Episode 249 - Becky Maybury

Welcome

00:00:24Oliver Spake: Welcome to episode 249 of the parkrun adventurers podcast. I am Ollie Spake and I am joined by the Enchantress of the Witching Hour. Should I call you the Good Witch of the South or maybe the Elphaba of the South?

00:00:40Melissa Ellis: Oh, I'm 100% Elphaba.

00:00:43Oliver Spake: The Elphaba of the South, Melissa Ellis. The West. Well, the West, yes. I suppose from where I sit, you're South, but it's actually, if I just place myself front and centre, the West. Welcome, Mel.

00:00:57Melissa Ellis: Hello, Ollie. How are you?

00:00:59Oliver Spake: I'm well, thanks.

00:01:00Melissa Ellis: Thank you for such a lovely introduction.

00:01:02Oliver Spake: That's quite okay. Slightly disoriented, but nonetheless, I think it was well earned.

00:01:08Melissa Ellis: People won't have any idea why you referred to me as that.

00:01:12Oliver Spake: Well, I think it's deserving of jumping straight into some context, Mel. What have you been up to this weekend?

00:01:18Melissa Ellis: Where do we start? Good grief. Just as well there's no parkrun. Ollie, I've got no time to fit it in.

00:01:23Oliver Spake: No, no. What parkrun?

00:01:26Melissa Ellis: This week was event 50 at Ellis Palace parkrun and... So to celebrate, we went 1950s rock and roll with burgers, fries and milkshakes. We saw Daryl and Paul rocking the sideburns. Hashtag who did it better. While I was hopelessly devoted to my new pink ladies jacket, victory rolls, and I even dug out the makeup bag and Googled 1950s makeup YouTube tutorials. You will be pleased to know that no balloons were harmed in this theme. And feedback from many was it's their favourite to date. So, yes, it was a very fun morning.

00:02:10Oliver Spake: It was just spectacular. The hair was impressive, Mel. So well done on the research there.

00:02:18Melissa Ellis: Thank you. It went better than I had hoped. I'm definitely not skilled in the hairdressing techniques, hence why I normally am seen in either plaits or ponytails. But I had a crack. I got out the hot rollers and I had a crack. And anyway, it had an effect. So it was fun and it saw another (not)parkrun day go by with a little bit more happiness than would otherwise be.

00:02:47Oliver Spake: Oh, for sure, for sure. And so that jacket is clearly treasured now. Yes, 100%. Yeah, yeah. Milkshakes, how were the milkshakes? Well, they were pretty good.

00:03:04Melissa Ellis: I had to let the effects of the milkshakes wear off a bit before I could actually go and do my (not)parkrun. So, yeah, mudslides, they were.

00:03:14Oliver Spake: Excellent. And just in case we didn't pick it up, I'd certainly vote for Paul's sideburns.

00:03:22Melissa Ellis: I'm so lucky that I've got this shop that I can go and buy wigs. I've got quite an impressive collection of wigs now. And he's very accommodating. Somebody commented that I, I think it was Janet actually commented that I had the most accommodating husband. And yeah, I do. Yeah, I'm pretty lucky.

00:03:39Oliver Spake: He puts in a pretty, pretty fine effort and it does doll up pretty well too.

00:03:44Unidentified speaker: Yeah.

00:03:46Melissa Ellis: Yeah, so that was my morning, which obviously we followed up with the live. But, Ollie, the time has come to reveal what you were up to this Saturday morning with your mysterious post-live run to the Windang Bridge. And, yes, I did stalk your Strava to see where you went. So would you like to share your Saturday morning not parkrun?

00:04:14Oliver Spake: I'd love to. I'd love to. Because that's what I got to do. I got to share my (not)parkrun. And look, I was very fortunate after your suggestion last week to gain an invite to Banksia Avenue Not parkrun. Awesome. And I didn't get to do the whole thing, of course, because the lockdown latest has me still only being able to run to, I figured it was the end of the bridge, so I didn't cross the land line, but I was fortunate enough to join Bec to go and hang out with, you know, part of the parkrun adventurers podcast family, you know, part of the Bailey shot, and to go and do a (not)parkrun for about one and a half Ks. Is there photos? There is a photo. There is a photo. And it features ugly buffs as well. Unfortunately, it was overcast. So there was no light. We didn't pass under the bridge. That's not part of the course. But there was no light. So no light shot. So needless to say, more plans must be hatched.

00:05:20Melissa Ellis: I like the sound of that.

00:05:23Oliver Spake: But I feel pretty fortunate that we've got this parkrun family out there, this Adventurers family, that even in this situation we can connect those of us that are closer by and those of us that are connecting virtually as well. So thank you, Bec, for the invitation and the company, for my first non-household, not parkrun buddy for a long time at least. And, yeah, pretty cool to check out a new course, Mel. So you shared your bubble. I did. I did. Yes.

00:05:57Melissa Ellis: I also did some bubble running on the weekend. Yes.

00:06:00Oliver Spake: Yes. Please tell us more.

00:06:02Melissa Ellis: So, yes, alluding back to your introduction in which I was referred to as Elphaba, the reason being I took part in a virtual event

00:06:14Oliver Spake: Curfew Crushers Relay.

00:06:16Melissa Ellis: Yes, exactly right. I took part in a Curfew Crushers Relay in which we ran in a team, a team of eight participants over the course of the day, but only within the curfew hours that we're allotted. Each of the eight participants had a two-hour time slot to run. And I was the team captain, so I put my hand up for the first leg, which was from 5am to 7am. So I Although that was really early, it was also really clever because I was running in the dark and I was in costume so nobody would see me. So the way that the competition or the virtual event worked was you were allotted points not based on how far you ran but by your creativity. So your costume would earn you points and if you did Strava art or just the photos that you took out on your run.

00:07:06Unidentified speaker: Okay.

00:07:07Melissa Ellis: And this was created by Mick Duyvestyn that I spoke to last week and his mate, Peter Mitchell. They came up with this concept and invited people to create teams. So there was team spread all across Victoria. We had a couple out in the west. There was some in around Melbourne. There was some down on the peninsula and there was some in the southeast. And I think there was 10 teams all up competing at the same time. So social media was going off all day. It was fabulous because every time a leg would finish, they'd upload all their photos to social media. So I put out a message in my local resident's Facebook page the night before because I was a bit concerned. I'll go out running at 5 a.m. in the morning dressed as a witch carrying a broomstick.

00:07:53Oliver Spake: During a lockdown. Yeah.

00:07:54Melissa Ellis: a lockdown might raise alarms. So I sent out a message and said, if I'm doing this tomorrow morning and if you see me, please don't call the police. And this is what I'm doing. I'm taking part and it's all a bit of fun. I'd love to see some people's security cameras of this witch running past because I wasn't going to go too far from home. It was 5am in the morning and, you know, I was running on my own so I was a little bit nervous. So I just did loops of my estate. I did it four times. So there would be people out there with their security cameras trained on the front of their house with this witch every... every 20 minutes running past the front of their house. It would have been quite funny.

00:08:36Oliver Spake: I'm just thinking of all those sleepless kids that have been told go back to bed. They're looking out the window and they really don't want to be up during the night.

00:08:46Melissa Ellis: So I got up at 3 a.m. to do my makeup because I had the full green witch face, the full Elphaba witch face. Sadly, the witch costume didn't fit very well. So it didn't matter. I just put a jacket over the top. Nobody could know that. But I did carry the broomstick for the whole two hours, and I ran for the whole two hours, Ollie. That's fantastic. I did 16Ks, and I haven't been able to do that for a very long time. So lucky I've been in training.

00:09:11Unidentified speaker: Yeah.

00:09:12Melissa Ellis: But the mind was very determined that I didn't – at first I thought I would just run an hour and a half, but when I got to the hour and a half, I just went, no, you can do this, and I kept going. So that was good. And it was only right at the end that I came across another guy running and he sort of saw me saw the broomstick and he indicated to me about magpies and then I realised oh he thinks I'm carrying the broomstick as protection for the magpies swooping and he was running with a stick because that's what people do around here they we're approaching swoopy September yes people walk around with with sticks to protect themselves from the swooping magpies and then as we started to engage in conversation I can see him sort of looking at me And I'm like, oh, actually, I'm doing a fun run. So it was quite funny. So I met a neighbour.

00:10:08Oliver Spake: Great first impression.

00:10:09Melissa Ellis: I know. Loony lady. Anyway, it was a great day and, you know, obviously it was just something to do. It just really took a bit of focus off sitting around and being in lockdown. So I followed the social media posts each day as each member of my team did their legs and then posted their photos. It was fabulous. It was a fun day and I thank Peter and Mick for overseeing and orchestrating it all.

00:10:34Oliver Spake: Their efforts are wonderful to inspire another great, very imaginative event to encourage people to get out and be a part of a community when it's a little challenging to do that. So, yeah, well done, guys. So is there another one planned for next week, Mel? You seem to be on a bit of a run here.

00:10:55Melissa Ellis: Nobody's mentioned next week. There's been a few allusions to, oh, we'll have to do it again, but I think it was a big day for Mick and Pete. I think there was a lot of work on their part to oversee the Facebook posts. They were awarding points to each leg of each team so that they could be totalled up and we could have a winner at the end of the day that wasn't based on who could run the fastest. Yes. They wanted it about fun. They didn't want it about... ability if you know what I mean yeah so that it was inclusive and everybody could join in you didn't have to be a runner you could be a walker or you could ride your bike it wasn't speed based which was really lovely and and some of the costumes were just absolutely fabulous

00:11:35Oliver Spake: I'll have to Google or I'll have to Facebook search more of the event photos if I can find them. Is there a way I can see them, Mel? Or is it just in the group?

00:11:44Melissa Ellis: There's a Facebook group called Free Bird.

00:11:46Oliver Spake: It's in the Free Bird one. Okay.

00:11:48Melissa Ellis: Yeah, and all the photos were posted there. Even Cluck Norris, he took part in. Cluck Norris was on my team.

00:11:55Oliver Spake: Oh, what a team.

00:11:57Melissa Ellis: I know. So there you go. We had all the names.

00:12:01Oliver Spake: You sure did. You sure did.

00:12:03Melissa Ellis: Yeah. What a weekend, Mel. I know. I'm exhausted. I need a rest now.

00:12:07Oliver Spake: And I'm not sure we quite thanked, not in the podcast anyway, Alison and Andrew.

00:12:13Melissa Ellis: I know. Yes, our live on Saturday morning, perhaps a little early for most of our listeners, but Those that were up that early were actually at parkrun.

00:12:23Oliver Spake: True that. Yes. Yeah. Thank you to those that did join us or maybe belatedly joined us. It was wonderful to hear from Andrew and I guess share a bit of the lockdown love with our friends across the ditch.

00:12:35Melissa Ellis: Absolutely. And yeah, always great to catch up, with our New Zealand friends and have the interaction and for us to have a little bit more practice doing lives, Ollie. So, you know, we should probably ask the listeners if they enjoyed the live, if they listened, if they listened back later, if it's something we should do again. Should we try and get better at it?

00:12:58Oliver Spake: Do you like 7 a.m. starts in Australia? 9 a.m. for our Kiwi friends, of course.

00:13:03Melissa Ellis: Yeah, should we do it later in the day? Should we make it more reasonable brunch time so people can have their (not)parkrun sleep-ins? Let us know.

00:13:13Oliver Spake: Let us know. Yes.

00:13:15Melissa Ellis: But Ollie, you've got an interview this week. You spoke to the lovely Becky over at Richmond Olympic over in Canada. So should we have a listen to that?

00:13:26Oliver Spake: Let's.

Interview Becky Maybury — Core team member and Run Director, Richmond Olympic parkrun (Vancouver, Canada);…

00:13:35Oliver Spake: Our next guest is a parkrunner who's just recently been reunited with their own parkrun at Richmond Olympic parkrun, which is near Vancouver in Canada, recently returned from its pause on the 14th of August. She was the Run Director on the day and has since completed her own parkrunning return, participating in her 50th parkrun at home just this weekend. Welcome to the podcast, Becky Maybury.

00:13:59Becky Maybury: Hi there. Thank you very much. It's a pleasure to talk to you a little bit about parkrun Canada.

00:14:04Oliver Spake: No, look, thank you so much for joining us. We've been very excited to see Canada's return and watching, you know, one by one some of these events click back into gear and look really exciting to see that it's back at Richmond Olympic. And you've already managed to both volunteer and parkrun. So, Becky, can you tell us how's it been to have it all back?

00:14:24Becky Maybury: You know, obvious answer, it's fantastic to have it back. We've had restrictions on public gatherings for about 17 months. So our last parkrun was International Women's Day on the 7th of March 2020 and not back until last week. So, yeah, a few of us got there early to set up and previous sort of prior to the pause, there was this older couple who they never met, park ran themselves, but they would always be walking on the trail at that time of day. And they, you know, within minutes of us setting up, they appeared and beaming from ear to ear and welcomed us back and said how much they'd missed us. But they weren't the only ones smiling. I think, you know, lots of smiles. It really seemed to mean a lot to people to be to be back parkrunning again.

00:15:16Oliver Spake: Look, that's wonderful and what a welcome back to have, you know, just people from the community just ready to have you back and obviously looking forward to that. Needless to say, the long pause has made it very hard for many to stay motivated and connected. How have you and the community there managed in that time?

00:15:35Becky Maybury: I think it's probably the same as every other area of life, like learning to adapt and a little bit of patience. So very early on, we did a sort of a weekly virtual coffee morning, but then the whole world got Zoom fatigue. And so after about six weeks, we scrapped that. But fortunately here, we were never restricted on the amount of exercise we could do or the distance from our homes that we could exercise. So, we have so many great running spots in and around Vancouver that you go out for a run and you might bump into a parkrunner or cross paths or see what people have been up to on Strava. But I think for me, one thing that I'm very interested to see play out is how the community has grown in that time. Whenever I looked at the (not)parkrun results, I'd see people logging them that had never attended a parkrun in real life, or maybe only been once or twice. And I'm just really curious to see how over the next few weeks, we'll see people coming along for the first time with the closure of indoor exercise spaces, My hope is a lot more people will be exercising outside and discovering the joy that we all know and love of being outside.

00:16:52Oliver Spake: Yeah, I suppose it's given people a lot of opportunity to re-evaluate things and as it seems, you know, to find a different way to connect with parkrun. So have you noticed anyone coming along yet? Or I suppose it's early days, isn't it?

00:17:07Becky Maybury: Yeah, I mean, we've definitely had first timers on both days, as well as the, I won't say old faces, you know, the familiar faces is probably a more polite way of saying it. Yeah, someone brought a new guy along today and sort of presented him and said, this is my neighbour, he's coming to parkrun now. So yeah, it's definitely happening.

00:17:28Oliver Spake: Yeah. Look, in Richmond Olympic, I'm not familiar with the course. I had to Google it to understand the location. So could you please give us a bit of a description of, you know, what's the parkrun like and what's its history been?

00:17:43Becky Maybury: Yeah, I'd say our history is tied very closely to that of parkrun Canada, which actually began five years ago on this very day. So this is parkrun Canada's fifth birthday and

00:17:57Oliver Spake: Oh, happy birthday, parkrun Canada.

00:17:59Becky Maybury: Yes. Oh, thank you. Yeah. The first event was in a place called Kelowna, which is also in British Columbia, August 2016. And then Richmond Olympic followed about two months later in October 2016. So earlier that year, I was relocating from the UK. I probably can tell by now that my accent is not that of a Canadian national. So I was relocating, emailed parkrun HQ and said, what does it take to start parkrun in Canada? And I was put in touch with a guy called Ewan Bowman, who is the North American territory manager now.

00:18:33Unidentified speaker: Yes.

00:18:33Becky Maybury: But at the time, he was also living in Vancouver and was just sort of collecting people who were interested in parkrun, mostly immigrants from parkrun countries like myself. And that little group of people in the city became the core team for Richmond Olympic. And I think all of them are still involved today. So we kind of got it together and launched Halloween 2016. We were the third parkrun in the country. And for a while, we were also the planet's most westerly parkrun. I think currently we still are or currently we are because the two further west haven't reopened yet, but on the island, hopefully not for long because yeah, I'd love to see them love to see them start again. In terms of our route, it's an out and back along the Fraser River, and we've got a beautiful backdrop of mountains. On the side of the river that we run on, our route passes one of the Winter Olympic 2010 venues, the Olympic Oval, hence our name. And then on the other side of the river is the Vancouver International Airport. which is notable for a few reasons. I think firstly, we're right under a flight path. So no run briefing has ever been completed without having to stop and wait for a plane to pass over.

00:19:52Unidentified speaker: Yeah.

00:19:53Becky Maybury: The proximity to the airport as well means that people often will turn up with all their baggage. So, you know, you see them sort of dragging their wheelie suitcases along the gravel trail and rushing to get there for the start of parkrun, either on their way into the country or out of the country. And then I think kind of linked to that is the phenomenon of the time travelling parkrunner. I'm not sure if you're familiar with that, but I think the two places you can do it are Auckland to San Francisco and Brisbane to Vancouver. There might be other Australian cities that it can be achieved as well, but essentially a runner can get two runs in Australia, on a given Saturday by crossing the international dateline. That is outlawed by parkrun now. The second run isn't recognised. But there was one particularly enterprising Aussie on New Year's Day 2020, which was also the last day you could ever record two parkruns. She flew across the dateline and came to our parkrun as Doc Emmett Brown from Back to the Future. So she exploited the loophole and is the last person who will ever be able to do that. So congrats to her.

00:21:11Oliver Spake: And there really have been some fantastic examples of people time travelling and managing that dateline. Yeah, we've seen them over time, but well done to Doc there, wrapping it all up, the last opportunity.

00:21:26Becky Maybury: Yeah, I mean, it's a great achievement to be able to, you know, you really, your timings have to be bang on, but it's possible and quite a fun thing. One of our claims to fame.

00:21:36Oliver Spake: Yeah.

00:21:37Becky Maybury: Probably our only one.

00:21:38Oliver Spake: You put into perspective the whole interruption during the run brief thing. So you've probably got some tips for all of us. How do you manage the interruption that you just can't avoid of the aircraft travelling over during the run brief?

00:21:53Becky Maybury: it's whatever you do it's really awkward either you choose to continue with your briefing and you just shout louder and louder and no one can hear you or you stop and wait for it to kind of pass directly over but that's also really awkward because you have all these sets of eyes staring at you and you just kind of have to hang there awkwardly not saying anything so no tips whatsoever if anyone has any please do let me know because it's

00:22:21Oliver Spake: it's really annoying I heard shout louder so I'll have to try that one yeah megaphone maybe I don't know yeah and and look lovely to hear obviously that close connection of the community you know the efforts from from you and and the likes of yourselves and the team in setting up parkrun Canada but to hear that you know there is still that connection from so many that's wonderful yeah yeah it's really lovely yeah now um As I noted, you've just completed your 50th parkrun at home. You're also approaching a personal parkrun milestone. Congratulations in advance. Can you share a bit with us how parkrun entered your life?

00:23:01Becky Maybury: Yeah, for sure. It was when I was still living in the UK and there was a parkrun about a K from my house. And I've been told about it. And I used to see people walk in front of my window in their sports kit. But I used to play hockey on Saturdays. Well, in Canada, you have to refer to it as field hockey because their default hockey is ice hockey. But I think you Aussies will know what I mean when I say hockey. And you can't really do a match in midfield if you do a 5k in the morning. So I think end of the season in 2015, I finally made it along to a parkrun. And I absolutely loved it from the first time I was there. I'd say my sporting career has definitely been one of the enthusiastic amateur rather than sort of definitely lean on the side of participation to elite performance. But I recently learned that the etymology of the word amateur comes from the Latin to love. So part of being an amateur means that I love seeing people being active. And so from that first time I was sold, I wanted to get involved. When I got to Canada, I wanted to be part of parkrun and had the opportunity as well to build a team of volunteer social media ambassadors across Canada who manage the social media content each week. So that's just been another way that I've been able to contribute to parkrun and the ethos that we all believe in.

00:24:34Oliver Spake: It's fantastic, you know, to find new ways to connect, particularly now with that need to reconnect. We see some fine examples of that out when we trawl the parkrun Canada and other international parkrun organisation pages. So thank you for your volunteering and thank you for your support.

00:24:53Becky Maybury: No worries. It's kind of tricky when there are no events for 17 months to actually put content out. So we lent more on global to provide the content over the past year and a half. But definitely as parkruns come back, we get photos and new stories coming.

00:25:09Oliver Spake: Yeah. And look, as I understand it, you volunteered far more than you've actually completed parkruns in that time. So, you know, what is it about volunteering and, you know, do you have a favourite role or is it more in that ambassadorial development side of things?

00:25:24Becky Maybury: I think kind of what I was saying about, you know, providing opportunity and parkruns remove barriers, whether they're real barriers or perceived barriers to getting active. So I love volunteering in general. I just love to see people getting involved and maybe achieving things that they weren't expecting, like, walking their first 5k without stopping or getting a PB. We actually had a runner today, uh, get a personal best on her 50th parkrun. She was delighted. Um, so seeing things like that kind of keeps the motivation. Um, as for a favourite role, like the community side, you can't beat it. So I do love being Run Director. Um, I love that people will always come up and introduce themselves to you and tell you a little bit about themselves and, um, You know, you get to have these conversations that you wouldn't necessarily day to day. Can you hear that aeroplane in the background? I also live under a flight path.

00:26:14[other]

00:26:22Oliver Spake: If I'd planned that better, we would have timed it in with the conversation about the run brief, but I'm glad we squeezed it in.

00:26:28Becky Maybury: Yeah, I can shout louder if it's helpful. But I would say on the volunteering, like in all honesty, by choice, my tally wouldn't be quite that high. Like I really love to run as much as I can. But when you're on a core team, you know, one of the the less glamorous things is that it's your responsibility to keep the parkrun happening each week. So I'd say kind of within that volunteer tally are times that I've had to cancel or rearrange weekend plans or had been planning to run, but I'd had to step into volunteer, you know, when there weren't enough volunteers coming forward. So I'd say people should volunteer because it is fun and it is really rewarding. But also to consider helping to share the responsibility across the community is a great reason for volunteering as well.

00:27:18Oliver Spake: Yeah, yeah. And you're right, it comes with all angles, but it makes such a difference. And it's really nice when you have that kind of engagement, as you say, you know, people walk in as new parkrunners or visiting parkrunners, and you might be there as a Run Director or someone that can help engage them. Yeah. And hopefully, as you say, yeah, join the experience of volunteering as well, which can be so rewarding.

00:27:43Becky Maybury: Absolutely, yeah.

00:27:44Oliver Spake: Yeah, look, whilst the 50 milestone is a key milestone, we've mentioned your personal parkrun milestone just around the corner. You've got, I suppose, a fairly impressive array of different visits and highlights so far. So as I understand it, there's five countries in the kit bag so far, 27 different events. Are you able to share with us a top three or maybe three of the highlights of the parkruns you've visited beyond Richmond Olympic parkrun, please?

00:28:14Becky Maybury: You definitely know more about my parkrun history than I do. Okay, so in no particular order, one parkrun I ran was Gorky parkrun in Moscow, in Russia. That was, it kind of runs along the Moskva River. And during the run briefing, we were told, keep running along the trail until you see a giant pile of snow and then turn around and come back again. There were no course markings. They weren't lying. There was a giant pile of snow. And one of the faster runners, when he got there, just kind of stood there like a scarecrow pretending to be a human cone almost. So we ran around him, ran back again. And then the Event Director's grandmother, like his babushka, had provided chai and this like delicious gateau cake for the parkrunners so we all stood on the banks of this frozen river in minus 10 degrees enjoying the tea and the cake together so that was a super memorable one and Next, I'm going to say Etna parkrun in Italy. And yeah, I'm going for some quite obscure ones here. But I had a couple of friends, Kez and Nicole, who visited me in Canada, and I forced them to run a couple of parkruns against their will. But of course, they were hooked. So we decided that we'd try and coordinate our 50th parkruns together. And then we were like, well, you know, we may as well go on a holiday while we're at it. So went out to Italy. And this run is, it's essentially sort of around the base of a volcano. And during the run, I was, you know, looking around and soaking up the atmosphere and I tripped on some like lump of volcanic rock or something. Fortunately had enough momentum that I did this weird double commando roll and sprung back up to my feet. But an Italian runner behind me saw me fall and shouted, Mamma Mia! really loudly, which was just the most Italian thing to happen. So that was pretty funny. It was special because it was our 50th. It was memorable because of the Mamma Mia. And then the Event Director of that run is actually a tour guide. So we ended up going with a hiking group for a nighttime walk up the volcano to go and look at the lava at night, which was like, yeah, ridiculous and amazing. Wow. And then my third one, I think I'm going to go for a Richmond Olympic highlight, actually. So we actually have our own Olympian. There's one of the Canadian race walkers, Evan Dunfee, is based in Richmond. He's been to a handful of parkruns, but on this particular day, he brought two of his teammates along. So these guys were out on a 30K training walk. They incorporated the 5K parkrun into this training walk I think they all came in the top like five or seven by walking it and then, you know, trotted off to do the rest of their run. And a big shout out to Evan. He actually in the 50K in Tokyo a couple of weeks ago, he got a bronze medal. Wow. Absolutely nothing to do with our parkrun, but, you know, we'll claim him as our own. And big congrats to Evan, the true Richmond Olympian.

00:31:42Oliver Spake: That's fantastic. Yeah. Look, race walking blows me away. And to provide a very interesting angle to the fact that, you know, parkrun welcomes runners, walkers, joggers and so forth. Bronze medal walkers is... Yeah, he's a great example of that.

00:31:58Becky Maybury: Yeah, there's often the odd joke that we could ask him to be our Tail Walker, but he'd actually finish in the top three, so he wouldn't necessarily be the best Tail Walker.

00:32:09Oliver Spake: Some amazing highlights there, and I don't think I've matched that for a lot. That's the bird you described.

00:32:17[other]

00:32:17Becky Maybury: Oh, yeah, can you hear it?

00:32:18Oliver Spake: I can hear the bird in the background, yes.

00:32:20Becky Maybury: Some of the Canadian wildlife in the background.

00:32:23Oliver Spake: Yes, yes. That's great. We feel like we're really there with some of the ambience. So thanks for lining that up.

00:32:30Becky Maybury: Absolutely.

00:32:31Oliver Spake: Yeah. Look, fantastic experiences, like I said. And yeah, no doubt the 100 will be just as special. Maybe no volcanoes, but...

00:32:42Becky Maybury: I mean, hopefully not. No, it's very flat in Richmond, so it would be surprising if a volcano sprung up. But yeah, hopefully I'll get my hundred next week. So it'd be nice to be able to do it at the parkrun that's been so close to my heart for the past five years.

00:32:58Oliver Spake: Yeah, look, that's fantastic. And thank you so much, Becky, for joining us and sharing some of those highlights and the experience you've obviously been through in the last 18 months there. Wish you very best for your parkrun milestone and for you and the team in unpausing and welcoming new parkrunners to join in the parkrun love back at Richmond Olympic, getting it all back up and running.

00:33:21Becky Maybury: Thank you so much. And hopefully when the travel restrictions ease up a bit, I'll see some of your listeners come over. I feel like every parkrun I've been to, there's always at least one Australian. So the invite's open. And yeah, I'd love to see some of you over here.

00:33:36Oliver Spake: You'll have many of us adding it to the list and just waiting for the opportunity to come and visit. So thank you for the invitation. We'll be there.

00:33:45Becky Maybury: You're welcome. Thank you so much.

00:33:53Oliver Spake: Yes, so look, Mel, it was wonderful to hear firsthand what it's been like for parkrun Canada to come on back, to get back into real-life parkrunning world.

00:34:04Melissa Ellis: Yes, Ollie, so that's good. More and more events coming back from Canada. Yes. And nice to hear from Becky.

00:34:09Oliver Spake: Yeah, thank you very much, Becky. And look, I really enjoyed some of her highlights, even if she did get away with mentioning her home parkrun as a top three highlight. And look, I was listening out because she described dying seabirds in the background to me when we were recording. So I was very thrilled when I heard over the audio what literally sounded like a dying seabird. I mean, not thrilled at the notion of it being a dying seabird, of course, but...

00:34:38Melissa Ellis: I heard it too, yes.

00:34:40Oliver Spake: Yes, yes.

00:34:41Melissa Ellis: It was quite loud.

00:34:42Oliver Spake: It was, it was, yeah. So, hey, the wildlife in Canada. Good to hear from the locals. Yeah, it makes it a bit more of a touch of what it's like there. And that takes Canada, well, not necessarily that event because they've been back two weeks now, but that takes them up to 15 events so far returned. Keep it up, guys.

00:35:01Unidentified speaker: Mm-hmm.

00:35:02Oliver Spake: And speaking of keeping it up, Mel, we're keeping it up with lots to listen to this week. We've got a couple of roving reports. We've got more coming up later in the pod. So should we have a listen to a couple of our roving reports?

00:35:15Melissa Ellis: I think so.

Roving reports & the Channel 5 News crew

Roving report Tracey Wood — Mudgeeraba

00:35:24Tracey Wood: Good morning, parkrunners. It's Tracey in a Tutu. Myself and a friend went away for the weekend to Tamborine Mountain, but their event team decided not to go ahead with the event this weekend. So we've meandered our way down the mountain, almost to the Gold Coast, but we stopped about 10k short and we found Mudgeeraba. And we're at Darcy Doyle Park this morning. We got in here a little early and the event team's still setting up, but we found a regular to chat to. Let's talk to Donna. Hi Donna, how are you? Hello Tracey, how are you? I'm good, thanks. Now Donna, I believe you're a regular here.

00:36:02Donna: Yes, I am. How long have you been coming here? Oh, jeez. I've been doing parkrun for probably seven years. Oh, wow. Yeah, and doing it here at Mudgeeraba for probably five years.

00:36:14Tracey Wood: Yeah, yeah.

00:36:15Donna: And where did you go before that? We sort of travelled around to a lot of the Gold Coast ones, so Kirra, even went down to Kingscliff, Broadbeach, Varsity, Coomera, so quite a few of the different ones we used to go to all the time.

00:36:33Tracey Wood: Yeah. And are you chasing any of the parkrun challenges at all? The pirate club or the tourist? No, not at this stage.

00:36:41Unidentified speaker: No, you're just like moving around.

00:36:42Tracey Wood: No, that's fine.

00:36:44Donna: And how many parkruns are you up to now? I'm up to 210.

00:36:48Tracey Wood: 210. Oh, you've got your milestone coming up maybe early next year, I'd say, 250.

00:36:56Donna: Yes, as long as COVID doesn't stop us too often.

00:36:58Tracey Wood: As long as COVID doesn't stop us. Have you missed parkrun in the last two weeks? Yeah, it has.

00:37:03Donna: It's been hard missing it.

00:37:07Tracey Wood: What does parkrun mean to you? It means a lot with meeting new people.

00:37:14Donna: It's like a family. You really get along with people. Yeah. And trying to get healthy and fit.

00:37:23Tracey Wood: Exactly. Look, thanks for chatting with us, Donna. You have a great run this morning and might see you later on after the event. No worries. Thank you. Thank you. And I've found Trent. Hi Trent, how are you? Good morning, how are you going? Good, good. You look like you've got something. What are you doing this morning?

00:37:40Trent: This morning I'm doing the newbie briefing, so like all other events we go through, I've got the course map here, let everyone know what they do with their finish tokens, make sure they bring them back, all the rules and regulations.

00:37:52Tracey Wood: Right, and do you get a few tourists to Mudgeeraba?

00:37:55Trent: Yeah, thankfully with COVID, a lot of locals are coming from other events that maybe they wouldn't make the effort to get to. So with 10 events on the Gold Coast, you've got plenty of options from hills to beaches and we're sort of somewhere in between, I guess.

00:38:08Tracey Wood: And what's this course like? Is it nice and flat or we've got hills here?

00:38:12Trent: Yeah, it's a very flat course, very picturesque along the creek. We've got two U-turn points that'll bring us back here to the start. Probably average around 140 people a week, so... Right. Not too bad.

00:38:23Tracey Wood: It does look a little confusing. Am I going to get lost?

00:38:26Trent: We have arrows and the council have put up all the signage. So at each junction point, there's always an arrow and a sign to follow. Unless you run around to 17 minutes today, are you going to lead the way for us?

00:38:38Tracey Wood: Let me think about that. No.

00:38:39Trent: Not today? Not today.

00:38:41Tracey Wood: No.

00:38:42Trent: Perfect conditions out here today, though.

00:38:44Tracey Wood: Yeah.

00:38:44Trent: It's really good.

00:38:45Tracey Wood: Yeah, it is. And you're a regular here at Mudgeeraba?

00:38:49Trent: Yeah, yeah. I've been involved for probably coming here for the last six years. All my three kids run. My young bloke's on his 93rd run today, so coming up to his 100th. So it's great. And I just did my 200th last event. Well done, you. All right.

00:39:05Tracey Wood: All right. Looks like we're about to get going fairly soon. I'll get ready for my newbie brief and we'll get out there.

00:39:10Unidentified speaker: Newbie brief. Thank you so much. No problem.

00:39:12Tracey Wood: Okay, I've just finished Mudgeeraba and I found Peter. He's the Run Director this morning. How are you, Peter?

00:39:17Peter: Good, good. How did it all go today? Oh, it's gone well. You know, beautiful day out here in Mudgeeraba. The weather's great. So it's just a perfect day for parkrun.

00:39:26Tracey Wood: Yeah, yeah. Look, it's a great course. I found it so well signed out here. How would you describe it to listeners today?

00:39:33Peter: Look, it's a quick course. As you said, it's well set out, it's well run. We've had a big involvement from Gold Coast City Council in getting the course set up nicely. So it's just a good parkrun in the true sense of things, yeah yeah and have you been with Mudgeeraba for a while oh yes look uh since uh since one of the very first runs um you know we've been uh we've been part of Mudgeeraba now for uh Mudgeeraba park right now for uh since since I think run number 15. yeah yes and where were you before that were you uh attached to another parkrun then no not at all not at all I registered with Mudgeeraba park and I think I've done two other parkruns It's been pretty much Mudgeeraba parkrun all the way through. Yeah, yeah. And being involved with the running of Mudgeeraba parkrun has also been the attraction to stay here.

00:40:35Tracey Wood: No, it's an excellent parkrun. So thank you for having us this morning.

00:40:38Peter: My pleasure.

00:40:39Tracey Wood: See you later.

00:40:39Peter: Thank you.

00:40:41Tracey Wood: Okay, well, that's all from me at Mudgeeraba parkrun. I forgot to mention, by the way, that Donna was actually barcode scanning this morning. So thank you to Donna for doing that and all the other volunteers who helped make this happen. That's all from me. I'm going to go in search of coffee. Toodles from Tracey. See you on the B-side. Bye.

Roving reports & the Channel 5 News crew

Roving report Mark Scarborough — Bayview Road

00:41:01Mark Scarborough: Hello parkrun adventurers, this is Mark reporting in for the Channel 5 News crew. This week we find ourselves in Karratha, which is a city in the Pilbara region of Western Australia. Now funnily enough, it's over 1,100 kilometres from our last parkrun course that we were able to do. And here in Karratha, in the Dampier region, there's actually two local parkruns which started up only a couple of months ago. So we're going to have a chat with the two local RDs about their parkruns. So I'm here with Zoe, who's the Event Director for Bayview Road parkrun in Karratha, Western Australia. Good morning, Zoe. How are you?

00:41:35Zoe: I'm pretty good. How about yourself?

00:41:37Mark Scarborough: I'm good, thank you. A nice warm day here in Karratha, which is fantastic. We're enjoying the warm weather. Bayview Road parkrun is relatively new. It's about two months in and nine parkruns down. What can you tell us about Bayview Road parkrun and how it started?

00:41:50Zoe: So when I first moved up to Karratha in late 2019, I was at a loss to find any running groups up here and I've enjoyed running for quite a while. I use running as an outlet for my mental health. I think it's one of the better outlets. And so when... COVID sort of happened and everything I was quite isolated at home I didn't know anyone I'm an ex-police officer so I had been in the job for 16 years I found it really isolating moving up here as a stay-at-home mum and you know when you're working you find your immediate group of friends obviously when you're a stay-at-home mum it's really hard and then we went into lockdown and I started to find things really difficult and I started having a really hard time I started speaking to a counsellor, a lady called Danielle from Soldiers and Sirens, and she suggested I join this amazing running group called Running Mums Australia on Facebook. And so I got on there and I posted a thing saying, are there any other running mums in Karratha? And I got a response from a couple of fabulous ladies up here. One of them, Natasha, started up her Karratha Running Facebook page straight away so that we could all chat together. And then we decided to start meeting to run together. And on one of the first runs we did, there was a lady named Peta there and she started talking about parkrun. To be totally honest, I'd never heard of parkrun. Had never run a parkrun. And I just obviously wanted a running group together and she was going on about all the benefits of parkrun and how it's this great community and it's worldwide and rah-rah-rah. And so then we started looking at how to start a parkrun in Karratha. It had been tried a couple of times before, but there are logistical issues with Karratha with starting a parkrun, mainly because of the footpaths because it's quite an older town and the footpath sizing and all that sort of stuff there's a lot of intricate rules with the parkrun on how you can set them up and then luckily one week we were running our mock parkrun down in uh Cattrall Park and uh it started raining and I don't like getting my shoes wet when I run so we changed it up just for a week to run up at Bayview Road because it's a quite a good double width footpath and um then we decided that we really liked that course and so we applied for approval with parkrun to get that one sorted and were eventually successful

00:44:02Mark Scarborough: And how did you get support locally to get the parkrun started through the local council and get the funding?

00:44:08Zoe: We hit out at some local businesses in town. So Karratha Earth Moving got on board straight away and donated some cash. Rio Tinto donated our defibrillator. And then we applied for funding through Pilbara Ports Authority and they came through with a fair bit. And then Yarra just basically rang up and said, yep, love what you're doing and gave us all the rest of the money that we needed.

00:44:31Mark Scarborough: So you said that this has been important for your mental health. So what do you get out of running?

00:44:37Zoe: I find that it is a great way to clear your mind of the day's troubles you know like whether it's parkrun or with our Karratha runners also we have a group that we just go running we've got Monday sessions and Tuesday sessions and like yesterday afternoon we just went for a 10k run through the back of the hills and you know like you just in nature there's no cars there's no no interruptions and you just clear your mind and and it's my happy place.

00:45:03Mark Scarborough: So have you done another parkrun then? Like, so you said that you hadn't heard of parkrun before. Have you done another parkrun at all or only at Bayview Road?

00:45:10Zoe: I volunteered once at the Hampton Oval one, but I was training for a marathon, so I wasn't willing to run on uneven ground because I'm really uncoordinated. And so I volunteered there, but no, this is the only parkrun I've run.

00:45:26Mark Scarborough: Have others in the event team then experienced another parkrun to then kind of know about the parkrun community and, I suppose, spirit?

00:45:33Zoe: Yeah, absolutely. So Jamie, who's my 2IC, he's done well over 50 parkruns, I believe. I think he's got the red shirt, whichever one that is. And so he was all over parkrun. He does most of our speaking, especially before we got going, because people kept asking us to do media interviews and stuff, and I had no idea what I was talking about. So I was like, oh, Jamie, don't do it, Jamie, do it. And... And Peta, obviously, who was the initial push for it, she's done quite a few parkruns before.

00:45:59Mark Scarborough: And what do you think that establishing this parkrun here in Karratha means to the community?

00:46:05Zoe: Look, we started in January this year, and as soon as we started, I think we had about six people turn up to our first one, and then it just grew exponentially. It was amazing. Just all these people. We have lots of mums and dads with prams, because our track is so user-friendly. We have lots of kids. We've got heaps of little kids now, six, seven, eight year olds that are doing the whole 5Ks. They're amazing. So as far as a family experience goes, it's really good. We've got some great competition with the back-to-back crew from the airport fireys. So they come out and try and smash each other's records each week, which is really cool. We've got some coppers that run with us. We've got some of the ADF guys. So it's And we've got heaps of people that just want to get fit. And I think my favourite stories are the ones that on our first parkrun turned up and couldn't, you know, could barely run a kilometre. And now they're doing five kilometres and they're so proud of themselves. And we're so proud of them because they're achieving their goals, which is amazing.

00:47:04Mark Scarborough: Yeah, well, that's certainly what parkrun is about, isn't it? Can you describe the course for us?

00:47:10Zoe: So our course is a lap course, so it's two and a half laps of the Bayview Road, so we start in the middle basically, we run down to one end, it's like a semi-circle I suppose, so you run down to one end, you run back past the start line to the other end, then back past the start line again to the first end and back to the middle, so you sort of do two and a half laps of the entire course, which is really good because it means that you're constantly passing each other and cheering each other on and it's really good.

00:47:36Mark Scarborough: And we noticed when we were out there yesterday that the kids obviously get out there and do some of the chalk art with inspiring messages for people.

00:47:42Zoe: Yeah, we started off trying to do, you know, being very serious with the chalk art and, you know, because you see some great things on Instagram and stuff from the other parkruns, but now we just let the kids have the chalk and they do a great job.

00:47:50Mark Scarborough: All right, well, thank you very much for your time today. It's good to catch up and hear about one of Australia's newest parkruns up here in the Pilbara. So thank you very much.

00:48:00Zoe: No worries at all. And we've had lots of tourists already come and run with our parkrun with us and we're looking forward to having lots more.

00:48:05Mark Scarborough: All right. Thanks, Zoe. So that's us done here at Karratha. And Mel got your message regarding the Wagi Bridge Trolls and if they're able to visit you at Ellis Palace parkrun one day coming up. So I'll check the Wagga Bridges schedule and see what can be worked out. Anyway, we'll talk to you next time on the parkrun adventurers.

the Informant

00:48:38The Informant: This is the informant. Coming to you grumpy from my room with a view. Apparently no time for chit chat this week. Under orders from Mel just to get it done. Apparently she has an interview with some Aussie parkrun royalty that needs to fit in. So I'm just lucky I don't get bumped. I bet it doesn't stop them banging on about Ellis Palace and zombies though. Anyway, apologies for sounding like a mini beige trousers. The stats, you know the deal. They're only accurate unless they're not, in which case we'll just blame someone else. On the juniors front, I think we're back to three events, but I don't have time to talk about that. I will put the spreadsheet on the blog. In Australia and New Zealand, we are plagued with lockdowns. Globally, numbers are still booming. There were 1,171 runs taking place in 17 countries. There were four launches, Sonsbeek in the Netherlands, and in the UK there were three, Grove Fields, Sandy Water, and Torvean, which is a kind of new, kind of old event relaunched in a new location. Aussie New Zealand attendance was up 1,200. We had 18,429 runners out of 158,227 worldwide, which is 727 higher than last week. Down under we had 2,276 PBs, while 527 people participated for the first time. 54 juniors reached their junior 10 milestone, 97 people reached their 50 milestone, 61 reached their 100 milestone, and 15 people reached their 250 milestone. Six people called bingo. Samantha Jo Leonard was the quickest with 197 events. Lorna Davin was the slowest person taking 344 events. Five new statespeople this week. Matthew Hines, Jared Fissenden, Scott Clark became Northern Territorians at Darwin. Mel Crossing, a South Aussie at Patawalonga River. And David O'Brien, a Tasmanian at Whitemark Wharf. On the top 20 most Aussie New Zealand events list, there were no upward movement. Overall biggest movers were Mill Clayton, Vicky Thompson, Tim Bowden, Nathan Currie, Craig Robertson, Linda Cushmash, who all jumped 13 places from 232 to 219. Only mild grief from the Windexes this week. Peter Berry was the biggest mover, up 14 from 1 to 15. Okay, Parkies, that's your lot for this week. To see the stats in full, look for The Informant on Facebook or visit the blog at www.theinformant.me. This has been The Informant and my stats report has been abbreviated.

00:51:27Melissa Ellis: And that was really good to hear from Tracey back after Queensland's short pause from Mudgeeraba. And Mark bringing us that interview there from Zoe at Bayview Road in Karratha. And... He actually turned up to Port Hedland, Ollie, and the parkrun was cancelled due to a music festival, but great to still get an interview from you, Mark, and they look like they're still having heaps of fun.

00:51:54Oliver Spake: Hey, if you've seen any of the pictures, they're having an awesome adventure or series of adventures as they're travelling out west there. So fantastic to hear from you, Mark, and from Tracey and our informant as well, of course. Always cheeky. Yes.

00:52:08Melissa Ellis: Always making me giggle.

00:52:10Oliver Spake: Which we need.

parkrun news bulletin

00:52:11Oliver Spake: I'm not wanting to downplay the lockdown struggles that we're all experiencing, but we did get some other bad news this week, Mel.

00:52:21Melissa Ellis: Did we? Oh, we did. Yes. The event that we had very excitedly entered, Ollie, and we were going to have a palm frond and we'd been training. Well, I had. Oh.

00:52:35Oliver Spake: Sort of had, yep.

00:52:36Melissa Ellis: Yes, it's been cancelled. Sadly, Panorama Punish is not going ahead this year, but fingers crossed it can come back in 2022 and 222.

00:52:50Oliver Spake: 2-2-2, yes.

00:52:51Melissa Ellis: I'm committed. I'm going to be there.

00:52:53Oliver Spake: I agree. Look, I'm disappointed to not get to see the Bathurst team themselves and also to see many of our other parkrun adventurers podcast family that were going to be out there. So, hey, we will see you on the grid in 2022.

00:53:11Melissa Ellis: But in other happier news, we heard that Finland is going to be launching a new event, Ollie, which is going to become the most northerly parkrun in the world.

00:53:20Oliver Spake: This is pretty exciting. I hadn't been following the most northerly parkrun in the world too much, but this one, I think, is going to go onto my list, Mel.

00:53:29Melissa Ellis: Really?

00:53:30Oliver Spake: Yes. And the reason is... What's the reason, Ollie?

00:53:34[laughter]

00:53:34Unidentified speaker: LAUGHTER

00:53:36Oliver Spake: Just had to contemplate there. No, the reason is Kathy's family home on her mother's side is just 200 and, no, not 200, yeah, 250 kilometres away. Can you tell I just Googled that?

00:53:51Melissa Ellis: I will when I listen back to the recording and I hear the tap, tap, tap, tap, tap.

00:53:56Oliver Spake: Yeah, look, they hail from Nickalabi, which is just down the road. So I am going to put this on my list and hopefully in five years time or thereabouts, I'll be there.

00:54:06Melissa Ellis: Wow. Yeah. That's impressive. Yes. So we are looking forward to that happening in September. A bit of fun, even though none of us can go.

The Compass Clubnew tourist club

00:54:16Melissa Ellis: It'll be exciting. I hadn't really considered that there's a global Compass Club as we know it here and we celebrate in Australia. It's not necessarily events with North, South, East and West in their name, but it's actually the geographic most furthest points in the country that we class as our Compass Club.

00:54:37Oliver Spake: Yeah.

00:54:37Melissa Ellis: Yeah. So, but how does it work? How does it work with the east and the west, Ollie? When the globe's round, how do you decide which is the most eastern or western? Do you just do it with the world map flat as it's usually seen?

00:54:53Oliver Spake: Do you work off the clock? Do you work off the international date line? Because I think I'd taken that there was a reference point of the international date line. In fact, Becky was talking about it in terms of obviously Canada has some rather western North American dates, parkruns there and that's got to be getting close to if not still the westernmost as the day flows oh my goodness I can't even get the time difference to New Zealand right Yeah, look, it's one that I would welcome the feedback on. If anyone can enlighten me in particular, ignorant of this, how we work out what is the Global Compass Club in terms of the compass points.

00:55:37Melissa Ellis: I know who will tell us, Peter Pohlman.

00:55:39Oliver Spake: Excellent, Peter. Please.

00:55:43Melissa Ellis: Yes.

00:55:44Oliver Spake: But nonetheless, Mel, we've got plenty of goings on still in Australia and probably neglected with the lockdown latest to talk about the full update. But if I'm not mistaken, where are we this week? We've got New South Wales still out. We've got Victoria out. We've got the ACT out. And, well, we've also got our friends in New Zealand out, if I'm not mistaken.

00:56:07Melissa Ellis: Indeed. Indeed.

00:56:09Oliver Spake: That's a lot to manage.

00:56:11Melissa Ellis: It is. And we have some insight into how that is done, Ollie.

00:56:16Oliver Spake: That's right. So you were fortunate enough to catch up with parkrun Australasia's Renee Gimbert and to get a bit of insight because we feel the pain for these guys. They're working all hours and doing the hard yards for us. So let's have a listen.

Interview Renee Gimbert — parkrun Territory Manager, Asia Pacific (parkrun Australia HQ)

00:56:41Melissa Ellis: Our next guest is the parkrun Territory Manager for Asia Pacific. She is barcode number A130534 and is committed to a healthier and happier planet. I got that from the Twitter profile. Welcome back to the parkrun adventurers podcast, Renee Gimbert.

00:56:59Renee Gimbert: Thanks so much for having me. It's lovely to be back.

00:57:01Melissa Ellis: Now, Renee, we've heard from you before on the pod. In episode 30, we heard your parkrun story. In episode 50, we heard your highlights from 2016. And back in episode 112, you spoke with Scotty about juniors. And more recently, we saw you on the With Me Now Live when the Northern Territory was the first Australian territory to return after the COVID pause. However, we've never met. I have, however, met your dad. LAUGHTER That does not surprise me at all.

00:57:27[laughter]

00:57:32Renee Gimbert: I love it. Were you at Curl Curl?

00:57:35Melissa Ellis: Indeed I was. Yes, back in June of 2019 I was up there for the longest run weekend. Yep. And had brunch. Nice. After parkrun and sat opposite your dad and had a good old chat.

00:57:48Renee Gimbert: I'm sure he chewed your ear off.

00:57:50Melissa Ellis: No, it was lovely. It was good. And I think we were discussing solar panels back then.

00:57:56Renee Gimbert: I do feel for you if he talked you through the solar panels he put on his roof. But that certainly is my dad. I love it.

00:58:06Melissa Ellis: So we thought it would be a good idea to invite you back to have a chat about the current situation, the current status of the events across Asia Pacific, because it must be, there's a lot going on. That would be a good way to describe it.

00:58:21Renee Gimbert: Yes, that is very true. There's a lot going on and it's constantly changing. From the afternoon to the evening, things are changing so quickly. It is a workload trying to keep up with what's going, what's happening in all the different areas. But we're managing to stay on top of it. And it's not great news, you know, watching locations going to lockdown and having to cancel events there. But we're certainly feeling for the teams as we're communicating with them that parkrun won't be going ahead. But it's certainly keeping us on our toes.

00:59:00Melissa Ellis: So just for the listeners, you've got a relatively small team across HQ in Australia. Would that be fair comment?

00:59:09Renee Gimbert: Yes, we try to be as lean as we can. And this is globally as well. So we have 45 off the top of my head globally. In Asia Pacific, we have a team of 10. In all different areas, our ops team consists of a handful of people. So, you know, the people that are monitoring the information is, you know, there's three people in the operations team plus our head of volunteer management staying on top of this. Obviously, it also feeds into our comms department to get the communications out to everyone. So it is taking up, you know, a lot of the team focused on where we are opening and closing at the moment.

00:59:56Melissa Ellis: Yeah, because every state and territory within Australia has different rules and different levels of what I guess parkrun is classified as. I know here in Victoria we're not, we aren't classified under community sports. So every time we see on the news community sports is allowed to come back, everybody, all the parkrunners get all excited, but that doesn't necessarily mean parkrun can come back because that relates to community gathering limits.

01:00:21Renee Gimbert: Correct. Yeah.

01:00:22Melissa Ellis: But then that's not necessarily the same in South Australia.

01:00:25Renee Gimbert: Correct. And it's difficult that there's no consistency across it, but it's what we have to work within, each state government classifying things differently. And as you say, we're not community sport. We're under an event system, tier three in Victoria. In other places such as Queensland, we're classed as community sport. So it varies. One of the things with community sport is often a lot of areas would have a number limit on that. And so that's what we can't fit within where community sport, they're saying groups of 10, things like that. And we can't fit within those requirements for the small group sizes.

01:01:12Melissa Ellis: And then as another layer of complexity, each state is also divided into metro and regional. So you've got some events happening, like I'll use Victoria as an example, because that's what I know the best. Victoria at one point, you know, metro is locked down, but regional's been allowed to return. So there's that divide as well that just complicates everything.

01:01:34Renee Gimbert: Absolutely. We've seen the same thing in Queensland and in New South Wales as well, where we've got Greater Sydney lockdown and then the regional New South Wales open. And then that has changed over time and regional have gone into lockdown as well. Same in Queensland with South East Queensland. And again, it's understanding what events are in those local government areas and what is classed as metro and regional and where the borders are, that type of thing. It's certainly great for a geography lesson of Australia, but, you know, to understand, you know, what LGA's things fit into.

01:02:12Melissa Ellis: I guess I wanted the listeners to get a good idea of just how difficult it is behind the scenes for the very small team we've got here in Australia. They must be working late nights as well because I think Friday night there was really late comms going out from the government with a possible last minute lockdown of regional Victoria. And there was messages coming through saying, I could see quite late into the evening.

01:02:38Renee Gimbert: Yes, I giggled when you said that because I did call a meeting of a number of the team at like eight o'clock or something on a Friday night, which isn't normal, but it was easier to get everyone on one call to determine what was happening, rather than try and communicate through Slack or through email. So we need to be flexible in the hours that we work, depending on what's happening. And so we haven't had a situation like we did in Victoria on Friday where things changed pretty quickly. We were comfortable and confident to be going ahead, which we were on Friday as well. But there was news articles suggesting that community sport didn't go ahead. There was no directive for us to cancel. However, to clarify how we operate and where we, you know, open or close, we fought really hard to come back, to bring parkrun back after lockdown all around the world. So for me, whenever there is an opportunity for us to allow parkrun events to operate, we will take that opportunity. So regional Victoria, for example, was closed the week prior. We then opened for one week under number restrictions, which were 300 at the time. We spent some time working through that to understand, would we go close to those numbers? how would it all work? But with the intention that whatever we could do or look at to make sure we could come back, that we would. So we know the benefits, the mental health benefits, not just the physical activity side, to have parkrun events. We know from surveys that lockdown and not being able to see people has such a you know detrimental effect to people's mental health that we want to come back and and that's where we open in regional Victoria and it's also why we didn't make a blanket cancel on Friday night in Victoria so whilst there was news breaking that there was talk of something about to happen it didn't happen and we you know if there's an opportunity to go ahead then we want to Obviously there were teams where there were cases near them, so we support them to cancel, and that's what our communication was, that we wouldn't apply a whole blanket cancel, but we would let event teams decide if they were in an area. So there were some regional Victorian events that were nowhere near where new cases were popping up, and we didn't want to take that opportunity away from them. We follow the government advice and that's the path that we need to take. But as I said, where there's an opportunity for us to remain open or to reopen, we will do that. We will do what we can to make that happen.

01:05:29Melissa Ellis: Does it weigh heavily, Renee? Is the team, how are they going? How's morale? Look...

01:05:36Renee Gimbert: We're a very tight-knit team and so we work well together. I would say it's draining. That's, you know, it's not nice delivering bad news. So I think, you know, everyone's coping the best possible that they can, but we're certainly trying to stay as positive as we can. Some of the team at the moment, our office, our Australian office is on the Gold Coast. And so we think that we're incredibly lucky to be in a position where at the moment we're not under restrictions. There's a lot of people in other states and territories that have lost their jobs and that are struggling. So we look at it that we're in a privileged position and we've got more concern for the teams out there that we're telling that need to cancel rather than how it works for us or how we feel about it. Our goal is to work as hard as we can to get events operating wherever we can.

01:06:46Melissa Ellis: Yeah, it must be difficult too to put out the social media side of it because you want to be promoting and happy for the teams that are running, but then you've got all these other events locked down that probably don't want to see that kind of thing. So it must be incredibly difficult to try to balance that.

01:07:04Renee Gimbert: It is. What you'll see over the last few weeks or months on social media is people a lot of references to not parkrun so we try to balance out that you know we'll often ask who's been to parkrun this morning but we will ask who's been to parkrun or not parkrun um because we're very conscious that not everyone can actually get to a parkrun and I agree it is hard you know when you look on social media and and you're in lockdown but you know it seems like the rest of the world is moving forward so We try to balance that out in communications. So, you know, we are genuinely thinking of people in lockdown. We are genuinely concerned for them. But it's also, on the other hand, it's really lovely to see the (not)parkruns being logged. I think there was like 1,500 last week, which is really nice to see that people are getting involved. They are getting out there, which I think is great it's keeping communities communicating with each other um we're seeing on social media at local event teams kind of having a little challenge with other events in their area who can get more people to not parkrun at their event and I think you know that's that's really nice to see that communities are still you know together through this time

01:08:27Melissa Ellis: Yes, I've even been guilty of changing my home parkrun profile so that I can virtually tour to my friends' events and appear in their (not)parkrun results for the week. Brilliant. And because it's just all different ways to try to, I don't know, bring a little bit of interest to the week. I mean, we're tourists. I'm a tourist. That's what I like to do. I can't do it at the moment. It's frustrating. We're locked down. But we can still do it virtually. Yep. So I hope that doesn't upset parkrun with me continually changing my home parkrun. No, no, no, no.

01:09:05Renee Gimbert: Absolutely not. And look, this is what we wanted not parkrun to be, to be able to create what you would normally do of a weekend, but it's just not parkrun. So I think it makes perfect sense that if you're a tourist that you're still touristing without it, without parkrun being, you know, operating. So it is nice to see people using it in different ways.

01:09:29Melissa Ellis: And so, okay, the current situation, you also oversee New Zealand and Southeast Asia.

01:09:35Renee Gimbert: Yes.

01:09:35Melissa Ellis: And, of course, we've just had our friends in New Zealand go back into lockdown, but Southeast Asia, they're not back yet?

01:09:42Renee Gimbert: Correct.

01:09:42Melissa Ellis: Or are they?

01:09:43Renee Gimbert: Well, so Singapore and Malaysia, we're not back yet. Malaysia, in both countries, there's still number restrictions. I mean, Singapore, off the top of my head, is like gathering limits of six or something. It's really quite small. We're looking into events in Singapore at the moment to understand how we fit in there. There's some differing information of people needing to be vaccinated or certain percents. not vaccinated. So that's something that we're working through at the moment. In Japan, we're open. However, some of our events are closed due to COVID. So in Japan, there's a number of prefectures that are under a state of emergency. And in those locations, some of the events are cancelled. So it's really interesting in Japan, where there's a state of emergency, that doesn't mean a blanket cancellation for parkrun. Some landowners will still permit us to use the land. So last weekend, I think we had 10 events open in Japan and 15 closed. 13 of those were due to COVID. What's really positive, though, on the other hand, is we've actually got new events that are due to open in Japan in the near future. So we've got another event launching at the beginning of September and then another one that will launch at the end of September. So whilst some events are closed, we are still in those areas that we can operate in. We are still opening more events, which is exciting. In Japan, we started there in April 2019 and then went into lockdown in February 2020. So we hadn't even been open a year in Japan before we went into lockdown. And we've already, you know, approaching nearly 30 events there, which is a testament to the whole team and the work that they've done. And obviously the work is also remotely, you know, all of our conversations are online. Through, you know, Zoom calls, that type of thing. So it's wonderful to see things still happening, even though, you know, the country is part open, part closed.

01:11:56Zoe: Yeah.

01:11:56Renee Gimbert: In New Zealand, as you say, the whole of New Zealand is currently in lockdown. Yeah. So I think what we'll continue to see, and I've said this for quite some time, is in the areas that we're open, we're going to continue to see events open and close, regions open and close, and states open and close. And I think we're going to continue to see that at least up until Christmas. That's just how things are moving. But where we can remain open or where we can reopen, we'll absolutely do what we can to make that happen.

01:12:28Melissa Ellis: Mm-hmm. Wow. So much to juggle. I don't envy you that. I don't envy you that at all. And on top of all these types of things, you're still trying to progress as normal with other initiatives. And we saw during the lockdown, the Australian parkrun shop launched. Yes. Which was very exciting for all us over here. And by all accounts, it looks like it's been really well received. I know I've got a new parkrun cap and socks. Yep. So how has that all gone from your perspective and can we expect any new additions anytime soon?

01:13:00Renee Gimbert: Look, the shop has been really, really successful. We're really excited to have been able to expand the range. A lot of people have wanted things for a long time and it's been a work in progress for some time to get it to this point. But it's certainly very successful and we know that people are out there, we see it everywhere you go, there's someone in a hat or socks or whatever. I can tell you that there will be some new socks that are promoted this week. So we had feedback from people that the socks, you couldn't see parkrun when you were wearing the socks. And a lot of people, so going back a step, the socks, the light feet socks are brilliant. They're so incredibly comfortable. Yes. And I've worn them for quite some time. This is pre-parkrun socks. So I've always had the aubergine colour because I like to wear it when I volunteer. So they're so comfortable. But a lot of the feedback we got was actually we want to be able to see parkrun on it when we're wearing them. So we've taken that feedback on board and this week there'll be, they're live at the moment, but we will start to promote them this week. They're a longer sock. I think we call them the mid sock. So you can actually see parkrun on it. I think it's positive that people have wanted something and we've delivered and then people have given feedback and we've been able to take that on board and release another product. So that is exciting. There's also a new colour that's come out in the socks, which is pink. And there will be, and I'll tell you, there will be another product coming soon. I won't tell you what it is. Okay. But there will be something coming, something else, something different that's not available on the shop. It's not another product like what you can buy on the current shop that will be coming, I'm going to say, within the next couple of weeks, couple of months, which is exciting. And again, based on feedback that we're getting and what people want.

01:15:10Melissa Ellis: It is exciting, Renee, because when we can't do a lot at the moment, we can't actually in a lot of places go to parkrun. But, yeah, these little things give you a bit of a lift when you can order them and even wear them on your (not)parkrun. I've got a girlfriend today. She sent me a selfie. Her name is also Renee. Good name. She sent me a little photo via Messenger today that said – something along the lines of, you know, happy mail. And she'd received a parkrun cap. There was a photo of her in a brand new parkrun cap. Lovely.

01:15:42Renee Gimbert: Yeah. Yeah, that's lovely. It's nice to see. And, you know, like I actually, when parkrun was closed here on the Gold Coast area, A couple of weeks ago, I went for a cycle on my bike and the amount of people I saw wearing their milestone shirts just running around, it was lovely. I get excited when I see someone wearing one of our hats or something. You know, it's exciting. It's genuinely exciting that people out there are loving it and, you know, want more of it.

01:16:10Unidentified speaker: Yeah.

01:16:11Renee Gimbert: You say you're a tourist. Have you got one of the bag tags?

01:16:15Melissa Ellis: I don't actually, no. No, I did see them and I got all excited when they first come out, but I must admit I haven't ordered one yet because I can't go anywhere, Renee.

01:16:24Renee Gimbert: You can't, you can't, but you can pop it on your bag and then when you can go somewhere, you won't lose your bag.

01:16:33Unidentified speaker: Yeah.

01:16:35Melissa Ellis: This is true. This is very true. Yes, I am finding as the weeks of lockdown progress, I'm buying more and more things online because it's just something to give a little bit of joy to my day when things arrive in the post.

01:16:48Renee Gimbert: This is terrible because I'm actually buying things online and I'm not in lockdown. LAUGHTER

01:16:52[laughter]

01:16:54Melissa Ellis: I think it becomes a habit. Yeah. So what I did want to say on a more personal level, how is parkrun for Renee at the moment? Are you getting to Coomera still on a Saturday morning?

01:17:05Renee Gimbert: Yes, I am. I was there on the weekend, actually. So we had a two week lockdown in, sorry, we had a one week lockdown on the Gold Coast in South East Queensland. And then there were restrictions still in place for two weeks after that, which meant parkrun couldn't operate for two weeks. On the Thursday, last Thursday, there was an announcement that, or maybe it was the Wednesday, probably Wednesday, an announcement was made that community sport could resume from 4pm on the Friday rather than 4pm on the Sunday. And so we had cancelled all the events in the system. We had told event teams they couldn't operate. But we reviewed all that information and then reversed that decision because we were then allowed to operate. So for me, it was lovely because I didn't think I'd be going to parkrun on the weekend. And I actually did go to Coomera. And every time I go there, I run up the hill thinking, who on earth would put a hill in this course? And then I have to remind myself that actually it was my bright idea. But I love it. I love that community there. I don't get there as much. These days, I often will go to Surfers Paradise is actually one of the closest events to me. And so I tend to go there a bit, but I do love going back to Coomera because all my friends are there.

01:18:27Melissa Ellis: Yeah.

01:18:27Renee Gimbert: And that's what, you know, that's what it's about. It's about me. You know, it takes longer for me to get to Coomera, but it's about seeing my friends when I'm there, which is what I love.

01:18:38Melissa Ellis: Yeah, so I did have a little look at your parkrun results and you look like you're one of these people that's actually got fitter and faster during lockdown. No. As opposed to me who's got chonk and got slower. But your annual results, they've got faster.

01:18:54Renee Gimbert: Well, maybe since lockdown I've gotten a bit faster but I'm nowhere near what I used to run back when we started at Parfra. I think it was because, as I said to you before, we are a tight-knit team and we get along really well with each other and we try and do things to encourage each other. So pre-COVID, we all had this great idea that we would do a half Ironman together. And that's probably why I got quicker because I had to start training for that whilst we were in lockdown. And so I actually had to start running, start getting out and running again. But I think if you look at all of my results over the last 10 years, I got faster and faster and faster and then hit this like peak. And then it all just went downhill from there.

01:19:49Melissa Ellis: But that's okay. It looks like it's trending the right way now. It is now.

01:19:54Renee Gimbert: Yes, it is now.

01:19:55Melissa Ellis: And you're on 98 unique events. So is there plans for the Cowell Club?

01:19:59Renee Gimbert: No. Do you know what? So I've never really followed all the clubs until one day I realised that I was like way in front of my husband and I'm like, okay, this is good. I'm going to do this. Yes, look, I do try and get to as many different events, as I can. I kind of stopped touristing for a period because I was away from my home event so often that I felt like I never saw my friends. And then that's what drew me back to, I just, you know, I want to go and have breakfast with my friends. So I do need to do a bit of touristing. Just take your friends with you. Simple.

01:20:42Melissa Ellis: Yes, I know. Well, that's true.

01:20:46Renee Gimbert: I can do that as well.

01:20:47Melissa Ellis: Yeah. Well, Renee, thank you very much for coming and giving us a little bit of insight into the complexities that is parkrun Australia and indeed parkrun Asia Pacific at the moment. Really appreciate your time and it was really lovely to speak to you. You too.

01:21:05Renee Gimbert: Thank you for having me. I do appreciate it. You know, I look forward to the day where we have the whole of Australia open again. You know, that's our goal. That's what we're working towards and hopefully it's not too far away.

01:21:19Melissa Ellis: Let's hope. Thanks, Renee. Thanks. And it was great, Ollie, to catch up with Renee Gimbert and get a little bit of insight into the goings on in HQ in Australia.

01:21:37Oliver Spake: Yeah. Thank you, Mel. And thank you, Renee. We appreciate everything that the whole team are doing. I have to admit, I need to check out the parkrun shop.

01:21:45Melissa Ellis: I've already done that.

01:21:47Oliver Spake: You have, yes. And a few more things to check out. Yes.

01:21:50Melissa Ellis: I've got pink socks and luggage tags in my cart.

01:21:55Oliver Spake: Oh, well done. Well done. You do move quick. Yep.

01:21:58Melissa Ellis: The early bird.

01:22:01Oliver Spake: Wasn't that last week?

01:22:03Melissa Ellis: Yes, 3am. You do not need two hours to paint your face green. There's a hot tip.

01:22:09Oliver Spake: Well, hey, you've got to try it to know it sometimes.

01:22:13Melissa Ellis: Yes.

01:22:14Oliver Spake: Speaking of trying it, Mel, it's time to hear about trying something else. And many of our listeners will have tried this and will, I'm sure, already love it.

Streaky September

01:22:23Oliver Spake: But it's almost time.

01:22:26Melissa Ellis: It is only the fifth annual Streaky September begins next Wednesday. How exciting.

01:22:33Oliver Spake: That's very exciting.

01:22:34Melissa Ellis: A lovely distraction for all us locked down people.

01:22:37Oliver Spake: That's right. And look, before I forget, I want to say thank you from both of us to everyone that has reached out with their suggestions and particularly all the offers of help for the Bingoe card. Good news, everyone. We've got a Bingoe card.

01:22:50Melissa Ellis: We do. That's exciting.

01:22:52Oliver Spake: You can't see it yet. No. But we've got it.

01:22:54Melissa Ellis: It will be revealed in due course.

01:22:57Oliver Spake: It will. And Mel, how are you feeling ready for Streaky Septmeber?

01:23:01Melissa Ellis: Oh, I am good to go. Can't wait. Can't wait. Of course, there's so many different analogies for Streaky Septmeber. I like to refer to it as Swoopy September because that's when the magpies are out in force down here in Victoria. And the fun is trying to do your streak without being swooped.

01:23:20Oliver Spake: Hence a reason to run in green every day of the month, broomstick and all.

01:23:24Melissa Ellis: I was worried when I was running around on, what morning was I doing it? Sunday morning. Because as I was running, it was dawn. So the magpies were out and they were warbling and I'm running past looking up at them and I'm going, it's me, it's me. Like they'll look and they'll think it's someone strange but they'll recognise my voice. So clearly I'm just a little bit cray-cray.

01:23:47Oliver Spake: No, look, I'm sure that that helped. They would have been pleased to find out it was you.

01:23:53Melissa Ellis: Yes.

01:23:54Oliver Spake: Their mate. Now, I have to say, I've taken a bit of inspiration. So listening to, obviously, the chat around the free bird, I'm wondering if there's a level up. We've talked about the elevation challenge in a month. So I'm curious to know, is anyone going to throw in a bit of elevation to Streaky September 2? Or am I just convincing myself of something that I'm not quite ready for?

01:24:18Melissa Ellis: Haven't you already said you haven't got enough hills around where you live? We're all stuck in our bubbles.

01:24:24Oliver Spake: In our bubbles, yeah. Up and down, up and down, up and down.

01:24:27Melissa Ellis: Oh, okay. So hill repeats.

01:24:30Oliver Spake: Hill repeats. But, hey, look, let's see how long that lasts.

01:24:34Melissa Ellis: Okay. Find your own panorama. Punish.

01:24:39Oliver Spake: Look, maybe a better way to get everyone warmed up would be to hand it to the experts, the streaking experts themselves. So, rather than hear us ramble on, we've had some help from our friends and I think Yeah, some of the people that have really been showing what streaking is all about. We've prepared a bit of an insight into what streaky september or streaky Septmeber, sorry, Mel, what it really is, how it works and why should you do it and what it's going to do for you. So is it time to hear, Mel?

01:25:14Tony O'Connell: Yes, let's listen. Howdy parkrunners, TOC reporting in for the Channel 5 News crew. Today I'm here to talk to you about the global phenomenon that's called Streaky September, or for our more learned friends out there, Streaky September. What is Streaky September? It started about four years ago as a challenge between the original parkrun adventurers hosts, Scotty and Mel, and it was about getting each other out and accountable to do some activities or exercise every day for the month of September. And it's just rolled on from there. It's gone to the point now where some people have been doing it for four years, some for three years, and some only last for a week or so, but that's fine. It's just about getting out and doing some exercise. Part of the thing that we do with Streaky September is you do a minimum of either two kilometres of walking or running, or you can go out and do other exercises. So you could go out and do bike riding, we suggest it, minimum of 30 minutes a day, or swimming, in which case you're going to do a lot less than two kilometres unless you're one of the Olympians. But once again, you should be aiming for about 30 minutes of exercise a day. We also run a series of fun activities on the Facebook group over the month of September. And there are things like bingo, where we have a Bingoe card. We go out and spot things. For those playing from past years, you'll know all about bin chickens and the like. And we also ask people to post their exercises on the Facebook page and encourage others to get out and do the exercises as well. It's a really great, fun activity. We get a lot of comments going backwards and forwards, and I just encourage everyone to get involved. So get out there, get into Streaky September, and let's see if you can roll it on into Streaky 365 and beyond. Cheers, guys. TOC out.

01:27:04Alison Fraser (King): Hello adventurers, it's Alison here reporting in from this morning's streak. This is my first year of streaking so I'm closing in on 365 days and I signed up purely just to see if I could do it. I had a friend who was a streaker and he's you know he's been streaking now for five years I think and I always thought he was crazy but I actually think I was the crazy one for not doing it. What I've really loved about the streaking is it's made me go out and do my exercise. It's non-negotiable and at a minimum it's just 2k so it's really really achievable. Even on those days when it's pouring with rain you can just get your shoes on and go out just run a straight 2k and you're done. I've done streaks in all kinds of places. At fogged up airports, in between flights at an airport just around the car park, in forests near to my friends homes when I've been travelling away for parkrun, but I really really enjoy just going around my local neighbourhood and watching the sunrise and seeing the same people every morning, but most especially the man who walks his dog and his cat follows. So you never know what you might see on these these streaks and I never expected to see a cat out for a morning walk for example and today um I've seen oh that's a rosella one of our parrots flying overhead I've heard cows today I've just been swooped on by a tui it wasn't frightening not like a magpie it was right behind me and um yeah it's just beautiful just to start the day like this and know that you've done some exercise and stretch those legs and counted another day towards 365 days

01:29:02Pippa White: Taking part in Streaky September, or what has now become a permanent streak, has really, really changed my life. When I started at the beginning of September 2019, a regular planned activity, walking or running, just wasn't part of what I did. Fast forward through accident, through lockdowns, however many, and I'm now fitter, running maybe 40 kilometres a week, which I know is not a lot, but it's quite a lot more than I did. I'm active, my mental health is better because I've got time to process what's going on. And what it's done is it's taught me that it's a small action done every day can absolutely change what I'm doing. So if this is just to get you started in Australia springtime, or like me, it was a really good incentive to keep going in Northern Hemisphere wintertime, It can be addictive, but actually it can utterly change how you see what's going on. Anyway, it would be lovely to see you join us. Thanks.

01:30:06Melissa Ellis: So thank you very much to TOC in Australia, Alison in New Zealand. And our friend Pippa from the UK, who coincidentally actually happens to be on holidays in France. So there you go. There's a nice, wide, broad view. Streaky September experts from all around the globe.

01:30:26Oliver Spake: Yes. Wow. What about that? You can do it wherever you are.

01:30:30Melissa Ellis: Absolutely. Yes. And I know Pippa is continuing her streak over there in France. Very impressive.

Sign-off

01:30:36Melissa Ellis: Yes.

01:30:37Oliver Spake: Look, I am in envy and admiration. In fact, forget the envy, just admiration for our streakers. I yet to manage much more than the month itself of streaky September. So let's see how it goes this year. But Mel, I think that could be it for the week. Jammed packed.

01:30:59Melissa Ellis: Another bumper episode. And did we ask, Ollie, if people mind the extra long episodes? Because we've had a few of them recently.

01:31:10Oliver Spake: We have. We're very fortunate to be hearing a lot of good news. And of course, you know, there's ups and downs that we're all experiencing. But hey, guys, if this is a bit long for your long run... Let us know. Not long enough, sure. Let us know. We can ramble all night. Just give me a chance. I don't think I've even said the word once this week. So let's keep it at that, hey? Who would have thought?

01:31:36Melissa Ellis: It's a lot easier when there's no parkrun, hey?

01:31:38Oliver Spake: That's right. But in the meantime, as always, if you'd like to give us some feedback on the pod or if you'd like to contact us, say hello. You can do so via Facebook and you will be able to do so at Dazza's Cafe when Dazza returns from his week off, if that's right, Mel, on Saturday. And you can also contact us on our email, which is parkrunadventurers at gmail.com. But from all of us here, that's it for another week. We'll see you all next week for more adventures and a bit of a milestone episode, hey?

01:32:11Melissa Ellis: Yes. Stay tuned.

01:33:20Unidentified speaker: Hi Mel and Ollie. Today I did a five kilometre not parkrun. My mum dressed up like Glinda the Good Witch and I dressed up too. And Cluck Norris came with us again. It was funny. We logged our (not)parkruns for our home parkrun, which is Wyndham Vale. Did you know we came first every week? Wyndham Vale is awesome. We saw Shellharbour came third. I think Shellharbour should try more, Ollie. Bye, everyone. Stay safe.