guess I fell in love with it. But anyone who's outside of the school system, if you're looking to get involved, you've just got to either reach out to myself or to your local Queensland race walking, New South Wales race walking, wherever you are in the country, there's definitely a club there for you. So yeah, yeah, get involved for sure and someone will teach you the technique and then once you learn, you can just go out to parkruns.

00:31:42Scott Trickett: A little known history about myself, Dane, is that I actually, in the under 10s or something, I went to the States in Victoria and I did okay in the race walk and I discovered it through Little Athletics.

00:31:53Dane Bird-Smith: Yeah, Little Athletics as well is a great platform for all athletics events. Yeah, especially the race walk. It's very competitive at that Little Athletics level. I can I can safely say I was totally rubbish when I was doing it back then.

00:32:07Scott Trickett: One thing I do remember, though, you said it's not as – It's better on the joints and the bones and all that when we go for a run. But I remember as a kid, it really hurt. Like I got really sore shins and knees from the locking or not locking. Did you come across that when you started out?

00:32:26Dane Bird-Smith: 100%. And you go through phases of that when you start or when you're coming back to training. Whenever I have some downtime and I come back to it, it's always the small muscles, the ones that never really get used when we're running or we're just walking around normally. This is the front of the shin, the anterior tibialis. That muscle there is basically a quarter of the size of the calf muscle. And that's what it's got to pull against every time you want to stride out in front of your body to lift your toes, straighten your knee, and make sure that you're doing the race walking technique. So you've got tiny little muscle groups that are doing a whole lot of work. And for a lot of people who've never done race walking before, they're muscles that they've never actually used in their life. So, you know, that's the big problem with this is that It can seem so daunting and so difficult to first pick it up. But, yeah, it's 100% way, way better for your joints. I've got my hips, my knees great. My ankles are really, really strong. I've never had any problems. It's just getting over that initial muscle soreness. But that's the same with running, same with anything else, jumping on a bike, swimming.

00:33:35Melissa Erbacher: So you've run at Kedron. You did the walking at Brightwater and smashed everybody when you were on the Sunshine Coast. Have you got plans to do some more walking at parkruns just to sort of promote it?

00:33:50Dane Bird-Smith: Yeah, I mean, I think that's something I'd definitely like to get involved with, especially with I've got a lot of time now back in Australia where usually I'm travelling a lot. So it kind of cuts me out of being able to do anything back home. But now I've got a lot of good downtime. I've got some good build up for next year leading into the World Championships of track and field that I'm really excited to get involved with a bit more of the parkrunning, especially the parkrunning or the fun run events, you know, and be out there race walking and showing people, you know, just what I can do and maybe even get a few people involved in it. Yeah. So I think this weekend we're actually planning to be out in New Farm parkrun on the Brisbane River. So if anyone's wants to come on down and try their hand. I think I might be running this weekend. I'll see what the other boys are up to, but I think that's what the plan is.

00:34:44Scott Trickett: Dane, you're pretty young and you're starting to get a bit of a profile in the Australian team. How is that viewed with the greater Australian public? I'm guessing you can walk down the street pretty anonymously. No one comes up to you, but hopefully your profile is building.

00:35:03Dane Bird-Smith: Yeah, I mean, I guess when you're in your day-to-day clothes, yeah, a lot of people probably, unless they're involved in some kind of athletics or running, wouldn't recognise me. But a lot of the school kids, you know, a lot of the school kids around Brisbane, they're all really, really behind it. I did a lot of visits around to there just trying to get them kind of inspired by the whole Commonwealth Games that was coming up, get them involved in athletics or any sports. I'll be doing the same thing leading up to, Olympic Games in Tokyo 2020 so yeah I think that's where a lot of like the fan base is is those younger kids those ones that we can really inspire and motivate to get involved with track and field or athletics or just running but yeah I guess if I'm just walking down the street normally no one would notice but if I'm into my race walking technique going down Coro Drive or out for a train around University of Queensland that yeah definitely everyone will um definitely everyone can pick it straight away. And I'm usually one of the only race walkers out there in Brisbane going that quick. So it's pretty easy to tell.

00:36:10Melissa Erbacher: Do you ever just pull the race walking out when you're late for a meeting or something like that? And you're just like trying to get through the crowds?

00:36:16Dane Bird-Smith: Oh, for sure. You can always do that for a little bit of fun. You know, getting down the shopping aisles pretty quickly. I do it to my wife sometimes in the shopping centre. It's always fun just to leave her behind and chuck a few strides in race walking and Catch you later. I'll see you down at the other end.

00:36:35Melissa Erbacher: Awesome. Now, I actually want to know a little bit more about the different distances because, you know, you can probably, I'm assuming, you can race walk at any normal fun run, but they might not have a separate, like, division for what you're doing, so you'd be effectively participating against the runners. But there's multiple distances as well. It's not all just short form or anything like that. What do you feel most comfortable with, Dane?

00:37:02Dane Bird-Smith: Yeah, look, I'm... 100%. I mean, I do a lot of fun run events throughout the year. I've done the Bridge to Brisbane a few times. I was actually a pace setter for the Bridge to Brisbane. I wore the 40-minute balloons and paced everyone around for that and finished 96th, I think. So, you know, I really enjoy the 10K. The 5K is really good. It's nice and short and quick. But the 10K is, you know, you get into a bit of a better stride and really get into a rhythm. But race walking varies anywhere from a 1500 metre all the way through to 20 and 50k at the Olympic distance. So that, yeah, that's where I'm at at the moment is just racing that 20k Olympic distance. Haven't looked to do the 50k yet. I think that's still a job for a car.

00:37:53Unidentified speaker: Yeah.

00:37:55Dane Bird-Smith: far yeah 50k I imagine would hurt those small muscles in the shins So what's, what's next for you, Dane? what's next on your calendar what are you aiming for um well my calendar now is just um as I said just in a little bit of downtime having a bit of fun with some running and um yeah just kind of taking it easy for a little while and in the lead up for next year in the 2019 season I've got A few altitude blocks. We're looking to do a lot of heat acclimatization as our world championships next year are actually in Doha in Qatar. So it is going to be seriously, seriously warm there. And we're looking at something like I think they've put us scheduled for 11 p.m. at night for the 20K walk along with the marathon as well. And we're still looking at around about 28 to 32 degrees tomorrow.

00:38:45Melissa Erbacher: 28 to 32 degrees. Yeah, that's a decent temperature to participate in any kind of sport, in my opinion. Good luck with that.

00:38:56Dane Bird-Smith: Yes. Well, especially at midnight as well, it's going to be a little bit of a weird one with the not just time zone difference, which you usually get when you're racing overseas, but it's going to be time zone plus a midnight race, which is totally weird, but should be very exciting.

00:39:14Melissa Erbacher: Very bizarre. I'm sure it will be a wonderful adventure nonetheless. Dane, thank you very much for joining us on the podcast this week. We've enjoyed chatting to you and learning a bit more about race walking. Hope to see you at a parkrun. I'm based on the Sunshine Coast, so head up my way sometime soon and get some of your speed walking on around the courses up here and ruffle a few more feathers. I think it'll do everyone good.

00:39:38Dane Bird-Smith: Yeah, cheers. Well, thank you very much for having me on there. And yeah, looking forward to get out to a few more parkruns around the place. So keep an eye out. Cheers.

Roving reports & the Channel 5 News crew

Roving report Melissa Ellis — Cohuna

00:39:56Melissa Ellis: Good morning parkrun adventurers, it's Melissa here and this morning I'm coming to you from Cohuna parkrun in northern Victoria. I think Cohuna might be our most northern parkrun at the moment and it's in farming territory and we've got the Kahuna Festival going this weekend and I've got with me Cheryl. Hi Cheryl. Hi Mel.

00:40:20Cheryl: Cheryl tell us why you are here at Cohuna today dressed like a pirate. Well, today I will be running my seventh C for the Pirate Challenge. I have completed six C's already and Rosebud for my R. And so today I become a pirate. Oh, congratulations. Thank you. There's a group of people here with you? Yes, we are camping together and we celebrated Paul's birthday yesterday and we are going to run Cohuna today and have a good time together. Yes, brilliant. Are you going to be spending a bit of time looking around the town? Definitely. It is a lot of fun here. The people are lovely and warm and friendly. And the weather's not too bad today after yesterday's wind. And you're a bit of an adventurer. Yes, I am. How many, okay, well, we start with how many parkruns in total have you done? I've done 201 parkruns and 121 different events. And I'm tipping that you're maybe not a native Australian, just... No, I come from South Africa. Big Bay was my home, but I've now moved here with my husband to Melbourne. And we are slowly moving our way around Victoria. Today will be number 59 parkrun in Victoria. Okay, so an uber-tourist. Yes. Where did you do your first parkrun Cheryl? Our very first parkrun was at Albert, Melbourne. We were here on holiday and we were looking for something to run and there was a 5k and we did it and I fell in love from the very first parkrun and it's just been a really great experience since then and now we are slowly exploring Victoria and a little bit of Australia And the more we see, the more we love and so grateful to be here and just love meeting the people and our fellow tourists. They've just really made us feel so at home. Oh, that's great. Okay. Well, thank you for talking to me, Cheryl. Enjoy your parkrun. Thank you so much, Mel. And it's so good to be here with you too.

00:42:30Melissa Ellis: Thank you. Okay, I'm here now at the Bower Hotel for brunch and I'm with Amy who is the founding ED of Cohuna parkrun. Hello Amy. Hi, how are you going? I'm good. You were the one that set up the parkrun here in Cohuna?

00:42:47Amy: I did. We're coming up to our second anniversary. And we've had 101 events as of today with a record of 82 people, which we made at our launch two years ago. So we're trying to break that record at some stage. If anyone wants to come and help us do that, that would be wonderful. But, yeah, it's a big number for such a small town. We average about sort of 30, even over winter. which we're a very sport-oriented town. We often have to travel up to two hours for football and netball, so over winter, yeah, even getting those numbers we've been really impressed with. So you'd be classed as like a rural town? Very rural, yeah, farming community, and probably less than 2,000 sort of people, so to get that kind of support and to have such a good volunteer base... It's been really, really good for the town. Lots of tourists have been coming, thank you. And yeah, we just get lots of varied people coming along. and people come for lots of different reasons. Like pirates.

00:43:49Ebony: Absolutely, lots of pirates.

00:43:51Amy: I think you're our first pirates that have been today, so that's good.

00:43:55Melissa Ellis: And describe the course for us.

00:43:58Amy: The course is well-treed, so nice and shady. It is two big laps and a half lap. It took me six months to design this course because we haven't got too many areas that are appropriate and follow the parkrun rules. But we're really proud of it and there's lots of opportunities for high fives, which I think is nice. There is. Yeah, yeah. That's really good. Cross paths with people along the way and... get to say hi and always have a few marshals out there.

00:44:27Melissa Ellis: What's the waterway?

00:44:28Amy: The waterway is the Gunbower Creek. So it comes off the Murray River and then goes back onto the Murray River down at Koondrook. And actually on the other side is what's called the Gunbower Island, and that's the biggest inland island. I think the Southern Hemisphere, actually. And it's a very historic sort of place out there and it's a very interesting place when you start looking into it.

00:44:51Melissa Ellis: Now, I know Cohuna's got a big festival on. My husband was actually here a while ago and you said to him, come back in November, we've got a big festival.

00:45:01Amy: Thank you for listening. Yeah, we've got the Big Kahuna Festival. It's an annual event on the Cup weekend. and it's just growing every year. It just started out with sort of like the school fair on the Saturday, and now I've just added all these different events. We had a food festival last night. We have, yeah, the school fair still happens, parkrun, big breakfast. People open up their farms. We've got lots of interesting little farms, not just dairy farms, but we've got a mini goats and goat soap farm and miniature pigs and... Yeah, lots of different farms will open up their gates. So I'm even as a local going to that because they're running businesses so you don't just get to go and have a look at someone's farm even if you're a local. So I got in quick because I missed out last year. It sold out and you get to go and have a look at the farms operating.

00:45:46Melissa Ellis: And I know there's some photography, some sort of photography thing.

00:45:50Amy: Photography workshops. Yeah. One of our locals, he owns the goat farm. He's also a farrier, does lots of things in the community. And, yeah, he's a very avid photographer, but also he loves using his iPhone for photography and he's just started a little niche, sort of running courses with that, teaching people how to use their iPhones for amazing types of photography. So I think that's booked out. He's always very popular. Yeah, yeah.

00:46:13Melissa Ellis: Dawn wanted to go, but it's booked out. Yeah. And the Duck Derby.

00:46:16Amy: duck derby that's just a tradition of yeah fundraiser and lots of fun and the um recently started up the Cohuna farmers and makers market which is on monthly but they're having an extra one to coincide with the big kahuna festival um and yeah that's become really popular and really focal point of the town once a month now so I think that's a great thing about parkrun tourism you pick um a place where you've never been before and and and they got like

00:46:43Melissa Ellis: the festival today and you can come and really get to know what the community's about and see Victoria or see Australia or see the world.

00:46:53Amy: That's right. Even if they're little towns, they have a lot to offer. And if you look at Cohuna on the map of Victoria, it might not look that special, but you get here and it's absolutely beautiful, lovely people and plenty to do, especially on a weekend that has lots of events on.

00:47:07Melissa Ellis: And how did you come to know about parkrun?

00:47:11Amy: I don't actually really remember. I think I signed up, we were going on a trip to Tasmania and I googled what is there to do in Launceston on a Saturday, which was when we were going to be there, and it said parkrun. And so I signed up and we didn't end up going because even though it was January. It was like five degrees and I couldn't convince my family to leave the cabin that early to go to it. So we actually signed up and then never did it. And eventually I thought, went to the Bendigo one and just checked it out. And I thought, yeah, this is good. We need this in Cohuna. It'd be really good for our town. And yeah, there was no parkruns, pretty much north of Bendigo at that point. Because you launched before Echuca. We launched before Echuca, yes. So that was, you know, I did it really for selfish reasons because I wanted to see it in the town, but it's been so much more than what I imagined, actually. That's wonderful.

00:48:04Melissa Ellis: Well, thank you for starting parkrun and coming up.

00:48:06Amy: No worries. Thanks for coming. Oh, and thanks for talking to me today. No worries. Thank you.

Roving report Tony O'Connell — Koonwarra

00:48:10Amy: Bye.

00:48:11Tony O'Connell: Howdy parkrunners, it's TOC reporting in for the Channel 5 News crew. I'm down at the lovely Koonwarra, one of my favourite courses. I'm here with the lovely Eb, the Event Director for Cooney. It's the first anniversary today, Eb, and we've had a really big day.

00:48:25Ebony: It is, TOC. We're so happy to be celebrating our first birthday at Koonwarra, one year on and I think I talked about hygge at our last interview and I think the hygge, that sense of community and wellness and warmth, I think we've created it. It's even bigger and better and I think it's broadened so much in the space of 12 months.

00:48:48Tony O'Connell: I think it has, Eb, and having a look around at your volunteer base, you've built up a really good team around you. There's just Great numbers of people wanting to put their hand up to help. And just, as I said, you know, the course is lovely. Everything really works well. Your numbers today, they were pretty big again.

00:49:03Ebony: Yeah, 163 this morning, TOC. And that's, you know, awesome numbers. It's a little bit overcast here at Koonwarra, for a spring day we might have been hoping for a bit more sunshine but TOC we've averaged about 90 per week, so for a population of Koonwarra that's got a bit over 300, awesome numbers. It takes in, you know, more than just Koonwarra township — it's Leongatha, Korumburra, Loch we've got people that travel up to an hour just to get to parkrun so some really good things happening

00:49:36Tony O'Connell: And some really good numbers of tourists today. You had a big contingent across from Inverloch. You had a big contingent of the Pakenham Roadrunners here today.

00:49:44Ebony: Yeah, thank you to all the Inverloch people coming out. I wonder how many they got at Inverloch today.

00:49:49Tony O'Connell: And we had some... Some special guests today. We had Brendan Peel and Michelle and you had all the Baldwin family here today as well. Dan's flown all the way over from Western Australia. So a big day.

00:50:01Ebony: Absolutely. It's good to see everyone turn out. And even for the Pakenham people, you know, they make the trip down. And not only all the celebrities, but we had our special K-themed dress-up day. So there was some Kath and Kims and Kermit the Frogs and Kites and Kings, it was a really good day.

00:50:22Tony O'Connell: Yeah, when you announced that it was a K theme, I really had some doubts because K seemed to be so hard, but it was really well embraced by everyone out on the course day. There were just so many people out there in costume. It was a great day.

00:50:33Ebony: TOC, you haven't done too bad in your koala outfit. I like it. I did say that there's two types of people in this world. People that spend weeks and weeks preparing outfits and then people that wake up on the morning and open up their wardrobe and that's what I've done. People have just realised that I'm decked head to toe in the colour khaki.

00:50:53Tony O'Connell: Well, khaki starts with a K, so you're right on point with your theme. It does. Even the ribbon in the hair's got the khaki in it.

00:50:59Ebony: Ah, you've noticed. Someone that's noticed the ribbon.

00:51:03Tony O'Connell: Well, look, it's been a fantastic year at Kearney. We're looking forward to going onwards and upwards.

00:51:09Ebony: Yeah, here's to another year or plus. Thank you, TOC.

00:51:13Scott Trickett: Cheers. Nice work, Melissa, who is at Cohuna. And TOC, at the Koonwarra anniversary. So two Victorian roving reporters at Victorian parkruns. Once again, the great state representing and carrying the rest of the team. But Ebony raised a good point there, Mel. There are two types of people in this world. One thing that jumped out from TOC's interview, there are two types of people in this world. Those that plan weeks in advance, their costumes, that would be you, correct?

00:51:46Melissa Erbacher: Yeah, usually.

00:51:47Scott Trickett: And then others that wake up on the morning or plan the night before. That's generally me.

00:51:54Melissa Erbacher: Well, there you go. The chalk and the cheese.

00:51:57Scott Trickett: Yeah, we're always providing the black and the white. The yin and the yang of the parkrun world. Hey, but it leads to... So what are we going to do now, Mel? Like, what are we going to do? They said no to the hotline. We wrapped it up last week. Yeah, Club Corner was just too much work. What else did we used to do in the end bit here? We've had some ideas.

00:52:17Melissa Erbacher: Poem Zone. Poem Zone. I love the Poem Zone. How's that rating in the Perlustration these days?

00:52:25Scott Trickett: Yeah, let's move on. Move on. The Poem Zone's not coming back.

00:52:31Melissa Erbacher: Okay.

00:52:32Scott Trickett: Much to my disappointment.

00:52:33Melissa Erbacher: Okay, well, I don't know.

00:52:36Scott Trickett: I liked what we did last week.

00:52:38Melissa Erbacher: What did we do last week? You'll have to remind me.

00:52:41Scott Trickett: I gave top three wish lists, top three backgrounds we want to get to.

00:52:46Melissa Erbacher: Oh, but that was just kind of inadvertent. We didn't mean, well, we did mean to do it, but we didn't plan it as a thing. So do you want to do a top three then, Scotty?

Top Threes

00:52:56Scott Trickett: I think so. I think the outro should be all about top threes now.

00:53:00Melissa Erbacher: Because we know how much everyone loves top threes and rating things and scoring things. Hey, Danny.

00:53:05Scott Trickett: Yep. But what we want you to do, we want you to interact with us. So we share our top threes and then you give us your top threes through whatever medium you wish. You can write us a letter. You can put it in poem form. You can just comment on a Facebook post or tweet us. I'm all over Twitter these days.

00:53:21Melissa Erbacher: Yeah, I saw you were on Twitter yesterday.

00:53:23Scott Trickett: Yeah, it's tweeting here and there. I really want to tweet about non-parkrun stuff, but... I've got to build up the courage to do that.

00:53:31Melissa Erbacher: Oh, okay. To have an identity outside of parkrun. Yeah.

00:53:35Scott Trickett: Yeah.

00:53:36Melissa Erbacher: Meet the real Scott Trickett.

00:53:38Scott Trickett: So can I lead us off here with something, and I didn't mention it in my recap of my visit to Point Cook, but one thing I did on Saturday is, now I'm going to sound a bit corporate, and I'm not. This is just a genuine parkrun experience for me that I really enjoyed. So the Athlete's Foot, who are our national partner, are visiting parkruns around the country at the moment, and they're doing wear testing. So do you know what wear testing is, Mel?

00:54:06Melissa Erbacher: I do because I'm in the know, but you might want to explain it to the people who won't know.

00:54:13Scott Trickett: So like walk two metres up and two metres back and then that's got to determine your opinion whether these shoes can run for 800 kilometres and support you and do everything that you need out of a pair of shoes, which is ridiculous. And even the idea, there are some fancy running shoe stores that get you to go on a treadmill. But really, how many people actually run on a treadmill? And even then, you only run for maybe a minute at a time. And we're supposed to analyse everything. This way, you get to run 5K in the pair of shoes. And I did. And I tried on a really expensive pair of shoes that I would never want to buy because they're really expensive and I would want to know if they could work if I was going to spend that much amount of money. So I tried on some on clouds.

00:54:56Melissa Erbacher: Okay.

00:54:57Scott Trickett: And it was great. But what I did notice is that not many people were going up to the guys at the athlete's foot. They had all their shoes on. But I think it was that, oh, we're a bit unsure. We don't know what's going on. We don't know what a wear test is. Can we just go and pick a pair of shoes and wear them? So I'm saying to all our parkrun adventurers, if you see the athlete's foot at a parkrun and they've got shoes out, put them on. Try them out. For one week only, try on a different pair of shoes.

00:55:24Melissa Erbacher: Okay. What I want to know is what happens to the shoes that have been running for like five kilometres? Like does it – Was somebody buying those without knowing that somebody sweated through his socks into those shoes for 5K?

00:55:38Scott Trickett: Well, as you know, Mel, I don't sweat. So it wouldn't have been a problem with my shoes. But I did think that too because they weren't brand new. They weren't out of the box.

00:55:45Melissa Erbacher: They get sold as ex-demo models like they do with cars at discounted prices.

00:55:50Scott Trickett: I don't want to know the answer to that. Well, I'm not buying ex-demo running shoes. So if you do, that's a life choice you're making. But anyway, so that's one thing that if you haven't done it at parkrun, I implore you to do it. Should I give you two more to round out my top three?

00:56:09Melissa Erbacher: Please do.

00:56:10Scott Trickett: Okay. I reckon everyone should do a warm-up at Junior parkrun. So there's not too many volunteer roles that I haven't done. In fact, I don't – well, there are probably some really weird ones. But I've done all the stock standard. But when we launched juniors, we introduced this warm-up role, and it's awesome. It's lots of fun. It's over and done in like a minute. If you want it to be, you could stretch it out to 10. But the kids genuinely like it. And I was surprised. I thought it was just going to be ticking boxes here. We're doing it to get the kids warmed up, blah, blah, blah. But no, the kids really enjoy the warm-up, and I enjoy it. So there's a lot of give and take.

00:56:49Melissa Erbacher: Do you enjoy it because you just get to be like a big kid doing silly things to make them laugh and stuff?

00:56:54Scott Trickett: Well, Mel, that's not really my personality.

00:56:58Melissa Erbacher: Okay.

00:56:59Scott Trickett: Like, I do like to have fun, but I don't need that in my life. But what I do need… But I did really enjoy it. So it's really easy to entertain and put smiles on kids' faces by doing the warm-up.

00:57:14Melissa Erbacher: Okay.

00:57:15Scott Trickett: And that's a nice feeling. Very selfishly, that's a nice feeling.

00:57:19Melissa Erbacher: Okay.

00:57:21Scott Trickett: And one more. Have I got another one? Have I got another one? Yeah. Here's another one. Now, you don't have to do this. Only do this if you can. So I'm not saying that this is a list that I'm going to give you a medal if you complete this.

00:57:31Melissa Erbacher: These aren't challenges, exactly. But, yeah.

00:57:34Scott Trickett: These are just Scott and Mel's ideas about what you can try at parkrun. Mine is I really love, and I've talked about it on the podcast before, I love it when it's just me and Kasia doing the parkrun. And usually when we're just walking, so we spend an hour together. So it's one-on-one time with your kid. Now, whether that's your kid, whether that's your niece, your nephew, whatever it is, whether you've got four kids and you just want to take one of your kids around parkrun one week. So it's just one-on-one time because they're forced to talk to you. And once they get into an age bracket, that my daughter's in, we don't have a lot of, you know, sit down and have deep, meaningful conversations at this age. But on the parkrun, they're forced to. And once they start talking, they can't stop. And it's just awesome. So I recommend that one-on-one parkrun with a kid.

00:58:23Melissa Erbacher: Okay. That's a good one. I like that because, yeah, there are definitely different experiences. However, I would reiterate, don't just grab some random child, you know. Probably better that you already have some sort of relationship with that child first.

00:58:37Scott Trickett: Yeah, so you'll get there in a few more years. You've got to wait a few more years for Wes. I mean, he's not talking yet, is he?

00:58:43Melissa Erbacher: No, well, this week he learned to say achoo, which is quite cute because it's the first two-syllable thing that he says. He's learned it from one of his books, The Very Cranky Bear. And so the line actually goes, achoo, I'm allergic to trees. So Wes goes, achoo, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Because he doesn't know how to say the rest of the words. But the achoo part is ridiculously cute. So he now knows how to say achoo, sa for sun and ka. Those are the extent of his vocabulary. I'm doing a good job.

00:59:16Scott Trickett: Wes's age, not the right age for that exercise, that task.

00:59:22Melissa Erbacher: No. Okay. Okay.

00:59:23Scott Trickett: Have you got top three? Top three, what are we calling it? Top three things to try at parkrun or top three things I've never done at parkrun, something like that.

00:59:30Melissa Erbacher: Yeah, well, no, you've done the warm-up leading and stuff before. So it's just, yeah, top three things we would recommend others would try, I guess. Well, the obvious one, and let's go back to Ebony's little comment about the two different types of people, are fancy dress for me. I think everybody who's never tried to run a five kilometre or walk a five kilometre parkrun in fancy dress should do so. That's one of the must-have experiences of a parkrun journey in my opinion.

01:00:05Scott Trickett: So sell it to me, Mel. Sell it to me. So I reckon everyone who's listening who has wanted to would have done it already. So you're talking to those that don't want to do it. So tell us why we should.

01:00:15Melissa Erbacher: Because, well, as a starting point, I guess the people who haven't done it haven't done so because they don't feel comfortable. It's outside of their comfort zone. So for that reason alone, you know, challenging yourself to do something that's not – you that isn't what you would normally do, it can be really exciting and it can be really satisfying and enjoyable after you've done it to sort of push yourself beyond the normal limits of what you would do. And then secondly, It can be very liberating to be in a fancy dress. Depending on the style of fancy dress, you know, the amount of joy that you would bring to other people, especially if it's just a random weekend, it doesn't have to be an anniversary, it doesn't have to be Halloween or Christmas or any other excuse that people come up with for dressing up. Just show up at random in an outfit. You will get more cheers on the course, more high fives, more people yelling out to you and encouragement than you ever would would have expected and certainly than you would have got not in fancy dress and you will put smiles on faces of people that aren't with parkrun just other randoms out on the course who'll be like there was some nutter today going for a walk or running around in a spider-man outfit I have no idea why but you know it brightened my morning because that was an experience they had so it's it's less about the person who's getting dressed up and more about the impact they'll have on others

01:01:47Scott Trickett: Can I give you a pro tip for those who are on the fence or they're worried about people looking at them? Wear the mask. Yes. If you've got the Spider-Man outfit, put the mask over your head so they don't know who it is.

01:01:58Melissa Erbacher: Exactly. That's where the liberating part comes in because you can take on a whole other persona and you can be silly or weird or funny and almost no repercussions because people don't necessarily know who you were.

01:02:10Scott Trickett: Okay, that's good. I still reckon there's guys out there. It's mainly guys who are shaking their heads and going, no, no.

01:02:17Melissa Erbacher: If I get one person to try fancy dress at parkrun who never has before, my mission is complete.

01:02:24Scott Trickett: Okay. For those miserable old blokes, move on to the next one.

01:02:28Melissa Erbacher: Okay. The next one, this is a little bit of something that I like to try to do from time to time. Negative splits. So you don't have to race the entire run. You don't have to like be going all out, killing yourself to get a PB. But I always enjoy getting negative splits because there's something really satisfying about like Every kilometre being faster than the one before it. Getting faster.

01:02:57Scott Trickett: Yeah. Yeah. It's good. I did it on Saturday. My 4Ks were all negative split.

01:03:01Melissa Erbacher: Yeah. On my freedom run, I thought I had done it and I rechecked it when I looked at it later and I hadn't because I'd gone out too fast in the first kilometre. So that's my pro tip. Don't go out too fast in the first K. Just take it easy and then slowly start to ramp it up because – Yeah. Yeah.

01:03:19Scott Trickett: Start at the back. Start at the back of the crowd because that will naturally slow you down. Yes. So your first K is way off.

01:03:25Melissa Erbacher: Yeah, but it's – yeah, it is just – I don't know what it is, whether or not it's just like, yeah, I felt powerful by the end kind of thing because I pushed it harder and harder as I went along when I guess technically your body should be getting more fatigued yet you were going faster. So, yeah, it might be some sort of – I don't know, mental thing about – I'm not using my words very well here. Help me out here, Scotty.

01:03:52Scott Trickett: Okay. Hey, let's move on to the next one because can I guess it?

01:03:55Melissa Erbacher: You could try.

01:03:56Scott Trickett: I reckon you want to try race walking a parkrun. No.

01:04:01Melissa Erbacher: Though, I mean, well, no. That'd be cool. I would like to try race walking, me personally. However, it's not something I'd recommend to other people because I've never done it before. So I can't very well sort of say – you should definitely do this because your life will be changed forever. Okay, that's a bonus one. Personally, I would like to try racewalking after our chat with Dane because I think it's the same thing for the fancy dress. People watching me racewalk would bring a lot of people joy because it would be hilarious.

01:04:32Unidentified speaker: Exactly.

01:04:34Scott Trickett: Exactly. So give us your third one then.

01:04:37Melissa Erbacher: Well, no, before we move on from the race walking, I would like to put a challenge out there that anyone who wants to get video footage of themselves trying to race walk, send it in to us because I want to see that. I want to see people's techniques based on Dane's explanation of what it's supposed to look like.

01:04:56Scott Trickett: I'll do it.

01:04:57Melissa Erbacher: Yeah.

01:04:58Scott Trickett: I was serious. I was good as a junior. I've got medals. I've got trophies. Trophies in amongst my other trophies. And they're race walking trophies. So I'll do it.

01:05:06Melissa Erbacher: Yeah, let's have a race walking competition where everybody who says it, we'll have to have a prize. We'll get a prize. Do we have any more watches, Scotty? How many watches have we got to give away for Perlustration? Maybe we can divert one to race walking or something.

01:05:20Scott Trickett: No, but we could give away that first pair of leg warmers. That first excess pair of leg warmers.

01:05:26Melissa Erbacher: We could – that might actually force me to knit or it might at least force me to ask my nana to knit on my behalf.

01:05:33Scott Trickett: Hang on. You told me you were doing it.

01:05:34Melissa Erbacher: Yeah. It's work in progress. For your nana? No, no, no, no. I might get my nana to – she might be on the production line. We'll see. She's got to finish off a scarf for my nephew first. And she's dragging the heels on that one.

01:05:51Scott Trickett: Well, I feel like we're dragging the heels on your third one, Mellie. You're trying to think of it on the spot.

01:05:55Melissa Erbacher: No, I was mulling through them while you were bringing yours up. Okay, I do have my third one. And it might be a bit of an obvious one, which is why I was surprised you didn't guess it. Volunteering in something that scares you. So this is... That was a bit like mine. Well, yeah, maybe, but it's not, it's not the same because everybody has different things that scare them. For a lot of people, it's the stopwatch. I know, I don't get that. No, I don't get that either. It's, I think my, my second or third most favourite role that, or at least the one I've done the most after run directing, um,

01:06:32Scott Trickett: I get that people are scared of it because they're going to stuff up the results for everybody. So I get that.

01:06:37Melissa Erbacher: But you know what?

01:06:38Scott Trickett: You don't. How many times the percentage of it's been stuffed up is minute.

01:06:43Melissa Erbacher: And in my experience, what gets stuffed up more frequently is handing out tokens, which is just bizarre because they're numbers and they go in numerical order. So how do you stuff that up? But there are some creative volunteers out there and they manage to do it. And, you know, they do the best they can. But that scares some people too. Finish tokens. Like the pressure when you've got five or ten people crossing the line trying to make sure they get their tokens in order. I do understand high pressure icing. But also fun. There's adrenaline involved. It's the scary stuff. You know, when people do the scary stuff that they don't feel comfortable doing, those are the more satisfying things. Like afterwards where you can go, yep, I did awesome at that. I kick that job's ass.

01:07:35Scott Trickett: Yeah, so I like it. So that's the job I avoid the most, but I'm not scared of it. It's the one that I probably dread doing the most. So you're saying challenge people to take on their... Their most... Face their fears.

01:07:47Melissa Erbacher: Yeah, their most feared volunteer role.

01:07:49Scott Trickett: Their volunteering fears. Okay, so what's yours?

01:07:54Melissa Erbacher: I don't know. I'm not really scared of any of the roles. What roles are there? Maybe lead bike.

01:08:02Scott Trickett: Lead bike, I was going to say.

01:08:03Melissa Erbacher: Just because I probably am not.

01:08:04Scott Trickett: What about a 20-minute pacer? Yeah. How'd you go with that?

01:08:06Melissa Erbacher: Well, I've only paced once, and I think it was 50 minutes. I did a good job, though. I got four people their first sub-50-minute parkrun. Yeah, I think lead bike would probably be the one I'd be most concerned about only because I'd be worried that I didn't go fast enough to beat the lead runners.

01:08:25Scott Trickett: Well, as, you know, Dane's doing it in 15 minutes.

01:08:27Melissa Erbacher: Exactly. That's moving. I don't think I can ride a three-minute kilometre. I'm pretty sure I can't ride that fast.

01:08:35Scott Trickett: Don't go to New Farm on the weekend.

01:08:38Melissa Erbacher: No. Oh, and then the other thing would be, like – Because I don't, there are no lead bikes on the Sunshine Coast and those are the courses I'm most familiar with. So I would have to do it somewhere that I'm not super familiar with and I would probably ride the wrong way. I would lead some poor adventurers who are also there for the first time, but running a really good time, I would lead them astray.

01:08:58Scott Trickett: Yeah, well, because when I do a first time as brief, I sort of say, is anyone here going to run sub 17? And nobody ever puts up their hand and I said, okay, just follow everyone else and you won't get lost.

01:09:08Melissa Erbacher: Yeah, but do you think there's ever those people that are just like, oh, I'm not going to showboat about, yeah, I'm going to run a sub-17?

01:09:14Scott Trickett: Yeah, maybe. Maybe. Anyway, no one's ever got lost at parkrun, I've been at.

01:09:19Melissa Erbacher: So I like this. We should do top three things next week as well. Top three something else.

Launches and anniversaries"Where is the cake?"

01:09:25Scott Trickett: Now, because we've introduced the top three, the old calendar's been bumped right to the end of the podcast. So I wonder if there's people that listen to our podcast every week religiously wanting to know where new events are coming and where the anniversaries are.

01:09:39Melissa Erbacher: Possibly, but I know I'm actually heading to the only launch we've got on our list this week, Scotty.

01:09:45Scott Trickett: That would be at Victory Heights Trail parkrun in Queensland.

01:09:48Melissa Erbacher: It would, and I'm very excited. More for the community and the Event Director than for myself. Like, I've done a Freedom Run of the course before, so I know... what's in store in terms of the course and it's brilliant. But I also know that this event has been 21 months in the making. That is a long time for a prospect and for a single Event Director to maintain momentum and positivity and, you know, get this happening for his community. So Jodie Fisher, you're an absolute legend. It hasn't launched yet, but it will and it's going to be brilliant.

01:10:27Scott Trickett: Well done, Jodie. And I noticed that this was due to launch a couple of weeks ago and we bumped it. So he's like, he got so close. He did. And then we said, no, can you wait a couple more weeks?

01:10:36Melissa Erbacher: Well, no, we had this shocking weather that destroyed big sections of the course. So they had to get Earthworks guys to come out because it's a trail event. And, yeah, we had such awful weather in Queensland about a month ago. And, yeah, it just totally slammed the course and they had to rebuild sections. So that's why it was dangerous. The whole trail network in that park got closed to the public. So we're very lucky that they were able to move on it so fast and fix the bits up. that needed fixing. But yes, it got so close and then it got delayed again. Poor Jodie. So I think it's going to be a very sweet morning on Saturday.

01:11:16Scott Trickett: Okay, great. Lucky you, you get to go to that. I wish I was going to Broken Hill on the weekend because it's in my top three wish list, but they're also celebrating their anniversary this week.

01:11:27Melissa Erbacher: They are, as are Diamond Creek in Victoria, another one that's close to you, Scotty.

01:11:33Scott Trickett: Yes, closest parkrun to my home. And probably the parkrun that's furthest from my home is Geographe Bay. And that's, how many years old will Geographe Bay be? Two, three, four?

01:11:45Melissa Erbacher: It's got to be at least four or five, surely.

01:11:48Scott Trickett: Yeah.

01:11:48Melissa Erbacher: That's one, that's Maddy Trent's old local. So it's been around for a while.

01:11:53Scott Trickett: Launceston in Tasmania and Nepean River in New South Wales. I stole all the events this week, Mel.

01:11:59Melissa Erbacher: Well, not all of them, but that's okay, Scotty.

01:12:02Dane Bird-Smith: Gave you Diamond Creek.

01:12:03Melissa Erbacher: Yes. Happy anniversary to all those events.

Sign-off

01:12:06Scott Trickett: And that concludes another episode of the parkrun adventurers. We would love to continue on for another 40 minutes.

01:12:13Melissa Erbacher: But we run out of things to say.

01:12:15Scott Trickett: We do. And I've got to go do some stuff. Pick up my daughter. Have you seen the time, Mel?

01:12:22Melissa Erbacher: Yes.

01:12:23Scott Trickett: I just did. Let's go. Okay. Thanks again. Speak to you next week.

01:12:27Melissa Erbacher: Cheers. Cheers.