Episode 139 - Running Challenges

Welcome

00:00:17Scott Trickett: Episode 139 of the parkrun adventurers is here. The commitment is real. Welcome, Mel Erbacher.

00:00:25Melissa Erbacher: The commitment is real.

00:00:28Scott Trickett: Commitment is real because my challenge tonight is to keep you awake, Mel, because in our preamble that we do before recording, you have struggled to stay awake. Now, I'm not sure if that's a reflection on our general banter off the podcast or if you just had a really late night.

00:00:42Melissa Erbacher: Well, I've had a couple of really late nights actually working on something a little bit special.

00:00:47Scott Trickett: Oh, what have you been doing?

00:00:49Melissa Erbacher: I can't tell you, Scotty. Why not? Because it's for our adventurers.

00:00:54Scott Trickett: But I already know.

00:00:55Melissa Erbacher: We can't tell people yet, can we?

00:01:01Scott Trickett: Well, why not? Well, there's a few boxes we need to tick. But this year, so in previous years of us doing the podcast, we've tried to give you a Christmas present. And that's in the way of our last episode of the year. We've tried to make it a bit longer. We've tried to bring some Christmas cheer to our listeners. This year, we've got physical gifts to give that you'll have to pay for.

00:01:23Melissa Erbacher: Yeah, it's like buy your own Christmas present.

00:01:27Scott Trickett: Yeah.

00:01:28Melissa Erbacher: On the parkrun adventurers.

00:01:30Scott Trickett: Yeah, so we're hopefully going to announce it next week. As I said, got to tick a few boxes, got to make sure some things line up, but we're both super excited. It's another one of our great ideas. It's not the hotline. It's a better than that. It's not the poem zone. It's a lot better than that.

00:01:45Melissa Erbacher: You know what, Scotty? It might have to get announced in the middle of the week between podcasts.

00:01:51Scott Trickett: Oh, so how do we do that? Pay attention to the Facebook page.

00:01:54Melissa Erbacher: Mm. Mm-hmm.

00:01:56Scott Trickett: So there you go. There's something exciting off the bat. In episode 139 of the parkrun adventurers, we're chatting to the guys from Running Challenge. We had a great chat to them already. It was a nice and long one. So we really did a deep dive on all things Running Challenges. We're going to reveal the results from the perlustration. We're going to draw the winner of the TomTom challenge. Watch and we're going to figure out a way to give away A Scent of Fear. Six books. Yeah, we might do that live because we haven't talked about that yet.

00:02:26Melissa Erbacher: No, we haven't.

00:02:29Scott Trickett: But before we do all that, let's find out what Mel Erbacher got up to on parkrun Day this week. Did she survive? She's here. We can hear her. Was it a fun morning?

00:02:42Melissa Erbacher: I am pleased to announce, Scotty, that I appear to have broken the streak of misadventures with my parkrun last weekend. I was very tense the whole morning. Adam did swerve to avoid a pigeon on the way there. He missed it. No damage to pigeon or car, which is great. And everything seemed to go well. I was super paranoid. I was thinking, it's okay if something goes wrong. This is the toughest parkrun in Australia. What happens if somebody has a cardiac arrest? It's okay. I've done my first aid training just recently. I was on the stopwatch at the finish line with a wonderful lady named Tracy, who's also actually a nurse. So if you're going to be at the finish line of any event and, you know, there's the potential there that somebody might have a heart attack, then that's pretty much a really great place to be. So I thought, okay, I feel confident and comfortable about that. That's that base covered. Not that the event team don't already have all these contingency plans in place for emergencies and their response and that sort of thing anyway, but it's just, you know, brain was ticking into overdrive for all the things that could go wrong. Yeah, as I said, happy to report Misadventure Street has been broken. You know what I put it down to?

00:04:09Scott Trickett: Not believing in superstition?

00:04:12Melissa Erbacher: No. My fabulous costume because it was their third anniversary and it was a super theme and I decided late Friday night after several hours of procrastinating that at about 8.30 I should probably make myself a costume and I decided to go as volunteer girl because There is no greater hero than Volunteer Girl, which involved, you know, purple and fluoro orange matching cape and mask and boot covers. I made my own boot covers, Scotty, like knee-high purple vinyl boot covers. Never done it before. absolute 100% success. And now I know how to do it. I'm going to make boot covers in all the colours. Yeah.

00:04:54Scott Trickett: You're in a very creative zone at the moment, aren't you?

00:04:56Melissa Erbacher: I am. I'm just nailing it. Usually in the wee hours of the morning, there was no Friday night either. So that's my new streak is staying creative.

00:05:08Scott Trickett: I've been getting messages from you from 2 a.m. in the morning. That does factor in a bit of the time difference we've got at the moment.

00:05:15Melissa Erbacher: You're a hard task master. Am I? Yeah.

00:05:19Scott Trickett: That's great news. That's great news. Would it fit me? Because I'm going to an anniversary this coming parkrun Day. And I found out that it's actions and heroes, superheroes theme.

00:05:29Melissa Erbacher: Well, I mean, I could chuck it in the post for you. The mask and the cape will fit you. I don't know. Do you fit into a size five slash six women's boot?

00:05:39Scott Trickett: You know the answer to that.

00:05:40Melissa Erbacher: If you have zips down the side, you might just have to be a little bit tiptoe in size, in their, they might not have the calves, although you do have magnificent calves.

00:05:50Scott Trickett: They do. Well, my strongest, my most attractive feature is my ankles. Might have to put my thinking cap on to come up with another idea for my anniversary. But I'm glad. I'm glad you survived.

00:06:02Melissa Erbacher: Yes. Well, thank you. Your parkrun day. That's great.

00:06:05Scott Trickett: Do you want to know what I did?

00:06:07Melissa Erbacher: Yeah. Tell me.

00:06:08Scott Trickett: I was at home at Westerfolds. Which was great. Which was great. I'll tell you what we did. It was a little bit more exciting than a regular parkrun day because we had Amanda Smith, who's the presenter of Radio National's Life Matters, visiting us. They're going to do a little bit of a, what is it, a story on parkrun. Cool. And so we invited her out to Westerfolds to have a chat to some of our runners, tell some stories, grab some atmosphere. And I think she enjoyed the morning. So she wasn't, she's not a parkrunner. Did she participate in the event? No, she didn't. So she headed off with the Tail Walker. So she got to experience parkrun in situ as it was really happening. But then she ducked back and waited for everyone to finish. So it was a bit exciting to have a real proper radio person at parkrun. She had a big fancy microphone and a big tape thing.

00:06:57Melissa Erbacher: Awesome.

00:06:58Scott Trickett: You know, it's always something a little bit out of the ordinary.

00:07:01Melissa Erbacher: And so the program is called Life Matters. Are you sure it's not Life Matters?

00:07:06Scott Trickett: Isn't that what I said?

00:07:09Melissa Erbacher: Well, it depends on what you put the inflection on. Whether or not it's life matters, as in life is important, or life matters, as in things in life.

00:07:22Scott Trickett: Well, small confession. I've never listened.

00:07:25Melissa Erbacher: Okay.

00:07:26Scott Trickett: But I will be. So I'll have an answer for you on that next week. Or maybe our listeners can let us know.

00:07:32Melissa Erbacher: Awesome. If you've listened.

00:07:35Scott Trickett: But let's crack on, Mel, because we've got a lot. We've got Andy and Laura coming up, and then we've got the perlustration reveal, which is always fun.

00:07:44Melissa Erbacher: So much to get through. Super excited, just like we were at the start of the week when we shared our top three things to be excited about.

00:07:59Scott Trickett: It's all the rage. Running challenge is what we've all been talking about. But last week, we got a little bit confused. Confused about the P-index. Even though I was secretly excited that I was improving my P-index, I have no idea what I was talking about. So we put dibs on the interview with the two wonderful parkrunners who came up with this little idea. And it's time to have a chat to Laura and Andy.

Interview Andy Taylor and Laura Cowan — Co-creator of the Running Challenges Chrome extension; Run Director and core team…

00:08:23Scott Trickett: Welcome to the parkrun adventurers.

00:08:25Laura Cowan: Hello.

00:08:26Scott Trickett: So running challenges, it's all the rage. Can we start there? Are you surprised with how popular it's been? Because I'm sure you're going to tell us that it was just an idea that you had in the back of your mind and it's just blown up? Or did you meticulously plan this takeover of the parkrun world?

00:08:43Andy Taylor: I think the former is very much the camp that we've been in. And we've been amazed at how many people have... given us so much kudos and love for the extension. It was kind of originally born out of just a little bit of fun. And to have so many people install it has been kind of crazy. And it wasn't long before people from Australia were emailing us about the fact that it didn't do their set of challenges. So yeah, we've had interest from all around the world, practically from the start, really.

00:09:14Laura Cowan: Yeah. And it started because of the UK tourist group, which is why a lot of the tourist challenges are very UK based, like the Pontys and the Compass Club and things like that.

00:09:30Melissa Erbacher: That's very cool. So I know in Australia, we've been having conversations for years, even just among like the Event Directors about whether or not there could be badges added to people's profiles and things like that to show different achievements along the way. And so obviously you guys have had that idea and run with it. How did that all come about? I know you mentioned that with the tourism group, Was it a group thing where people sort of said, wouldn't it be good if this? And then you guys went, well, actually, we know how to do that technically. So maybe we could make that happen. Talk us through it because I still don't really understand how it works.

00:10:13Andy Taylor: So I think the short answer is we just launched it onto the rest of the group and say, we've done this. What do you think? The slightly longer answer is that Laura joined the UK parkrun tourist group probably in March about the time just not long before we did this actually and she was scrolling through on Facebook one morning saying oh look at they've done a poll of all of the challenges that people are doing some of these sound really fun and I think that's when you first heard about the alphabet challenge.

00:10:41Laura Cowan: Yeah. I was looking at the alphabet challenge. So I started going through my, in my head mentally, like which, which ones I'd done. And I mentioned it. And then Andy went off and wrote a script to scrape it from my, my single page and just say, Oh, here you go. Here's a list of all the ones you've done. I was like, Oh, that's kind of cool. And that makes it easier. Cause I think the people in the tourist group have got all kinds of manner of spreadsheets and posters that they tick them off on. Yeah.

00:11:07Andy Taylor: Yeah, so you wanted to know which ones you needed to complete it. Yes. And I had been to New Zealand a few years prior to that, and I'd worked out by grabbing the data that the map events page is used, is based on. And I knew that in that was all of the locations of all of the parkruns. And I'd worked out the two furthest apart parkruns because I wondered whether or not I was anywhere near the record if I went to Christchurch and whether Winchester was the furthest point you could get from that. And it turns out it wasn't, but I knew all this data was there. And I think actually, if you're interested, I think at the time it was, Was it Dunedin, parkrun and one in Plymouth in the UK? So sort of like the tip of England and the south coast of New Zealand. But I knew all that data was there. So I was like, OK, I can use that. I'm pretty handy with a bit of Python scripting. I can work out which are the closest ones for all the letters from our flat. So that was kind of just like an offline thing. I just did it on my laptop and I worked out Laura's list. And I think she posted it on Facebook and said, these are my nearest ones. And I've done so many of them.

00:12:10Laura Cowan: Yeah I mean like he literally jumped out of bed one morning and spent half an hour doing this when he should have been getting ready for work.

00:12:18Andy Taylor: But then we realised that I think for your V it listed Victoria parkrun which was in London and that hadn't started yet so already there was a there was like two errors on it because it didn't know whether the parkrun was active or not so we had to think a bit more about what what things worked and what things didn't and then

00:12:36Laura Cowan: We had about a week off work in the end of February, beginning of March, and we just decided to spend a bit of time on it. And Andy came up with the idea of making it an extension, because if you wanted to do it as a website, you'd have to grab all the data from parkrun. And the downside of that is obviously that parkrun might not be so impressed. Also, there's now, of course, a lot of more data protection law here anyway. And also Andy's made the point several times to people that all the sponsorship is on the website so we don't actually want to get people away from the website um so he came up with this idea of doing it as a chrome extension and spent a couple of days I think in the holiday doing that yeah so I don't know where the badges bit came from but I think we decided it'd be quite nice to um

00:13:25Andy Taylor: keep track of them and then we thought well maybe we've got these little shirts at the top so at the time we both had our 50 and and I had my 100 I think but Laura didn't have hers yet and we thought we could stick some more things up here so the first set of things to appear were the green badges for the running challenges and that's when we went back and had a quick look at the Facebook group and said what kind of challenges are people doing and we picked a few that you could easily get the data for so it was things like if their first letter matches because that's in the list where they are that's in the list um if you look at the the map data and there was a few others you could do like the stopwatch bingo with the numbers they're they're in the column so you can just sort of manipulate the data on the page and that's sort of where where it started

00:14:09Laura Cowan: Yes, all the data, certainly on the initial challenges, was on that single page. So it was just a case of scanning through it, taking it, picking out the words. So that's why things like the full ponty is there, because that was one that was on the tourist group. It's obviously of no interest to anybody outside the UK, because if you'd ever get to those three, even if you live in the UK, it's probably quite a challenge.

00:14:36Andy Taylor: um but yeah we we so we did that but then as Andy said there were things like if a parkrun hasn't started yet what then what do you do so then he had to start looking into it being a bit more complicated and the the badges themselves um Laura's got a little drawing tablet and I've been kind of thinking trying to find an excuse to use it so um they've got that very uh hand-drawn look about them because uh they were well exactly that just sort of freehand sketched and it kind of gave them a little bit of a a style I think that we're quite pleased with how they turned out.

00:15:10Melissa Erbacher: Oh, that's brilliant. They actually look like they're proper designed to look like that.

00:15:16Andy Taylor: Yeah, I think they kind of, yeah, they're not polished, but that's kind of almost by design.

00:15:22Scott Trickett: I think the badges are actually the genius part of it because parkrunners are essentially collectors. And I'm not sure, are you guys familiar with the website Smashrun? Have you ever come across that? So Smashrun, they also give away badges for reaching certain milestones with your running. And I think, well, that's the appeal for me. I just want to collect another badge. So I was curious to find out what part of your process did the badges come in? But you've kind of just explained that already. Yeah.

00:15:50Laura Cowan: Yeah, it was quite early on. And as you say, it's the whole collecting thing. And that's how I sort of very early on, I think my second parkrun was a tourist, was a touring parkrun. And quite early on, I got into that whole kind of collecting parkruns thing. So it sort of made sense as soon as Andy suggested it. And things like Strava.com have got badges and things and it sort of all just kind of came together.

00:16:17Andy Taylor: I don't know quite when you guys first cottoned on to the extension, but I think it was probably a week or two later that we added the volunteer badges. Um, now we, we volunteer a lot at our local park and we're on the core team and our Run Directors here at Winchester. And, um, I kind of felt that it was a bit of a shame that the, uh, the non tourists weren't getting any love. So, um, the volunteer badges came along because I felt that the, like we've got a guy who volunteers every week. He's he's tail walked once, but that's his only recorded kind of event completion at Winchester. And it's kind of a shame that his 200 and something volunteer weeks are not recognised in some way so yeah it was very soon after that we thought well we've got to get the volunteer badges on there and the people who are sort of giving back can collect something

00:17:07Laura Cowan: Yeah, what I'd really like to be able to do, because we've got the gold obsessive badge and things. And of course, if you volunteer, it means you've got a week that you're not running. And currently we can only make the obsessive badges based on your actual runs. And what I'd really like to do is incorporate the volunteering weeks in that as well. But we can't access the dates of when you volunteered at the minute, which is a shame. So at the moment, all we can do is volunteer badges based on the roles that you've done and how many times you've done them.

00:17:37Melissa Erbacher: I like the idea of that, that the obsessive is like not missing a parkrun, whether or not, I guess, you're participating as a runner or a walker or if you're volunteering. You're there either way. So it should all count. I think that would be quite nice, actually, if milestone shirts work that way too. And instead of being a running shirt or a volunteering shirt, it's just a milestone shirt. My favourite of all those little badges that I've collected so far, apart from the volunteering ones, which are awesome, but the staying alive one for the Bee Gees. So, Andy, you actually drew that yourself. You drew that little man doing the dance with the flares on and everything.

00:18:20Andy Taylor: So I think that one, I found an image on Google and sort of roughly traced it.

00:18:24Melissa Erbacher: That is actually John Travolta. Excellent. That's perfect. So good. I mean, if anyone hasn't seen it, well, obviously you need to go get some more B's and G's just so that you can see that little badge because it's a perfect classic. So you went to the tourism group to look at the kinds of things that people were looking at collecting there. Have there been any challenges that have been proposed that have like completely done your heads in when you're trying to think, well, can we manipulate the data to actually extract that? Yeah.

00:18:59Andy Taylor: So I think it's a rare week when somebody hasn't emailed in to say, I love your extension, but I've just come up with this extra challenge. Maybe you could consider it. And there's only so many hours in the day and only so many metres of screen that you can scroll through if you want to add them all on. So we're kind of trying to work out how to add... uh extra ones in sort of a manageable fashion when we sort of like open the floodgates and add some more in but um there have been a few suggestions which we've added in um since it started I think I think the stats have probably come in because they're more manageable and we've been able to put them on the page in sort of a small box at the top and they they don't need badges drawing they don't need like huge amounts of screen so it was quite easy to say sum up how many um tourist places you've you've um you've been to and things like that so and the stats were definitely easier to sort of add in there um the um

00:20:00Laura Cowan: Yeah, some of the, we get quite a few requests for kind of custom regions, especially. And for badges, like groups of badges that, groups of parkruns that happen in different places. So like, for instance, the Ponty badges are all very UK specific and there's a few others like that. And they're not so interesting to people who are in Australia or South Africa, which is I think the two main areas that use the Chrome extension outside the UK. And so one of the things we'd like to do, but obviously it depends on having time and working it out, is being able to filter out badges and challenges by default for specific countries or just being able to kind of manipulate a bit more what gets displayed on your page by default, because otherwise everybody's going to end up with phenomenal numbers of challenges, most of which they can't do.

00:20:54Andy Taylor: And I think probably the key to, or maybe the halfway house to doing that is to enable people to come up with their own groups. And it's just a private list because a lot of people are keeping track of how much they've done in the old ceremonial county of Yorkshire or something like that, which is impossible to work out from the list of parkrun names because whether or not it gets included in a geographical region depends on like which dates you're counting that geographical region for. So yeah, if we can get sort of sort of a custom list that you could have for yourself and just so you're ticking them off and you can see which one you want to go and do next that one that might be the easiest way to to not it's not polluting everyone's page but you know if you have to put it on everyone's or no one's it's it's kind of a bit all or nothing and it's it's like a make your own adventure um yeah option I like it

00:21:44Scott Trickett: I know the parkrun technical gurus would be very happy with you because you have created this as an extension, so you're not doing all that scraping of the results every week that we know goes on. Have the big head honchos reached out to you from parkrun? Have you had a discussion with Ian Rutzen or anything like that? I think we haven't had –

00:22:09Andy Taylor: sort of any sort of official communication. The Facebook post we put up originally to say, we've done this thing, what do you think? And I think Paul Sinton-Hewitt liked it. Tom Williams liked it.

00:22:19Laura Cowan: Oh my God, I was so excited.

00:22:21Andy Taylor: So I think there's kind of been some, not explicit, but just kind of, they've sort of ticked a box and we kind of felt, it was kind of happy to let it slide if, if that's what they were doing or whatever. And then I think there was a tweet by, um, yeah, Tom Williams again, uh, basically saying that, um, He was doing one of the challenges or he was having a competition with somebody else to complete the stopwatch challenge or something. So they seemed to just accept it as a thing. And it just suddenly became a thing that everybody knew about and was kind of expected to know about. And then I don't know if you would have seen the communication, but in the parkrun UK newsletter a few weeks ago, They basically did a Compass Club list. And I know it's not your Compass Club, but it was a Compass Club and it wasn't ours either. It was sort of some halfway house of it had to begin with West or East, which is not quite our rule either. So it's sort of pervaded everyone now. It's in official communications, although it's not really been officially acknowledged, I guess.

00:23:25Melissa Erbacher: Endorsed on social media. I mean, come on, that's the highest level of endorsement, isn't it, really?

00:23:30Laura Cowan: Yeah. It is very cool when you see people on Twitter share screenshots of the badges.

00:23:36Melissa Erbacher: Well, we'll have to start doing that. I mean, I think it's probably, of all the topics that we keep coming back to, there's just so many different challenges and things like that in there that you could have conversations about, and especially for parkrun adventurers who love travelling around. And as Scotty mentioned, collecting things, you know, it's just opened up a whole new world of, ooh, I didn't know that existed. Oh, I would like to start chasing that down sort of thing. So... Do you know how many people have downloaded and installed it?

00:24:13Andy Taylor: So the Chrome and now the Firefox web stores do give you as an admin some insight into how many installs there have been in total and how many uninstalls, which is sort of an interesting number in and of itself. They also give you a number to say like active weekly users. And we're not quite sure what the difference between the two is, but we know that about 6,000 people have installed the Chrome extension over the years. And we think there's probably about... 5,500 or something active installs which I think just means Chrome has been used and it's checked for updates for the plugin but sort of of those 6,000 which is an amazing number to be quite honest just under 80% of them are in the UK because it will split it down by region for you as well 14% of them were in Australia and 6% in South Africa so that's sort of our global reach at the moment

00:25:12Scott Trickett: Get ready for that to explode after this interview for the Australian contingent. Can we do a bit of a deep dive into some of the contentious challenges there? One being the P-index that is a complete mystery to me and Mel. Can you explain it to us? Can you put a clear definition to the P-index for us?

00:25:32Melissa Erbacher: And also where the names come from.

00:25:34Andy Taylor: Oh, I think the name is just the parkrun index. I don't think the P stands for anything, but I tried to think last night and I'd been lost.

00:25:41Laura Cowan: No, I think it was just parkrun index.

00:25:44Andy Taylor: So Mel got it pretty close last week when she was describing it. And that was, it's basically how many parkruns have you done that many times? So if you've done six different parkruns and you've been to each one at least six times... you've got a six, but if you've only been to a couple of parkruns, like hundreds of times and all the rest are ones, then it's only two. Cause you've only got two parkruns. You've done at least two times. You would need to get one of the other ones up to three. And then you've got three parkruns that you've done three times. So the idea is you go to your first parkrun, you've got a P index of one. But to get to the next, get it up to two, you've got to have two different parkruns that you've done twice each. So you've got to have done a total of four parkruns. So it gets harder and harder to make that seven into an eight in your case, Scotty.

00:26:34Melissa Erbacher: It gets harder and harder to understand in my mind. As it goes on. I'm a visual person. I think I need to see like a pyramid. And if at the top of the pyramid, you've only done one event one time, then your P index would be one. If you've done two events two times, your P index would be two. Is that like how it would work? Yes.

00:26:55Andy Taylor: Yeah. So I think the easiest place to look at it is not currently on our extension, but if you sort of on your normal page and you go just below all of our badges, it says view all stats for parkruns, view all stats of all parkruns by this parkrunner and your event summary page table. So at the top is the one that you've done the most. So in your case, Mel, it's Kawana there, 68 runs. And then the second one, I've got it in front of me, Noosa at five. And you can see that the top three parkruns you've done at least three times, but the fourth one is only at two. So you have to get those top four up to four for your P index to go up. So it looks like you'll be going back to one of Golden Beach, Hervey Bay, what is it, Wondi, South Bank, Central Lakes or Main Beach. You need to go to one of those twice more to get your P index up to four.

00:27:48Melissa Erbacher: Well, I need to go to four of them twice more, don't I?

00:27:52Andy Taylor: No, because the top ones, you've already done more than four times.

00:27:56Laura Cowan: Yeah. Okay. So my P index is a two because I've done quite a bit of touring, touristing, but other than that, I've mostly been at Winchester. So I've got an awful lot of ones.

00:28:11Melissa Erbacher: Yeah, that makes sense. So are there any plans to do a volunteer P index, for example?

00:28:20Andy Taylor: So, um, I was speaking to Tim, so I don't know, do you know, do you know Tim who did the tourist tour?

00:28:26Laura Cowan: Tim Glover-Pulteney?

00:28:27Melissa Erbacher: No, but we use the tourist tool actually like at work, at parkrun for work, we use the tourist tool to figure out actually like where events are, what their closest events are when we get initial inquiries so we can see, okay, well, you've got two events close to you kind of thing. You know, have you been to these ones? And, yeah, we use it at work. It's so funny because, of course, it's not an official thing really, isn't it?

00:28:56Andy Taylor: so Tim is a friend of ours he lives in Winchester as well and he's another one of the Run Directors he was actually Event Director of Winchester for a while but he's recently he now runs the juniors event which is uh also in Winchester but not at the same place um but yes so Tim um has been adding a few extra features to his tool recently to the tourist tool and I think it has a volunteer tourist tool um checkbox now so you can say which ones have I not volunteered at but that information isn't on the website it's only in the database which he's he's got access to and that's how that website works so we don't actually see any of that information so we can't get it where your volunteers were or even as we said earlier we can't see which dates your volunteers were so they're not listed on the on the page so we don't we can't get at them gotcha I did wonder how the because if you enter in your athlete id into the tourist tool you can

00:29:50Melissa Erbacher: you can select your nearest event not yet volunteered at. So it's like your NENVY, not volunteered yet. Yeah. Oh, well, that's really interesting. Wilson Index. That's a very, very popular one and one that's a little bit more easy to understand.

00:30:09Andy Taylor: That's Danny's fault, that one.

00:30:11Melissa Erbacher: That's Danny's fault.

00:30:12Laura Cowan: Yeah, that is Danny's. Well, why is it not named Norman?

00:30:15Melissa Erbacher: Why is it not the Norman Index?

00:30:17Andy Taylor: Because I think Danny was chatting with Mr. Wilson. Because he's often referring to Mr. Wilson's wife of the index fame now. But I think he was talking to the Mr. Wilson. And I don't know if it was down the pub or at a parkrun or something, but he was basically saying, I've worked something out and I've got this index for me of such and such. And I think he might have mentioned that on the podcast. And I thought, well, we can work that out. That's all the information's on the page. So we thought we'd add that as a stat.

00:30:47Laura Cowan: Yep.

00:30:49Andy Taylor: So for those of you who don't know what the Wilson Index is, I guess it's the next question. So it's to do with the event number of the parkruns that you attended. So this unfortunately means to get off the mark. So everyone's on zero sort of by default because it depends on which parkruns you've been to, not just that you've been to a parkrun. So you have to go to an inaugural parkrun to get a one. And in the UK, that's quite a contentious thing. But I think maybe in Australia, it's not quite so bad. You don't get quite the influx of people to overwhelm a new parkrun by the sounds of it. But yeah, so you have to go to inaugural parkrun. Then you've got an event number of one on your list. And then you have to search around and find a two that might be going on.

00:31:31Laura Cowan: And there's no obvious way to do that. So it's kind of luck partly as well.

00:31:35Melissa Erbacher: Well, that's what I was going to ask. And that you've reminded me now my question is, Are there plans to do a Wilson Index extension whereby you can tell people like what numbers are missing for like the first 20, for example, if they're not up to 20?

00:31:58Andy Taylor: Yeah, so I think from our point of view, we could tell you where your gaps are in maybe the next few numbers or something like that. But I did hear that somebody else has done a website that sort of brings together all of the next event numbers for all of the parkruns, because that's also not available in a very handy place on the parkrun website itself. I think you have to go to every event to see what they're... current event results are at and to see what the next one is. So from an extension point of view, I think we'd have to go to all, whatever it is, 1,500 plus website pages to see which ones they were all at and then work it out, which I don't think is very practical. And it's certainly not something we want to do in the extension. But maybe if this other person's website is keeping a list, we could go and grab that and see what the next numbers are to kind of tell you which parkruns might be coming up that would meet your criteria to get the next number. But yeah, it's a sort of a balancing act between what the parkrun website has on it and what it doesn't have on it. And if it doesn't have it on, can we work it out in a sensible way maybe just looking at one web page. But we're not going to do something where we have to look at hundreds and hundreds of pages because we don't want to be accused of that scraping.

00:33:13Laura Cowan: Swamp the website, but also it would take ages for the extension to load.

00:33:18Scott Trickett: Let's go to the Compass Club. So in Australia, it's different. Now, currently, I'm a member of the Compass Club, which I'm very happy about. But Mel is very passionate about her Compass Club and our Compass Club here in Australia. Is this going to be a possibility for you to implement this or are we just going to have to deal with the northwest, east side?

00:33:38Laura Cowan: Yeah, so it sort of comes back to what I was saying before about the filtering on countries. So being able to pick out which Compass Club is relevant to you, depending on what country you're in. And at the moment, we can't do that. So that kind of limits us other than putting everybody's Compass Club on everyone's pages.

00:33:58Andy Taylor: However, one idea we have had is so at the moment you get your badges at the top and then you get some flags below. And each time you go to a new country, we just we give you a flag. And that's quite nice to see where you've touristed and had a little adventure to foreign shores, um but we were wondering whether or not we could do something with those flags so um if underneath each of those flags there was a little cluster of adornments that you could get a bit like the stars that we put on the the volunteer badges so we could give you a navigator badge for each country and it wouldn't be sort of like one in the big long list as a as a big green green badge at the top perhaps but your your flag could say I'm a nav I'm an Australian navigator or I'm a Polish Navigator or any one of those things. And I think actually it's relatively straightforward for us to work out. So we have the list of all the data that says where every parkrun is, which region is it in? So which country or if your country has sub regions, which one it's in. And it has all the locations. So it's quite easy for the extension to scan through and find out which one has the latitude that's the highest. So that'll get you the north one and which one has the lowest and then the longitude for the east-west. So I think in terms of what the maintenance on the extension to find those parkruns out is actually quite small because it works it out it would do it every time you loaded the page so that would be that would give you the uh the ability to wipe your your navigator out next time you reloaded the page which is currently what happens with the Regionaire if uh if a new one starts up so we aren't curating that list it's working it out from the data so um

00:35:42Laura Cowan: Yeah, so that would be all right. It's just how to present it on the page, isn't it?

00:35:45Andy Taylor: Yeah. So unfortunately, I think it got a lot harder for us to rename our club once the parkrun UK put out their newsletter and said the Compass Club.

00:35:53Laura Cowan: No, I think it'll be fine.

00:35:55Andy Taylor: So we might have to tread a fine line, but I think we could definitely do something that gave you, that indicated you were a navigator. If that would have... sort of fulfill your criteria.

00:36:06Melissa Erbacher: The badge would have to be a little compass with the north, south, east and west on it, obviously. But I would then know that I've made it in the parkrun world if I had a compass club badge on the Chrome extension. That's, you know, I think I could almost retire from parkrun happy.

00:36:25Laura Cowan: If that were a legacy. You just have to remember to take a quick screenshot in case anything changes.

00:36:29Melissa Erbacher: Well, that's the thing, yeah. Is there a way to just, because this is something that we've added as an addendum to our rule after so many people had so many compass points wiped out. That if you – in Australia, if you qualify as a navigator in the Compass Club, you would have those four events set in stone for you. You become a navigator. You don't have to keep chasing them to, like, maintain the status as such. You just become a navigator because you – at one point in time, it can be frozen. Yeah. You know, you achieve that status and you don't get stripped of your badge just because somebody launches another event for another community that really needs one. I guess that's sort of more a difficult thing.

00:37:11Laura Cowan: Yeah. And in principle, there's no reason why you couldn't carry on saying that you're a navigator in this context. But the Chrome extension can't retain that information because it's doing it based on what's on your page.

00:37:26Andy Taylor: So it's currently what the, as I said a few moments ago, if you refresh the page, it calculates them all again. So if you haven't done the brand new parkrun that's just started down the road and you suddenly lost your Queensland entire region, then it doesn't know that you had it last week, if you see what I mean. So the extension has all of its data within the browser. It's not like we have a, log on to a website and a server in the back end that's calculated your progress throughout the years and has said oh you gain this badge then and then you lost it and then you regained it so I think that's probably far more work than we're we want to be sort of involved with sort of maintaining that but the nice thing about the extension is it's sort of it's all there it's just in your browser it loads it it works it out but at the same time that means that things like Your Compass Club and the Regionaires can change and drift from week to week and people can be annoyed about that.

00:38:23Laura Cowan: Yeah, and that's one of the biggest questions we get is people who say they've gone to France and they've done a parkrun in France and then the France parkrun has shut and they had a French flag and now they don't or they never, you know, they expected to have a French flag and they don't have it on their page. And Andy has spent many hours trying to work out how to do this sort of retrospectively based on your list of parkruns done but the list doesn't necessarily show you which country it was in and oh that he's still kind of looking at it but um it's not that easy to capture that information without storing it and we don't want to start storing data you guys obviously love parkrun can we hear a little bit about your parkrun story I mean tell us about Winchester and tell us about what you guys love about parkrun so far Oh, I started parkrun January 2016, 2015. Andy's checked some stats for us first. Because I heard Paul Sinton-Hewitt interviewed the summer before on the radio, and I thought that sounded kind of interesting, but it didn't motivate me at that point. But then I heard another article about it on the radio in the Christmas, I think, and mentioned it to my friend, and she said she'd been, so I was like, okay. So I went one week in the beginning of January. And then somehow, I think I was supposed to be going to my friend's house. And she said, oh, we've got a parkrun here. And so after that, I then started this whole collecting parkruns thing. And I happened to be going to North Carolina on holiday a few weeks later. So I found the one there and went to that one. And at the time, I... when we were in North Carolina we met a guy from Stockport in the UK who had been on business in Atlanta and had driven eight hours overnight just to get to the parkrun that we were running in North Carolina to do the parkrun then turn around and then go back to Atlanta to catch his flight home and at the time I was like oh it's crazy why would anybody do that and then Later, about two months later, I was going to Sicily with my parents and discovered they'd just started a parkrun there in Palermo. And I went to great lengths to organise for the three of us to go and stay up in Palermo overnight on the Friday night so that I could do the parkrun on Saturday morning. And I think at that point, I kind of accepted that I was maybe a bit hooked on it.

00:40:55Andy Taylor: There wasn't even a badge. You just do it because you...

00:40:58Melissa Erbacher: You can't go to Italy and not do a parkrun.

00:41:01Andy Taylor: Seriously.

00:41:02Melissa Erbacher: Like, who are those people that do that?

00:41:05Andy Taylor: You met Danny there, didn't you?

00:41:06Laura Cowan: Yeah. Yeah, and that's where I met Danny, actually. He was at that same Sicily parkrun.

00:41:11Andy Taylor: And, um, I started, uh, a little before that in like a whole month or two in November, 2014. Um, and I, I hadn't been badgered for a while, but a few people at work was, were kind of saying, oh, you should come, you do, you do some cycling. Why don't you give running a go? Cause I'd never run before I started doing parkrun. Um, I've done mountain biking quite a bit and done some long treks on that. But they were saying, oh, why don't you come along? And I was like, nah, don't fancy that. And then I happened to be up... wait it's this time of year it's uh there's a an event called Kendal Mountain Festival up in the lake district in the UK and they have lots of talks about um climbing and uh being outdoors skiing that kind of thing and I snowboarded um I said I do snowboard um and so I was kind of interested to see what was there but I was mainly going up with my friends who were going up and um running was not on the agenda but we were staying at my friends Anna and Gav's house and Anna was like anyone want to do parkrun in the morning I was like well I haven't got any sessions planned to go to this little festival so um I'll come along but I don't have any shoes I've just got these sort of like fashion trainers and I haven't got any shorts so I borrowed my friend Gav's shorts and his shoes his running shoes and then we went off to do the the one at Windermere uh Lake Windermere so Fell Foot parkrun so that was my first parkrun it wasn't even it wasn't even my home parkrun so I registered that Friday night and uh went off there and um yeah I don't think Anna was very impressed because I set off at the start not really knowing what I was doing I was in a in a hoodie and a hat because I felt cold I didn't know I was going to get quite warm and um I finished and Anna was a bit miffed that I came before her because she was still struggling around.

00:43:01Laura Cowan: It was quite muddy, I think, wasn't it?

00:43:03Andy Taylor: It was not a very nice day, but I had to walk a few times, but I got round and then I was like, well, next week I'm going to do it without stopping. And so I started going to Winchester every week.

00:43:12Melissa Erbacher: So you did get hooked straight away then?

00:43:14Andy Taylor: I think I did, yeah. It was can I do it without walking and then can I dip under 25 minutes? I think that kept me going for the first month.

00:43:20Melissa Erbacher: Oh, God, can I dip under 25 minutes in the first month? Yeah. My PB, which I set five years ago, is still up in the middle 30s.

00:43:30Laura Cowan: Thank goodness I'm not motivated by times. Me too. I initially started off by doing every other week. I kind of had this thing that I was going to get fit and go every other week. I wouldn't do any more than that because that would just be unsustainable. And then I got to kind of, well, doing all this travelling and stuff, I ended up going every week then. And then I overdid it by doing a bit much running during the week in between times. And so then I actually didn't run for about a year because I sort of had shin splints, but I think it was kind of muscle problems. And so I did an awful lot of volunteering then. So that's how I got into volunteering. And I did tail walking before it was called tail walking. And yes, that's how I got to know the core team then. And I think, well, I met Andy through parkrun and we both were doing volunteering and I think we got asked to do the run report.

00:44:29Andy Taylor: So in that summer, I can't remember which summer it was, was it 2016? I don't know. Our Volunteer Coordinator at Winchester said, I hear you've done some writing before or you might do some writing at work. So Tim had sort of scouted us out, I think, because he was Event Director at the time. And he said... give them a go so Laura and I sort of alternated week by week writing the run report so we we definitely got most of the way towards our 25 purple t-shirt via doing the run report but then we sort of got onto the main core team and it wasn't long before I was asked if if I fancied doing a bit of run directing so I did that first and then we sort of started doing it as a pair then because it's a it can get quite busy on a morning it's quite nice to have a sort of a two-hander with a separate pair of hands So, yeah, we've done a lot of volunteering since.

00:45:22Melissa Erbacher: Awesome. We love to hear people falling in love with parkrun and then, of course, falling in love with volunteering because I think the two definitely go hand in hand. The, um, you've created this amazing Chrome extension with all the badges. I mean, a little bit out of interest for yourselves to see where you're at with certain things, but has it motivated each of you to, to do different things and to go different places in pursuit of the challenges that, you know, have been created there?

00:45:52Andy Taylor: So I think, well, it's probably true of any parkrun adventure is you go on holiday and you work out where the next one is. Um, I think at the moment, we haven't been to as many far away, but we've kind of done them in our local county. It was definitely before the badges, but I went to New Zealand in 2016 in December. And basically, my route through the country in my little camper van was dictated by where the parkruns were. I had three weeks and nothing really planned to do. So, yeah. I said, well, I've got two Saturdays and I've got all of these extra days. So at the time there were 10 parkruns. So I ended up freedom running the other eight and running two official on the Saturday. So at the time I'd run all of the courses of the parkruns in New Zealand, which was kind of fun.

00:46:38Laura Cowan: And that's not even a challenge.

00:46:38Andy Taylor: And that wasn't even one of the, there was no extension then, but yeah. I think at the moment Laura's trying to get her P index up. So we've been repeating a few.

00:46:47Laura Cowan: Yeah.

00:46:48Andy Taylor: And we'll probably go a bit further afield when we can.

00:46:51Laura Cowan: And we went to Jersey earlier this year so we could get our J for the alphabet.

00:46:55Andy Taylor: Yeah, that was definitely extension related.

00:46:58Laura Cowan: Yeah.

00:47:00Andy Taylor: So apparently there's another J somewhere on the mainland UK now. So all those people who had to go to Jersey are now going to miss out on the delights of the island of Jersey because they're just going to. I think it's near London or something, but it's not going to be as fun, that, is it? It's like the Tasmanian trip. Yes. It's a special one.

00:47:17Melissa Erbacher: Well, that's just for the lazy alphabeteers if they don't want to head to the further distances. But, you know, the new J might be a little gem as well. I'm going to thank you both on behalf of all of the parkrun adventurers in Australia and the world for creating this Chrome extension. It has just... just blown the minds of so many people. And I know, you know, you just send the link and it's like, oh, hey, have you looked up your thing through this? You should do it. And I just know so many parkrunners who are just like, oh, my God. And then I'll get texts or phone calls late at night going, hey, what are you up to on this kind of thing where somebody has sat down after dinner and they're just reviewing where their whole family is at. I wish there was a Chrome extension that could – suck all my hashtags that I use for my son when I do activities with my son, because that way I would know where he's been and done all those sorts of things. I'm not quite to the level yet of doing it manually. Maybe one day, but I think I'll just wait until he registers. And thank you both very much for joining us on the podcast this week and letting us pick your brains and understand things such as the P-index.

00:48:35Andy Taylor: I don't know if we made it more clear or less clear.

00:48:37Melissa Erbacher: Well, Scotty is claiming to understand it better now.

00:48:41Scott Trickett: I get it now. I get it now. I think I get it now.

00:48:45Melissa Erbacher: All right. Next week I'm going to ask you to explain it to somebody new and see if it makes any sense then.

00:48:50Scott Trickett: Yeah, I probably would have forgotten by next week. But it's crystal clear right now. So thanks. Thanks very much for coming on the pod this week. It was awesome.

00:48:57Laura Cowan: Thank you for having us. And thanks to everyone for being so enthusiastic and for all the emails.

00:49:02[12 seconds of audio that could not be transcribed]

00:49:14Scott Trickett: Our Channel 5 news crew must have known that we had a jam-packed episode because we didn't get any roving reports this week.

The Perlustrationannual listener survey

00:49:21Scott Trickett: So we can head straight into the 2018 parkrun adventurers Perlustration results. Mel, I've got it up in front of me. I'm hiding the results from you. So we're going to go through them. This is something we do every year. And you and I, we like it. We like to find out what our listeners think of us.

00:49:43Melissa Erbacher: It comes with its certain level of trepidation when we send it out. Do we click that button and really put our egos on the line? But we decided that we've survived the last couple of years. So year three, we can do this.

00:49:57Scott Trickett: So the first question we asked this year was, where is your home parkrun? This is something that we've done every year. And remember a few episodes back, I made that comment about the black hole of our audience.

00:50:09Melissa Erbacher: Of our listeners.

00:50:10Scott Trickett: Yeah. I don't know what I was thinking. And I corrected it the week later when I looked at the downline figures. And I've been proven wrong once again. Because while they're not our most prolific state for listeners, New South Wales comes in second with 24%.

00:50:27Melissa Erbacher: Ooh, going into Wales.

00:50:30Scott Trickett: Trailing the greatest state. And if we, so that's Victoria, way out ahead on 30% of our listeners come from the greatest state. But if we track it, Mel, if we go back to the first perlustration, Queensland were well represented. So they're going backwards. What does that say? We're losing the Queenslanders or we're gaining?

00:50:51Melissa Erbacher: Well, who knows if we're actually losing. Losing, yeah, it's hard to know. We might be maintaining the Queenslanders and then just, you know, coming up strong with, you know, because we did do a bit of a concerted focus on New South Wales for a little while there because we felt like we were neglecting them and maybe that's why they weren't listening a long time ago, which is probably where this black hole idea originated from for you and you just hadn't like updated your info, I guess, over time. But also, you know, like how are we doing internationally? Yeah.

00:51:22Scott Trickett: Yeah, the internationals are growing. So we're sitting on 11.5%. Wow. Yeah, if we go back to one, it was much lower.

00:51:30Melissa Erbacher: These are the listeners who've completed the perlustration. So that doesn't necessarily mean that there aren't.

00:51:37Scott Trickett: It doesn't, but I think it's a good snapshot. We're using it as an accurate sample size.

00:51:43Melissa Erbacher: Okay, fair enough.

00:51:45Scott Trickett: Yep. We have a very experienced... Bunch of parkrunners, which I'm not surprised because if you invested enough in a parkrun podcast, then you've obviously done a few. And that's true. So over 50% of our parkrunners have done at least 100 parkruns. 10% have got their green 250 shirt, which is an impressive figure. We don't have anybody who's listening to the podcast who's never been to a parkrun.

00:52:09Melissa Erbacher: So your mum and my mum, I guess, you know, they've been to volunteer as such.

00:52:17Scott Trickett: Oh, well, maybe they didn't fill it out. That hurts.

00:52:20Melissa Erbacher: Or maybe they were just too embarrassed to answer. Did anybody skip? Like, could you skip this question?

00:52:29Scott Trickett: Nobody skipped this question.

00:52:31Melissa Erbacher: Okay, cool.

00:52:31Scott Trickett: There you go. There you go. Question three. This is the one we're really interested in. And this is the one that we probably overanalyze more than I should anyway. And this is where we ask you to rate our segments. our so-called segments. And this year we included our banter, which we do every year, the hotline, the roving reports, our guest interviews, and the madness quiz because I wanted to get a feel of the room on how the madness quiz is being received because, Mel, you and I love it. We love doing it. We did it at Palm this year because… Live. We just thought that was the most fun thing we do. So should I go to that first?

00:53:11Melissa Erbacher: Yes, let's go to that first.

00:53:13Scott Trickett: Look, the positive thing to report is that even the hotline, there were more people in favour of it, giving us an awesome ranking than they were giving it a meh ranking. Okay. But to give you a sort of a baseline, the hotline did take a beating. So that was sitting at a 57.43.

00:53:32Melissa Erbacher: See, we knew that, which is why we let the hotline go.

00:53:36Scott Trickett: Yeah, we did. But the madness doesn't fare much better either, sitting at a 69.31. Okay. So we might have to rethink the madness or not. Or do we just look at the 69% who love it?

00:53:54Melissa Erbacher: I don't know. It's one of those hard sort of things, isn't it? I mean, maybe those people who are like, meh, don't like quizzes. Maybe they're just not quiz people. Maybe it's not necessarily our quiz they have a problem with so much as quizzes in general.

00:54:09Scott Trickett: And the other ones, the banter, roving reports, guest interviews, everybody loves them, which is great and which is really interesting. And it's a conversation we had on Twitter is that our banter performed really well.

00:54:21Melissa Erbacher: Oh, that's good to hear. Yeah.

00:54:22Scott Trickett: Yeah, so 94% went with the awesome response as opposed to the 6 miserable percent of people who said, nah.

00:54:31Melissa Erbacher: Well, what are those people listening to us for anyway?

00:54:35Scott Trickett: But that was the curiosity around the first time we did this because our banter didn't fare that well. But now it's what people want. I think it's because they've got to know us maybe, so they feel like, yeah, our banter's not so annoying when you know the people. Yeah. The next question we asked was, do we want to see any of this segment's return? And we asked about Club Corner, the ED interviews. I hopefully included the Poem Zone. And the other one we added in there was the news segment.

00:55:07Melissa Erbacher: Didn't we also have like a random one where people could tell us something else that they want to do back? Yeah, okay.

00:55:14Scott Trickett: I'm getting to that.

00:55:14Melissa Erbacher: I'm getting to that.

00:55:16Scott Trickett: Yep. So positive response for the ED interviews. So 73% of people want to see them coming back. So there's a fair chance we'll probably be slipping them back into the rotation next year. Yep. The poem zone.

00:55:30Melissa Erbacher: This is a favourite of yours. How did that one go? Okay.

00:55:34Scott Trickett: Well, you know, it was only a favourite because I love the name, The Poem Zone. And the jingle. I was like, you do love the jingle. Should we play it again? Just, no. 11%.

00:55:43Melissa Erbacher: Wanted it to come back and then everybody else was like, no. Okay.

00:55:47Scott Trickett: Yeah. No. No. And so the others, not much better. Club Corner was just sitting below 50. Oh, The News was just above 52. So we might have to think about bringing The News back, Mel. That was your labour of love. Yeah.

00:56:02Melissa Erbacher: Focusing on the word labour in that sentence. It was good fun. It was just one of those things that kind of fell by the wayside as time became more limited.

00:56:15Scott Trickett: But you're right. We did ask for others. So if there was anything that we didn't mention that you wanted to see back and have a guess what people want back now. Overwhelming response.

00:56:26Melissa Erbacher: Oh, like so the suggestions that people came up with were all the same. They weren't all just different random things.

00:56:33Scott Trickett: Yeah, so to be fair, 90% of people skipped the other, but the 10% of people who did fill it out, they basically all said the same thing.

00:56:41Melissa Erbacher: They want you to sing again.

00:56:42Scott Trickett: No, nobody said that because that wasn't really a segment.

00:56:46Melissa Erbacher: Oh, okay. A segment. Well, we kind of, we only added that one in case we had forgotten anything, really.

00:56:53Scott Trickett: Yeah.

00:56:53Melissa Erbacher: So, yeah, nothing's popping into mind.

00:56:58Scott Trickett: Remember our old mate Ian Hay?

00:57:00Melissa Erbacher: Facts in a haystack. Well, it hasn't really properly gone. No, it's just Ian's really busy. That's why we didn't add it to the possible choices. Oh, but everyone wants Ian back.

00:57:11Scott Trickett: Everyone wants Ian back.

00:57:12Melissa Erbacher: Nail him down.

00:57:14Scott Trickett: Yep. I'm a step ahead here. I've already reached out to Ian. So hopefully Ian's coming back.

00:57:19Melissa Erbacher: Awesome.

00:57:19Scott Trickett: In the next couple of weeks because we miss him too. So stats are coming back. Stats, facts, all coming back soon. The next few questions I'll skip over because they were about Palm. We wanted to get an idea of who's coming and who's not. So we've got a few people coming this year, which is great. The Contiki Tour or the Not Contiki Tour, same question. We've got a few people keen. What we did ask about the Contiki Tour was your preferred destination. So guess if it's happening, and it's going to happen, Mel, guess where we're going?

00:57:52Melissa Erbacher: Well, still following on from our chat with Tony Park last week, I'm still super keen for South Africa.

00:57:57Scott Trickett: We're going to South Africa. Yeah. Everybody wants to go to see a 50 car. So that's where we're going.

00:58:03Melissa Erbacher: Awesome. Excellent.

00:58:05Scott Trickett: If it happens.

00:58:06Melissa Erbacher: Yep.

00:58:07Scott Trickett: Now, the reason why I've kept you up so late tonight to record on a Tuesday night is because people want to see the pod released on a Wednesday, Mel. They want to get through their week.

00:58:16Melissa Erbacher: Well, this doesn't surprise me to be honest. It was, it was always lovely to have it time smack bang in the middle of the week to break it up between parkrun days. I did enjoy a Wednesday release as well. Um, I guess that just means we're going to have to try to work harder to be, you know, to be honest, and this is a 50-50 split here, organising guests when we don't think about it until Monday or Tuesday. It's kind of hard to get somebody to come and have a chat to us and then do it in time to have a podcast out by Wednesday. So maybe we're just going to have to start.

00:58:53Scott Trickett: thinking a little bit ahead again and being a bit more um organised in that respect I think we can question number whatever it is we didn't number them so I don't know but the next question question nine we did yeah number nine um so we asked about the other parkrun podcasts and there was a nice response about 70 of you both you listen to both With Me Now and Free Weekly Timed which is good oh Stay Frosty parkrun, not getting a lot of love. But some love. That's not surprising. It doesn't have a big marketing machine or a big name behind it.

00:59:29Melissa Erbacher: And it's just a new offering as well. It is.

00:59:32Scott Trickett: Yeah. Marathon Talk, we also asked about Marathon Talk because technically it's Stay Talk parkrun. It's hosted by the Global Chief Operating Officer, so it kind of counts. But not a lot of love, about 35%.

00:59:46Melissa Erbacher: Okay. Well, that's a third. That's not – a third of our listeners also listen to Marathon Talk. I think that is quite a lot, actually.

00:59:54Scott Trickett: Question 10, where were we coming from here, apples or mangoes?

00:59:59Melissa Erbacher: I would like to know, Scotty, your reply, apple or mango.

01:00:03Scott Trickett: So this was just to split the audience. Are you team Scotty or are you team Mel?

01:00:08Melissa Erbacher: Without being overt and sort of telling everyone which was which. Yes.

01:00:13Scott Trickett: So Team Scotty won with apples coming through with a whopping 51% as opposed to mangoes on 49%.

01:00:23Melissa Erbacher: Yeah. Pretty close.

01:00:25Scott Trickett: Pretty close.

01:00:26Melissa Erbacher: Split, isn't it? So I guess what does this tell us about our listeners? Either you are tropical and exotic or you're just running the mill and want to keep the doctor away.

01:00:36Scott Trickett: Or you're sweet and juicy.

01:00:41Melissa Erbacher: Like a bit of crunch.

01:00:44Scott Trickett: Are you sitting down, Mel, for question 11?

01:00:46Melissa Erbacher: Oh, I think I know what's coming. Yeah, you know what? Funnily enough, I don't podcast a lot standing up. In fact, I'm not sure I've ever done it. But yes, I can confirm I'm sitting down.

01:00:58Scott Trickett: So, question 11, we asked the question, who is funnier? Prompted by Tim's analysis that I'm the straight guy and you're the wacky and zany part of this podcast.

01:01:08Melissa Erbacher: Which you built is mostly because I spend so much time laughing at you that people think that I'm funny because I laugh a lot. Well...

01:01:17Scott Trickett: The world is a mystery to me, Mel, because I'll tell you, well, the results are. We also put an option in there, too hard to call. I'm pleased to report that 49% of you said it was too hard to call. So 50% of you are really nice people and we love you because you can't choose. You did the right thing.

01:01:36Melissa Erbacher: Or you didn't want the resultant ego smashing to happen.

01:01:41Scott Trickett: I want to talk to the other 50% of the listeners.

01:01:45Melissa Erbacher: Okay, what do you want to say to them, Scotty?

01:01:51Scott Trickett: I mean, it is what it is. You find, you know, humour is in the eye of the beholder. Is that what you're saying?

01:01:57Melissa Erbacher: Well, no, but I understand what you mean.

01:02:01Scott Trickett: So you're funnier, Mel, according to our listeners, on 26%, if you want a really deep dive, 26.09%. Versus how funny are you? 25.22. So you beat me by one vote.

01:02:14Melissa Erbacher: Well, that was probably my mum, so I wouldn't be too concerned. Actually, no, that wouldn't have been my mum because she thinks you're funnier.

01:02:20Scott Trickett: So I checked in on this like last week. That was miles in front of you.

01:02:25Melissa Erbacher: It was being funnier.

01:02:26Scott Trickett: Yeah.

01:02:27Melissa Erbacher: Yeah.

01:02:28Scott Trickett: So the last, like, so since Monday, so since we put that post up reminding people, it's all been you. So you've obviously been hilarious the last couple of episodes.

01:02:37Melissa Erbacher: Well, everyone feels so sorry for me because I've had such a rock trot at parkrun lately.

01:02:45Scott Trickett: I saw this result a week ago and I was all ready to come on and gloat. I'm thinking, yes. I'm not just a straight miserable guy. But then there you go. You beat me by one vote.

01:02:55Melissa Erbacher: Well, the thing is I wrote the Facebook post reminding people to come along and check it out and stuff. And they could probably tell by the language that it was mine. And so it might have just been fresh in their minds that, oh, yeah, Mel's excited and positive and happy. We'll say she's funnier.

01:03:13Scott Trickett: Maybe. Anyway, it is what it is. I've moved on. I do have the names of everybody who voted for you. And I'm going to be having some very earnest conversations with some people.

01:03:26Melissa Erbacher: You know what? I think of all the ways to have that go, I think egos should have come off pretty well.

01:03:35Scott Trickett: Yes. Should we come back next year? Yep. So people want us to come back, which is great. Why would you be listening if you didn't? Well, two people.

01:03:46Melissa Erbacher: Two people. So they're obviously just filling in the survey for a free watch and they haven't actually been listening to us. Yeah. But they saw the link on Facebook, so they probably forgot to unfollow us.

01:03:57Scott Trickett: Good on you. That's what I say. Yeah, have your say. And good on you. So that's it. The 2018 parkrun adventurers Perlustration results are in. And as we've said many times, we will use them to shape how the pod progresses next year. Basically, ED interviews are coming back and we're going to see how good if we can. And I'm going to try and be funnier.

01:04:18Melissa Erbacher: Well, don't try, Scotty. I think you do a good job of the funny. Like, you'll get that one extra person next year.

01:04:24Scott Trickett: Maybe.

TomTom GPS watch giveaway — Emma Jackson

01:04:25Andy Taylor: Maybe.

01:04:26Scott Trickett: We did have the watch, thanks to TomTom, no longer a partner of parkrun Australia, but still friends of the parkrun adventurers podcast. So they've given us a watch. And in all fairness, I've set up a wheel, which I think we did last year.

01:04:40Melissa Erbacher: We did, and we got the boss to call it out last year. We sent him the link to the wheel. But, you know, I think everybody trusts our integrity now that we can just do it ourselves.

01:04:48Scott Trickett: So here we go, spinning the wheel. Okay, the winner is Emma Jackson.

01:04:56Melissa Erbacher: Congratulations and thank you for filling in the perlustration, Emma.

01:05:03[applause]

01:05:03Scott Trickett: The studio audience was back for the drawing of the prize.

Scent of Fear book giveawaypark dog selfie challenge

01:05:06Melissa Erbacher: And we love giving away stuff. So do we want to keep moving forward with the giveaways and try to figure out how we can distribute these wonderful books that have been donated?

01:05:16Scott Trickett: Absolutely. Can you think of a crazy, wacky, zany way to do it? That's your territory. That's your domain.

01:05:23Melissa Erbacher: Well, there was nothing in the perlustration about crazy wacky territory. See, my crazy wacky zany thing is like, you know, just show up to a random parkrun and have the books and like throw them at random parkrunners walking past. But that's not going to work because those might not be our listeners.

01:05:39Scott Trickett: Well, I think we should take a page out of all the cheesy game shows, like the cash cow. I think that's a thing, the cash cow on one of the morning TV shows. I think you ring up and if you moo or something, I'm not sure.

01:05:53Melissa Erbacher: Okay. Let's get people to send in a selfie challenge. Let's do selfie challenges because then the people have to be in the photo and then – but they have to be doing something maybe with a park dog because Scent of Fear is all about people – the poaching teams, the anti-poaching teams that have the dogs that help. So maybe we need to get people to send in selfies with a park dog that's not their own.

01:06:19Scott Trickett: Oh, Mel, you're always taking that next level. Just a photo with a dog.

01:06:26Melissa Erbacher: Presumably, it's not that difficult. I mean, if you do parkrun at an event where park dogs are not allowed, then you may have to go on a bit of an adventure this week. I think we need to keep this time limited so they have to do it this weekend. We did already put the call out telling people that if they want to know how to win the books, they have to listen in this week.

01:06:50Scott Trickett: They've had to listen in a whole hour. Did you hear for the book? Yeah. Sorry, sorry, that last hour and a bit.

01:06:56Melissa Erbacher: So, and you think I'm making it too difficult. You just think it needs to be a park dog.

01:07:01Scott Trickett: Yep, a park dog. The wacky and zany photo will be the winner. It'll be judged by us. So it's not just, it's not just, you just have to submit a photo. It has to be wacky and zany.

01:07:10Melissa Erbacher: All right. And so we're happy for them to do this on Instagram or Twitter. And we need to create a hashtag that is, or maybe, maybe they need to do Scent of Fear hashtag. as one of the hashtags. Or maybe they need to do two hashtags. I don't know. How does this work, Scotty? Because we're going to try out things without missing it. And then from all the people that send the stuff in, we're not going to judge. We're just going to use those names to do another wheel decide, won't we?

01:07:38Scott Trickett: No, that's what I'm saying. We have to, we're the judges. So the wackier and the zanier you are, the better the chance you have of winning a book. If you just send us a photo of you standing next to a dog, unless we have less than six entries, you're not going to win a book.

01:07:52Melissa Erbacher: I'm a bit concerned about – we've got some pretty wacky and zany adventurers and, you know, we don't want to put any dogs at risk.

01:08:00Scott Trickett: Well, no. If the dog looks in distress, you're not going to win a book.

01:08:06Melissa Erbacher: And if we get reports – That's automatic disqualification and we may have to report you to the RSPCA.

01:08:11Scott Trickett: So, yeah, just tag us on the socials, all the socials, Instagram, the Twitters, the Facebooks, emails, LinkedIn, Twitter.

01:08:19Melissa Erbacher: If you want to make sure that we definitely don't miss you, just email it as well to parkrunadventurers at gmail.com.

01:08:27Scott Trickett: That's how you're going to win a book, Scent of Fear. The first one's, I mean, you can't even buy the damn book and we're giving it away.

01:08:34Melissa Erbacher: To be honest, I thought, oh, I wonder how easily I could read one of these without like creasing the spine or the pages. Have you ever done that with a book? It's just sort of read it without opening the pages properly. Okay. Because I do have a copy coming, but I could just potentially post it as one of the copies instead, but I'm not going to. I did skim through to find the references to parkrun and I was very excited. I can tell you all, chapter five, chapter five.

Launches and anniversaries"Where is the cake?"

01:09:05Melissa Erbacher: Hey, so no launches again this week, which is okay because we have got anniversaries galore. Where are they, Scotty?

01:09:12Scott Trickett: New South Wales leads us off with anniversaries at Cronulla, Forster and Kamay.

01:09:18Melissa Erbacher: Kamei or Kamei?

01:09:19Scott Trickett: Kamei.

01:09:20Melissa Erbacher: Okay, cool. And then we've got three, no, four to follow in Queensland, alphabetically, of course. We've got Miles, Minnippi, North Harbour and Sandgate.

01:09:31Scott Trickett: And standing out like a shining light amongst all these is Sunbury from the Greater State in Victoria. Oh.

01:09:38Melissa Erbacher: Followed by another one from Queensland, just for good measure, Surfers Paradise.

01:09:43Scott Trickett: The Beaches in New South Wales will be there next year.

01:09:46Melissa Erbacher: And WA getting a look in with Yokine.

01:09:49Scott Trickett: Busy weekend. Hey, Mel, I'm going to one of those. I'm going to – well, I'll find out how to say it. Kamei or Kamei? What did I say?

01:09:57Melissa Erbacher: You said Kamei the first time.

01:09:58Scott Trickett: Kamei. And you think it's Kamei.

01:10:01Melissa Erbacher: Yeah.

01:10:01Scott Trickett: You know, I think you're right. When you say it, it sounds more right.

01:10:05Melissa Erbacher: It sounds more parkrun than parkrun. Yeah, gotcha.

Top three

01:10:12Melissa Erbacher: Hey, so, Scotty, we've got to do top three something or other.

01:10:18Scott Trickett: I think this is easy this week. Let's just go back into the running challenges and just give us the three things that you look for or the three things that you like about the running challenges, like your favourite.

01:10:30Melissa Erbacher: Our top three stats.

01:10:31Scott Trickett: Yeah, so when you look at it, like, do you go straight to the P index or do you go straight to see how you're travelling in the Cowell Club or what do you go for? What's your go-to stat?

01:10:42Melissa Erbacher: Okay, so I'm going. So I'm literally going to my stats so I can tell you. It's loading the geo data as we speak. This is all live and happening. Hey, did you know I'm on 148 runs? I'm only two away from my arbitrary milestone of 150.

01:11:01Scott Trickett: Do you know I'm on 99 volunteer roles? I'm only one away from an arbitrary 100 milestone.

01:11:07Melissa Erbacher: When are you volunteering your 100th?

01:11:09Scott Trickett: It'll be on Sunday at Juniors. Actually, no, I won't. I just dropped off the roster. So I'll have to wait another week.

01:11:16Melissa Erbacher: So next week. Are you volunteering next week? Oh, but you will be at Juniors. Yeah. Okay. Well, if you guys are listening and you're going to be there, make a big deal out of it because even – Yeah. Get a banner. Yeah, get a banner. Make Scotty run through one of those big paper things that he has to break when he – Absolutely. He run directs. Yeah. It's so large. That's what it's all about.

01:11:44Scott Trickett: Pack of doughnuts.

01:11:47Melissa Erbacher: Okay. But we digress. Well, what do I usually look for? Well, it's probably not correct to say that I usually check to see whether or not they've fixed the Compass Club yet. We've had that discussion. What do I look for? The top three things.

01:12:04Scott Trickett: Well, you think about it, Mel. Should I give you mine?

01:12:06Melissa Erbacher: Yes, please do. Maybe the way you phrased it, the top three things that I look for, like, yeah, I'm going to have my own take on it. But you go. Okay.

01:12:17Scott Trickett: Okay, well, I'm focused on stopwatch bingo at the moment because I'm just two off. I need two times. I need to be really a bit more focused on parkrun day about it. But I think there's something nice about the surprise that like one more number has disappeared off stopwatch bingo without me trying is my aim there.

01:12:36Melissa Erbacher: You're only two off.

01:12:39Scott Trickett: Well, I may not be as funny as you, but I am further ahead on the stopwatch bingo. Yeah, I need 30 and 48. Interesting. To get that badge. I'm also a fan of the longest tourism streak. Mine currently sits at 12. So that's a real effort you've got to get to.

01:12:58Melissa Erbacher: Longest tourism streak? What am I up to for that? Oh, I'm at 15.

01:13:05Scott Trickett: You got me there.

01:13:06Melissa Erbacher: Yeah. My longest PB streak, I bet, is not as good as yours.

01:13:11Scott Trickett: Well, you'd be surprised. Well, there you go. Mine's two.

01:13:14Melissa Erbacher: Oh, mine's two as well. Yep. We match. Good old PBs. And what's your third one? Sorry, I interrupted you.

01:13:23Scott Trickett: And I'm always looking at my NENDY to make sure that that's front of mind. And it's currently Wilson Botanic, which it has been for a while now.

01:13:31Melissa Erbacher: Which is how far away from you?

01:13:33Scott Trickett: 36 kilometres away from me. Have you had time to think about yours?

01:13:36Melissa Erbacher: Yeah, yeah. Well, so I'm going to do it differently. I'm not going to go like what – so if I use a Chrome extension, like if I'm checking in, basically I do just scroll down to see like my overall view of everything to see how far away I am from all the stuff. The Wilson Index I don't need to keep an eye on so much because I'm aware – I've made a little list of the ones that I'm missing and so I know if I'm going to an event that has any of those numbers, which I haven't been lately because all the events that I've been visiting are sort of quite established. So basically I'm going to make it be the top three that I think are like the funnest, most interesting ones. So I keep an eye on my tourist quotient, which, you know, obviously the higher that is, the more you've been travelling around. The total distance travelled for me is bittersweet because it should be over – 100,000 now, but it isn't because of my cancellation in Tasmania. So because I travelled all that way, but it doesn't get added because I didn't run the event.

01:14:46Scott Trickett: Why did you bring that up again?

01:14:48Melissa Erbacher: Oh, well, you know, it takes time for people to move past traumatic experiences. But I do like, and this is, I think this is only new, the furthest travelled. So that's something else that I like to keep an eye on. So those would be my top three. Now, two weeks ago when we first introduced our top three, we had the top three things on a to-do list that we think all parkrunners should do. And we did ask people to send us in their to-do lists. And we got one from Bruce Purdy last week, but it arrived either after we'd already recorded or we didn't see it until after we recorded. So we didn't use it. in the podcast. We do want to share Bruce's list. However, we're going to wait to do that next week because we want to know what your top three Chrome extension stats are and why. So send those in as well and we will do a wrap up of all of them next week.

01:15:42Scott Trickett: Great idea, Mel. In the interest of keeping this short and sweet for episode 139, we've almost broken our record. Maybe. Not quite. Our Christmas episode last year was quite long.

01:15:53Melissa Erbacher: Are you getting excited about Christmas, Scotty? Look, I haven't brought this up and it's not in the run sheet. Did you know Vanessa Gibson has done a podcast called Christmas Podding?

01:16:05Scott Trickett: Have you listened?

01:16:06Melissa Erbacher: I haven't. I've downloaded it ready to listen and I'm so excited. She went early.

01:16:12Scott Trickett: Like, I love Christmas. You know, the people that start moaning and bitching about Christmas, I don't get that. It's a happy time of year. Might have gone a bit early in mid-November with the Christmas podcast.

01:16:25Melissa Erbacher: No, no. See, in a Gibson household, I'm pretty sure the Christmas tree goes up in September. It does.

01:16:31Scott Trickett: It does.

01:16:31Melissa Erbacher: If anything, this podcast is late to the party. Yeah.

01:16:36Scott Trickett: So I haven't listened to it. It's on my radar. So let's listen to it next week and give a critique review.

01:16:42Melissa Erbacher: Yes. So that's Vanessa Gibson who will be celebrating the anniversary of Sandgate parkrun this weekend as co-ED there with her husband, Dean.

01:16:50Scott Trickett: Great. There's a challenge for our listeners too. Check it out. What's it called? Give me a reminder again.

01:16:55Melissa Erbacher: Christmas Podding.

01:16:57Scott Trickett: Christmas potty.

01:16:57Melissa Erbacher: Yeah, so it's like a play on words, which I think is very clever. I love it when people do puns like that.

Sign-off

01:17:02Scott Trickett: That's episode 139 of the parkrun adventurers. Come back next week on a Wednesday when we'll have episode 140.