Episode 190 - Chasing Vert

Welcome

00:00:24Lyndell Murray: G'day parkrun adventurers. Welcome to episode 190 of the parkrun adventurers podcast. And it's Lyndell and I'm not reporting in for the Channel 5 News crew. I am guest co-hosting once again with the fantastic Melissa Erbacher. Mel, how are you this evening?

00:00:46Melissa Erbacher: I'm great, thanks, Lyndell, and lovely to have you back. It's always nice. We seem to time your episodes with you having to do the intro, so you're getting really good at it. Well done.

00:00:58Lyndell Murray: Well, I managed to introduce myself and yourself this time. And the podcast. And the podcast. Tick, tick, tick. Tick, tick, tick. Gold star for me. So parkrun this week, Mel. Tell me a story.

00:01:13Melissa Erbacher: Here's the thing, Lyndell. You introduced us as the parkrun adventurers, which is great because for the last 189 episodes, that's what we've been called. However, in light of recent events, I'm beginning to wonder whether or not we should be called the parkrun Misadventurers. Yeah. The weather and, you know, extenuating circumstances just doesn't seem to be on our side of late. I missed parkrun on Saturday. It was very wet. The events around my locality weren't cancelled, however. I have had two very sick little boys in my house and that kind of inclement weather was not really appropriate for taking the two of them out, especially as we don't have a rain cover for the double pram yet. So we did not make it to parkrun on the weekend. Kind of difficult to do a podcast where you chat a lot about parkrun when you haven't been much of late, but anyway. We will soldier on. So I'm counting on you to carry this one, Lyndell. Where were you on the weekend?

00:02:20Lyndell Murray: Well, I'm in the Misadventure Club this weekend myself. Oh, no. Yeah. I made a reasonably last-minute decision on the Friday night to adventure to Zillmere for their birthday parkrun on the weekend. It doesn't take much to lure me to cake, let's be honest.

00:02:41Melissa Erbacher: It's a legitimate reason to choose a particular location for parkrun.

00:02:47Lyndell Murray: Oh, 100%. So, yeah, I hatched the plan on Friday night that that's what I was going to do. I was going to run to Zillmere, do Zillmere, eat some cake, talk to the locals, run home, job done. You know, I was even determined to go even if it was raining because But with all of the inclement weather and the heavy rainfalls, Zillmere parkrun, as many adventurers would know, is, I guess, a cross-country course. It's all on grass and soccer fields and so forth. So the amount of rain that we got here in Brisbane on Friday night, I have no doubt that it would have been almost a... an aquathlon with a swim and a run leg available to us at Zillmere. So I think they've made the right decision in cancelling. And look, looking on the bright side, at least I have cake to look forward to again for another week. So...

00:03:42Melissa Erbacher: This is true. There's always a silver lining, especially when there are so many rain clouds. And look, Zillmere wasn't the only one and you weren't the only one who wasn't at Zillmere on the weekend. Dave was also headed that way and he didn't make it, but he rerouted and ended up going, I believe, to New Farm, which was one of the very few events in Brisbane that wasn't cancelled. I think we had more than 20 events cancelled due to rain, or flooding in Queensland last weekend, which not much fun. I mean, the rain is very, very welcome in general to lots of drought stricken communities. So that's a plus.

00:04:21Lyndell Murray: It sure is. But yeah. So what did you find yourself doing instead? Well, look, I don't really have the luxury of taking the day off because I'm training for an event at the moment. So I ended up subjecting myself to a long treadmill run at my gym locally. So, yes, look, I think that I did do a pretty long run on the treadmill and it took a lot of, I don't know, I don't know how I got through it. Lots of podcasts to listen to. Yeah.

00:04:53Melissa Erbacher: Well, well done you for still getting out there or getting in there, I should say, and moving anyway. There's a lot of people who did. As you say, I mean, I'm not sure I'd call it a luxury to have the day off, but certainly I wasn't training for anything, though I did get out in the afternoon and had a lovely run, which was great.

00:05:14Lyndell Murray: That's fantastic.

00:05:16Melissa Erbacher: Yeah, but ironically the rain started, about three minutes after I got back home. So it would have been so welcome out on the run because it was very, very muggy by that time in the evening. You know, we'll always find something to complain about anyway.

00:05:32Lyndell Murray: Yeah, and look, I think a lot of the parkruns in Brisbane are, you know, along some of the waterways here in Brisbane, you know, and the reason why they're bike paths and not roads and not residential areas is because they flood. So in a lot of ways we're really lucky to have that space available to us nine times out of ten because it's lovely green space that the citizens of Brisbane have available to them when it's not flooding. So we have to take the good with the bad and when it floods every now and then we just deal with it.

00:06:09Melissa Erbacher: And fortunately the floodwaters tend to go down pretty quickly too so hopefully that means most of the events are going to be back on as usual this coming weekend. Fingers crossed anyway. I know, you know, it's I guess the time of year, but in the UK everybody's cancelling due to dangerous icy courses and things like that, which is not something we really ever have to do in Australia, even in the winter I think. I'm not sure anyone's ever cancelled because of ice on the course. I wouldn't imagine so. Yeah. We might have to send out some feelers to find out whether or not. I mean, if any of our adventurers out there who are listening know that their event has been cancelled because of icy conditions, I'd be interested to hear about it.

00:06:56Lyndell Murray: It makes you think, though. What are some of the reasons why events cancel? There must be some, you know, wild and wacky reasons.

00:07:06Melissa Erbacher: Well, since you mention it, Lyndell, the cancellations are visible to the public every week. So people can go and look at the list of cancellations. I know lots of groups share them around and things like that as well so that people can you know, can stay informed about, especially if they're travelling to an event they don't usually travel to and things like that. A friend of mine took a screenshot of some of the UK ones and she lives here in Australia, but I think because she's originally from over there, she might have been keeping tabs on things that friends were doing or whatnot. And There was an interesting one and I will quote, course infested by ice skating zombie penguins.

00:07:54Lyndell Murray: Sorry. Did I hear that right now?

00:07:59Melissa Erbacher: Well, say it back to me and I'll tell you.

00:08:02Lyndell Murray: The course was infested by ice skating zombie penguins?

00:08:09Melissa Erbacher: Yes. You heard correctly, Lyndell. I think... Generally speaking, the cancellations are always done for reasons of safety unless there's like a conflict with other events happening in the area at the time. Yeah, for sure. They require uses of the parks and things like that, which is fine. This one, I don't know.

00:08:33Lyndell Murray: Zombies are dangerous. I don't know about penguins.

00:08:37Melissa Erbacher: Well, ice skating ones, especially if you're not very good at ice skating, then obviously that's not going to bode well for you. I'm going to read between the lines and say that hopefully this particular event runs around or near a pond or a lake that freezes over in the winter and might get used by ice skaters or turned into a temporary ice skating rink because I do know that there are these Penguin things, I don't know what you would call them. They're like a vertical aid in that they help you stay upright when you're learning to skate and they're shaped in the shape of penguins and they've got little handlebars that you hold onto and you put them around ice skating rinks when you're learning to skate. Traditionally used by children.

00:09:32Unidentified speaker: Oh, yeah.

00:09:33Melissa Erbacher: But I guess adults could use them too. So perhaps that might be and that is a bit of a wild reading between the lines. Who knows? There could really be ice skating zombie penguins out there, in which case kudos to the event team for cancelling because that is a safety hazard.

00:09:52Lyndell Murray: Yeah. Yeah, get out of there. I don't know. I'm not hanging around if there's actually ice skating zombie penguins out there.

00:09:59Melissa Erbacher: No. I mean, we have Phillip Island parkrun and Phillip Island is known for their penguins, but they're only the little fairy penguins. So even if those ones were skating zombies, I wouldn't be too concerned. It'd be the really penguins I'd be worried about. I don't think we're going to have to worry about that in Australia at any time soon anyway.

00:10:19Lyndell Murray: No. Well, you know, the ones that you'd hold onto when you skate, they're not blinking. That's why they're zombies, right, because they look like they're, you know, haunted or something because they're not blinking the Phillip Island penguins you know they're cute right I think so I haven't I haven't actually been it's on my list yeah

Roving reports & the Channel 5 News crew

00:10:43Melissa Erbacher: Anyway, fortunately, you and I didn't get to parkrun, but there were a whole bunch of people who did on the weekend, tens and tens and tens of thousands of them. And among those were a bunch of our roving reporters, not all of whom actually did get to parkruns, but we've got a few of them who sent in some reports and stuff like that for us to listen to. So we don't usually introduce them. But because you and I didn't get to parkrun, I think we need to reassure the masses that, yes, don't worry, this whole pod isn't going to be completely void of parkrun.

00:11:20Lyndell Murray: Definitely not.

00:11:20[20 seconds of audio that could not be transcribed]

Roving report Matty Trent — Mundy Regional parkrun

00:11:41Matty Trent: Good morning, Matty Trent here, reporting in for the parkrun adventurers from Mundy Regional parkrun. Now, I'm sweating profusely, and I'm here with Geoff Hansen, who's the ED of this event. Now, the first question I have for you, Geoff, is what the hell was all that about?

00:11:57Geoff Hansen: Well, that was, believe it or not, that was the easiest course we could find, given the terrain we had to work with. So we made it as easy and safe as possible. So I don't know what people complain about when they tell me it's hard. We could have made it a lot tougher.

00:12:13Matty Trent: Well, I nearly had a, I think my watch said 1.39 Ks when I was choking back my first puke. So is that pretty normal for people on here? Yeah, 1.39.

00:12:23Geoff Hansen: So you're probably at the top of the second climb on the loop section, just coming back to the second marshal. So yeah, we haven't had reports of any actual vomiting as yet.

00:12:36Matty Trent: just the one broken ankle no ambulance has been called so it's too bad it's definitely a course to take it easy on but how about this view I reckon from up here how many other parkruns do you reckon we can see you could probably see almost every parkrun in to the north of us in Perth from here anyway right now you're working on the volunteer roster so I'll let you get out and about and get a few people to put their names down and I'll see you again in a minute

Roving report Sarah — Cobram

00:13:05Sarah: Hello parkrun adventurers, it's Sarah here. We are in Cobram. We are currently staying just down the road in Echuca Moama and thought we'd drive up and have a go at Cobram this morning. Also helps me tick off another C on my Pirate Club quest. We're just here about to listen to the event briefing. I have had a little bit of a look at the course description. We start at Thompson's Beach and we go, there's like an, it's basically an out and back with a little loop around an island. Gravel uh bitumen and grass are also featured in in the course but we'll check back into you after we've had a run and we'll see how we go okay so we're here at the finishing line and I've caught up with Sue Sue completed her 100 parkrun today at Cobram so congratulations Sue so what do you love about parkrun I love the community the um people here I've met so many great friends and I love the exercise

00:13:36[crosstalk]

00:14:02Sue: Fantastic. Even though I don't run, I walk, but, yeah, I still love it. I'm not home in bed. It's a bit of exercise. That's great, isn't it? And that's the thing, parkrun's such a community, isn't it? It is.

00:14:11Sarah: And you made a very good point.

00:14:13Sue: Walking is great. Yeah, yeah. Well, I started off with, you know, because I'm quite shy, and coming to parkrun, I've met so many different people, and I've got my – actually, I ended up getting a few people to join, so, you know. Oh, look at you. That's excellent. You're happy with it. You're a parkrun recruiter. Wow. Yeah. You could say that. No, no. No, it's good though.

00:14:32Sarah: And I hear you've done a little bit of touristing. What was your favourite touristing spot?

00:14:36Sue: Would have been You Yangs. Oh, beautiful. Yes, that's lovely. Then I would be Benalla. Yep. Besides here. And I've done Mansfield. I've done Euroa. I've done Willow Park. Toolern Creek. Yes. That's the worst one.

00:14:49Sarah: Yeah. I did Toolern Creek on the New Year's double. Oh, did you? Yeah. It was quite warm. It wasn't a bad course. It was very dry, though. And Shepparton up there. And Shepparton?

00:14:57Sue: Yeah, Shepparton's beautiful. I did the double here, too. We did Shepparton first and then here. Oh, that's a good double. Yeah. Last year, we did here first and then Shepparton.

00:15:06Sarah: Oh, fantastic. Fantastic. Was the Toolern Creek one with Sunbury? I did Toolern Creek and Wyndham Vale. Oh, Wyndham Vale. Because I've done Sunbury before, but I thought I'd go and do Wyndham Vale. Do something that you haven't done before. Yes, I've got to do something you haven't done before.

00:15:16Sue: Yes, that's what I'm trying to do.

00:15:17Sarah: Or you'll have to come and visit us at, well, I'm at Highlands, so you'll have to come visit us at Highlands.

00:15:21Sue: Well, I want to, Mary and I, she's my cousin, we're going up to Queensland next couple of weeks, so we're going to do Golden Beach in Caloundra. Oh, beautiful. So we haven't done the G yet.

00:15:31Sarah: Yes, you're doing your alphabet. Trying to. Fantastic. If you're up at, because I stayed at Caloundra last year and I was literally 400 metres from Golden Beach, but I took my son to Nambour. Oh, Nambour one. So if you get a chance, Nambour's beautiful. It's very hilly. I've heard that. But you get to see the emu. The emu comes out on course and visits you. It's beautiful.

00:15:51Sue: That'd be lovely. Yes. So Nambour's not that far away from Caloundra because my daughter lives in Caloundra. Oh, beautiful. Double whammy. Yes. I'm going up to my great-granddaughter's first birthday.

00:16:01Sarah: Oh, fantastic. Well, Golden Beach parkrun, look out for Sue.

00:16:04Sue: She'll be on her way in a couple of weeks.

00:16:07Sarah: Thank you so much for talking to us and congratulations on your 100th. Thank you so much. Excellent. Thank you. Hello, it's Sarah again at Cobram and I'm here with our Run Director today, Trish. How are you today, Trish?

00:16:18Trish: I'm good, thank you, Sarah. How are you?

00:16:20Sarah: Yeah, very well, thank you. I loved your course. I didn't see a koala, but it's a beautiful course. Could you tell us a little bit about it?

00:16:26Trish: So our course is just a bush track, pretty much, and it's just really scenic. We're really lucky. We do get koalas most mornings, but I don't know, they've probably gone up. It's not too bad this morning with a bit of a breeze, so we probably haven't seen any today. But look, we have a lot of fun. It's not necessarily the fastest track, but it's a nice track. But we're lucky we get to go out around the banks of the Murray and see it, so it's just wonderful. Yeah, it's beautiful. Yeah, it is. We're very lucky. We think our track's one of the better ones.

00:16:57Sarah: As we all do.

00:16:59Trish: Of course, every Run Director thinks the same thing, so it's great. Absolutely.

00:17:02Sarah: And it's so cute that you get to go across at Quinn's Island. Yeah, Quinn's Island.

00:17:06Trish: It's beautiful over there. So we do a beautiful loop around there. Yeah, to see a little bit more of the Murray and the little inlet that goes alongside it, which is just lovely too. And look, sometimes you do get to see, well, every now and then we do get a few kangaroos hop past. Oh, nice. Yeah, but today I don't know that anyone's seen one. I haven't heard anyone comment.

00:17:22Sarah: No, I haven't heard anything, but that's okay. Koalas can be hard to spot sometimes if they're up high. Especially, it's hard when you're trying to focus on your footing.

00:17:30Trish: Yeah, and that's it. If you're focusing on footing, you will never see a koala. I can go weeks and not see one, and then one week I specifically walk and just look for them and one make us all 14s. Oh, wow. Yeah, so they are there. Amazing.

00:17:41Sarah: So you've got to come to Cobram and check out the koalas. There's lots of koalas you can spot.

00:17:45Trish: And then when you finish, if you've run and you're really hot, you can go for a dip in the river.

00:17:49Sarah: Oh, yeah. I know it's beautiful here at Thompson's Beach. You've got such a – the sand areas –

00:17:54Trish: quite beautiful isn't it it is we're very lucky it's actually known as the biggest inland beach in Australia so there you go there's a tip yeah according to the volleyball people that came last year so yeah another reason to come to Cobram absolutely yeah get to see the men's and ladies volleyball championships and I think they are back again this year so check it out on the internet so how long have you been um rd this is my third oh wow

00:18:17Sarah: And you're doing a stellar job. Well done.

00:18:19Trish: Congratulations. My third one today.

00:18:21Sarah: And you've been parkrunning for a while?

00:18:22Trish: Yeah, I've been parkrunning for over two years now. Fantastic. Just at Cobram? No, I've been to a few touristy ones as well. I've been to a few different places locally and closer to Melbourne. Fantastic. What was your fave? um probably really enjoyed Euroa was a good one oh beautiful um and Portland was quite an interesting one too so yeah but some of them are just straight in and out tracks so yeah and actually the Benalla Botanical Gardens is a beautiful track that's also quite um yeah it's on my list I haven't got there yet but I will Yeah, no, look, I think going to some of the other tracks is really good. It's really interesting. And I've been to a couple of those, the launches. Oh, brilliant. Yeah, Sabinella was the launch, which was fabulous. Launches are lots of fun, aren't they? They are lots of fun. And, of course, you can't forget the purple choo-choo when you go to a launch.

00:19:06Sarah: Yes, I know, which I forget every time, but that's okay. Exactly. So that's good. Well, thank you so much for talking to us today. No, thanks, Sarah. And we will catch you over across the river for a coffee. Sounds like a plan. Fantastic. Thank you.

00:19:18Trish: Thank you, Sarah.

Roving reports & the Channel 5 News crew

Roving report Tony O'Connell — Wallaby Track parkrun

00:19:22Tony O'Connell: Howdy parkrunners, TOC reporting in for the Channel 5 News crew. Today Jack and I ventured down to the Wallaby Track parkrun in Ballarat, about an hour out of Melbourne. Wallaby's been profiled before, so we'll leave it at that. But I just had a great idea for a new parkrun club. We could have a macropod club. We could go to Wallaby and to Kangaroo Island and really support the Kangaroo Island group. How does that sound everyone? TOC out.

Roving report Melissa Ellis — Puckapunyal

00:19:49Melissa Ellis: Good morning parkrun adventurers, it's Melissa here and I am not coming to you from parkrun. It's Saturday morning, I was not granted leave to leave base, so I've gone out and done my own 5k at 8 o'clock on Saturday morning. So I think it's important at the moment that I keep that, what would you call it, routine because Being away from family and parkrun at the moment can play with your mental health a I've just done my run listening to the parkrun adventurers podcast, the latest episode, and Mel's experience on Kangaroo Island, which I was aware of because, as Mel said, we parkrun together on New Year's Day. And it was really lovely to share that experience with you, Mel. I thoroughly enjoyed the weekend, but we had fears for Mel knowing the potential danger that was there. Anyway, so I've done my run today and I'm grateful for that. The call out of the reserve in Australia is unprecedented. It hasn't happened since World War II. So there's a lot of people probably in this location with me that may be parkrunners and they're also going through, you know, feeling displaced like I am at the moment. However grateful I am to be helping out, we had very short notice to mobilise and go away from our family and friends. I'm supposed to be at Kerang this weekend with my family, with Paul and Zoe and our adventurer friends, so I hope they have a fabulous adventure. And just anybody who has also missed Kerang and fancies... a buddy for a road trip in the coming weeks let me know. I also discovered by being here that the local town Seymour does not have a parkrun and the closest parkrun is 40 minutes away so I'd also like to say if there's anybody out there that lives in the general vicinity of Seymour and would like a bit of assistance in perhaps starting up a parkrun in the local area I know the Goulburn River or I believe the Goulburn River runs through Seymour let me know and I'll be there to support you and help you and see if we can't get something like that up and running for not just for the local community but for the military members that come and go in the local area so anyway that's all from me I hope you all had a fabulous weekend at parkrun see ya

Roving report G-Train — Victoria parkrun, Kitchener

00:22:26G-Train: G'day parkrun adventurers, it's the G-Train here again. And this week I've been at Victoria parkrun in Kitchener, Ontario, which is a gorgeous little course around a lovely island, lake and island there's a light dusting of snow on the trees and on the ground Canada geese and northern mallards in the water this edge and we're having a post-run coffee now in Williams cafe in Kitchener and I'm here with aiden and Jonathan aiden took part in the event today and Jonathan was one of the volunteers so I might ask Jonathan to tell me a bit about how he got involved in parkrun

00:23:04Jonathan: So I got started a couple of years ago. I was a runner on a university team and just wanted there to be more running events that were, I don't know, I like racing and just, Being able to run something for free is pretty good. And just helping people get more active and involved in running is, I guess, a life objective of mine. So I got in touch with Julia and we decided to start this parkrun in Victoria Park.

00:23:41G-Train: That's great, Jonathan. And Aidan is also a visitor to this event today. His usual parkrun is a little bit further north from here, but I'll get him to tell you a bit about where he's come from.

00:23:51Aidan: So, yeah, I'm a visitor to Kitchener today, but I ran a year here in Kitchener. I live about 20 minutes away in Guelph. And this past summer, an event started in Guelph. I was involved in starting that up. So, It's Guelph every morning for me because it's only a five-minute drive from me there. So I started parkrun. I'm originally from Ireland and, you know, in touch with a lot of former friends and colleagues and that on Facebook in Ireland. And I heard about parkrun from them. And I ran my first parkrun a few years ago in Ireland, near where I grew up. But then I waited another two years before I was able to run another one until the event started here in Kitchener.

00:24:43G-Train: Jonathan, as I was saying, like, the course is just absolutely gorgeous and quite picturesque. How did you manage to get into, like, get permission to be able to run the course around the park that you're using?

00:24:56Jonathan: We just got really lucky. It's beautiful, like, how, like, First, like how nice the course is and like it's well maintained in the winter, which is sometimes a problem in Canada. It was salted today, so not even too icy. We got in touch with the city and I guess they just they allowed us to use it. They didn't really care, to be honest. I don't know if they really appreciate the benefits of parkrun, but they're not kicking us off, so that's good. Yeah, it's a beautiful course. It's very well contained. We don't need very many marshals to execute the day. And it's so central, you can take transit there pretty easily. I'd bike to it most weeks. Yeah, really beautiful course.

00:25:54G-Train: And the interesting thing about this course, it's one that I haven't experienced, is that it's almost a four-lapper. So I guess that gives you a good opportunity to sort of take things a bit easy for the first few and get your pacing just right. Scotty would love it because it goes over a bridge a number of times and then finishes just over another bridge, so... That's quite exciting. And the water in the lake was frozen over today for most of the part, so that looks quite nice, and a few spots there for the birds to be able to get in. We did get a warning about wildlife, and I might get Aidan to talk about the warning that we had today and why that's in place.

00:26:29Aidan: So Canada is famous for its Canada geese. And these are quite big and, you know, they're about the size of a medium-sized dog. And so they seem to own the territory. So you're running along the path and you encounter them. You might run into like 20 of them. You can go around them, but you can't run directly at them. So you got to be careful because then they'll get a little aggressive. And if they start hissing, that means you got to stop and tread carefully. So today they were around, but they were easy enough to avoid.

00:27:05G-Train: Yeah, for reference, I guess they're about the size of a black swan, which we'd see in Australia, but a bit heavier set. So if one of them had a go at you, I think you'd be heading for a PB, I think, if you had one of them chasing you. So, look, I think we'll just keep it short this week, and hopefully next week I'll be able to get to Guelph, although Guelph has had a couple of issues recently. Perhaps, Aidan, you might like to mention those?

00:27:30Aidan: So our trails in Guelph are on, you know, stone dust, crushed, sort of crushed gravel. So what happens is that the snow that falls gets sort of pounded in, and then when it melts, it's just sort of icy with water on top of it. So the... The streets and the paths in Guelph are all snow-free at the moment, but unfortunately our trails are not in good shape at all. So we cancelled today, Saturday. We cancelled last week on Saturday, but midweek on New Year's Day we had fresh snow and it was nice and firm and we had an excellent parkrun and record turnout. So we're just hoping for some snow actually.

00:28:13G-Train: Yes, and as I said, like the course was clear today, there was a light dusting of snow on the trees and on the grass, so they looked really quite picturesque. And also where we're sitting coughing, there's ice skating going on outside. And so very much a winter scene here. But as I said, that's all for this week. And hopefully we'll be able to come to you from Guelph at Eramosa River Trail parkrun next weekend. So thanks very much. This is G-Train signing off from Victoria parkrun in Kitchener. And definitely if anybody is over this way, you should come and check it out. See you.

Roving report G-Train — Eramosa River Trail parkrun

00:28:50G-Train: G'day parkrun adventurers, it's the G-Train here once again for my last weekend in Canada on this trip and I've just done Eramosa River Trail parkrun in Guelph, Ontario which is probably about an hour or so outside of Toronto and it's been an interesting day and I'm here with Teresa, Chris and my old mate from last week, Aidan and we'll just ask them what was special about today.

00:29:16Teresa: Well, we had quite the amount of rain and that reflected in the number of runners we had. We still had 21 people come out and we actually had to modify the course a bit to make it safe for everybody. So it was quite the adventure.

00:29:30G-Train: And as well as it being a bit damp, I mean, what are the issues with safety on a day like today, Chris?

00:29:35Chris: Well, when there's a lot of rain, there's always the problem of there being ice underlying, especially when it has been winter and quite cold the past little while. So we're going to have runners that are slower, potentially quite chilly on the course, the potential of slipping as well. So lots of things to consider while they're out for the parkrun.

00:29:52G-Train: Yeah, and I can attest to that. So there were some spots where, you know, there's puddles, which, you know, you get and the rain pelting down, which you get in Australia as well. But below some of those puddles, you could feel the ice that was there hidden away. So It was a bit of a slow one today, I think, for everybody that was out there. But, you know, it was probably about 10 or 11 degrees, so not too cold and, you know, In that respect, the conditions weren't any worse than what we would see back in Australia. But it was that hidden ice that was just lurking below the surface, which we really had to be careful of. Aidan, we did Victoria in Kitchener last week and Guelph today. What would you say are the things that distinguish the two parkruns?

00:30:37Aidan: Kitchener has got a tarmac sort of trail which is maintained by the city so most of the winter it's in good condition. Here we have a stone dust trail in Guelph and I don't know how well it's maintained by the city because this is our first winter. So that may be the big thing. We've had a couple of cancellations the last couple of weeks because the snow has been pounded to ice and then melted and the course has become waterlogged and very slippery. And that's something that probably doesn't happen too often in Kitchener.

00:31:15G-Train: Teresa, parkrun and Guelph has only been here for less than a year now. What can you tell me about the growth of parkrun and Guelph and the numbers that you've been getting?

00:31:25Teresa: We launched our first parkrun in Guelph on June 22nd, and Guelph is a huge running community. So I believe we had 60 or so for our inaugural run, which was fantastic, and our average has been around 65 or so. So we've done some special events. We've had a potluck, we had a Halloween costume run, we had a New Year's Day run, and we've had numbers up to over 100. So it's been phenomenal to see that growth. We're bringing in Regular runners were bringing in first-timers. We're reaching community people that said they've never really run or walked. We've got families, multi-generational. We've got people that bring their kids in a stroller, including today. And he's known as Stroller Guy. His real name is Dennis, but he's known as Stroller Guy. And so it's just been getting people from all walks of life, and it's been awesome to see.

00:32:16G-Train: And I believe you had set an attendance record of about 130 on New Year's Day. Is that correct?

00:32:22Teresa: Yes, yes. It was great.

00:32:24G-Train: Now you use a term there that is probably unfamiliar to a lot of Australians of potluck so perhaps you could explain that.

00:32:31Teresa: Sorry about that so it's again trying to reach out to that community so we had people bringing different types of food so we had provided some beverages with the coffee and juice and water and people brought desserts and they brought treats and snacks and what have you because we really just wanted it to be again, as all-inclusive in the community as we could. I think we did that in early September because we were getting the bugs out from the run from June and July. So once we knew what we were doing, we said, let's hit this with a splash. And people like food. So food and running was a great combination.

00:33:07G-Train: And Guelph is probably a town that's unfamiliar to most Australians. I know because my lovely wife went to university here. But, Chris, can you tell me what would you recommend for the things that, I guess, the things that will bring people to Guelph? What's attractive here?

00:33:22Chris: The Guelph parkrun is going to be top of my list. Guelph is really known for its university community and its very unique restaurants downtown, but honestly, the running community here is beyond anything I've ever seen. I know that the Canadian Running Magazine a couple years ago nominated Guelph as being the running capital of Canada. So based on that, it's the running community that keeps me coming back day after day.

00:33:48G-Train: Aidan, so where do you think parkrun will be heading in Canada?

00:33:52Aidan: Oh, parkrun is growing all the time in Canada. We've had quite a few new events in the last year. The numbers in Canada are not large, but it will grow and continue to grow. It's starting sort of slowly, but it's really picking up speed.

00:34:12G-Train: And that's it from me now, I guess, for this trip to Canada. Not as much snow as when I was here two years ago. Rain on the first weekend that I was here, rain on the last weekend. No snow during the events and no snow on courses, unfortunately. But it's certainly been fantastic to get back here and meet lots of wonderful parkrunners. It was certainly interesting the first few weeks here that... Most of my interviewees were either from South Africa or from England. We've got one now from America and Ireland, but also it's been great to be chatting with some Canadians too to find out how they're enjoying the growth of this fantastic event. So that's all from me now, and I look forward to getting back to Australia soon. See you.

00:34:55Melissa Erbacher: Thank you. Another awesome lineup of roving reports. Matty Trent kicking off today. He's making a bit of a play for the Channel 5 news crew, I think, but he's got a bit of work to do. Never signs off, Matty. You know, you should... Finish what you start, Matty, is all I'm saying. Although I have to admit, Lyndell, I don't know about you, but when he was chatting to Geoff about the difficulty of the course and Geoff said, oh, you know, this is the easiest one they could find with the terrain they had to work with, I was wondering what some of the other iterations might have been and how many more metres of elevation they could have involved. But, oh, I laughed out loud when Matty said at 1.39K that he was choking back his first puke.

00:35:36[laughter]

00:35:44Lyndell Murray: I mean, look, he's a natural for the Channel 5 News crew, creating theatre of the mind like that. I mean, we were right there with you, Matty.

00:35:53Melissa Erbacher: Yes, painting a word picture, big time. Thanks for that, Matty. And then we had Sarah who was out at Cobram, which doesn't it sound gorgeous, like so picturesque along and around the Murray.

00:36:09Lyndell Murray: Oh, 100%. And then we heard from TOC on the Wallaby track and he had an idea for a new club. So how about we just put a pin in that? We might get back to that one a bit later.

00:36:25Melissa Erbacher: And of course, Melissa Ellis, my heart went out to her when I heard this one, when she was at Puckapunyal and talking about missing her parkrun last weekend, like we did, but for completely different reasons, obviously. And Yeah, I'm glad she got to have a bit of a run in for her mental health and I hope she gets back to parkrun again soon. But thank you, Melissa, for all your contributions and what you're doing to help in the relief effort. It doesn't go unnoticed and we think you're awesome.

00:36:58Lyndell Murray: That we do. And look, what a woman. She's there missing parkrun, missing her family, working really hard for the benefit of the country and the community. And she's still thinking about what more she can do for the community and offering help to somebody who wants to start a parkrun. Hats off to you, Mel Ellis.

00:37:20Melissa Erbacher: Absolutely. And I think it's a great idea. Puckapunyal would be a great place. Or Seymour, you know, that whole general area. I hope it happens.

00:37:29Teresa: Yeah.

00:37:30Melissa Erbacher: Meanwhile, on the other side of the planet, rounding out his series, of Canadian parkruns. We had the G-Train checking in from, we've got, well, two weeks in a row because G-Train was so prolific over the New Year's period with profiling and chatting to so many different parkruns while he was away that we couldn't fit them all in last week. So we saved one. We saved Victoria Park in Kitchener to be played back to back with Eramosa River Trail parkrun. And Far out. He's done such a great job. He's super professional now. I may have mentioned to him in an email that perhaps he's also looking for an invitation to the Channel 5 News crew, to which he replied that he wasn't. No. And no.

00:38:21Lyndell Murray: What's not to love about the Channel 5 News crew? Who doesn't want to be a member?

00:38:27Melissa Erbacher: Well... It's not that he doesn't want to be a member of the crew so much as he's looking for a specific title. And you know what? I think I might pay this. G-Train wants to be our special correspondent.

00:38:41Lyndell Murray: I reckon that's fair enough.

00:38:42Melissa Erbacher: That's fair enough. Have you seen the 2016 British Canadian American comedy written and directed and starring Ricky Gervais called Special Correspondents? I have not. It's put it on your to-do list. It's on Netflix or it was on Netflix and it should be again. Not only does it star Ricky Gervais but it also stars Eric Bana and I'll give you the basic premise. These guys, they work in the news. They work on the radio actually. They're not – They're not video presenters or anything like that. And they're going to cover their war correspondence. They're going to go cover some stuff that's happening in Ecuador. And on the way to the airport or when they're at the airport, they realise that Ricky Gervais' character has thrown out their tickets and passports into a garbage truck. So they can't go. But instead of, you know, owning up to the fact that, okay, they didn't make their flight and they have to replace their passports and all that sort of stuff, they go back into town and they hide out in a local cafe and they fake their correspondence with So they make fake stories saying that they're in Ecuador and then covering the war, you know, and all that sort of stuff. But then they realise, oh, you know, maybe we're not, we need a story with more substance. So they create a story about some bad person or something like that and it all just basically gets out of hand. Yes. Great movie. Really, really funny, enjoyable movie. So I highly recommend it. But it does make me wonder whether or not G-Train would consider himself to be the Ricky Gervais character or the Eric Bana in this scenario.

00:40:40Lyndell Murray: Yes. The other thing that's running around in my mind is if these guys – on this show, this movie, just made stuff up. Are the Canadian attack geese really real? Well...

00:40:57Melissa Erbacher: See, this is the thing. Are these guys waxing lyrical? Is G-Train even in Canada? That's what I want to know. I haven't actually been looking up the results just to double check that he is where he says he is. He might have even sent his barcode over and somebody could be scanning him in and doing him a favour. Let's face it, those first few events, the people he was speaking to all had Aussie accents.

00:41:23Lyndell Murray: That's right. They didn't even sound Canadian.

00:41:25Melissa Erbacher: No. So I don't know. Maybe we shouldn't be naming him a special correspondent and we should just be completely reviewing all his work.

00:41:33Lyndell Murray: Get the detective Mel onto the case and let's see what we can find out.

00:41:40Melissa Erbacher: I hope I'm just not too trusting, but I am questioning everything now.

00:41:45Lyndell Murray: Look, either way, whether it's real or not, G-Train knows how to tell a story.

00:41:51Melissa Erbacher: He does. It's made for great listening.

00:41:53Lyndell Murray: Doesn't he? I mean, his roving reports were fantastic. It's made excellent listening. I've really enjoyed all of the stories and people that he's been interviewing. So, you know, hats off to you, G-Train. If it's real, it's fantastic. If it's not real, it's even better.

00:42:10Melissa Erbacher: Fact or fiction. Not fussy. You know, just send us whatever you like. We'll take it.

00:42:17Lyndell Murray: Don't let the truth get in the way of a good story.

The Vert Clubnew Adventurer Club

00:42:20Melissa Erbacher: no fact checking on this program who's got time for that exactly yeah well good good job to everybody again this week it's been a lot of fun now you put a pin in TOC's suggestion for a macropod club, Lyndell can you explain like what's something's going on in your brain what's going on in there

00:42:47Lyndell Murray: Yeah, look, hey, there's a lot going on in my brain. No doubt. But particularly in relation to TOC's idea. Specifically in relation to TOC's idea for a new club. And look, in the normal segment that we do on the parkrun adventurers is about running challenges and clubs and unofficial clubs. I've got an idea. I'm wondering if you can help me flesh it out, Mel.

00:43:12Melissa Erbacher: Ooh, intriguing. Okay.

00:43:14Lyndell Murray: Yes. So thinking about TOC's idea for a new club and Matty Trent being at Mundy Regional, that is vomit inspiring. I'm wondering.

00:43:23Melissa Erbacher: Okay. I'm worried now.

00:43:26Lyndell Murray: No, no, stay with me. I'm wondering if there's a place on the unofficial parkrun club roster for a vert club. So for all those parkrunners who like to go chasing vert, Could we measure the elevation gain that we have in parkruns to see if we can climb Mount Everest at parkrun?

00:43:50Melissa Erbacher: I... I seem to recall there has been conversations, and you've probably been a part of them, no doubt, in tourism groups in the past couple of years about elevation. I know in Australia, so we're talking about running challenges.

00:44:08Lyndell Murray: Yes.

00:44:09Melissa Erbacher: Obviously those are particular clubs that can be measured or people's participation or entrance into those clubs can be found through their results.

00:44:19Unidentified speaker: Yes.

00:44:20Melissa Erbacher: And we've got a whole bunch of other clubs in Australia that are not quantifiable like that, that people just have to track themselves, which is great. They're unofficial. We're an unofficial podcast. Sounds perfect. We love unofficial. It works for us.

00:44:33Lyndell Murray: So, yeah, elevation gain isn't something that parkrun measures as part of your results. So this would be entirely unofficial.

00:44:40Melissa Erbacher: Yeah. And not to be confused, I'm assuming, with people do track – how high or low things are above sea level, like the actual elevation of a parkrun's location. No, no, no. It's not about that. It's about when you do the five kilometres course. How much gain. How many hills do you climb?

00:44:59Lyndell Murray: How many hills do you climb? So it's not about, you know, something like the beaches, which is actually run on a beach, is at a zero elevation and something at, I don't even know, say somewhere that's not at sea level. Okay. obviously has some kind of elevation above sea level. That's not what this is about.

00:45:20Melissa Erbacher: So the ones that come to mind, I guess, like Nambour parkrun.

00:45:23Lyndell Murray: Like Nambour.

00:45:24Melissa Erbacher: And now Mundy Regional, of course. Yeah. Your home parkrun, Bunyaville. Bunyaville. Got some hills.

00:45:29Lyndell Murray: Yeah. So these are all parkruns that have quite a bit of elevation gain and within the parkrun so the other clubs that I think have been bandied around that again this is different too is there's the mountaineers club which is about clubs that have mount in the title like Mount Gambier Mount Barker yep Mount Barker, Mount Tamborine or Tamborine Mountain so if you want to be a mountaineer I think you have to do all the parkrun events that have a mount in their title Yes. And some of them might actually be flat. You never know.

00:46:01Melissa Erbacher: Yeah. And there's also the hillbillies, which is the same. And those ones have hill in the title.

00:46:06Lyndell Murray: Yeah. And I don't even know of one of those. There must be some though. The vert club is all about how much elevation you get when you run a parkrun. So Mundy Regional um I was you know I had my um attention piqued at how hard it was because you know I like a good hard parkrun it's got I think about 210 metres of elevation gain so it's I think it's probably the mother of Everest parkruns in Australia. Okay. Some of the ones that we talk about a lot is Nambour. So Nambour has 190 metres or thereabouts of elevation gain. And runs like Bunyaville and Ocean View have got about 150. So my proposal is in the vert club there could be different stages of chasing vert. So you could start, for example, with an elevation gain equivalent to Mount Kosciuszko, which is 2,228 metres you have to climb within parkruns.

00:47:12Melissa Erbacher: Okay, so you're not proposing, for example, somebody has to do the five parkruns that... have the most elevation because that could be quite difficult. People would have to go to WA and then a couple in Queensland and then the goalposts could be shifting all the time, not unlike the Compass Club. Yes, I did like that one. Yeah, I should have thought more about locking that down so it's not a shifting thing. So you're not talking about like just choosing five, you're talking about actually attaining a certain height.

00:47:43Lyndell Murray: Yes, so every parkrun you do, helps you accrue elevation towards your vert club. Oh, I like it. Right? But if you do something like New Farm, for example, I'm just thinking of some flat runs around Brisbane that I've done, you might only get a few metres of elevation gain.

00:48:04Melissa Erbacher: So it's going to take you a long time to get into the Kosciuszko level of the vert club.

00:48:11Lyndell Murray: Well, if you only run at New Farm or Sandgate or Wynnum, it would take you a really long time. So, you know, according to my Garmin anyway, Wynnum has two metres of elevation. So that's a lot of parkruns.

00:48:26Melissa Erbacher: So that's 1,114 Wynnum parkruns will get you.

00:48:30Lyndell Murray: Wynnum parkruns will get you to be.

00:48:32Melissa Erbacher: To the Kosciuszko level.

00:48:33Lyndell Murray: Kosciuszko.

00:48:34Melissa Erbacher: And there's going to be more levels to this club. by the sounds of it.

00:48:38Lyndell Murray: Yes, there is because we're talking about Everest. So you've got your Kosciuszko. I figure if you're going to climb Everest, you might as well put in a milestone for base camp.

00:48:49Melissa Erbacher: Yes, a lot of people work up to doing the whole thing by going just like they just do the treks to base camp. That's good. How high is the base camp?

00:48:59Lyndell Murray: Base camp is 5,380 metres. Okay. Yep. And then you've got the pinnacle, pun intended, of the vert club, to attain Everest. How tall is Everest? Which is 8,848 metres elevation. Ouch. Now I've done some maths. Of course I've done some maths. Tell us the maths, Lyndell. Yeah. So if you run Bunyaville at an elevation of around 150 metres per parkrun, If you've run that 59 times, you've climbed Mount Everest.

00:49:41Melissa Erbacher: Ah, well, that's, well, I say that's doable. That's still more than a year's solid running. That's doable. One event with a lot of elevation.

00:49:49Lyndell Murray: It's still more than a year's solid running. That's it. Nambour, you can go slightly less than a year. You need 47 or so of Nambour parkrun. Okay. To get your Mount Everest run. And if you like vomiting, like Matty, and want to go to Mundy Regional, you have to do that just over 42 times.

00:50:11Melissa Erbacher: Okay. So, but these are for the people who are trying to climb Everest in the shortest amount of time. Exactly. Or, you know, within reason and within their localities. But every event that we've done, you know, I've been parkrunning since 2012, so... If I go back and look at the elevation of all the courses, and this might take me several hours, which is good. I like a project. But I'm going to work on this project and I'm going to try and find out the – well, we don't have the actual elevation of all the courses, do we? I'll have to see if I've Strava'd them all.

00:50:48Lyndell Murray: If you've Strava'd them or Garmin'd them – You can do an export and good old simple spreadsheet. For those of us that have been parkrunning for longer than the running challenges app, or, you know, extension's been around, we've all got spreadsheets logging our parkruns. We do.

00:51:08Melissa Erbacher: We've got the spreadsheets anyway. And look, to be honest, we're still keeping the spreadsheets because there are extra things that aren't included. We're all nerds. It's okay.

00:51:18Lyndell Murray: So, yeah, you can do an export and have a look.

00:51:22Melissa Erbacher: I'll report back next week about how high I've climbed since 2012 when I started parkrunning.

00:51:28Lyndell Murray: Yeah.

00:51:29Melissa Erbacher: And see. So you've got the three levels at this stage. Would you be open to having other mountains included? And so what happens, the club's name is the Vert Club.

00:51:43Lyndell Murray: The club name is the Vert Club. And, look, I think we can have little titles. So, like, I –

00:51:49Melissa Erbacher: Are they like badges, like in running challenges they call them badges?

00:51:52Lyndell Murray: Sure, why not? So if you get to the height of Kosciuszko, you can get the Strzelecki badge.

00:52:01Melissa Erbacher: Ah, that's the first person who climbed Kosciuszko, I'm assuming? He's the first person to climb Kosciuszko. Because I know Everest was Hillary, but I'm not so familiar with Kosciuszko.

00:52:14Lyndell Murray: Everest. Yeah, when you get to Everest, you get the Hillary badge because Edmund Hillary was the first person to climb up Mount Everest. I don't know what we call the base camp one. Maybe we could just call that the dodgy tourist badge because... You know, there's all those stories now about people just going to base camp and not being very respectful. That's a bad idea, isn't it?

00:52:39Melissa Erbacher: I'm sure there are people that are respectful that go to Everest base camp.

00:52:45Lyndell Murray: Maybe we could call it the bucket list star badge because base camp seems to be something that people have on their bucket list.

00:52:52Melissa Erbacher: Yeah, well, you can't get there without a Sherpa, can you? You're not allowed to go even to base camp without a Sherpa. Maybe you could be a Sherpa. Maybe it could be the Sherpa badge. I like that. I mean, technically, I think you're not allowed to go to the top without a Sherpa, are you?

00:53:06Lyndell Murray: I wouldn't imagine so. And so I like that because, let's be honest, Strzelecki and Hillary also had helpers, whether they were Sherpas or, you know, they weren't climbing up these mountains. Yeah, they're the unknowns. Exactly. They weren't climbing up these mountains by themselves, let's be honest.

00:53:23Melissa Erbacher: No.

00:53:24Lyndell Murray: So let's call the base camp badge the Sherpa.

00:53:28Melissa Erbacher: Okay.

00:53:29Lyndell Murray: I'm down with that.

00:53:31Melissa Erbacher: I love it. You're going to have to write this all down, Lyndell, and send it to Peter Pohlman so he can add it to his spreadsheet.

00:53:38Lyndell Murray: Yes, I will.

00:53:38Melissa Erbacher: Because Peter Pohlman's spreadsheet is the mother. It's the Excel slash Google Sheets version of – running challenges it's sure no not really it it just has all the names doesn't it in Australia of what the unofficial clubs that have been given names and and entry criteria for yeah well Lyndell thank you for straining my brain um with all that maths you I'll be honest I'm not usually so um mathematically inclined unless it comes to parkrun like all the stats and all the different clubs and you know all that sort of fun stuff um it really piques my interest and and Andy and Laura at Running Challenges, they've made some upgrades to the Running Challenges extension in recent weeks, which is very cool. You know, they've added extra stuff in. So go check out the website to see what the new stuff is because it's fun and awesome. But I do love this extra stuff as well. So thank you for giving me a project to get onto for next week.

00:54:47Lyndell Murray: So have we done it? Is this a club now?

00:54:50Melissa Erbacher: Yeah, I reckon. Vert Club. I mean, that's all you've got to do is have a name. I mean, nobody else might want to do it. It might just be you and me. But that's okay too. I mean, that's the whole point of unofficial clubs. You can pick and choose which ones you want to chase. It's all about the chase. It is all about the chase.

00:55:12Lyndell Murray: It's about the adventure, should we say.

Sign-off

00:55:15Melissa Erbacher: Thank you also for joining me on the podcast this week. It has been lovely to have a bit more of a lighthearted episode for a change of pace. I hope everybody else is on board with that. I got a lot of nice messages about last week's episode, which were very appreciated. So thank you to everyone who got in touch with me about that as well. But ultimately, Lyndell, thank you for being another awesome co-host and joining me this week.

00:55:42Lyndell Murray: Thank you, Mel. Thank you for entertaining my crazy idea for a new club. And thank you for the wonderful podcast that is the parkrun adventurers. Thank you.

00:56:52Unidentified speaker: Thank you.