Episode 205 - Tania Hollis

Welcome

00:00:23Melissa Erbacher: Would you look at us go. Episode 205, only one week or within the week after episode 204, which was also within the week after episode 203. I think we might be a bit on a roll. My name is Mel Erbacher. Welcome to episode 205 of the parkrun adventurers podcast, which I am proud to call my own. And this week I am joined by the ever effervescent Lyndell Murray as co-host. Lyndell, welcome back to the pod.

00:00:55Lyndell Murray: G'day Mel. Thanks for having me again. It's great to be here.

00:00:59Melissa Erbacher: Always awesome having you. Now, Lyndell, I'm going to cut straight to the chase. We haven't had a chat for a couple of months now. There's been a bit of chaos going on in the world and, you know, I've had other co-hosts, et cetera. What have you been getting up to lately? How are you keeping out of trouble?

00:01:16Lyndell Murray: Keeping pretty well. Life's been pretty normal with work and so forth through all of this. And I've been trying to keep my running up and, yeah, just keep myself busy and keep myself –

00:01:29Melissa Erbacher: trucking forward that's good to hear how about you Mel well Lyndell I'm keeping out of trouble by doing not parkruns I am pleased to report that I have done four in a row of that see it's like a rolls happening there as well all four weeks I've completed at least one in week three I actually did two don't know how I managed to find the energy and time to pull out a second 5k in one week But it happened. I've got the proof. Sad to say that I did not maintain my streak of PBs after week two. But it's kind of, you know, not a bad thing necessarily. I feel like I am putting a bit of pressure on myself to be performing better every time. And it was kind of nice to break that streak because it takes the pressure off just a little bit. I'm kind of returning to running, I guess, for the first proper time after having Emmett. There was a long period of walking while I was pregnant with him and then afterwards when I was recovering from the having of him being almost an 11-pound baby. So, yeah, I'm kind of starting from scratch and remembering things from when I first started running the first time. So, yeah, there's a lot of head games going on and I won't go into it here, but it's not all straightforward. But I am proud to say that I am getting out there. Not parkrun is getting me moving again on parkrun Day and I'm happy for that. So it's all progress. It's all progress.

00:03:06Lyndell Murray: That's great, Mel. And look, you can think of it another way. You know, the pressure can get to you. But, you know, if you're putting pressure on yourself, it means you're doing something that is really valuable and meaningful to you. So hats off to you for getting that foot out the door and getting back into running. It's not easy to get back into it after a little break. And it sounds like you're making great progress.

00:03:28Melissa Erbacher: Well, I'm moving forward anyway. And that's what I always tell people. As long as you're moving forward, you're doing okay. But are you doing anything fun or different to mix up? Are you not parkrunning? Are you doing any other kind of random challenges to get your feet out the door? Yeah, look, I've entered a few different virtual challenges.

00:03:49Lyndell Murray: I haven't done any not parkruns. I haven't logged any anyway. But I guess parkrun related, what I have been doing is Again, you know, virtual events are taking the place of actual events in all parts of our life. At work, we're having virtual meetings and, you know, event organisers are putting on virtual run and parkrun's got not parkrun. So I've been a bit inventive with my parkrunning experience. And I'm pretty happy to announce that I've managed to pull off my virtual Peel Club during COVID lockdown. So that's pretty all right.

00:04:22Melissa Erbacher: I'm pretty excited about that. Okay. Explain to me, I mean, congratulations, first of all.

00:04:27Unidentified speaker: Yeah.

00:04:28Melissa Erbacher: But you haven't left the state, I'm assuming. How does a virtual entry into the Peel Club work? What does that look like?

00:04:36Lyndell Murray: Yeah. Well, I have two states or two territories, rather, to tick off. The areas missing for me are Northern Territory and ACT. So I was a bit inspired by, you know, I'd seen on some of the tourism pages and the unofficial parkrun pages that people had been spelling out parkrun with street signs and spelling out the names of parkruns with street signs. So I took a bit of inspiration from that. And probably about a month ago now, I spelt out Nightcliff with a whole bunch of business names. And the week after that, I spelt out Coombs with a whole bunch of different parks in my neighbouring suburbs. I even managed to find myself a Studley Park right here in Brisbane.

00:05:23Melissa Erbacher: Oh, really? Studley Park up here must have a little bit of a sister in Victoria. I wonder which one came first.

00:05:29Lyndell Murray: Obviously the Queensland one.

00:05:31Unidentified speaker: I don't know.

00:05:33Lyndell Murray: I did try to research that, but I didn't find any conclusive information about the origins of Studley Park. So I think we can just claim it, Mel.

00:05:42Melissa Erbacher: I would, you know, just by default.

00:05:45Lyndell Murray: Why not?

00:05:46Melissa Erbacher: It's accurate unless proven otherwise, in my opinion.

00:05:50Lyndell Murray: So, yeah, so that's how I have done my Peel Club. Yeah, it was really good because, you know, like you, the (not)parkruns getting you out the door, just setting those little challenges is, you know, they seem a bit random, I know, but they got me out the door that week for a decent size run each week and that was important to me. So, yeah, it was fun actually plotting out the route that I'd take to tick off my N-I-G-H-T-C-L-I-F-F.

00:06:18Melissa Erbacher: I love your creativity. It takes an adventurer to think of something so random and outside the box. Yeah, look, it was a bit of fun.

00:06:26Lyndell Murray: But as I said, it got me out the door and yeah, I took photos of all the different signs and locations that I went past and yeah it was a lot of fun.

00:06:35Melissa Erbacher: Awesome well speaking of fun we have a guest lined up who I'm looking forward to introducing very shortly but we also have a stalwart of the podcast who's coming back for a little bit of a new segment a little bit later on too so shall we kick off?

Interview Tania Hollis — Event Director, Dunedin parkrun (New Zealand)

00:06:53Melissa Erbacher: Let's get into it Mel. We are very lucky this week to have a chat to somebody who has done two actual parkruns in the last two weeks. Not not parkruns, real parkruns. She is the Event Director at Dunedin parkrun on the South Island of New Zealand and her name is Tania Hollis. Tania, welcome to the parkrun adventurers podcast.

00:07:18Lyndell Murray: Thank you so much for having me tonight.

00:07:20Melissa Erbacher: Now, we're really excited, obviously, to speak to a real live parkrunner after you've just had real live parkruns. I'm going to go straight to it. What was it like getting back to parkrun two weeks ago?

00:07:32Tania Hollis: It was absolutely amazing. As soon as we'd gone into our level one here in New Zealand, which was pretty much no social distancing, no need to worry about face masks or anything like that, I started getting the questions. When are we starting again? And I was just telling them, just hang on a second. We're just waiting to hear from HQ when we can start again. And then we had the two week countdown when we were told the start date. And then that was a matter of getting our volunteers all ready, which was not too much of a problem, which was good. And then that first morning when I said, welcome back to parkrun and everybody cheered, it was just amazing. Really, really amazing.

00:08:14Lyndell Murray: Did that two weeks between thinking you might be back and getting back just feel like ages or did it go very quickly?

00:08:23Tania Hollis: It went really fast because in that time as I was run directing for that one as well I was getting making sure the kit was ready trying to get our permissions with the council all sorted out on top of making sure that we had volunteers so it actually went quite quickly and I was nervous on that first day back, wondering how many people would turn up. So yeah, nervous excitement.

00:08:47Melissa Erbacher: Did you get emotional? Because, I mean, I'm feeling emotional just hearing you talk about it and I don't know if I'm just a lady on the edge with not enough parkrun in my life right now, but just, you know, every time I see a video or something of parkrunners keeping connected and then knowing that you guys are actually back together, I think I would have choked up during the pre-event brief. How did you go?

00:09:10Tania Hollis: I just had one of those smiles that makes your face hurt. And that's kind of how it was all of Saturday morning. Just really happy to be back and just to see everybody I hadn't seen for quite a while. So it was just, yeah, silly grin. I can imagine. I'm with Mel. I would have been blubbering.

00:09:27Lyndell Murray: I would have been very, very emotional. But I love the idea of a smile that makes your face hurt. That is for sure. Is there anything that stood out from that day, Tania, that will just be in your memory?

00:09:38Tania Hollis: Yeah. Just everybody coming up and saying how great it was to be back and it was so nice to see us and thanking us for starting up again, getting an extra muffin given to me in the cafe afterwards. That was kind of a great thing. Just seeing everybody's joy at being back was pretty amazing, really.

00:09:57Melissa Erbacher: And so, I mean, we've skipped straight to the end of the story, really.

00:10:03Tania Hollis: As you do when you're excited. Yeah.

00:10:06Melissa Erbacher: Yeah, I'm one of those people. I don't go to the last page of a book because I don't want to ruin the ending, but we do know how this ends. It ends with a happily ever after. So let's go back to the start and then we'll get to revisit the end again at the end so we can relive it twice, as it were. How did parkrun start for you, Tania? Where does the story begin?

00:10:27Tania Hollis: It started for me actually in West Australia, when I was doing a couch to 5K running program, as a lot of us start off that way these days, and I was looking for somewhere to do my first 5K run. And Rockingham parkrun had just started a couple of weeks before I was due to do that 5K. And so I went along and I volunteered at my first parkrun to see what it was all about. And then the next time I ran my first 5K at the Rockingham parkrun, And yeah, it's just been ongoing since then. That's amazing. You ran the whole way on your first one? Yeah. Fantastic. That doesn't happen now in Dunedin. I do not run all the way in Dunedin. There's, yeah, too many hills here. I was going to say, is it too cold? The cold makes you run a bit faster sometimes, I think. It's just hilly, very hilly.

00:11:22Melissa Erbacher: I have been to Dunedin and I have seen those hills, so I can appreciate how you might feel that way. But I am impressed that your very first parkrun experience was as a volunteer. I think it takes a special kind of person to volunteer at something that they've never been to before. They don't know how it all works. Were you nervous about that?

00:11:41Tania Hollis: Yeah, I think I can't even really remember it because it's like a lot of these things, the first time you do it, it goes by in a blur. But just I think... That's what parkrun's so good at. It just makes you feel so welcome and you can just kind of jump in and do something. And there's lots of support there. So I can't remember it being an absolute disaster. So that must have been a good thing.

00:12:03Lyndell Murray: I'm sure it went very, very smoothly. Volunteering at parkrun is very well supported and it just seems to happen, doesn't it?

00:12:10Tania Hollis: Yeah, absolutely.

00:12:11Lyndell Murray: Now, Tania, early on in your parkrun career, I shouldn't call it a career, should I? There's a little bit of adventuring around Western Australia. Are there any highlights there that you'd like to tell us about?

00:12:23Tania Hollis: Some very early morning starts to get in some of the ones down south before I left West Australia. So I remember getting up very early one day to get down to Bunbury and drive down there. And also the other thing I really remember is meeting some great people at the different parkruns. But we did a longest day not official parkrun adventure where we did seven parkruns in one day and went around all the different courses at the time. And that was just amazing as well.

00:12:56Melissa Erbacher: Sounds awesome. Yeah, so we know you're in New Zealand now, but you started your parkrun journey in Western Australia. So you did live here on the West Island of New Zealand for a period of time.

00:13:10Tania Hollis: Yes, you can join us. Of course you can join us.

00:13:13Melissa Erbacher: How we would love to do that and have all the borders, although it would mean that your cases of COVID-19 go skyrocketing, unfortunately.

00:13:22Tania Hollis: Let's just keep it as it is for now.

00:13:24Melissa Erbacher: Yep, yep. We'll get ourselves under control first and then we'll create the trans-Tasman bubble. Then we can all enjoy a little bit of overseas adventures as well. Yeah, absolutely. But you lived in WA for quite a time and, as Lyndell said, you did manage to get in quite a few events as well while you were here. Yeah. What first got you interested in adventuring?

00:13:43Tania Hollis: Just to see the different courses and meet some of the different people, really. And we would do it often as with friends, go off to a new one, make some new friends at another one. There was some quite good parkrun WA community Facebook pages at the time as well. So we got to know people better. through those pages so we could meet up with them at their home parkruns as well. West Australia is so big and it was really just starting to take off when I left there's so so many more so when I go back there I've been back a couple of times now I always try and get down to one of the ones down where I used to live and then a new one that had started up since I'd left. Great fun.

00:14:26Lyndell Murray: Are there any favourites, Tania, that you have in Western Australia?

00:14:30Tania Hollis: Probably one of my favourites is one that doesn't actually exist anymore. It's Heirisson Island. It stopped quite a while ago now and it was on this small island that's in the middle of the Swan River. And I remember going there. It was a lovely morning. There were dolphins in the river. There were kangaroos further down the course. Beautiful, beautiful spot. Yeah, one of my favourites.

00:14:55Melissa Erbacher: Now, you've also done a swag of events in the North and South Islands of New Zealand, not just the West Island. When you moved back to New Zealand, did you immediately move to Dunedin? Did you start Dunedin parkrun or did you inherit it from someone else? How does the story move on when you get to New Zealand?

00:15:14Tania Hollis: So when I decided to come back to Dunedin, there was no Dunedin parkrun and I was thinking, oh, no, I'm going to have to go and start one up. That sounds like quite hard work. And then shortly after I had that thought, Dunedin parkrun turned up, which was great. So I got in contact with Emma Lawrence, who was the Event Director who was involved in setting it up, and said I was coming back and I was quite happy to get involved as she needed. And she emailed me back and said, actually, we're in the process of leaving Dunedin, her and her husband, And we're just setting up a group of Run Directors to look after the parkrun. I said, sure, I'll join in with that fund. That sounds fine. So I came back. It was all up and running. So I inherited a lovely parkrun. And just over the course of time, I've gone from being one of the group of Run Directors to being the Event Director here.

00:16:09Lyndell Murray: And had you been a Run Director prior to that or was that your first experience run directing back home in Dunedin?

00:16:14Tania Hollis: First experience. And I've never been a public speaker. I would get quite nervous speaking in front of people. And I have to say that it's done the world of good for my confidence being a regular Run Director now and speaking in front of people. And people often come and say, you're really good at this. I'm like, oh, I really don't like doing it. But it's given me great confidence getting up in front of people on a regular basis, taking them through the briefing and welcoming them to Dunedin.

00:16:46Lyndell Murray: I think that's one of the things that we sometimes forget about volunteering, especially in the parkrun world. We all do it because we love parkrun and want to contribute to our parkrun community. But you can actually build some really great skills and, you know, learn some things about yourself that you hadn't through volunteering from time to time as well. So it's really great that you've had that experience as well, Tania. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

00:17:11Melissa Erbacher: Now, as well as run directing, obviously, you've had a bit of a go at a whole bunch of volunteer roles. Which is your favourite? Is being the RD your favourite or have you got a fondness for something else?

00:17:23Tania Hollis: I do like RDing, especially when everything goes well on the day and it's nice to kind of chat to people and just make sure everything's ticking over. Our parkrun's not so big that it's very stressful all the time, just when something goes wrong, or if we have quite large numbers for us, then you have to pay a bit more attention. So usually it's just checking in with people and chatting to the visitors who come up and say how lovely it's been. So yeah, run directing is my favourite part of volunteering.

00:17:54Lyndell Murray: All right, now let's get into the nitty gritty of Dunedin. All we've heard so far is hills, and I don't mind a hill personally but some of our listeners don't love hills so sell us the course at Dunedin.

00:18:07Tania Hollis: What's it like? Oh it's fantastic. We're very lucky to be running in the botanic gardens here in Dunedin. That does mean we can't have dogs in the garden so we do get to miss out on our parkrun parks but um we hopefully make up for that with our beautiful gardens uh we run two loops around our bottom section which is the manicured garden where the roses are and some beautiful big trees and the seasonal uh garden beds and then we run into our bush section and the hilly bit of the gardens which is run on trail so it's slightly different than around the bottom And you get to do that two times. We have a couple of good hills in there for people to enjoy. We have a section called the Stairs of Despair. So we do warn people about that before they come across it. Fabulous name. The fast runners are amazing to watch run up there when they go past you as you are slogging it up there, you know, puffing and panting. And they seem to take it in their stride. And then we get to finish past the duck pond in front of the big band rotunda on the open grass. It's just beautiful.

00:19:17Melissa Erbacher: It definitely sounds very scenic. Absolutely. Is there a cafe or is coffee on site with a coffee van?

00:19:23Tania Hollis: We have a cafe in the gardens who love us. They are very welcoming of all the parkrunners because we pack them out most Saturdays. Great Kiwi cafe food, muffins and scones and pies and that kind of thing and a good cup of coffee in there as well.

00:19:39Melissa Erbacher: Excellent. Now, when we got to March this year and all the events were cancelled, did you anticipate that that was coming? We did have some countries already cancelled because of the virus ahead of New Zealand. Did you think it was on the cards?

00:19:58Tania Hollis: I think it's, I was saying to people, watch out. I think we're going to start getting parkruns cancelled but I don't know if I meant in New Zealand and I think how quickly we went into lockdown surprised us because one week we were running and then the next week we weren't running so I don't think it totally surprised us but I think the speed with which it happened did

00:20:24Melissa Erbacher: Yeah, not only were you not running, but you weren't leaving your houses either, were you?

00:20:28Tania Hollis: No. So we went into a pretty full on lockdown within 48 hours where we were to stay at home unless you're going out for groceries or to the pharmacy or for a walk around your block to get some exercise. So it was pretty restrictive, yeah.

00:20:44Lyndell Murray: And it did happen really suddenly. That last weekend that parkrun ran, I was up at Mooloolaba with some friends of mine from New Zealand and some of them changed their flights to get back into the country, on that Sunday so that they wouldn't have to go into isolation and lockdown and all of those things. And others did have to go into full-on lockdown and isolation when they got home. And it was quite, I remember speaking to them, it happened just a little bit more gradually here and it was a really big shock. So what's your experience been in lockdown? Has that been, you know, is there any positives out of that for you, Tania?

00:21:26Tania Hollis: I think maybe like most people, I was quite anxious when it first started because everything was so unknown. We didn't know what was going on in the world, how that was going to affect us personally. And then after a while, you kind of get into your routines and I just kept working through it. So I had that stability of my job still going on. Motivating yourself to get out and do something was quite a good thing to do. It got you out into your neighbourhoods. You got to see people out on the street walking with their families and their children. That was a really nice part of lockdown. And I think it made people kind of slow down a little bit, whereas you're used to rush, rush, rushing around all the time because you didn't have to be anywhere, do anything, other than stay at home so I think a lot of people it gave them a chance to think about their priorities in life as well some people went under into some financial strains so there were some issues people had to deal with there um yeah it was strange times yeah I think some people were quite isolated as well like I did think a lot about our parkrunners that come down to parkrun as part of their social activity for the week, where they might be at home by themselves during that time. It was quite challenging for some people who were very isolated during that time so it was great to see you know that's one of the great things about parkrun is it gives you that weekly outlet for getting to see people and getting to make friends.

00:23:10Melissa Erbacher: I know some event teams did various things on social media to engage their communities were you guys on board with that did you do anything different or check in with your participants?

00:23:20Tania Hollis: We didn't I didn't do any special activities but I was posting regularly on our Facebook page and also sharing things like the parkrun quiz or anything that was coming up on the global parkrun social media pages just to get them into our local area as well and just trying to encourage people to get out there and have some activity outside even though we were in lockdown we actually had a really nice autumn here in Dunedin so The weather played ball with us, which was great.

00:23:51Lyndell Murray: I'm sure your community really appreciated that effort to just keep them connected and keep that line of communication open. So moving on, you're back. We all watched. Yeah, let's have a little. Definitely that's worth a cheer. We're back at the Happily Ever After again. Yes. On the first weekend when your events launched, you all adopted a country. So what country did you have at Dunedin and how did that manifest with your community there?

00:24:02[applause]

00:24:24Tania Hollis: So Dunedin has its history in Scotland and I decided we'd go completely against the grain because we usually would pick Scotland as our country to support. But that would make too much logical sense and where's the fun in that? So we actually have one of the ladies who's a regular parkrunner is from the Netherlands. So I thought it might be nice for her and for the rest of the parkrun community if we chose the Netherlands. And they also come with a great colour scheme so we could pick it

00:24:55Lyndell Murray: go with orange as a great colour scheme to go back on our first part yeah fantastic nice and bright so that's how we that's how we came up with those guys so lots of orange yes did you have any delicacies to to snack on afterwards yes we did have some um dutch biscuits at the end as well because you can't have to, don't you? I've heard that those Dutch biscuits are pretty special too.

00:25:17Tania Hollis: Yes, they're very nice. Unfortunately, it was a very windy day, and just towards the end it did blow over the plate with the leftover Dutch biscuits on, but I think most people got to have one before that happened.

00:25:28Melissa Erbacher: Oh, you can't get good weather all the time. Now, Tania, there was, well, I guess it was roughly, what was it, three and a half months pause for you guys over there?

00:25:40Unidentified speaker: Yeah.

00:25:41Melissa Erbacher: Between March and coming back now at the beginning of July, a fancy dress notwithstanding, because of course that would have attracted a lot of people. Did you see a massive difference in the participation numbers or your volunteers?

00:25:55Tania Hollis: We had something very strange happen is that we finished parkruns in March with 165 runners. And then our first parkrun back, we came back with 165 runners. Weird.

00:26:10Melissa Erbacher: Spooky weird. That's fantastic. Did you check all the names to see if they were exactly the same people? No, we haven't done that. That's okay. I don't blame you because that would have hurt your eyes, no doubt, especially if they didn't all come in the exact same order.

00:26:25Tania Hollis: They would require some sort of fancy spreadsheet to do something and that's way beyond my abilities. And you had Dutch biscuits to eat. Who needs to be doing spreadsheets when you've got Dutch biscuits? And coffee to drink in the cafe. Coffee to drink and two muffins. Yes, absolutely.

00:26:42Melissa Erbacher: So your face was hurting by the time you got home and for the rest of the day because of the big grin. Were you on that high for the rest of the week until event number two?

00:26:51Tania Hollis: Well, first of all, I had to get used to the fact that I have to come and wash the tokens and dry them all off and then realise that one went missing along the way. So it was kind of a big hard slap back into normal parkrun reality there. Then I was thinking about going away for my second parkrun. So I wasn't going to be at my home parkrun for the second week back.

00:27:12Melissa Erbacher: And you did. You ended up taking a little trip straight back into the adventuring. And where did you head? I'm not going to say. I know where you went, but I'm not going to say it because I want to hear how it's actually pronounced correctly rather than have me butcher it.

00:27:27Tania Hollis: Yeah, so I flew to the North Island and I went to Kapiti Coast parkrun.

00:27:31Melissa Erbacher: Oh, thank goodness because I was totally going to call it Kapiti Coast. Kapiti, Kapiti I can say. Excellent. It's all education in all this podcast. Thank you for explaining that one to me. Anytime. I had a chat with Kent Stead a little bit earlier today and he Yeah, he pronounced the northernmost event and my tongue can't get around that one, I'm afraid. Can you tell us, for the podcast listeners, what it's called? Is it Whangarei? Yes. Yeah. That's it. And it's not spelt like that, is it? No.

00:28:09Unidentified speaker: No.

00:28:14Melissa Erbacher: So if anybody's interested, just head to the map of New Zealand and go look at what the northernmost event is and then you can replay Tania with her beautiful pronunciation. Whangarei parkrun.

00:28:26Lyndell Murray: Yeah. I picked a nice and easy one when I went to New Zealand. I went to Millwater. Oh, too easy. Too easy. I'll have to challenge myself next time I'm in over the other side of the ditch.

00:28:40Melissa Erbacher: And how was, all right, I'm going to try it again. How was Kapiti Coast?

00:28:44Tania Hollis: Kapiti Coast was lovely. Was that the first time you'd ever been there? No, that one is my home away from home parkrun because it's near where my mum lives, so I often go to that one when I'm up that way. And... Due to a dodgy knee, so I'm not running myself at the moment, I did some volunteering there. So that was good fun.

00:29:03Lyndell Murray: Nice. So geographically, Kapiti Coast is obviously on one of the coasts. If we wanted to venture across the ditch, where would we fly to and what would we do from there?

00:29:13Tania Hollis: You would fly into Wellington. So that's the south of the North Island. And then you would head north along the western coast for about an hour. And that would get you to Kapiti Coast. Great.

00:29:27Lyndell Murray: I've got friends in Wellington.

00:29:28Melissa Erbacher: I'll hit them up. Well, a home away from home parkrun, everybody needs one of those, don't they? Yeah, sure.

00:29:36Lyndell Murray: Tania, thank you so much for joining us on the parkrun adventurers and letting us know all about your parkrun story and your parkrun journey and also giving us just a little insight into what it's been like to get parkrun back into parkrun day.

00:29:50Tania Hollis: Oh, thank you for having me. And hopefully in the not too distant future, And our bubble is expanded to include Australia. You guys can get over here and enjoy our stairs of despair yourself.

00:30:01Melissa Erbacher: That would be terrific. I would love that. You've sold it for me, Tania. You definitely sold it for me.

00:30:07[17 seconds of audio that could not be transcribed]

Roving reports & the Channel 5 News crew

Interview Mark Scarborough — Roving Reporter / Channel 5 News Crew member

00:30:24Lyndell Murray: Joining us now from – actually, I don't know where he is, but joining us now is Mark, our fellow roving reporter and Channel 5 News crew member. Mark, how are you going? Where are you?

00:30:37Mark Scarborough: Where in Australia is Mark? That's the question, isn't it? So I am coming to you live from Dubbo in New South Wales, and the family and I were actually – holed up in our caravan at the moment on pretty much the start of our 14-week Australian adventure.

00:30:58Lyndell Murray: 14 weeks. Okay, so there's got to be a story behind this, Mark. Why are you travelling around Australia for 14 weeks?

00:31:06Mark Scarborough: Well, we were actually originally meant to be flying out next week to Europe for 12 weeks, but good old COVID-19 has squashed those plans. So we've kind of brought forward some plans that we're going to do in 2021, where we're going to do the full lap around Australia. So we don't have the time to do that this time this year. So we're hoping that we'll get to do half a lap this year over the next 14 weeks.

00:31:35Melissa Erbacher: Awesome. And I think I can hear Nicole and the kids in the background. So you're in, you're actually in a caravan with your family at the moment.

00:31:43Mark Scarborough: Yeah. So yeah, recording, recording in our caravan. Normally, you know, if I was going to be on the podcast, I'd be you know, using the study at home. So I was away from all the noise. But yeah, here we are in our caravan. So this is the authentic life for me at the moment.

00:31:58Melissa Erbacher: I half expect to hear a, Dad, could you keep your voice down? We can't hear the TV. All right, cool. So you are on an adventure around Australia at the moment, half a lap of Australia, and while you are doing that, I'm assuming, and I hope not incorrectly, that you'll be taking in some new parkruns while you're moving around, even if you can't actually get your barcode scanned.

00:32:23Mark Scarborough: Yeah, look, you know, obviously when we kind of – We're going to do the European trip. We have plans to tick off parkruns in Europe. And certainly when we do the full lap around Australia, we have plans to tick off some of the big parkruns there as well. But the way things are, obviously, we can't do that. But there's nothing stopping us from doing that, our non-parkruns and freedom runs and that's certainly the intent and already knocked over a couple on the way to Dubbo so that's been good and there have been parkruns that I haven't actually been to yet so it was good to go and explore some new courses.

00:33:00Lyndell Murray: So give us the list Mark, where have you been and what's been the highlight so far?

00:33:06Mark Scarborough: So the first one I visited was Lawson parkrun in the Blue Mountains. That's one that I've been quite keen to check out for a while. I've seen some of my other parkrunners in Canberra go do that when they've gone to go do UTA. Some really iconic photographs that have come out of Katoomba. Sorry, Lawson. And yeah, that was a bit of a hard one. I did get a GPX file from somebody, but somewhere I did go a little bit off course. But I did manage to get out the 5K there. It's a tough course. It's a trail course, a lot of rock there, some decent hills. But yeah, very pretty area. The kids got some good photos there. Yeah, so the next one was then Bathurst. And that's just on the fringe of, I suppose, the CBD of Bathurst and along by the river. And that's a really pretty course. I really enjoyed that one. So it's kind of like, it was a bit of a strange one. I did get a GPX file for that one from Gary Clark as well. And somewhere there's a turnaround point. And I completely missed it. So I did basically two laps, whereas apparently you're meant to kind of go out and then go back and then back again or something. But, yeah, it was a really pretty course. I really enjoyed that one. Mainly on, say, bike path kind of paths. But, yeah, you're running right next to the river there, which is quite nice and a nice big bridge crossing. And then today was at Orange, and that was cold. And that's... Proper Canberra cold, that one. Yeah, that was hard to get out of the car and go and run that one. There was some really cold wind there. And that was another course that, you know, on paper looks fairly straightforward. But again, something went wrong with my watch directing me the wrong way. But I did squeeze out the 5k there. Again, around some water there, I think that's a really pretty course. I think the difference with this one too was that the paths are very, a couple of different paths there. So you've got white paths and the concrete path, but there's also like a really nice trail section there too. So yeah, I really enjoyed Orange today. And I think in a warmer day, it would be a really idyllic course.

00:35:25Lyndell Murray: It must be a bit of a logistical challenge organising. Well, I would imagine even for a single person or a couple, but for a family, there must be lots of logistics that go into this kind of trip. So how much forward planning have you done?

00:35:41Mark Scarborough: Well, funnily enough, we kind of pulled this whole thing together within about two months. So once we knew that we definitely weren't going to Europe, we knew that we needed to go on a holiday. It's obviously been a rough year for a lot of people in Australia. We were heavily impacted by the bushfire smoke over the Christmas New Year period. Concern, I suppose, around the bushfires were close to friends and family in Canberra. And then both our cars got written off in the hailstorm in Canberra in January. And then obviously COVID-19. So it's been a pretty rough year. And I'm certainly not saying that, you know, it's just us. It's certainly impacted a fair majority of all Australians in some way, some shape or form with bushfires, drought, smoke, hail storms, other storms and COVID-19. But we were, you know, we were tired and exhausted. We knew we needed a holiday. So like I said, we kind of thought we'll pull together, pull forward a trip from that we're planning for doing next year. And we just said, Just started the kind of ball rolling to try and get this holiday happening, which included, you know, we had to buy two new cars after ours got written off and then also buying a caravan and then looking at where we go and how long do we take at different places and things like that. We are now actually up to our plan D for where we're going and things like that because it has changed due to the hotspots that have popped up in Victoria and now New South Wales and also borders and things like that. So it hasn't been too bad with the planning, but it's certainly teaching us to be flexible, which is interesting.

00:37:22Melissa Erbacher: And you're all coping with that flexibility fairly well. Like, you know, you're already up to plan D. How many more plans do you anticipate there'll be before the end of the trip?

00:37:32Mark Scarborough: Oh, look, who knows? You know, this is, I suppose, very different for me. You know, like I am somebody who, does like a lot of you know control and order so I think for me this is actually really a good lesson for me is about being being flexible and just going with the flow so yeah I'm I'm kind of quite comfortable with it you know and it really is a case of that we're just planning on what does the next week look like and then we'll just take it take it as it comes so our plan is over the next week to to cross over into Queensland which you know should then give us quite a lot of time to to move our way up the north coast in Queensland. And then we hope to then get across into the Northern Territory. What happens after that? Honestly, I don't know. You know, will we be able to go into South Australia from the Northern Territory after that? Or are we going to have to backtrack to come back home or come home via Mount Isa? You know, these are things we just don't know. So we're just going to take it as weak as it comes.

00:38:26Lyndell Murray: Another COVID silver lining, learning different adaptability and flexibility. You know, it's had an impact on all of us, that's for sure. So in terms of planning, you've said that you're a bit up in the air. You headed to the greater state here in Queensland, both Mel and my home area. Have you got any ideas of the freedom or not parkruns you might do up here?

00:38:49Mark Scarborough: Not yet, to be honest, because the announcement for South Australian Arctic Midwater to New South Wales and ACT only happened, you know, around midday today. So we've kind of just started playing around with our itinerary to see where we'll go. We're certainly keen to catch up with our friends in the Gold Coast and go to their home parkrun and do a freedom run with them. And then, yeah, we'll see where we go, where we are. But, you know, certainly keen to keep ticking off as many as we can.

00:39:18Melissa Erbacher: Well, I certainly hope you include Lyndell and myself as some stopovers along the journey because if you're going to head north and you're going to take the coastal road, you're certainly going to pass both of us as well. Looking forward to hearing more about your adventures, Mark, and I do love your attitude, I think, this is a big learning year for a lot of people and yeah it's it's throwing everything it can at us but come on 2020 bring it on and see what you can do because I reckon we're gonna come out stronger for it in the end yeah look I do hope that there are lots of positives that come out of

00:39:56Mark Scarborough: This situation, whether it's a case of the small things, it might be a case of people recognising the value of family and friends more, getting out and doing exercise. You've seen there's been an explosion in people buying bikes and things like that. I hope that those kind of activities continue beyond this and we don't go back to old bad habits.

00:40:17Lyndell Murray: Let's hope not. Well, Mark, we're looking forward to plenty of roving reports or not roving reports or no, no, but you will be roving. So they're not roving reports. I don't know what we're going to call them.

00:40:31Melissa Erbacher: Maybe they're freedom reports.

00:40:32Lyndell Murray: Freedom reports.

00:40:36Melissa Erbacher: Or free ports? Free ports? Free ports. I think the creative name needs some work. I think we can agree on that.

00:40:45Mark Scarborough: Yeah, maybe we'll be able to workshop that in about a week when I'm in Queensland.

00:40:51Melissa Erbacher: We'll send a note down to our people on the border to let you in.

00:40:54Mark Scarborough: Yes, please. Yeah, like give me – that's where I can just flash in the Channel 5 News crew ID badge, you know.

00:41:01Melissa Erbacher: Oh, yeah, that's good for all borders. Perfect. Yeah.

00:41:04Mark Scarborough: Let me over. Yeah, no, I'll be submitting some not parkrun, freedom run reports where I'll just group together a whole lot of parkruns that I've done just so people know where I've been and maybe where we're kind of heading to. Like I said, this trip is all about being flexible.

00:41:22Melissa Erbacher: Can't wait. Have a happy trip between now and the next roving report, Mark.

00:41:27Mark Scarborough: Thank you very much.

00:41:39Melissa Erbacher: Lenzo. Yes, Mel. Oh, my goodness. I have come across the gem of 2020 thus far, one of my definite highlights and must-have recommendation on Netflix. Are you ready?

00:41:55Lyndell Murray: Yeah, I'm ready.

00:41:57Melissa Erbacher: Eurovision Song Contest, The Story of Fire Saga. Have you heard of it? I have. I have. Have you watched it? I have. What did you think? Was it not amazeballs? Look, I've got two words for you. Gold pants. So you're with me then. You have gold pants. You understand. I have gold pants. I get it. I get it. I want to move to Iceland and I want to join Eurovision basically after this movie, not least of all because of the soundtrack was, oh, I've been listening to the soundtrack on Spotify today. Yeah. And I want to go back. I've been dancing with the boys and singing out loud, ya-ya-ding-dong.

00:42:49Unidentified speaker: Yeah.

00:42:51Melissa Erbacher: And I'm going to teach them how to do all the words as well because every three-year-old and one-year-old needs to know how to sing ya-ya-ding-dong. Yes. If anyone out there is listening and you have not seen this movie yet, it is a must watch, especially because it stars Will Ferrell, who obviously we're a big fan of here on the podcast because of Anchorman being the originator of where the Channel 5 news crew has come from, originally the Channel 4 news crew. And I'm a big fan because Mugatu, Zoolanders, you know, So, yeah, I don't know, Lyndell. I think this has given us more scope for what we can do with the Channel 5 News crew.

00:43:37Lyndell Murray: I'm not so sure about that, Mel. I'm not seeing that. No. No. Well, see, I've tried to run in gold pants and it wasn't great. So, I'm just not sure what we can apply from Fire Saga to the Channel 5 News.

00:43:52Melissa Erbacher: Well, we have all sung at various points on the podcast. We've done compilations. Maybe we just need to mix it up a little bit Eurovision style. Look, I'm not suggesting we change the name of the Channel 5 News crew to Fire Saga, although that did occur to me at one point. I'm trying to figure out what I can change to Fire Saga. I might even order an apricot shirt with Fire Saga.

00:44:17Lyndell Murray: Oh, yes.

00:44:19Melissa Erbacher: On the customised panel, it's like parkrun Fire Saga. I think that would be pretty damn cool. If I was going to get something that was not Adventurer, that would be it. That would be it. No question, no competition. Yeah, so I think there is definitely some scope. We might have to chat with the rest of the news crew, but I think some kind of Eurovision entry would, Could be on the cards here.

00:44:46Lyndell Murray: Well, you know, Europe adventuring, there's a link there for sure about the European countries. I think all of us have got a European country on our wish list to actually go to and parkrun. At least one, if not more. Maybe the closest we're going to get to that in the near future is being Eurovision contestants from those countries.

00:45:09Melissa Erbacher: Because I don't know when we're going to be able to travel internationally again. This is a good point. And you know what? I think it's something that has been brought home to me as well, even in little things like the New Zealand event teams nominating or adopting a country and including the rest of us, the rest of the world in the return of parkrun over there. I think there's a lot of opportunity for the world to come together right now, even if – even if we're all apart. Yeah. And I think I'm sure there's got to be some kind of Eurovision Song Contest parkrun scenario that we can work in here. I'm keen to hear if anybody's got any ideas. That's a great idea. Let's put it out to our listeners. There's some creative people out there.

00:45:54Lyndell Murray: They might be able to give us a challenge here and figure out what the link is, apart from Will Ferrell.

00:46:02Melissa Erbacher: Exactly. Come on, guys, let's make this happen. There are just too many ideas and too many concepts in my head and it's too noisy up there. Somebody needs to just give me a straight answer about something amazing. So, yes, please get in touch with us. Let us know what we can do. And as I said, if you haven't seen the movie, you must watch it. Disclaimer, I do know one person who turned it off in the first 30 minutes because they thought it was rubbish and not their humour at all. Look, it's not everybody's cup of tea. I'm not going to mention any names. Tim Oberg. But no, you're right. Not everybody's going to love everything. But I think if you enjoy this podcast, it might just tickle a funny bone. Anyway, but that does bring me, since we're laying down challenges, that does bring me to, oh, it wasn't a challenge as such, but we did ask to find out where other people have been not parkrunning. We've asked it a couple of times, actually, in the last two episodes. Dave and I mentioned it. And then Melissa and Ollie mentioned it last week, which was pretty cool. So let me just scroll through to the Facebook and see if we actually had any replies. We did get replies a couple of weeks ago. This is the part where I should have actually done some preparation beforehand, but I only just remembered it now. Okay. On the most recent episode, on episode 204, Andrew Turner has kindly got in touch. Oh, and he's got a picture as well, but we all know that pictures don't translate very well to podcasts. So let's read what he actually said. He said, thanks for another episode. Great to hear from New Zealand. I've been doing my (not)parkruns in Footscray Park with the occasional spectacular sunrise. The course is fairly close to home, which is Maribyrnong. Record attendance between lockdowns has been five. Tourists welcome once that is allowed again. So that's very cool. It's nice to hear other people have created their own courses and are welcoming adventurers along to visit those. And, indeed, the picture that he shared is a bit of a spectacular sunrise. It sure is. So you can vouch for that.

00:48:27Lyndell Murray: Yeah, yeah.

00:48:28Melissa Erbacher: Head to the page if you want to see it. And then, formally to that, we also had Peter Pohlman got in touch and said they have been going anywhere that isn't our parkrun course. And he got a PB. Congratulations, Peter, on your PB. Sonja got a 59.59, though. Gasp. It's one of those scream emojis. Oh, Garmin fails. Well, see, that's what I thought. But apparently he said it was an actual 59.59. So she took almost an hour. I'm not sure whether or not it was intentional or it just was a random happy occurrence. I wonder. Yeah.

00:49:09Lyndell Murray: There's a nice story there. Mel, maybe Sonja could be co-opted into your efforts to... Eurovision. Get your stopwatch bingo.

00:49:20Melissa Erbacher: Oh, stopwatch bingo. Yeah, well, you know what? Not parkrun bingo. I'm not keeping track, but I'm pretty sure I've got a different seconds at the end of all four of my things so far.

00:49:31Lyndell Murray: Well, hopefully we won't be not parkrunning for enough time to get stopwatch bingo.

00:49:37Melissa Erbacher: Yeah, I mean, if you consider it being 60 weeks, but you can do multiple runs every week. This is true. Not that I've got the time to do multiple runs every week. You could punch that out pretty fast if you really wanted to. Somebody could. Somebody could. Not me, but somebody could. That person's out there, I'm sure. They're probably already halfway through stopwatch bingo. If you have done not parkrun stopwatch bingo, I want to hear from you. Also get in touch. Who else? Bruce Purdy, he's been swapping his home run for each not a parkrun to support the local events. And that's pretty cool because, you know what, Bruce Purdy actually stopped by Kawana parkrun virtually this week. So, g'day, Bruce. It was nice to see you on the results. Awesome. Oh, good on you, Bruce. There's a creative way to get your Peel Club.

00:50:29Lyndell Murray: Exactly. Following on from Bruce, Lee Cabarita has been doing not parkruns along the river close to Rhodes and Parramatta parkruns. We're really lucky to have lots of choices here and we are, Lee, you're right. And it is really nice to be able to run, you know, if not in your parkrun on Saturday morning, it is really nice to just get close to your parkruns and say g'day.

00:50:51Melissa Erbacher: And I'm a big fan of near the water as well, personally. There's just something very calming about running near water.

00:50:58Lyndell Murray: I love running along the water side.

00:51:00Melissa Erbacher: Now, hello to Stuart Brandwood who's commented. He has not shared where he's been not parkrunning, but he has got a question and wants to know, as a newbie, can he just ask about Cluck Norris? Now, Lyndell, have you heard about Cluck Norris? Do you know who that is? I do not know who Cluck Norris is. It's not easy to say, is it? Especially when you want to say Chuck. It is not easy to say. Well, Stuart, once again, this is a very educational podcast this week. So Cluck Norris is a well-loved rubber chicken who resides at Wyndham Vale parkrun and and is actually part of the event team there. Originally, Cluck began at parkrun after the starting horn that had previously been used stopped working. So the joint EDs, Maria and Andrew, needed something to fill the void, so they brought along Cluck Norris. Oh. Because he makes a honking sound. There you go.

00:52:01Lyndell Murray: Yeah.

00:52:02Melissa Erbacher: So if you want to experience a parkrun with Cluck Norris, you need to get to Wyndham Vale parkrun.

00:52:07Lyndell Murray: Noted. I like to put it on my adventurer list.

Sign-off

00:52:12Melissa Erbacher: It's been another fun pod, Lyndell. It was great talking to Tania and then to Mark as well and obviously wonderful having your fine company along for the ride. Thanks for joining me. Thanks for having me, Mel. I loved it once again and, yep, great conversation with you and Tania and Mark. I've just got three words for you, Lyndell. Yeah, yeah, which is one word. Ding dong.

00:52:37Lyndell Murray: Ding dong all the way.

00:53:34Unidentified speaker: Thank you.