Episode 159 - Kelly & Charles Hodges

Welcome

00:00:16Scott Trickett: It's deep in the night in sleepy old Research. The suburb, not the facility. And I said we weren't going to have an episode this week, but I lied. You lied, you can't stay away. I can't, I'm addicted to podcasting. And that is Mel Erbacher. Thanks for joining me again, Mel.

00:00:35Melissa Erbacher: You're very welcome, Scotty. I'm always happy to be here.

00:00:38Scott Trickett: You know, you weren't prepared because I put you on notice and said, nah, having a week off, and then here we are, recording again.

00:00:46Melissa Erbacher: Here we are. It's like it was only days ago that we recorded another podcast.

00:00:52Scott Trickett: It is. So we're recording earlier in the week. I'm not officially on holidays yet. So I thought let's sneak in a podcast because I still want to hear what's happening in Mel's world. And, you know, the world, the podcast world blew up with your idea from last week. So I thought maybe she's got another one she wants to share with us.

00:01:10Melissa Erbacher: Oh, well, you're springing all sorts of things on me. No, no other ideas, sorry.

00:01:16Scott Trickett: Okay.

00:01:18Melissa Erbacher: Maybe by the end of the podcast, I'll come back to you.

00:01:20Scott Trickett: Okay, okay. But I'm talking about the V-index, and the more I've studied it and looked into it, it's good. It's quite easy to follow. You can track it yourself, as we talked about, but someone has suggested that the running challenges can do it already.

00:01:38Melissa Erbacher: Well, we might have to send Andy and Laura a little polite email for something to look at perhaps in two or three years when they get a bit of a break from all the other requests I'm sure they've got. There's no pressure, especially because in the meantime, people can track it themselves or figure it out themselves. And they can do that from the running challenges page as well. In fact, it's probably easier than doing it from their email.

00:02:02Scott Trickett: So speaking of, did you increase your V index on Saturday?

00:02:06Melissa Erbacher: Um, I didn't increase it directly. I did do a role that I haven't, um, that I haven't done as many of as the other ones. So I worked on it, but I didn't go up in increment just yet. Yeah. How about you, Scotty?

00:02:24Scott Trickett: No, well, I was running. I visited, um... Working on my P index, playing a really long game, went back to Ballarat for the third time.

00:02:33Melissa Erbacher: Okay. Nice. It must have been quite brisk, I'm assuming, in Ballarat. It was cold in Queensland on Saturday. I don't know if you saw all the memes on social media about everybody up here freezing, but it was colder, I think, actually, than Melbourne in many places. Yeah.

00:02:53Scott Trickett: Well, I can tell you it wasn't, but I did see a lot of comment from Queenslanders. Always makes us chuckle.

00:03:02Melissa Erbacher: Yep, chuckle, I'm sure is the word.

00:03:05Scott Trickett: Yeah, so you mentioned Ballarat's. It's a bit notorious for being cold. It was actually pretty mild on Saturday. Okay. I was expecting the worst, and it was manageable, very manageable. Ran around in my shorts and T-shirt, which I would have done anyway, but...

00:03:20Melissa Erbacher: Shorts and T-shirt. I wore a beanie, a scarf, gloves, as many layers as I could wrap around myself. Jeans, knee-high socks underneath my jeans. I even wore sneakers. I've only been doing the slip-on shoes for the last couple of weeks because laces are very challenging for me. I wore sneakers and I got somebody else to tie my laces when I got to parkrun just so I wouldn't trip. Because I literally cannot reach them. It's ridiculous and laughable.

00:03:55Scott Trickett: What's the showman doing? Too busy to tie up his shoelaces?

00:03:58Melissa Erbacher: He was in bed. He was too cold and snuggly. Yeah, yeah. He stayed at home and so I left Wesley at home with him as well. So me and the not quite mini Erbacher, who's coming soon, we ventured out and the two boys stayed at home, soft and snuggly in their beds.

00:04:21Scott Trickett: You know, bring this back to me. I'm coming up there in a day or so. I'm coming up there to escape the cold of Melbourne.

00:04:29Melissa Erbacher: I did warn you. I hope you bring a hoodie of some description.

00:04:33Scott Trickett: I want resort pools. I want pina coladas by the beach or at the beach. This is not filling me with much hope.

00:04:41Melissa Erbacher: Well, did you not see that coconut oil has solidified in Airlie Beach? Apparently. Even as far as far north Queensland, it's getting quite crisp.

00:04:54Scott Trickett: Yep. Back to Ballarat, though. Back to Ballarat. And we're continuing the winter theme because you catch up with Kelly later on in this episode. I felt like I was carrying the show a bit lately, so I'll let you take all that responsibility on.

00:05:10Melissa Erbacher: Yeah, we'll see how well that went.

00:05:12Scott Trickett: Yep.

00:05:13Melissa Erbacher: I think I did a better job than last time. Do you remember that time that I had Tim co-hosting and the sound was terrible? I think I did better than that.

00:05:22Scott Trickett: You mean our lowest downloaded episode ever?

00:05:26Melissa Erbacher: Is that our lowest download? I can't believe that. Is it because it was missing the Scott Trickett factor?

00:05:33Scott Trickett: I didn't say that, Mel.

00:05:36Melissa Erbacher: Okay.

00:05:37Scott Trickett: Stats don't lie.

00:05:39Melissa Erbacher: Stats don't lie. Okay.

00:05:42Scott Trickett: Hey, let's go back to my trip to Ballarat, if we can. Again, bring it back to me. I did have a great morning on Saturday. They celebrated their fourth anniversary. Our ambassador up there, Bruce, he did a great little speech. And I got a bit nervous. And I hope Bruce doesn't mind me telling you this. So Bruce did the, he awarded the ED with the plaque, which was nice. He started reeling off some stats. And one of the stats was that Ballarat's a bit faster than all the others. And I go, oh, Bruce, where are you going with this? And then he said, the other stat that I like is that I've got 50 names in my phone. They're all names of people with parkrun at the start. So it's parkrun, Scott, parkrun. Kylie parkrun John and so that just shows that uh what parkrun has given to him is all these people these new people into this world I thought that was a really nice touch and it links back to me because the reason I was there and and for the rest of the time I was in Ballarat is because um ricky who we've had on the podcast before and she helps us out she writes some awesome um articles for the newsletter and does some social media work for us um We had dinner with her and her family, her lovely family on Friday night, and that was just lovely. Didn't talk parkrun too much. Well, that's a lie. Probably talked parkrun most of it to her husband, who's never been to parkrun, but is the expert on parkrun, which was an interesting thing. Side note.

00:07:08Melissa Erbacher: He's never been, but he's an expert on it.

00:07:11Scott Trickett: He's an expert. He's a great advocate of parkrun. Tells all his friends, tells all his family he should go there. So Ricky's trained him well, obviously.

00:07:17Melissa Erbacher: But what does he do on Saturday mornings?

00:07:21Scott Trickett: Well, he just stays at home. He looks after the kids. And I think he's quite happy doing that. He's a treadmill evening runner.

00:07:28Melissa Erbacher: Okay.

00:07:29Scott Trickett: Which doesn't work.

00:07:30Melissa Erbacher: Fair enough.

00:07:31Scott Trickett: For parkrun. But great guy, as Ricky's whole family, his kids and everyone. But then, so we're contemplating maybe looking for somewhere else to live, not really sure what to do. So Ricky gave us a tour around Ballarat later in, well, after parkrun and after breakfast. So it was the extension of parkrun. Here was someone who's been introduced to my life through parkrun. We live in completely different towns, have only met, I think, once before. But we had an awesome 24 hours together, brought together through parkrun. Common story. Bruce tells it. We all know it. We all live it.

00:08:10Melissa Erbacher: But, yeah, it's real. I like it. The connections, they extend way beyond the Saturday morning, don't they? Yeah.

00:08:19Scott Trickett: They do. They do. So to wrap up the whole Ballarat experience, it wasn't cold at Ballarat.

00:08:26Melissa Erbacher: It wasn't cold. See, that's the thing. I literally had people who were down in Melbourne who were sending me weather app, like, screenshots, and their temperatures were higher than they were in Queensland. You know, it was – It was very Baltic. I almost wore – you know how the first parkrun event of winter every year, South Bank parkrun, do a onesie run? You might remember that we talked about it briefly last year. And last year – no, it was two years ago, actually. I wore a onesie at Kawana because I couldn't make it to South Bank. And so, I was a pregnant unicorn who was timekeeping two years ago. And this year, I thought, oh, I should do that again. But you know what? I didn't because the onesie doesn't fit over the belly this time.

00:09:14Scott Trickett: Oh, okay.

00:09:16Melissa Erbacher: Yeah, and so I didn't want to be that person who's, you know, got the guts sticking out between the buttons. Popping out. of the pregnant unicorn onesie. So yeah, didn't wear the onesie, hence all the other layers, but that's okay. Fortunately, the volunteer bibs just add that extra little thermal capacity to keep everyone warm. And you know what? Volunteering makes you warm just because there's so much extra joy and happiness and smiling and high fives and thank yous and stuff. So yeah. I had a good morning despite the bitterly cold weather and hopefully it warms up a little bit for you this week, during the week, Scotty, so that you don't have to experience Melbourne-like weather when you're here.

00:09:59Scott Trickett: It better. I found a pair of pants during the week, had a couple of meetings, so kind of had to wear pants, but I'm not bringing them to Noosa, the Sunshine Coast.

00:10:10Melissa Erbacher: No, they don't set, you don't usually see people in pants up here anyway.

00:10:14Scott Trickett: Good, good.

Nutrition Q&A with Kelly Hodges

Interview Kelly Hodges — Resident nutritionist (recurring contributor); dietitian, returning from maternity leave

00:10:27Melissa Erbacher: It's been a while since we've heard her voice on the podcast. She's had a little bit of a break because she's welcomed new men into her life and into the lives of the parkrunners around the world. His name was Charles. He's very cute and cuddly. Her name is Kelly and she's our resident nutritionist. Kelly Hodges, welcome back to the parkrun adventurers podcast.

00:10:52Kelly Hodges: Thank you so much, Mel. It's so good to be back and yeah, it's good fun having a little park baby now who goes along to parkrun and gets passed around and yeah, it's awesome. I'm loving the mum life, the new life that I've been gifted with.

00:11:10Melissa Erbacher: Awesome to hear. Now, last week, Scotty actually did a bit of a segment without me and he hosted and asked all the questions. So we're kind of trying something new this week and I'm going to do likewise. So Scotty's not here for this part, but hopefully I'll be able to ask you some semi-intelligent questions. Sounds good. All right. So let's get going. Where are we? You know, it's almost winter. The first day of winter, probably a lot of people are listening to this in the early days of winter. So I know I've been getting cold and wanting to hibernate, not unlike a bear and things like that. It's probably not going to do a lot of good for my running. But fortunately, we've got parkrun to get us out of bed at least once a week.

00:12:01Unidentified speaker: Bye.

00:12:02Melissa Erbacher: One question I do have though is the whole hibernating thing. Obviously humans don't do it but there is a bit of an inclination to want to do it. So is that coming from like a physiological thing? Is there some part of our body that's wanting to do that and therefore should we all be eating a lot of food now and stocking up and building up our winter coats and therefore like burning through it just with a lot of sleep or what's going on with winter in our bodies? Yeah.

00:12:32Kelly Hodges: I feel we should totally be just like stocking up and eating and getting all of the winter fat on so that we can then sleep the winter away and wait for summer.

00:12:42Melissa Erbacher: Excellent. I love that answer. That sounds good to me.

00:12:45Kelly Hodges: Yeah, so let's just move on from there because I feel that's the answer that everyone's looking for. Everyone would be really happy with that. No, when it comes to winter, yeah, unfortunately we're not bears so we don't get to hibernate. We still... have to wake up through the days and eat and do our daily activities. When it comes to eating in winter, I think, I guess we're, like we still need the same nutrition. So if you're still doing the same thing day in and day out, if you're still exercising the same amount, which lots of people drop off in winter, um but then their food intake doesn't drop off with that but um if you're still kind of following your same daily activity then um your nutritional needs remain the same whether it's hot or cold outside um what lots of people tend to fall into the trap of though is the comfort eating the warm snuggly eating after dinner having a warm dessert having hot chocolates having um like hot breakfast, like pancakes and everything like that during winter, just in effort to warm up. And I think that's where lots of people can kind of almost like fall off the bandwagon because they've got all of these lovely warming foods, comforting foods, watching movies, having the chocolate and everything and then with that it's also a bit too cold to hop up in the mornings to to run to make it to the gym to go swimming and so I think it's um well whether it's hot or cold um your nutritional needs um stay the same so you just have to kind of keep a tab on what you're eating and how much you're exercising and then kind of just adjust it um based on how you change during the colder months.

00:14:47Melissa Erbacher: So if we're upping the intake of those warm goodies, like the hot chocolates and things like that, should we be trying to increase our...

00:14:56Kelly Hodges: exercise and things to compensate as it were yes absolutely unless you're wanting to put on the winter fat for hibernation then you don't need to but if you're not wanting to put on the winter fat then yeah you need to compensate with increased exercise as well Okay, I'm okay with a little bit of winter fat. We'll see how we go. Yeah, we just left that with the first answer with eat more and hibernate. Eat more and then just get a lot of sleep.

00:15:27Melissa Erbacher: Deal with it in spring, summer when it gets a bit warmer. Yeah.

00:15:31Kelly Hodges: Oh, my gosh. That sounds amazing. Could you imagine if humans did that where we did just eat and then hibernate all through winter and then wake up when it's like nice and sunny and all of that? That would just be amazing.

00:15:44[other]

00:15:44Melissa Erbacher: Yeah, it sounds like Charles is giving it his thumbs up anyway. Yeah. So that brings me to another thing because you mentioned it's like a comfort eating thing, people people want the warming things to warm up and yeah I I'm the first person to admit that I've already started increasing the amount of hot chocolates that are in my normal daily intake just because you know as much as anything I like to hold on to the hot mug it's not even necessarily about getting the stuff in like if if I can just hold on to a hot cup of Boiling water for half an hour, I'm happy. But I do have a lot of trouble drinking water as it is because I don't feel so thirsty. It's, you know, it's not – I don't feel as dehydrated as I am. Do human levels of hydration and things like that, like do our needs drop in the winter or are we still supposed to be aiming for a particular –

00:16:46Kelly Hodges: um you know number when it comes to drinking water or staying hydrated well that's a really good question and I guess it goes back to um what your needs are and what your activity levels are so When it comes to, let's say, summer, especially in Australia, you are obviously sweating a lot more. And so therefore, as you're losing fluids, you're needing to replace your fluids. You're needing to replace your electrolytes when you're going for a run or doing any form of exercise, you are kind of creating your sweat a lot more quickly, like your body is perspiring and therefore you're losing fluids a lot more quickly. When it comes to winter, you're not really sweating throughout the day, so you're not losing that water. And then also when you're exercising, maybe you're instead of sweating within the first couple of minutes, you may be sweating closer to about the 25, 30 minute mark as you're slowly starting to warm up. So again, you're not really losing as much fluid. So therefore, you don't need to drink as much water throughout the day, but you still need to have enough so that you are replenishing anything you lose. And also just for daily processes, like to flush out your body, you need to be having your water. So In winter you don't need as much, but you definitely still need to be drinking a decent amount. And, I mean, that changes for everyone, maybe about one and a half litres as kind of like a goal figure for the average person during winter is a good amount. But when it comes to the water, you don't have to just drink water. Like you can jazz it up and something like tea or something Any non-caffeinated beverages that are water-based, they're all counted towards water intake. So be it soup or broth or stock or just like a simple cup of tea, all of that does count towards your fluid intake. So you don't have to be sitting there drinking water. You can have a nice hot cup of tea instead and that would help count towards your fluid intake.

00:19:08Melissa Erbacher: So I do know, obviously, it's a little bit of different proportions and things like that, that tea, even black tea, is still caffeinated. There are teas that aren't caffeinated and things. But is there a certain level? Like I know, obviously, coffee is a lot more caffeinated. So are people going to dehydrate themselves or impact themselves in other ways if they sort of increase the caffeine-y type things? Or are there particular... types of tea that you can recommend that aren't as caffeinated as black tea can be?

00:19:45Kelly Hodges: Yes, awesome question. So caffeine is a diuretic. So caffeine, if you're having it in large quantities, it does absolutely dehydrate you. That's why anyone who drinks a lot of coffee through the day, which most people do, they will generally land up with headaches and kind of signs of dehydration towards the middle of the day or kind of like your 3 p.m. They get the energy slump, the headaches, just kind of struggling to get through the latter half of their day. But, yeah, so when it comes to tea, tea is also caffeinated, not as strong as coffee. You can get uncaffeinated teas. or decaffeinated teas. And you can also get rooibos tea, which is like a South African tea that doesn't have any caffeine in it. And that one tastes a lot like black tea. So instead of English breakfast, you could be using something like a rooibos tea. Also your herbal tea, so your fruit flavoured teas, they're really good as well. When it comes to coffee or anything that's like highly caffeinated, so be it coffee or energy drinks or iced coffees even, things with the high caffeine content. We do say for those, if you're having like a cup of coffee, for example, then you need to compensate that with a cup of water as well. And so when you're having coffee, it doesn't count towards your fluid intake because it's got the caffeine.

00:21:27[other]

00:21:27Melissa Erbacher: Sounds like Charles agrees with you there too. You're training him very young. Yeah, he's going to be a little nutritionist in the making. Excellent. Well, thank you, Kelly. That's given us a lot of insight. I'm a big fan of rooibos, actually. Oh, awesome. Yeah, lately I've also been drinking a lot of raspberry leaf tea, which looks like chaff and smells like chaff, but it doesn't actually taste too bad.

00:21:55Kelly Hodges: Yeah. You can get a lot of like the herbal teas, for example, like a raspberry one is really good. Otherwise, if you get up. Like you get like a strawberry one, for example, and if you add like a dash of coconut milk or something with it, it makes it quite decadent. The other thing is with the rooibos, something to try is vanilla rooibos. All right.

00:22:32[other]

00:22:32Melissa Erbacher: We've got a chatty little bub.

00:22:35Kelly Hodges: Charles is a fan of that one.

00:22:37Melissa Erbacher: I like the Honeybush Rooibos because it's just a little bit – I don't want to say sweeter, but it's – yeah, it comes in a yellow packet instead of a red one if people are looking for it in their supermarkets anyway. All right.

00:22:54Kelly Hodges: Yeah. Yeah. I feel all rooibos is great. And like when you get like one that's slightly flavoured, it's so, so nice as well. It feels like a dessert.

00:23:05Melissa Erbacher: Awesome. Well, some great ideas there for people to help stay warm and hydrated without perhaps adding too much to their winter coat to try and shift again later on in the season. Thank you for joining us, Kelly, and we really appreciate you making time with Charles as well, coming on board to be your little apprentice nutritionist for the pod.

00:23:29Kelly Hodges: Well, thank you so much for having me. And thank you for having Charles as well. We'll chat to you guys soon.

Roving reports & the Channel 5 News crew

Roving report Melissa Ellis — You Yangs parkrun

00:23:49Melissa Ellis: Morning parkrun adventurers, it's Melissa here coming to you from the You Yangs parkrun in Victoria. I haven't travelled for a few weeks, I've been sticking close to home but today I thought I would venture out, it's not too far from where I live to the You Yangs because there's There's a little bit of a story I wanted to share with you. And it relates to Dawn. We've met Dawn on the podcast before. I interviewed her quite a while ago at Chelsea Bicentennial. And she had a little mishap a couple of months ago now. Hi, Dawn. How are you?

00:24:20Dawn: Hi, Mel. Yes, a couple of months ago I was at Yu Yang's. The parkrun was fantastic. Had a great time. But in the car park on my way home, I slipped over and I broke my wrist. Fortunately, after the run, so I did get a time, which is very important. But yes, I came back today to say thank you to all the fantastic people who helped me when I fell over and in fact drove me to hospital, which was absolutely awesome. They say parkrun, everyone at parkrun is so friendly and here it is absolutely true. Yes, so we've got Peter here.

00:24:52Melissa Ellis: Now, Peter, you were the one that actually came to Dawn's rescue and drove her to hospital.

00:24:57Peter: I was one of the people that helped her out. There was someone else who had a space blanket in their car. But we tried to organise an ambulance, but it was going to take, what was it, half an hour for the ambulance to get to the You Yangs. So we decided it would be better to take Dawn directly to the hospital. So we put her in our car and I drove her into the Geelong Hospital.

00:25:15Melissa Ellis: That's fabulous. And you've brought a cake today to thank the community for helping you out on the day. Yeah, at least I could do. There's not much left. Lovely chocolate mud cake by the look of it. Yes, it's a mud cake. Yeah. And tell us about your experience with parkrun, Peter. How did you come to be part of this community?

00:25:34Peter: I started out a bit odd. I used to live in Torquay, and there was an article in our local paper about their first anniversary of the Torquay parkrun. And I had seen all these people running along the foreshore, but I never knew what it was about. So I read the article, and partway through the article it said you can walk as well. So I thought, oh. I'll give it a go, and I've basically been doing it every week since. I've since moved from Torquay to Lara, so I support my local parkrun.

00:26:06Melissa Ellis: Yeah, and it's a lovely little course. How would you describe it?

00:26:10Peter: Well, I find it a bit challenging for me because that first, what is it, 1.3 kilometres is a slight uphill, and that saps the energy out of me, but after that it's all pretty easy.

00:26:21Melissa Ellis: Yeah, and it's one lap.

00:26:24Peter: One lap. Yeah, no all left turns, so it's pretty easy to find your way around.

00:26:29Melissa Ellis: Yeah, and the bushland's just beautiful.

00:26:31Peter: It is nice, yeah, and you do see the odd animal. You see some unusual things. There's a group over the other side of the You Yangs that train their huskies to pull sleds. Really? Yeah. I've seen them a couple of times.

00:26:43Melissa Ellis: I hadn't heard about that. That's interesting. Thanks for helping. Well, thanks again for coming to Dawn's rescue. Oh, that's what anyone would do, isn't it?

00:26:53Peter: She literally slipped right in front of me.

00:26:55Melissa Ellis: Apparently I was very elegant. And you're all mended now, aren't you, Dawn? I am all mended now, yes. All right. And where are you off to next week, Dawn? Next week I'm off to Airlie Beach, which will be a bit warmer than Melbourne.

00:27:07Peter: You think?

00:27:09Melissa Ellis: Maybe. Yeah, Dawn's one of our very avid Victorian parkrun tourists. She's always jetting off somewhere. Yes, thanks Jetstar for those cheap flights. All right. Well, that wraps it up from You Yangs parkrun. Happy parkrunning. See you next week.

00:27:25Peter: Beautiful.

00:27:25Melissa Erbacher: Lovely story there from Mel Ellis who was at You Yangs talking to Dawn and Peter. Isn't it awesome when you hear these stories coming out of parkrun, Scotty, about people going above and beyond parkrun just being a co-parkrunner.

00:27:40Scott Trickett: It is. Hey, and nice work with Kelly.

00:27:43Melissa Erbacher: Oh, thanks. And Charles, her apprentice nutritionist who piped up quite a little bit throughout the interview. He did a very good job also.

00:27:44[other]

00:27:53Scott Trickett: Great to hear Kelly back. Love our regulars. I've got an idea for next week, Mel. We haven't spoken to the coach, so I basically haven't been running for a year. Hasn't been a year? It feels like a year. It's actually more than a year. I look at my Strava quite often these days and have a moment of sadness. So let's get the coach back on next week.

00:28:17Melissa Erbacher: Try to find some motivation.

00:28:20Scott Trickett: Yeah, maybe. We're beyond that. But let's – I just want to speak to the coach again. I really like the regulars coming back, and Steve hasn't been a regular. So let's correct that imbalance next week.

00:28:31Melissa Erbacher: Sounds like a plan.

Launches and anniversaries"Where is the cake?"

00:28:32Scott Trickett: Yeah. But this week at parkrun, no launches, but as usual, there are always anniversaries. And starting off down in New South Wales at Coffs Harbour.

00:28:42Melissa Erbacher: Yep. And there's one at Frog Hollow in Victoria. Yeah.

00:28:46Scott Trickett: Goondiwindi, Queensland.

00:28:48Melissa Erbacher: Jindabyne in New South Wales.

00:28:50Scott Trickett: Mitchelton, Queensland.

00:28:52Melissa Erbacher: Newy in New South Wales.

00:28:55Scott Trickett: Redland Bay, Queensland.

00:28:57Melissa Erbacher: And Shellharbour in New South Wales, one of our faves.

00:29:01Scott Trickett: Yep, one of our faves. And there's also one more anniversary. There is. Cannonvale Junior parkrun celebrating their first anniversary. Oh, wow. We have overlooked the junior events, Mel.

00:29:13Melissa Erbacher: Well... Have we overlooked them?

00:29:17Scott Trickett: Well, in terms of announcing when their anniversaries was, because we didn't mention Southport and we didn't mention Westerfolds a couple of weeks ago, even though I was there and it was a big, big moment.

00:29:27Melissa Erbacher: I remember congratulating Southport. Did we not do that on the pod? I'm sure we did that on the pod.

00:29:33Scott Trickett: Okay. Well, then we've neglected Westerfolds, which celebrated their first anniversary a couple of weeks ago. And it was a great day. Can I just recap that for the...

00:29:45Melissa Erbacher: Yes, please do.

00:29:46Scott Trickett: Posterity reasons because we had a onesie day. The kids embraced it. You know what we didn't do? We didn't do a big celebration as in this is our first anniversary. We didn't have cake or lollies or fruit platters or anything like that. We didn't go through stats or single out achievements of anybody that you might see at a traditional anniversary. We just said, hey, kids, we made it to year one. Have a run in your onesie. Off you go.

00:30:17Melissa Erbacher: Well, do you think kids care about stats anyway?

00:30:20Scott Trickett: Well, being the Event Director, I just didn't think they did. And I discussed it with my confidante, Kasia, and she couldn't care less.

00:30:33Melissa Erbacher: So you did some market research, basically. Pretty much. You had a focus group.

00:30:39Scott Trickett: Yep. Yep. But we got to one year of Junior parkrun and I was waiting for this so long and I thought going into it, particularly when we launched, as you remember, we went back. So the three staff members of parkrun are the Event Directors and that was the plan for year one. And before anybody asks, I'm not going to make any grand announcements on what is the next step for Junior parkrun because we're still in that assessing the pilot stage. But I thought I'm going to be in this role for 12 months and then we'll be ready to hand it over.

00:31:15Melissa Erbacher: Yep.

00:31:16Scott Trickett: And I started assessing that in my own mind. Like, do I want to do this? Like a couple of months ago, do I want to give it up and hand it over to someone else? And I don't know. It's not selfish, is it, Mel? But I'm keeping it. I've actually really enjoyed juniors. I've stopped running on Sundays. I've given up my long run and it's really affected my personal running. But I've got so much joy out of it. And actually, it's got to the point where I actually really do look forward to going to juniors on Sunday morning and volunteering. And it's with the kids, no pretension. Everyone's happy. It's quick. It's a very simple concept and I've really enjoyed it. So I'm sticking around.

00:31:53Melissa Erbacher: I don't think that's selfish at all. And look, if you're not tapped out, Scotty, if you're not... overextended or exhausted or just feeling like it's too much, then it's the right decision to keep it, you know.

00:32:05Scott Trickett: I sometimes look back. I might have given up Westerfolds a bit too quickly and I definitely feel I gave up Studley a bit too quickly because I don't know if I had this – pressure or I feel like it's the events for everybody and so I want everybody to experience it so I've had my time looking after the event I wanted somebody else in the community to do that but that's why I say selfishly because selfishly I'm really enjoying juniors so I want to enjoy it a bit more so I'm going to be sticking around at juniors through the winter months which is always a challenge on Sunday morning well you know you got to do something to keep you getting out of bed yep and all those warm smiles I think that's a good enough reason And if you're in Melbourne and you haven't checked it out and you've got a junior in your family, come on down. You won't regret it. I guarantee it. So, Mel, we haven't talked baby talk too much this week and last week, but this is your last episode for a while. Lyndell is going to do episode 160 with me next week. She is.

00:33:06Melissa Erbacher: I'm excited. I'm looking forward to listening to the podcast with Lyndell as co-host. I think she's going to be amazing.

00:33:15Scott Trickett: We've seen Danny. He's training up Mark to take over his role. I know we've already tried the Tim experiment. I mean, Tim's welcome back any time to take on my role. But maybe should we start looking at a replacement for me as well? And maybe it could be the Lyndell and, I don't know, one of our Channel 5 news crew. Gary Murphy, I reckon he'd be a great host. He's a great host. Lyndell and Gaz show. Yeah, the listener meetup. Maybe he can host the podcast.

00:33:42Melissa Erbacher: Are we talking about permanently? I don't know. You're looking at giving away the podcast now. You're just talking about you're keeping juniors and you're going to give away the podcast.

00:33:52Scott Trickett: Yeah. I've got a lot of parkrun going on in my life.

00:33:55Melissa Erbacher: You do have a little bit of parkrun in your life. These people who have lives outside of parkrun, you are not one of those people.

00:34:02Scott Trickett: I'll tell you a funny story. I'll tell you a funny story. Over the weekend, we did a Bunnings barbecue. I don't know if you've ever done them. And being a vegetarian, Mel, I'm guessing not.

00:34:14Melissa Erbacher: Not so much, you know.

00:34:15Scott Trickett: For the Westerfoldians, we did the sausage sizzle at Bunnings. It's a big production. It's lots of fun. And caught up with one of my Westerfoldian buddies, who's a listener, Stephen, and loves parkrun. And he says to me, can I talk work with you? And I wasn't sure if he was joking or not because he wanted to ask me questions about parkrun, but he didn't want to encroach because it was a Sunday. And he thought, well, that's his work.

00:34:38Melissa Erbacher: Well, that's very nice of him to ask.

00:34:40Scott Trickett: Isn't it? So that's why I bring it up. So thanks, Stephen, for recognising that there should be a work-life balance.

00:34:47Melissa Erbacher: Yeah, that's much more appropriate than somebody poking you in the belly to figure out if it was real or not on the weekend. So, yeah, well done to him for having some consideration and respect for other people.

00:35:04Scott Trickett: And that's what I'm doing for you, Mel. I'm having some consideration and respect for you, so you're going to have some time off. But, of course, welcome back when I decide. Oh, thank you.

00:35:18Melissa Erbacher: You're more than welcome whenever it is I decide that you're more than welcome. Yeah. Good to hear that, Scotty. Yeah, I'll be interested to see how soon that is.

00:35:28Scott Trickett: And I've got to say, Lyndell's been great because she's been on standby for a few weeks and there was a couple of false starts there where I thought she's on, but she just kept sticking around and she was great about it.

00:35:41Melissa Erbacher: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, she's a wonderful person. We're very lucky to have her on the news crew and now on the co-hosting crew.

00:35:52Scott Trickett: Well, not yet. We've got to get through next week.

00:35:56Melissa Erbacher: We'll see how she goes.

00:35:57Scott Trickett: Yeah. Let's just pull back on the accolades just for a minute. Great, great, great roving reporter, but let's see how she goes in the big chair.

00:36:06Melissa Erbacher: Okay. Well, hopefully I get at least enough of a chat with you sometime this week when you're up on the Sunshine Coast to satiate my need to chat to Scotty about parkrun for at least the first week.

00:36:21Scott Trickett: I'm coming straight to the hospital.

00:36:25Melissa Erbacher: Okey-dokey. We'll see how that goes.

00:36:28[other]

Sign-off

00:36:28Scott Trickett: Look, Buster's crying to get out of the recording studio, so I think it's time to wrap up 159 of the parkrun adventurers. Mel, I'll see you soon, and we'll all hear from you in a couple of weeks. And we'll update the listeners on what's happened.

00:36:45Melissa Erbacher: When it happens.

00:36:46Scott Trickett: If it happens.

00:36:48Melissa Erbacher: People keep telling me that no one stays pregnant forever. I'm not sure I believe them. I'll let you know.

00:36:59Unidentified speaker: Thank you.