Episode 189 - Happy New Year!

Welcome

00:00:22Melissa Erbacher: Welcome to episode 189 of the parkrun adventurers podcast. My name is Mel Erbacher. It's 2020, new year, same old me. I liked the me that was already around, so why bother changing? But I've got a new co-host this week. Well, new to the week anyway, not new to the co-hosting couch because he's been here before and did such a brilliant job and Those are the times that we asked him back. And I would like to say welcome, Toc, back to the co-hosting couch.

00:00:58Tony O'Connell: Well, and welcome to 2020. I hope you've got your party hat on and the party poppers going. A new year, new goals, new ambitions. Looking forward to it all.

00:01:09Melissa Erbacher: I am. So excited about the 20s. The last 20s looked like they were a hoot, basically. They had the best fashion, and I'm keen to bring the flapper dresses and gangster hats back. What do you reckon?

00:01:25Tony O'Connell: Oh, I'm sensing a theme for a dress-up run. I reckon I could get involved in that.

00:01:32Melissa Erbacher: Nothing like a bit of tassels flashing around on a parkrun course, I reckon.

00:01:36Tony O'Connell: Yeah, I'm not sure about the shoes they had back then. How are they going to go for PBs? I'm not sure how that bit's going to work. Might have to think our way through that.

00:01:47Melissa Erbacher: I don't know. They could dance pretty quickly.

00:01:49Tony O'Connell: Yep. Yeah. I can't dance quickly, but I can run quicker. And in fact, anyone I've probably ever danced with will probably tell you that I don't dance at all.

00:02:00Melissa Erbacher: Fair enough.

00:02:01Tony O'Connell: Unless you count... Trying to emulate Peter Garrett from Midnight Oil's dancing. Some people consider that a dance form. Other people, not so. I'll run with it.

00:02:14Melissa Erbacher: Would your wife be in the not so party?

00:02:17Tony O'Connell: I reckon she probably, if we were going to go out dancing, I reckon she'd be looking for some steel cap shoes.

00:02:23Melissa Erbacher: Good on you, Jackie.

00:02:24Tony O'Connell: I am not light on my feet.

00:02:27Melissa Erbacher: Well, I'm happy to have you back here joining me anyway, Toc. It's been an eventful, let's say, break, as it were, for the parkrun adventurers since our final episode of 2019 with the Christmas all happening.

00:02:46Tony O'Connell: It has, Mel. We've had some real highs and lows and it's been a very interesting time in the parkrun world. Yeah.

00:02:53Melissa Erbacher: And as we've had the opportunity to parkrun at a handful of parkruns since then, and so let's go back, Toc, and find out where you've been all these weeks of parkrunning.

00:03:08Tony O'Connell: Where have I been? Rightio. I guess we're starting back on Christmas Day. If you parkran on Christmas Day, why not? Okay. Well, I didn't actually run. I... run directed at Inverloch and we had an amazing turnout. It was one of those days every year at Inverloch, it just gets better and better. It's the parkrun family all coming together. Big crowd and the sun was shining. I know that always happens at Inverloch except for your occasion. But yeah, we had a big crowd for our Christmas day and it was a really great day. And after that one, we went to Mount Beauty for the 28th. And it's a gorgeous parkrun up there. You run around a lake. The track's pretty well right on the lake edge. You probably think to yourself, going to a mountain, Mount Beauty, it's going to be up and down a bit, dead flat. And it's a fast, great out and back course. Lovely people, lovely views as you're running around. Just another crack of a parkrun.

00:04:15Melissa Erbacher: Then it was on to the New Year's Day doubles. Where did you find yourself on New Year's Day this year, Toc?

00:04:21Tony O'Connell: Well, I should say before I get on to that, probably my highlight of Christmas for myself was my middle son came down to Inverloch parkrun and did his 50th on Christmas Day. And I reckon that was just a really cool way of clocking up the 50s. You know, really proud dad moment having the kids turn up and do the 50.

00:04:42Melissa Erbacher: Oh, that's awesome. Well done.

00:04:44Tony O'Connell: Daniel, doc.

00:04:46Melissa Erbacher: Doc.

00:04:47Tony O'Connell: We've got a doc. I went to school with a doc, actually. I went to visit one once, but not as good.

00:04:53Melissa Erbacher: Yeah.

00:04:54Tony O'Connell: And how did you finish off your year, Mel?

00:04:58Melissa Erbacher: I did not parkrun, nor did I volunteer on Christmas Day this year. We had just a bit of a logistical nightmare, basically, with family deciding where the location of Christmas was going to be and, yeah. Long story short, no Christmas for us this – no Christmas for us. Well, that's a little bit what it felt like. No, I shouldn't say that because my family might be listening somewhere down the track. No parkrun day for us this Christmas. So 25th was missed opportunity, unfortunately, for an extra parkrun. However, the 28th we were back home to see out the year with the parkrun event B course for Kiwana parkrun and that's where we start on the beach which is a little bit exciting for a lot of adventurers but not so for the locals and I was run directing that weekend and Adam actually used the opportunity to take the boys and try out the double pram himself for the first time down at Beringa parkrun because Kiwana parkrun on the stand not pram friendly for a 40 kilo double pram with children on board.

00:06:13Tony O'Connell: Yeah, I've seen the pictures. I think you'd be looking for the wide tyres on the pram to make it work.

00:06:18Melissa Erbacher: Wide tyres, possibly some kind of hovercraft situation motor going on to levitate the whole vehicle above the ground. Yeah, it's – I would go so far as to say it's pram hostile. Yeah. It's not just pram unfriendly, it's pram hostile. Something a bit different anyway.

00:06:42Tony O'Connell: And yeah, but then... From Mount Beauty, we ventured on. We were heading up to Canberra for our New Year's Day double. So we made the road trip up to Canberra and unfortunately, due to smog conditions, and we'll get onto that a little bit later, but due to smog, all the events across Canberra on New Year's Day were cancelled. So we did not get to run.

00:07:07Melissa Erbacher: It was a shocker, wasn't it? I mean, not a shocker in that it was unexpected, but it's always disappointing when the weather and conditions beyond our control intervene and mean that people don't get the opportunity to parkrun when they had hoped to.

00:07:24Tony O'Connell: Mel, it was really the right decision too. You could chew the air outside. It was that thick. And I really feel for the people up in, right up the eastern seaboard that have had those conditions. But, yeah, no, it was a great decision on the day. You could not have run in it.

00:07:41Melissa Erbacher: Yeah, and you weren't the only member of the news crew who found themselves in that situation. I believe there were three of you in ACT on New Year's Day who missed out on doubles. So that was a triple whammy for you guys. But as you say, absolutely the right decision. And you just can't do physical activity in those sorts of conditions. You're going to do more damage to yourself and it's not going to be enjoyable.

00:08:09Tony O'Connell: No. And when you look at the different websites and the advice for those days, yeah, and you look at what effects it has on the body, yeah, it's definitely not something you want to be out in. Yeah. Even just going out for a coffee in it and just walking 100 metres up the street with eyes watering and throat getting sore just in 100 metres. You just don't want to be out in those conditions.

00:08:37Melissa Erbacher: You really feel for the locals, don't you?

00:08:39Tony O'Connell: Oh, look, we were visitors up there. Mel, we were up there for a couple of days and then we took off. And back in Wonthaggi today, we've got very heavy smoke. In fact, we've probably got a heavier level looking at the air quality ratings than Canberra has today. So it's followed us down the eastern seaboard. And moving on from there, the following week on the 4th, we moved down to, we were heading to Bright. We're going back to Bright, which is very near Mount Beauty. They're neighbouring parkruns, but they were evacuated due to the fire threat. So we didn't go into Bright. We went to Benalla Botanical Gardens, another lovely parkrun, big rose garden in the middle of it, runs around a lake and down beside a river. They've got a rocket, a space rocket at the launch, at the start point. And we had a great day there. And it was Jacqui's 250th. So the O'Connells had a really big New Year's.

00:09:44Melissa Erbacher: Congratulations, Jackie. That's an awesome effort. Sorry, I mean, I don't want to overshadow. That's a big milestone. But there's a rocket at the start?

00:09:57Tony O'Connell: It's a kid's playground, and they've got this space rocket. If you have a look at their photos, it's a standabout. 10 metres tall it's a great thing right by the start line you can see it for miles so it's really cool awesome and and it's something that the kids can climb to the top of or it's just purely I don't think you can go to the top of it I didn't I Should have gone and had a go at it. You should have. I didn't pay that much attention. We ran past it a couple of times and I looked at it and thought, that's cool, and kept running. Where's the big kid in it? Not many kids playing around at 8 o'clock in the morning.

00:10:33Melissa Erbacher: Well, Wes would have given it a red hot crack, I can tell you that much.

00:10:39Tony O'Connell: So that was our couple of runs. Yeah, Mel, parkrun for you, New Year's Day. New Year's Day. What happened in your world on New Year's Day?

00:10:52Melissa Erbacher: New Year's Day was a completely different experience for me than it was for you, Toc. We had an absolutely quality adventure. From start to finish, it was just brilliant. I was not in my home state of Queensland. We had travelled down on New Year's Eve to South Australia. We went to Adelaide to grab a couple of sneaky doubles while we were down there before, well, it was the start of a family holiday for us, which had been long anticipated and much awaited. And we had lined up Jubilee Way and Lochiel parkrun to do the double in Adelaide. Very excitedly reached out a couple of days before we went down there because we're somewhat challenged with the amount of carry on that we can take with the boys. And not just actually when you travel with small children, you're allowed to take a ridiculous amount of things. The problem with that is the two little people can't actually carry any of their own stuff. So if you take your designated amount of luggage, you're going to end up with more things than you can physically carry. So we were sensible and tried to pack the least amount of things possible. That meant that we didn't take either of our two running prams, but we did We do have a little travel pram that actually folds down and fits into overhead baggage. So you can take it on flight with you, which is great. It counted as one of the boys' carry-on. But, of course, we push it around right to the last second. So it's not something you have to travel like carry on. and it ends up carrying half the other heavy stuff for you anyway. But it did present a little bit of a challenge for us parkrun-wise because obviously we either need to push them both in the double pram or somebody ends up carrying, and by somebody it's always me. Adam has not once done a parkrun with either of the boys in the carrier. Um, so to save my back, I posted in the unofficial South Australian parkrun Facebook group. And so I posted in there asking if anybody may have a spare pram that they could lend us and was going to be in the vicinity of either of those events on New Year's Day. And literally within, I think it was 10 minutes, um,

00:13:30Irene: It was sorted.

00:13:33Melissa Erbacher: We had people putting their hands up and saying, yep, I can bring it to this event. I've got another one if you want a different one for the second event. People were lining up basically to help us out, which was just amazing. And it's another example of the wonderful community, the extended parkrun family that they're willing to help out strangers and um, who want to have a crack at a parkrun when they're travelling, which was absolutely awesome. Thank you so much, Janet and Christy. We really appreciate your kindness and to everybody else who offered as well. I mentioned it was a quality adventure. Melissa Ellis was actually doing the double down that way as well. And she ended up walking with me, which was awesome. And she's got a photo of me in my Ugly Christmas Singlet with the koala on it, taking a photo of a koala oh that's so cool so it's it's got uh we're wishing you a quality adventure on the back while I'm taking a photo of a koala up in a tree so that's really cool yeah and pk managed to make it along to Lochiel too which was very cool and what else oh my gosh there was so much we also got to to meet uh parkrun adventurer listeners Parth and Irene and Chantelle and spend time with them out on the courses they were doing the doubles as well and having a great time and so it's it's one of those moments where we were aware of the other events that had to cancel and felt terrible for you guys for missing out on the fun and adventures but still really appreciative that we got to have those ourselves as well it was bittersweet but that that's where you're wrong we we did have an adventure on New Year's Day even though parkrun got cancelled

00:15:22Tony O'Connell: parkrun's about more than the run. It's about the coffee. We still had coffee. Mount Ainslie was the second event that most people were going to finish up at, which is just in behind the war memorial. They have the cafe there, Poppy's. Poppy's had organised extra staff to come in anticipating the New Year's Day crowd. And so everyone decided to go for breakfast anyway. So we still had about 60 parkrunners get together, most of them in parkrun shirts, and it was probably the first time on Saturday. a day where all the parkrun shirts have turned up dry and not park fresh. They were still in good nick. But, yeah, we had about 60 people going to Poppy's for breakfast. And it almost rivalled probably the experiences of the likes of Mount Gambier where you go to the metro and you're there for half a day. You know, we were there at Poppy's for a couple of hours. And even though we hadn't done a parkrun, everyone just sat around and talked about parkrun. And we had a great time. And there were so many of the regular people and the people that you know of that were there. It was just amazing. You can go anywhere in the parkrun world, and there's just fantastic people out there. And you can sit down and have that coffee, and you've got a shared experience. And, yeah, it was a great morning. So, yeah, we missed out on a parkrun, but there was a lot of people missing out on a lot of other things. But we got our breakfast with our parkrun friends, which was really fantastic.

00:16:52Melissa Erbacher: That's awesome to hear, especially that given poppies had put on extra staff to accommodate the anticipated larger crowd, I guess, and you're still able to go along and support them. That's really, really cool.

00:17:08Tony O'Connell: It was actually pretty funny, Mel. I've turned up at Menones and I've walked over to the start line and it was very smoggy. And I've got over there And there was about four people at the start line. I thought, oh, no, no one's come for breakfast after all this. But all the smart ones, because it was smoggy, they just went straight to breakfast. They didn't go to the start line because parkrun wasn't happening. They went straight for the coffee. So, yeah, no, that'll work very well.

00:17:33Chris: Mm-hmm.

00:17:36Melissa Erbacher: Well, my other parkrun days since then have not been exactly according to plan by any means.

00:17:47Tony O'Connell: But they were an adventure, Mel. You had an adventure.

00:17:51Melissa Erbacher: Yes. Yes, adventures were had. Some adventures I could actually well do without. Some might call them misadventures. Yeah. Okay, so I am about to break the fourth wall or I'm not even sure if it is a fourth wall in podcasting. Peeling back the curtains, as Scotty would say. I did give TOC the big rundown of the whole podcast. Misadventure, that was our time on Kangaroo Island, but it went for a very long time. Not exaggerating when I say it was the longest intro I have ever recorded in the history of the pod, and at more than an hour, I didn't think you guys would really want to stick around for that. So I have re-recorded this little bit, which it's the short version. So bear with me. This is the short version. And we'll head back to the normal stuff with me and TOC shortly. So... Many people, if you watch news the world over, would be aware of the total devastation that is currently being caused by fires across the country in Australia at the moment. People watching or reading the news are likely to have seen that Kangaroo Island, off the coast of South Australia, is one of the areas that has been hit in recent weeks. On the 2nd of January, Adam and myself left Adelaide with the boys and caught a ferry from Cape Jervis to Penneshaw on K.I., To begin our planned six-day adventure on the island, which was going to include Kangaroo Island parkrun, as well as taking in all the wonder and glory of the place, which is known for its beauty and its abundant wildlife and its stunning national parks and beaches. So let me give you some background on KI as informed by Wikipedia. On with me now, they call this parkrunpedia. So guys, I'm pinching a little bit of your stuff. The island is approximately 145 kilometres long from west to east and between about a K and 54 K from its narrowest to widest north-south points. Its area covers 4,405 square kilometres and it has a coastline 540 kilometres long. Remember that 540 kilometres. As at the 2016 census, KI had a population of 4,702 people and it's the third largest island in Australia after Tasmania and Melville Island, covering 4,405 square kilometres or 1,701 square miles for our overseas friends. It isn't small. To give you some context to the geography of events that happened while we were over there, the fire began and was primarily located at the western end of Flinders Chase National Park. That was before we got there. The ferry terminal is at Penneshaw on the eastern end and is about 100 kilometres drive from the accommodation we were staying at, which is located in the centre and on the north coast of the island near a place called Stokes Bay. On our day of arrival, at any given time, we were probably about 50 kilometres from the fire front. But this changed significantly over the next 24 hours after we arrived. Sorry, I said the short version. The short version of our story is that we had a somewhat stressful first night stay, keeping up to date with the fire warnings and movements as much as we could with, at best, severely limited phone service. We might have had, you if we moved to a certain place out on the hill, sort of cliffside. Friday the 3rd of January was forecasted to be a scorcher reaching 38 degrees Celsius and with winds that would create extremely difficult conditions for the fireys who were battling blazes. that had already been burning on the island for weeks. About mid-Arvo on Friday, a fellow tourist staying near us came and knocked on our door to check that we knew what was going on and to inform us of the latest updates about the level of alert from local police who they had met on the road. Bless her. It's so lovely to see people so concerned for other people's wellbeing and you don't take risks in these situations. So we tuned into the local radio station, which we should have probably done earlier given the terrible signal that we were experiencing with our phones and trying to get updates through the CFS and stuff. But anyway, we finally did tune into the local radio station who were already playing the alert messages every 15 minutes and they were strongly encouraging everyone to leave while they could before the forecasted changes to the wind direction put us in the direct line of danger. They were directing people to safer places, which at that point were Kingscote and Penneshaw. So from Stokes Bay, we evacuated to Kingscote, which is the largest town on the island. And it's a 42 kilometre drive east from where we were staying. We had a very short amount of time to take action and leave before it was going to be too late to do so. The radio warnings, they all start with an alarm, which is very scary to hear. It gets your blood pressure going up immediately. And they use terminology so that you know they're not messing about. Literally, direct quote is, radiant heat from the fire will kill you. Not could kill you, not might kill you, will kill you. So they don't mess around. The roads were already closed to incoming traffic by this stage. So the road that we got out on, we passed, we had to drive around road closure signs because they didn't want anyone in there because it was in the emergency zone. And we were basically very lucky or, you know, it was smart that we heeded the advice and got out when we did because there were other people that were not so lucky. Um, I, I'm not actually going to go into any more detail about our personal evacuation. Uh, Toc did a great job of being my therapist when we recorded this originally and I was emotional, but it, it, yeah, I'm not going to go into it again. I already feel my heart palpitating just thinking about it.

00:25:03Chris: Um,

00:25:10Melissa Erbacher: It was an extremely stressful, emotionally charged and distressing time. And even now I'm still processing it all. So I want to thank everyone on the island, our locals and the tourists for looking out for each other. The Country Fire Service and the KI community were amazing. We were especially grateful for information provided to us by the KI parkrun team, um who who gave us the details to contact the lady in charge of the emergency accommodation at the recovery centre and to receive the generous offer of a place um to stay from a lovely couple in Kingscote when we had nowhere to go after leaving the immediate area of danger um With tourist accommodation options already full, there was no space left on the ferries leaving the island on Friday. The thought that had crossed our minds that we could end up sleeping in our car with the boys. So to be offered a safe haven was worth more than I can say. And we are truly indebted to Graham and Leslie who opened their home to us. Complete strangers. Scarily, the danger increased into the night on Friday and even the easternmost parts of the island were put on alert and encouraged to evacuate to safer places, which is particularly scary when you're on an island and there's nowhere left to go. Okay, so fortunately the weather conditions did improve later in the night and we all remained safe, which is the most important thing. There were extensive road closures across the island on the following days and many of those are still in place now. But thankfully, we were able to get a place on one of the first ferries back to the mainland on Sunday morning. It's a bit of a catch-22 situation, being a tourist on an island, going through what they are. So on the one hand, you want to help wherever you can and support the businesses with your tourist dollars, which we did as far as we could on the Saturday. But on the other hand, you don't want to contribute to putting strain on resources, which could and should be dedicated to the firefighting and the recovery efforts. So there's guilt. There's guilt either way you look at it. Kangaroo Island parkrun was more than understandably cancelled on Saturday the 4th. Happily, however, they did run again last weekend on the 11th of January as it was safe to do so and Tessa and the team there recognised that offering a place for the locals to come together and enjoy a little slice of normalcy during their difficult times is an important thing for the community. So well done to the team for being there and offering a friendly and welcoming place for people to move and talk together. Some parkrunners went along and actually took a bit of a video and you might have seen that on the BBC News and it was just wonderful to see. Yeah. Two weeks on, the ravine fire, as it is known on the island, is still burning on KI. So as at the CFS's latest report issued on the 16th of January, 2,112 square kilometres, or 816 square miles, has been burned that is 50 of the island and I I just grabbed a couple more stats from their latest report the fire perimeter is 612 kilometres so you remember a little while ago when I told you to remember a number from the, what do you call it, the coastline. Okay, the coastline of KI is 540 kilometres long. The perimeter of the fire, obviously it's not just around the coast, it's inland too, is 612 kilometres. 32,000 livestock have been lost. Most of those were sheep. 89 dwellings destroyed. 296 outbuildings destroyed. 276 vehicles destroyed. 500 people approximately are housed in the base camp, including the international assistance from New Zealand. 200 farm fire units are actively working on the island. These guys, the people that live there, they had some terrible fires years ago as well. I think it was 2007. This is an island that is prepared. The signage for safer places, the signage for last resort refuges is all excellent and They've all got plans in place and they have got farm fire units who are used to protecting their properties. But all those other things have still been lost despite all that. And there's 63 firefighting vehicles and aircraft, including three fire bombers and two observation aircraft, have been assisting in the efforts as well. The number of wildlife thought to have perished has not been estimated with any precision as yet. The fires are ongoing, obviously, and in the national parks, so there are just areas they can't access to even begin to take stock of what's lost. Our hearts go out to the locals, human and wildlife alike, who have been and continue to be impacted most, some with the loss of their lives, and for the wonderful fireys and emergency services doing everything they can to bring the fires under control and protect everyone, as well as the army who have gone in to help with our recovery efforts. It's very early in the bushfire season and these guys aren't going to get a break soon. And we're already seeing lots of cancellations for parkruns. If you're a tourist or an adventurer, please don't put pressure on events not to cancel or, you know, contact them in the days leading up to see what the likelihood of cancelling is going to be. They're going to keep everyone informed, okay? So... Please bear in mind they've got a lot more important things going on right now in their homes and their lives. So just bear with them and keep an eye on the social media pages for their advice and just let them take the time they need to get that to you. Okay. Now, yeah, now we're going to put the fourth wall back up, and we're going to go back to TOC. I promised you that was the short version, so I apologise. It went a little bit longer than I expected.

00:32:23Tony O'Connell: So, Mel, I think the biggest thing that we can take out of these fires, and they've been really terrible. We've seen so many communities affected, but as adventurers, I reckon the really great thing that we can do out of there is keep away from the areas until they're safe to go in. We don't want to add any extra pressure onto our local fire services and our... the local, even the water boards that are trying to get sewer and water up and going. But let's keep out of those areas and do it safe. But once they are safe, I reckon as adventurers, one of the great things we can do is we can go into these towns and we can support the smaller businesses in there. Go into some of our holiday destinations that are going to be very quiet for a while because of these fires. Go into the town... Do some shopping in the town. Get a meal. Fill up the car with a bit of fuel. Even stay if there's some places around that you can get into. And I think that sort of support is going to be really critical for these towns to move forward.

00:33:25Melissa Erbacher: Absolutely. It will be a big part of the recovery. And, of course, get your parkrun done while you're there. You know, have your parkrun adventure. Oh, yeah. You're missing a key element there, TOC.

00:33:36Tony O'Connell: There's some sensational locations out there that have been fire affected. And I think some of those places are really going to welcome the parkrunners back in. But wait till it's safe to go into them. Don't go jumping the gun. Let the places get the fires out and get re-established. And then we can really help the smaller towns out and even some of the bigger towns out.

00:33:58Melissa Erbacher: Agreed, definitely. And yeah, it's not difficult to become educated about whether or not it's a good or a bad time to enter a place. If there are active alerts, maybe stay away. That's always a good indicator that it's possibly not the best time to be travelling there for your safety as much as the other travellers, the safety of everybody else who's also there so um no that's a really great point that you make there, TOC and look we've seen so many wonderful examples of generosity and and the way that these fires have touched the lives of parkrunners is rippling out through our parkrun community in ways that you mightn't have even considered you know I mean Just a couple of examples, Mark Scarborough, one of our Channel 5 News crew, he organised through his contacts to get pallets of fresh water out to local fire services to have. And Melissa Ellis, another one of our mainstays here on the team, she is actually in the Army Reserves who have been called up And she is stationed at the moment at Puckapunyal Base, whose closest parkrun is Euroa, which is 41 minutes away. But she's not allowed off base during our operation to attend parkrun. But these are the sorts of things that parkrunners are doing to help, in general, the fire affected communities. And as well as, you know, the physical donations and the monetary donations and things that I know people have been doing. There have been a lot of people who have been running park and donating a certain amount of money per kilometre that they've been running in virtual runs and things like that recently. It's really overwhelming and heartwarming to see the response of the Australian population and even the global population to the situation we have here because it is very easy to become... desensitized I think you know we're seeing it we've been seeing it for a long time months now we've been seeing fires in our news and oh you know another day another fire but these are real people and these are real communities that are being impacted and losing lives and the lives of wildlife and Beautiful nature reserves and just wonderful areas of our country are being lost on an hourly basis, not even just a daily basis anymore. The magnitude of it cannot be quantified in a single sentence and it's going to continue for a long time. So yes, recovery is going to be a big part of our future and adventurers have a very important part to play in that.

00:36:56Tony O'Connell: And I think, Mel, we're seeing those great examples from some of our regular adventurers, but I'd also just really like a heartfelt thanks to the parkrunners out there that are volunteer firefighters or volunteer support or welfare people behind the scenes because they're really holding this country together at the moment. I think we owe just a great deal of gratitude to those people. They're going above and beyond in these challenging times and We're only just at the start of January, so thanks to those people.

00:37:28Melissa Erbacher: We've got a lot of heroes in our midst, and we don't even know it.

00:37:32Tony O'Connell: We do, and then just not the ones that wear Superman costumes to parkrun. They're out there in reality.

00:37:38[21 seconds of audio that could not be transcribed]

Roving reports & the Channel 5 News crew

Roving report Melissa Ellis — Wallaby Track parkrun

00:37:58Melissa Ellis: Good morning parkrun adventurers. It's Melissa here and I'm coming to you from the very new Wallaby Track parkrun. I've got with me Lorinda, Co-Event Director of this brand new event. Good morning Lorinda. Morning, how are you going? I'm good.

00:38:11Lorinda: How have you gone today with your event? Yeah, it's been really good. I haven't got the exact finishes yet. The Tail Walkers just walked over the line. But yeah, it's been really exciting and really good feedback. What's the indication in numbers roughly? Oh, it looks like we might have gone to about between 150, 160. Okay. Maybe.

00:38:27Unidentified speaker: Yeah.

00:38:29Lorinda: Would you like to describe your lovely track for us? Okay, so our lovely track is in a bit of a bush setting. We start, it's got some undulations, I suppose. We've got 100 a metre, 120 metre, sorry, tunnel, that you get to run through, which is nice and cool on a day like today where it's quite warm. And yeah, it runs along the edge of a creek, the Yarrowee Creek in Ballarat, which is quite pretty. And it's Ballarat's second parkrun, isn't it? It is. It is Ballarat's second, which is very exciting. Okay, so how did it come to be? How did it come to be? Basically, Bruce Purdy, who is our event ambassador, had been looking for a second parkrun in Ballarat for a while. And my husband suggested to him that this would be a great track to have a parkrun on. And then the rest is history. Bruce just approached us and said, well, let's do it. And we approached council and they were really supportive. And here we are. That's really good. So have you got a long history with parkrun? What's your story? My story is I was... Very hesitant to start parkrun. My husband and my two boys had started running parkrun weekly and they really wanted me to come along and my husband told me I had to do it for the kids as they do. Mum guilt you into doing things. And my very first parkrun, I can remember exactly where it was. I stopped and I looked at my husband and said, don't you ever ask me to do this again while I was in tears. Anyway, now I've done 130 parkruns and as you can see I've launched our own parkrun as well. So it's changed my life, it's changed our family's life. We go to parkrun when we're on holidays. It's just a great community and it's really fun to do and it's a great way to get out and exercise.

00:40:04Melissa Ellis: And now you've got your own baby parkrun.

00:40:06Lorinda: We have our own baby parkrun. That's a good way of describing it.

00:40:09Melissa Ellis: And I noticed there's a local market here. Is that a monthly market?

00:40:12Lorinda: Yep, so the market's on once a month. And, yeah, it's really good. We've worked in with them so that they know when we're going to be around and they might have extra coffee vans or extra staff in the coffee vans so people can get coffee straight away. And I've seen a few people grab sausages and things for brekkies, so that's really exciting too.

00:40:30Melissa Ellis: And quite unique that you got to start on the very last parkrun of, well, it's not the last parkrun of the year, is it? No. Oh, yeah, it is.

00:40:36Lorinda: It is. And you're going to be doing the double. Yes, we're doing the double with Ballarat parkrun, which is very exciting. So we're at 8 o'clock and Ballarat at 9.30, which is really exciting.

00:40:44Melissa Ellis: really good because you don't have much time to travel and stuff so yeah it'll be fun yes I did love that tunnel that's very unique it is cool yep all right well thanks very much for talking to me today no worries and all the best for the future of Wallaby Track thank you okay so now I'm with Natalie Harrison how are you Natalie um well thank you I've just noticed or it's been drawn to my attention your beautiful tutu that you've worn today would you like to explain what's going on here with this tutu

00:41:10Natalie Harrison: Okay, so this I made for Sunbury's 100th and it's a tutu and it's got all the colours of the parkrun milestones. Plus it's got the volley colours, so we've got some purple and orange. We've got the apricot and the red. Yeah. Black, purple, white for the junior 10s. Yep, so it's got every milestone. Even the blue. Oh, and the 250 green. Yep. Yeah, this is my special tutu that I wear for launches.

00:41:37Melissa Ellis: And how did you find the event today?

00:41:39Natalie Harrison: Oh, I absolutely loved it. It was an absolutely gorgeous course. I love the tunnels and it's an awesome parkrun. I love it. I'll be back for sure.

00:41:49Melissa Ellis: How many... So what's your...

00:41:52Natalie Harrison: journey with parkrun how many different events have you done or do you stay at home mostly mostly stay at Sunbury um but lately been trying to get out and about and I've been to three launches this year um aurora and Goldfields um this is my third here hoping to do some more touristy parkruns in the New Year so but Sunbury is my home oh very good So you've been bit by the tourist bug.

00:42:18Melissa Ellis: Yes, absolutely. It's good, isn't it? What I love about it is catching up with all the tourist community when you come out to these events.

00:42:24Natalie Harrison: So it's a real big catch-up for us. It is, and you get to see some familiar faces and catch up with these guys like Brendan and Bruce and yourself and a few other familiar faces. It's awesome. Thanks for talking to me. Thank you.

Roving report Cameron Drake — Dawesville parkrun

00:42:40Cameron Drake: G'day everyone, it's Cameron here. Happy New Year. I'm down at the beautiful Dawesville parkrun on New Year's Day. Magnificent day for it. 7.30 start. Run right along the estuary. Couldn't ask for anything better. Let's see if anyone would like to talk to me. G'day everyone, I'm here with Mitch. Now Mitch, today was a bit of a special day for you for a couple of reasons. What were they? This was my first parkrun. Excellent. And how did you find parkrun today? Yeah, really fun. Yeah, it was good. I enjoyed it. I noticed you absolutely smashed it. Yes. What prompted you to give parkrun a go on New Year's Day?

00:43:12Mitch: Well, I've got a race coming up in a few months' time and started just training for that. And I've seen the stamps on the floor.

00:43:21Cameron Drake: around here yeah so I just thought oh what's this and I googled it and saying that was on today because I was doing this yesterday and I thought yeah I'll give this a go I live locally so oh fantastic so you're going to come on Saturday as well yeah yep yep oh great yeah well thanks very much for chatting and I hope to see you around sometime thank you hi everyone I'm here with the Run Director and Event Director Lynette Lynette how you going today good thank you how was today's event excellent it's gone like great for our very first New Year's Day one Oh, this is a fantastic turnout today. Now, what was the event? It was event number 248. I'm very jealous of your sandwich board there. So you've got a special event coming up soon?

00:43:59Lynette: Yeah. Two weeks' time, we're 250th parkrun.

00:44:02Cameron Drake: Oh, fantastic. And instead of cake, we're going to have?

00:44:05Lynette: Fruit. Fruit.

00:44:06Cameron Drake: I love fruit. Well, thanks for the quick chat, Lynette. No problem at all. And I'll speak to you later. If not, come down another time.

00:44:12Lynette: Yes. Thank you. Excellent. We'll see you in five.

00:44:14Cameron Drake: G'day everyone, Cameron here once again and I'm here with some lovely ladies at Dawesville and what's your name and where are you from and how did you get started in parkrun? Just quickly.

00:44:23Jenny: I'm Jenny, I run at Maylands Peninsula parkrun and my husband got me into it.

00:44:28Cameron Drake: Oh, dragged you into it, well done.

00:44:29Jenny: Yeah.

00:44:30Fiona: Fiona, I'm from Maylands as well and I got into it when a friend of mine dragged me along in December 2012. Oh, fantastic. Yeah, to Claisebrook which had only just started at that stage.

00:44:39Unidentified speaker: Nice. Yeah. Yeah, my name's Robyn and I started in 2012 too. My old boss, John Storey, he said come along to parkrun and I've been there ever since.

00:44:49Cameron Drake: Fantastic. And how did we find today's parkrun, ladies?

00:44:52Fiona: Good. Yeah, I like this one. It was a bit tricky because we had a bit of a headwind going out and I thought, oh, that'll make it easier on the way back, but it dropped.

00:45:00Cameron Drake: Oh.

00:45:00Fiona: Never mind.

00:45:01Cameron Drake: Run with the wind. It's always good. And you suddenly get no breeze.

00:45:03Unidentified speaker: It's always good to run. I'm a bit tired because I did the New Year's Eve run last night.

00:45:07Cameron Drake: Oh, was that before or after celebrations?

00:45:10Unidentified speaker: Before.

00:45:10Cameron Drake: Oh, before. Well, ladies, lovely talking to you, and I hope to see you again in approximately an hour and a half at Tamworth.

00:45:16Unidentified speaker: We will see you there. See you. Bye. Thank you.

Roving report Irene — Lochiel parkrun

00:45:19Irene: Hi, this is Parth and Irene from the Greater State and the Greater parkrun, Westerfolds parkrun. Bringing in 2020 here at Lochiel parkrun. We've decided to turn the tables and interview the podcast crew. So big hello to Melissa E., Erbacher, Melissa Ellis, and PK. And Happy New Year to all of you. And baby Emmett.

00:45:45Parth: Yay, that's right.

Roving report Parth — Lochiel parkrun

00:45:47Parth: Hi, it's Parth here. That was Irene doing the intro. Happy New Year. We've got some questions for you guys, so let's see how we go. Hi, PK, Mal, Mal. Actually, it's a privilege to meet all you guys in person, all in the one place at the one time. What's been your highlight of the day?

00:46:03Melissa Erbacher: It was a quality adventure.

00:46:05Paul Kitching: It was a quality adventure. I didn't even know it was a quality adventure until I saw the photos that Mel showed me. There were actually koalas here at Lochiel. I mean, I know there usually are, but I hadn't actually seen them. G'day, it's PK, by the way.

00:46:17Parth: Not Melissa E. What about you, Melissa E? Ellis? What's been the highlight of the day?

00:46:23Melissa Ellis: I think the koalas, I agree. Yeah? It was either that or the wine Janet gave us. Oh, yes. No, that was the highlight. Lochiel has champagne.

00:46:33Paul Kitching: Yeah. I'm just glad I survived on four hours sleep. But anyway, and that's not because of self-inflicted or anything. Just, you know, various reasons for a rather mad New Year's Eve. But now, hey, 2020. It's all good. If I only had 20-20 vision, I would have known how good this would be.

00:46:49Parth: Hey, we've got some 20-20 vision classes. Maybe we need to leave some with you. So, have you featured on an interview of yourselves before? No.

00:47:00Melissa Erbacher: Yes.

00:47:01Lawrence: Yes.

00:47:01Parth: You have?

00:47:02Melissa Erbacher: I think you interviewed Scotty and I at Nooriooka parkrun in Adelaide. In Adelaide. In South Australia a couple of years ago.

00:47:11Paul Kitching: 2017, that was. You're right.

00:47:12[other]

00:47:12Melissa Erbacher: Don't you love the background coffee?

00:47:14Paul Kitching: The background noise.

00:47:15Parth: The background, yeah.

00:47:16Irene: The blender.

00:47:16Paul Kitching: The blender noise is nice. We're at the best part of parkrun. Of course. We're having coffee in the garden.

00:47:21Irene: The most important of parkrun experience is the brunch.

00:47:24Parth: That's it. What about Ellis? Melissa. Ellis.

00:47:28Melissa Ellis: Have you featured in? No, I've never been interviewed. Oh, really? No, I don't think so.

00:47:31Parth: Is this the first time you've been interviewed?

00:47:32Melissa Ellis: Probably.

00:47:33Parth: Oh, my goodness. There you go. We've made you famous now. We've made you even more famous now.

00:47:38Melissa Ellis: I feel very special.

00:47:39Parth: There you go.

00:47:39Melissa Ellis: I'm sure you've been interviewed before. Have I? Yeah.

00:47:43Paul Kitching: yeah I was on the podcast as the quiz but that wasn't oh of course that's right yeah and my and my daughter interviewed me for the most recent episode indeed indeed yes so um the Christmas one because I had to find someone wearing a singlet and it was me anyway that would have worked out Thank you.

00:48:06Parth: So we'd love to know about your New Year's goals. Can each of you let us know one of your New Year's goals? Go for it Melissa Ellis, you start first. Pick one.

00:48:15Melissa Ellis: Okay so my goal for this year is to get to New Zealand and do a parkrun over there.

00:48:20Parth: Oh that's wonderful. What about you, Erbacher?

00:48:22Melissa Erbacher: I have not actually set my goals yet. So my first goal is to set some goals for New Year.

00:48:29Paul Kitching: I love it. What about you, PK? Just to run more, to get back down closer to my PB. And what's your PB? 24, 27, but I'm only on, my best would be 27 at the moment. Today, I think I did 38. So, yeah, just trying to get out there and run more and look after myself more and have more me time, I suppose.

00:48:47Parth: Oh, good on you, PK.

00:48:47Irene: What about yourself, Parth? What are your goals?

00:48:50Parth: One of my goals, actually, one of my goals is to do 50 Freedom Runs in 2020.

00:48:55Paul Kitching: Oh, wow. Wow, that's very cool.

00:48:57Irene: And what about you, Irene? One of mine is to become an AC-terian, to-tory, to-to-to-torian. Because we're already, Mel E and myself and you are all Victorian statespeople.

00:49:10Paul Kitching: So how many E. pachyrins are there in ACT? Do we know? I think there are nine at the moment.

00:49:15Irene: No, there's eight and I think there's going to be nine because there's another one coming up. Right. Am I allowed to mention that? I don't know. Absolutely.

00:49:23Parth: And if there's one message you'd give to the listeners of parkrun adventurers Podcast, what would that be, PK?

00:49:29Paul Kitching: It would be just to keep on parkrunning because we know how awesome it is and how wonderful it is to meet new people, especially you guys. It's been lovely to meet some of the listeners and just see how obvious your passion is.

00:49:45Melissa Ellis: for parkrun is so oh that's beautiful yeah I think that's my message thank you Melissa Ellis make a new friend every week when you go to parkrun go and speak to somebody that you don't already know and uh yeah learn their name and make a friend good on you Melissa back our message

00:50:00Melissa Erbacher: Be excellent to each other. And party on, dudes.

00:50:03Parth: Yeah, I like it. Well, guys, thank you so much for being part of this fun little interview. And we look forward to seeing you wherever next time.

00:50:10Paul Kitching: Yeah, and thank you for the opportunity.

00:50:12Irene: And we'll probably catch up with you at palm20. Yeah, bring on palm20. Mount Barker, I believe.

00:50:17Paul Kitching: Yeah, that's it. March the 7th. There you go.

00:50:20Parth: I look forward to catching up then. All right. Thanks, guys. That's really great. Thank you.

Roving report G-Train — Downsview parkrun

00:50:26G-Train: G'day parkrun adventurers, it's the G train again here. This morning I'm at Downsview parkrun in Toronto. I did the run earlier, it was quite a nice run, very flat but undulating. Lovely course in downtown Toronto and now I'm just doing a lap with Jemima the Tail Walker and I might get her to tell you a bit about the history of Downsview parkrun.

00:50:50Jemima: hi so today is our 14th parkrun so there's a core group of about five or six people who are responsible for this new parkrun in downtown toronto um and yeah we've started off really well in this in sort of September with about 60 people we've been averaging about 30, 40 people ever since. But today's been a really good turnout. I think we've had quite a few tourists from the UK, from Washington DC, Australia. So really great to see some tourists and also had quite a few new parkrunners as well. Good conditions today. Sometimes it can be a bit icy, but nice and clear and good weather. Yeah.

00:51:44G-Train: Given that Downsview is the only parkrun in the city of Toronto itself with Toronto being the capital city of the province of Ontario and also the largest city in Canada and it's also the Greater Toronto Area is the fifth largest city in North America. Given those conditions, what do you think the growth of parkrun in Toronto itself will be like?

00:52:13Jemima: So there's definitely great running communities in Toronto. So my husband Lawrence is part of a running club downtown and we have quite a lot of friends that are part of running clubs like Black Toe and Run To Beer. So they've all been out. There's a real desire to have one closer to the sort of actual city downtown. So we're, you know, trying to look at new new areas um there isn't a lot of sort of park area but very optimistic we've we've had a lot of encouraging signs um from some of the councillors and we're really hoping that not only to maintain Downsview because we've now got great you know sort of local community here as well but to be able to open up further or more parkruns downtown as well

00:53:13G-Train: That sounds fantastic. So I think that, you know, the future's looking good for parkrun in Toronto and for Canada itself. And I think the thing about this park is that, although it's a bit of a bleak winter's day here, the temperature's sort of somewhere around, hovering, I guess, somewhere between zero and four degrees with a little bit of a wind. But the trees are all bare at the moment because of, obviously, it's winter. But I think in summer, it'll be spectacular. Have you run events here yet in summer? I guess you haven't.

00:53:44Jemima: so it was towards the very end of the summer so yeah it was beautiful and green blue skies it was quite warm because there isn't a lot of cover on this particular path but there's a lovely pond with some great fountains that are only on during the summer time the autumn was spectacular all of the trees which You can obviously see all red and yellow. Really, really beautiful time of year to come and visit Toronto. And yeah, now, I mean, when it's snow, although a lot of people don't want to be running when it's that cold, when it is snowy, that's also a really beautiful time to come as well. Might be able to see a coyote.

00:54:32G-Train: Oh, well, we missed that today. Although I'm just looking now, I can see a bird up there. Might be... Might be some sort of a woodpecker, but no, it looks a bit too small. Anyway, we'll have to pull out the bird book later and have a look. Well, we're almost at the finish line again now, so I think we'll wrap this up for the moment, but I'll tune back in when we're having a coffee. Thanks, Jemima.

00:54:53Jemima: Thank you. Bye.

00:54:56G-Train: Okay, then we're now having a coffee afterwards. And what's this place called? Coffee Time? Coffee Time. Coffee Time. It's a bit of a backup plan today, but that's okay. And I'm with Lawrence, who's one of the core team members here at Downsview parkrun. And he's also got an interesting side role too as one of the social media ambassadors for parkrun in Canada. So maybe I might get him to tell us a bit about that role.

00:55:22Lawrence: Yeah, so I first moved to Canada two years ago from London. So my old home parkrun was Kingston in southwest London. And when I came over to Canada, I realised two things. Number one, there wasn't actually a parkrun in Toronto, which was... Really surprising to me and quite depressing. And so I reached out to parkrun and was put in touch with various people over here, including Ewan Bowman, the country manager. And so I just wanted to try and help get a parkrun going. But at the same time, they had just one person doing social media for the whole country, which is an unpaid voluntary role done by Becky, Becky Mabry. And so they asked if I would... agree to take on some of that role with her. So myself and my friend Amy, who's also part of the Downsview core team, she's also another social media ambassador for Canada. And then there's two other volunteers as well. So we just, you know, parkrun Canada at the moment doesn't have any paid employees at all. It relies solely on volunteers, not just for the events themselves, but for everything else. So there's like four or five of us and we just take sort of one week on, four weeks off, one week on, four weeks off, covering the Instagram and the Facebook, the website, the blogs and so on. Just trying to take the load off Becky so that she doesn't have to do everything. It's been really rewarding. It's been great. Canada's a really big country, a bit like Australia. So making sure that we communicate to everyone is really important, I think, and trying to get parkrun better known in the country. I mean, right now we're only averaging In the summer, we'll probably be averaging maybe 1,500 runners in the whole country across all the events that we have, across the 40 or so events that we have. And we really need to try and grow that. And for one person to try and do it on their own is very, very difficult. So it's been really nice to help out with that and volunteer for that.

00:57:39G-Train: Fantastic. And perhaps you can also tell us about a recent event that happened here, which was Canada's first parkrun Ambassador Conference.

00:57:47Lawrence: Yeah, so parkrun Canada's been really, really lucky in that we have a national sponsor, which is Saucony, and their financial support and the support of their publicity as well, but they agree to basically financially support the first ever parkrun Canada Ambassador Conference so parkrun Canada has been going for around three and a half years but obviously very very large country incredibly expensive to get ambassadors together from across the whole country but with Saucony's help we managed to do that so we all flew out to Victoria in British Columbia which is around which is on an island just near Vancouver out on the west coast We spent around two and a half days together basically sort of planning the future of parkrun Canada, trying to understand how we can grow parkrun. I don't like using the word, but grow the brand of parkrun nationally to get it from where it is right now, which is kind of a niche thing, which is still often only known by expats from Australia and New Zealand and the UK and so on, and try and get it really... better known within the country of Canada. Also as well, just to get ambassadors together so that we could learn from the likes of James Kemp. So James Kemp, the global operations manager, came over to help us ensure that our parkruns and newer parkruns that come on stream are doing things the right way so making sure that as we grow and get bigger we don't run into problems that you know we could have we could have avoided so making sure that just things like you know no barcode no time no exceptions just reinforcing some of that reinforcing what we can and cannot do on social media and what we can and can do in terms of not being off-brand with sort of unofficial merchandise and stuff like that, but things that can crop up from time to time. Because most people who are involved in parkrun Canada as volunteers I've never had any sort of interaction with anyone from parkrun, because of course we're a long way away from global and we have great communication with them electronically, but it was really invaluable to spend that time together, learning from each other about what works at our events, what doesn't work, but also to learn from someone like James about how we can navigate the next growth period of parkrun, not just globally, but specifically within Canada. And it was just really fascinating, apart from anything else, to get to know your ambassadors across the country. I mean, Canada is the second largest land mass on the planet. And running a parkrun in, say, Vancouver, which has a very temperate climate, to say running one in Regina or Saskatchewan... or Saskatoon, sorry, where it can easily be minus 39 on any given day. It's been really interesting to exchange stories and best practice and so on. So, yeah, that was an invaluable experience.

01:01:07G-Train: No, that's great. And I should actually just mention too that I did a run here on Boxing Day in the city of Hamilton where I was fortunate enough to meet David Holloway, who's the Event Director of North Bay parkrun, which is a few hours north of Toronto, and he was telling me about the event, small numbers that they get there but they're plugging away still and trying to keep things going up there which is fantastic to hear um now I think Mel and Scotty would also be uh interested to know that um you're a friend of the friend of the parkrun adventure show in that um you know uh one of their mates from over in the UK

01:01:43Lawrence: Yeah, so I first probably came into contact with parkrun in Surbiton. I was through the running club 26.2, which some of your listeners will know is the best running club in Surbiton. Of course, a friend of the show and with me now, host Danny Norman. So that's probably most of my parkruns. Historically, I've probably been with Danny at Bushy in Kingston. I'm not quite as a bigger tourist as Danny is these days. A bit difficult being a parkrun tourist in Canada, but now I'm... Yeah, that's probably how I first came into contact with the parkrun adventures was really through Danny and first came into contact with parkrun really through Danny, yeah.

01:02:24G-Train: Oh, that's fantastic. I'm sure he's going to tune into this show a bit more often now to catch up with his mates in Canada.

01:02:31Lawrence: Oh, I don't know. He's probably grateful for the blessed relief from my dulcet tones, but we'll never know. All right. If you are listening to this, Danny, you do have to come to Downsview, though. Just, you know, you promised.

01:02:44G-Train: Yeah, I'd highly recommend it, Danny. It's a good fast course, I think. Slightly undulating, but I think you'd probably be able to get out a good run here. And I'm sure if you came during the summer or the fall or on a snowy day in the winter, it'd be spectacular. But look, I think that's it for now from Downsview and hopefully I'll be able to bring you another report next weekend from another event in Canada and look forward to getting back to Australia soon and running in some warmth. So thanks a lot, Lawrence, and fantastic job here and all the best for the continued future of Downsview parkrun. Thank you. Very nice talking to you.

Roving report G-Train — River Oaks parkrun

01:03:26G-Train: G'day parkrun adventurers happy new year it's G-Train here coming to you from River Oaks parkrun in Oakville in Canada. I've just done it myself it's a very lovely course a bit of a bitumen path for the first 500 or so metres and it goes into a lovely little trail through the woods and around a baseball course and a baseball field. Double loop, quite a lot of fun. And I'm here with the Co-Event Directors, Joanne and Chris, and I might just get them to tell you a little bit about River Oaks.

01:03:58Chris: Sure, yeah. So we've been going for almost 18 months now at River Oaks here in the middle of Oakville. And we've really been pleased with the community we've been able to build here. We've got a great community of people that have come from other parts of the world, sometimes having done parkrun before. Many people that have done parkrun for the first time here in the city of Oakville. And really very, very pleased with the great community we've been able to build in the 18 months we've been running.

01:04:28G-Train: Thanks Chris and we last ran together two years ago at Beach Strip where at that time there were only two parkruns here in the Greater Toronto Area and now we're up to about it's probably about six or seven I would say.

01:04:40Chris: Yeah six or seven yeah it's been great to see the parkrun grow in the City of Toronto or in the Toronto area and I think it's becoming quite a good parkrun destination for tourists to come to you know because we've got quite a choice of different types of parkruns.

01:04:53G-Train: Yeah, and one of the things about small events as they're getting started, you do get a lot of tourists coming along. What sort of people have you had coming along as tourists?

01:05:03Chris: Wow, we've had tourists from just about all parts of the world, I think. We've had tourists, a lot of people from the UK, a lot of South Africans. There's a strong South African community here in Oakville. I myself am from South Africa and we seem to bring our people along with us. But we've had lots of Australians, a good contingent of Australians. And we've actually even had a couple of people out from places like Poland and Germany, actually. Oh, fantastic.

01:05:30G-Train: And what got you into parkrun, Joe?

01:05:32Joanne ("Joe"): Oh, I have a parkrunning family in the UK. And so they had encouraged me when I decided to get a little fitter that I could try parkrun at Beach Strip. And so I was hooked after that.

01:05:44G-Train: Oh, fantastic. And you're Canadian yourself?

01:05:47Joanne ("Joe"): British by birth and became a Canadian this year.

01:05:49G-Train: Okay. Oh, well. After 21 years. It can take a while. It took my wife about 18 years to become an Australian because she's from Canada originally. But, yeah, so I actually haven't spoken with any... people born in Canada since I've been here on this trip which is funny enough um but uh whereas last time um they were all canadians getting involved in which was fantastic to see um now we've got another event happening this morning over at Meadowvale um so this is the second year of you doing the uh the new year's double with Meadowvale how's that been going this year

01:06:26Joanne ("Joe"): Oh, we really feel as though we're such a partnership and a family with the parkrun at Meadowvale. We came on board within the same year. And yeah, so we've got quite the relationship built there. And it's a fun time to get together and sort of expand people's experience of parkrun.

01:06:47G-Train: Fantastic. Now, speaking of getting over to that double, I need to get over there myself, so I might wrap this one up. Thanks very much for having me, Joanne and Chris, and we hope to see you down in Australia sometime.

01:06:57Chris: Oh, that would be nice. That'd be lovely. Hopefully it'd be warmer than here.

01:07:02G-Train: It usually tends to be. Thanks, folks.

Roving report G-Train — Meadowvale parkrun

01:07:06G-Train: G'day again, parkrun adventurers. I'm now at Meadowvale parkrun for the second part of the double, where they've allowed me the honour of being the Run Director today, so it gives me a bit of time to do some more interviews. And I'm here with the Swirsky sisters, who are volunteering today, and I'll get them to introduce themselves.

01:07:23Roxanne Swirsky: Hi, I'm Roxanne Swirsky. Carolyn Swirsky.

01:07:26G-Train: And so I've finally gotten some Canadians to talk to at the different parkruns I've been at. As I was saying earlier, so far everyone else I've spoken to has been either from the UK or from South Africa. Now, a little bit of an unofficial milestone today, but a special one because it's Roxanne's 50th volunteering effort. So we're very thankful for that. What got you into parkrun, Roxanne?

01:07:48Roxanne Swirsky: Well, you know, I saw the parkrun advertised in our political councillors, our city councillors' newsletter, and I wonder what that's about. My sister brought me out, and now it's my way of giving back to the community, which is fantastic.

01:08:01G-Train: That's fantastic. And how about you, Carolyn?

01:08:05Carolyn Swirsky: I have an interest in running and getting in shape. parkrun came along at a perfect time. We came out and met the people that started it and have been here ever since.

01:08:16G-Train: Awesome. And what can you tell me about Meadowvale parkrun?

01:08:20Roxanne Swirsky: Well, it's a small parkrun, but it's a beautiful community park around a man-made reservoir lake, which gives us really nice views and some challenging hills. So I think there's a variety of a course, and it's great for those who want to walk and for those who want to run.

01:08:37G-Train: And I did this course on my first week on this trip to Canada a few weeks ago. And it, yes, as Roxanne said, it's a random man-made lake. All of the parkruns I've done here so far have been beside water, except for one, which, funnily enough, is called Nautical parkrun. So there's a bit of Canadian humour there, perhaps. And what's your favourite part about parkrun, Carolyn?

01:08:59Carolyn Swirsky: I love parkrun because it's all inclusive. You have runners, you have walkers, we have families. And it's just a great sense of family, community, time together.

01:09:09G-Train: Fantastic. And we've got a lot of runners coming past now, so we might get back to cheering them on and see who we can chat to later on. Thanks. G'day again parkrun adventurers, I'm still here at Meadowvale and I've found a couple of tourists from Australia so I'm here with Caden and Nicole who have both done over 250 runs themselves and they were at the double earlier at River Oaks as well so I'll just get them to give their impressions of running in Canada. It's cold, it's really cold but like the snow's good and the weather's nice mostly but yeah it's good. What about you, Nicole? How did you find it?

01:09:51Unidentified speaker: It's very different to running in Australia. I ended up walking just so I knew I didn't get injured. But it's lovely just to see the snow. And we did snow angels on the way around on this one. And, yeah, we've had a great time.

01:10:03G-Train: Fantastic. Yeah, there isn't actually a great deal of snow around and the paths are all clear, but there's still a little bit of ice out there. Did you have any issues with that?

01:10:11Unidentified speaker: Caden had a great time sliding across all the ice. He thought that was fantastic. I just very carefully walked across it.

01:10:18G-Train: And now I know that you're here with your family, Kaden. Where's the rest of them? Not a clue. I think they're sitting in the car right now in the warmth.

01:10:26Unidentified speaker: Yeah, but yeah.

01:10:29G-Train: And do you think you'll ever get them out for a winter parkrun? No, not a chance.

01:10:35Unidentified speaker: Definitely not a winter one.

01:10:37G-Train: And where's your home parkrun in Australia?

01:10:40Unidentified speaker: Rockingham, Western Australia.

01:10:42G-Train: And how many parkruns have you done there?

01:10:44Unidentified speaker: About 240, I suppose, but we're up to about 257 each after today.

01:10:50G-Train: That's great. And where else have you gotten to on this trip for parkrun?

01:10:54Lorinda: Washington.

01:10:55Unidentified speaker: Roosevelt Island parkrun in Washington, and then the double today.

01:10:59G-Train: Fantastic. Well, it's great to see you and lovely to meet you, and maybe we'll see you back in Australia one day.

01:11:05Unidentified speaker: We'll try, yes. Thank you.

01:11:07G-Train: Okay, parkrun adventurers, I'm here now having a post-parkrun coffee at Tim Hortons with Lawrence, who's one of the Co-Event Directors at Meadowvale parkrun, and his wife Vicky, who is one of the Run Directors there. And I might throw to Vicky first because she's the one who got Lawrence involved into parkrun.

01:11:26Vicky: Oh, well, we headed to Sydney a few years ago for my 50th birthday, and I told him to look for a 5 or a 10K run, and nothing was happening in Sydney, but he discovered this thing called parkrun, and off we headed to St. Peter's for his first ever event six years ago, and lo and behold, now we run our own course in Canada.

01:11:45G-Train: That's right. And, um, we were just having a discussion earlier about, uh, sponsors of parkrun and in Canada, it's the, uh, shoe running shoe maker. Saucony is their major sponsor. And I was telling Lawrence and Vicky about some of the previous sponsors that we've had in Australia. One of them being Tom Tom and, uh, Vicky had a wise cross and, uh, thought of related to, uh, a certain biscuit in Australia, which, uh, I'm sure most of you can, uh, probably work that out. Um, Now, as well as it being the double today with River Oaks and Meadowvale for the New Year's Day, Lawrence had the good fortune to hit a milestone. If you want to tell us about that, Lawrence.

01:12:25Lawrence: Well, today I managed to do my 99th and 100th parkrun.

01:12:30G-Train: That's fantastic. And most of those have been done at Meadowvale. And you've also run in a couple of other spots. And I noticed one which sort of took my interest, apart from your first one being at St. Peter's in Sydney. But I believe you've run on Guernsey as well.

01:12:44Lawrence: Yes, it was. We went for a family reunion there two years ago. And I guess being a good parkrun tourist, first thing I looked was, is there a parkrun there? And lo and behold, there was. So the basic plan was no matter what else is going on that weekend, I have to be in this location at nine in the morning.

01:13:04G-Train: And for those that don't know it, Guernsey is one of the Channel Islands between the UK and France in the English Channel. So can you tell us a little bit about that parkrun? Because probably not too many of our listeners will get an opportunity to get there.

01:13:18Lawrence: It's an out-and-back twice course that's on the beach and goes across grassy sand dunes. And the one thing that stood out for me in the runner's brief, which I'd never heard before, was we were told we tried to fill in as many as we can, but watch out for the rabbit holes. So that was quite a unique thing.

01:13:41G-Train: So there's another... bit of wildlife that we need to watch out for. So we've got magpies and snakes in Australia and coyotes in Canada and deer as well and rabbit holes on the Guernsey Islands. Now, I would also like to thank Meadowvale parkrun. They allowed me the honour of being the Run Director today, which I was very privileged, felt very privileged to be able to do. So I'm very appreciative of the team there. Can you tell us a bit more about... How many events have you had in Meadowvale and what got you started?

01:14:16Lawrence: I think today would have been our 89th event and it was basically starting up parkrun because we were trying to get something going in the nearest big city of Toronto and nothing was happening there for a while. We were running into issues with permits And I just thought, OK, I live in the neighbouring city of Mississauga. Let's see if I can get something going there. And initially, I was actually just trying to be part of the core team for Toronto. Next thing I know, I'm getting things going in Mississauga. The city was on board from day one and issuing the permits, et cetera, scouted out a couple of locations, and next thing I know, I'm suddenly the Event Director. And it wasn't quite what I was planning, but I'm more than happy to do it.

01:15:07G-Train: And you've got a Co-Event Director in Derren as well, and he couldn't be with us today, but he was at the events earlier. And like yourself, he's from the UK originally. One of the things that is noticeable here, I guess, on this trip is that the first time I came to Canada... since parkrun began is that the events at Beach Strip and Whitby were started by Canadians but fortunately all the other ones, interestingly all the other ones that I've been at so far have been started by either people from the UK or South Africa. Do you think that there is going to be more of a growth of Canadians starting up parkruns as well?

01:15:46Lawrence: I think that's happening in some of the other locations that are around the Toronto area. We have Victoria Kitchener, which I believe is set up by local Canadians, and Guelph, which is nearby as well. Those are all Canadian-run. So I think it's just a case of as word spreads and more people get to know and hear about parkrun, then more locals will take it on themselves to try and get something set up in their local community.

01:16:16G-Train: And I'm looking at heading to Victoria Kitchener next weekend and Guelph on the weekend after, so it'll be good to have a chat with some people there. The event today was fantastic. You almost hit 50 runners today, which was fantastic. What have the numbers been like so far at Meadowvale, Vicky?

01:16:37Vicky: Well, we started out with about five people and recruited some friends who were runners and we've surpassed 50 once and generally we have in the winter a dozen to 20 people but most of this last summer there's been almost well over 40 most weeks when it's warm and sunny. It's going to be minus 20 pretty soon and it'll be only the dedicated crazy runners who will come out at that time.

01:17:04G-Train: Unfortunately, I'll be back in Australia then, so I guess I'll have to miss it this time. But it's a great course of Meadowvale, running around a lake, as it does, which was frozen over today, I noticed, which always looks very nice and interesting. No birds on it today, whereas there were some last week when I was here a couple of weeks ago, and they were standing on the ice just below the surface of the water. So it looked as though they were standing on the water itself. But anyway, it's been fantastic coming along here. And this is my second time at Meadowvale today. I ran here a few weeks ago and quite enjoyed it. And thanks once again for looking after me. And we hope to see you again soon.

01:17:43Vicky: Congratulations on your 100th volunteer as well today here at Meadowvale. We loved having you.

01:17:49Lawrence: Thank you, Australia, for introducing me to parkrun. Thanks, everyone. See you.

01:17:55Melissa Erbacher: Thanks, Melissa Ellis and Cam Drake for your roving reports from Wallaby Track and Dawesville. And also thanks to Irene and Parth for putting us on the other side of the microphone at Lochiel. That was a little bit of a different experience.

01:18:11Tony O'Connell: A couple of great roving reports there from the G-Train who's making a big dent in all the Canadian events and It's amazing. Australia's been going through a little bit of fire and you look at his pictures and they're all covered in ice and snow. Probably more amazing, Mel, he's actually even got into volunteering over there and been a Run Director at a Canadian event. I reckon that's a really cool thing, pardon the icy pun, but that's a really cool thing to do while you're away on holidays.

01:18:43Melissa Erbacher: Very special indeed, and not too many people would have even probably thought of it, let alone gone through with it and contributed through volunteering on New Year's Day in another country. Very impressive. Love your work, G-Train, and keep the roving reports coming, loving those too. Let's talk about some lighthearted stuff.

01:19:07Tony O'Connell: Well, Mel, I've got a really cracker one to go on with. I don't know if you noticed, but over Christmas, the Running Challenges website updated. And if you haven't been on board and had a look, get onto it. Have a look at the map. It's incredible. They've split the whole world up into little segments. And I think it's called a Voronoi diagram.

01:19:34Melissa Erbacher: I have seen the maps, TOC. I'm a very visual person, so I love to see pretty colours and things. These ones are very interesting to look at. Have you done a bit of a dig to find out more about them? Can you give us some more details?

01:19:53Tony O'Connell: So I have been doing a bit of a dig and having a look. And for those that haven't logged into their running challenges and had a look, every parkrun has an area assigned around it. And so the world is essentially split up into a grid. And when you complete the parkrun, they shade it green. So it automatically shades it green. And I'm just having a look and look at my Victoria map. I've got a few dots there that I need to finish, but I'm looking at the linkages across and where the green joins, you can play almost like Tetris or blockbusters where I could see, I want to go and connect some of those dots up now and try to make a bit of a game of, of parkrun like that I'm just wondering you know is there anyone that's actually been able to connect like up the east coast or from the west coast to the east coast on the parkrun on their map I'd love to to know if anyone's actually managed to do that. Because when you have a look at some of the urban areas like Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne, there's just very small grids. But if you have a look at the size of the grid that's around Kalgoorlie, it's huge. So you can connect east to west with a couple of really big dots there.

01:21:06Melissa Erbacher: It's very impressive. Kalgoorlie does have a big, big chunk. And the WA events in general, they've got lots of big chunks that they can take. Obviously not the ones in the Perth area.

01:21:21Tony O'Connell: So I think if you're a capital city parkrunner, you're going to have some very small dots and you're not going to fill in a big map. I think if you're from regional Australia, you'd be surprised at how quick you can connect up a few of the dots. There's a couple of them there that have just really, really big chunks. And it's interesting to see the way they're split up, particularly, you know, Darwin or Northern Territory's got some really big ones as well, as you'd expect, because it's a long way between parkruns. I think Kununurra has just a massive dot that runs all the way across Indonesia. But you can actually play Connect the Dots right across the world. So as I said, it'd be interesting to see if anyone can go north to south in Australia or east to west. But it'd be interesting to see if anybody's done events such as Kununurra and then has done one in Indonesia where it connects up or... into Malaysia, Singapore. And when you look at some of those dots, some of the...

01:22:25Melissa Erbacher: It would be cool to bridge across to New Zealand as well. I've got Vanuatu covered, which is a pity. I think we need a parkrun in Vanuatu.

01:22:37Tony O'Connell: Yeah, my Merimbula takes me about halfway to New Zealand. And so I think it'd be, it's just really interesting to have a look at some of these dots and the area that they cover. And some of them just cover a massive area and some of them quite a small little dot. Depends on your cluster of parkruns around you. You can get from Malaysia into Russia in two parkruns.

01:23:01Melissa Erbacher: That's very impressive.

01:23:02Tony O'Connell: So if you've done Taman Pudu Ulu... and one in Russia that connect you halfway across the world in two parkruns. So, yeah, I think everyone should get onto the running challenges and just have a look and see their dots because I've started looking at it and thinking, oh, if I do that parkrun, it's going to connect up with those two dots. And yeah, my Tetris games complete.

01:23:25Melissa Erbacher: I like how you want to sort of connect and do a whole cluster together, whereas I'm like, oh, I want one that's going to be responsible for me also, you know, having a chunk of the South Pole. Yeah. I don't care if it joins anything else or not. I just want to go do the event that gets me a slice of the ice.

01:23:45Tony O'Connell: I'm sorry, Melissa. I was not going to mention that one because of past history, but there is an event in the south of Tasmania that does take up a significant chunk. But have you done Margaret River?

01:23:58Melissa Erbacher: I have, and I'm looking. I'm just zoomed in now. It's got me down. I've got a bit of ice.

01:24:04Tony O'Connell: Margaret River gets you down into the ice, so that one will count.

01:24:08Melissa Erbacher: Excellent. Now I need to go find one. I want one on the other side. I want some North Pole action going on too. I'm going to have to get me to Europe, I reckon.

01:24:18Tony O'Connell: And I'll tell you what, if you can get to the one in the Falkland Islands, you get about half the world in one parkrun. It's got the biggest block of them all, I think.

01:24:29Melissa Erbacher: Well, I reckon if you've managed to get to the Falkland Islands, you deserve it.

01:24:33Tony O'Connell: Yep. Although it is still a UK parkrun. Well. Technically. Technically. Technically.

01:24:38Melissa Erbacher: That's very cool. Thanks, Andy and Laura. I love, love the new fun things that you guys come up with.

Sign-off

01:24:44Tony O'Connell: I think the Running Challenges website is really revolutionary as the way we think about parkruns. Mel, I think, you know, things like having your Wilson Index and your P Index and your V Index and everything else all in one spot. I love it. It's a great website. Melissa, well, I've got you. Your New Year's Eve park or your New Year's Day parkrun, you've done your J in South Australia. I noticed that you've only got a couple of letters to go. And one of them is probably the most significant number or letter in the alphabet. That's your I. So any plans? When do we get to see you at Inverloch?

01:25:23Melissa Erbacher: I was going to say, why is it the most significant? I don't understand. There's plenty of I's all over the place.

01:25:29Tony O'Connell: Yeah, but there's only one that's always sunny. This is true. There's one that has a big stump. We've got everything covered.

01:25:38Melissa Erbacher: Okay. Do you know where I might be able to stay if I ventured down that way?

01:25:43Tony O'Connell: I know somewhere you could stay very close to Inverloch that you'd be more than welcome to come and bring Emmett and Wes and Adam down too.

01:25:51Melissa Erbacher: I'll get that information off you offline at a later time. We don't want to tell everyone because it sounds like it's a bit of a best-kept secret. Thank you, TOC, for joining me for the first episode of Season 5 of the parkrun adventurers. It's going to be an interesting season, this one. We've got a fairly early palm this season, so it's only a couple of months away now. Are you getting excited for it?

01:26:23Tony O'Connell: now I'm really getting excited it's going to be great to catch up with everyone again South Australia is always a wonderful destination to head to um I'm really looking forward to catching up with a couple of south Australian friends that we've got over there uh I probably just need to get onto the bookings the accommodation everything else but not really excited to get over there and uh catch up with a heap of people I think it's going to be a cracker of an adventure

01:27:49Unidentified speaker: So,