Episode 309 - Bruce & Gill Fordyce

Welcome

00:00:24Oliver Spake: And welcome to episode 309 of the parkrun adventurers podcast. I am Ollie Spake and I'm joining from home once again on Dharawal Country.

00:00:33Melissa Ellis: And I am Melissa Ellis and we're back, Ollie, and recording from Wurundjeri Country.

00:00:39Oliver Spake: We are back, Mel. Is it good to be home?

00:00:42Melissa Ellis: It is.

00:00:43Oliver Spake: Yeah. Yes.

00:00:44Melissa Ellis: They left it in pretty good condition.

00:00:46Oliver Spake: They did. They did. Look, firstly, huge thank you to the fill-ins. Not the parents, the fill-ins. But Mel and Scotty, it was just lovely to hear them again. I know I really enjoyed listening to the episode and just hearing a few of the references to some of their previous segments but a couple of challenges in there too. But yeah. It was a busy time for us though, Mel. So we really appreciate them having filled the seats and kept the podcast going.

00:01:17Melissa Ellis: We do. Did you enjoy your week, Ollie?

00:01:20Oliver Spake: I did. Doesn't feel like a holiday. It's been full of work, but it has nonetheless still been a great week. Yeah, what about yourself, Mel?

00:01:29Melissa Ellis: I did too, yes. It's Halloween today, so happy Halloween, and I do apologise if I do get distracted with knocks at the door with trick-or-treaters. That's always going to be a risk when it's Halloween night, and... Chico's just decided to have a coughing fit right on cue for recording. But, Ollie, I've got some jokes for you.

00:01:50Oliver Spake: Okay. All right.

00:01:52Melissa Ellis: Halloween jokes.

00:01:53Oliver Spake: Yep.

00:01:54Melissa Ellis: How did the zombie become good at trick-or-treating?

00:01:59Oliver Spake: I don't know. How? Dedication.

00:02:03Melissa Ellis: And here's one for the Office Lady. Who does a werewolf go trick-or-treating with? His cousins What Wolf and When Wolf.

00:02:15Oliver Spake: They're fantastic. Pure gold.

00:02:17Melissa Ellis: One more, one more. What Halloween candy is never on time for the party?

00:02:22Oliver Spake: No, no. Three out of three, I'm stumped. Yep.

00:02:24Melissa Ellis: Chocolate, far too intelligent for me these tracks that's all I got that's all I got uh look they're bonbon worthy Mel so well done thank you we have to enjoy halloween Ollie I've just spent the last two hours out uh volunteering for a local halloween charity event dressed as a T-Rex with Abby's mum being an absolutely fabulous, now I can't say who she was, Maleficent? Yes. Maleficent, is that how you say it?

00:03:00Oliver Spake: That's how I would say it.

00:03:01Melissa Ellis: Excellent.

00:03:02Oliver Spake: If I could say it properly, yes.

00:03:03Melissa Ellis: And Abby and Hannah, dressed as wonderful little stormtroopers and Darth Maiders. Yes. Yes. So brilliant night and organised by none other than the founding EDs of Wyndham Vale parkrun in their local area.

00:03:18Oliver Spake: Oh, nice work. That sounds like a fun time and obviously the weather is a little better now in your neck of the woods.

00:03:25Melissa Ellis: Well, it turned up, Ollie, in the area and it was pouring with rain so I was a little concerned but thankfully we Those parkrun weather fairies came to the rescue and everything just cleared up and we had a fabulous evening. And shout out to Maria and Andy from Wyndham Vale parkrun. It was a fabulous night and no doubt raised a lot of money for charity. Nice work.

00:03:51Oliver Spake: But speaking of fabulous times and, well, the weather holding out. We were fortunate to enjoy both to an extent, at least. And the extent bit is the reference to the weather at Bathurst, which is really, that's the key reason why we were away last week. Of course, wanting to hear from Mel and Scotty was another great reason. But Mel, have you had a chance to reflect and do we need to give the listeners a bit of a, I guess, a verbal image

00:04:19Melissa Ellis: Well, Ollie, with this being our first chat since our weekend away at the Punish.

00:04:23Oliver Spake: That's true.

00:04:24Melissa Ellis: I'm happy to give the listeners the recap, if I may.

00:04:28Oliver Spake: Absolutely. Please.

00:04:29Melissa Ellis: So firstly, can I start with a huge thank you to Jen and Steve, Bathurst parkrun co-EDs and Panorama Punish race directors who made us feel warmly welcomed and acknowledged us as a group. The Bathurst parkrun on Saturday the 27th of October attracted a course record of of 332 for event number 270, with Ollie and I joining the party at the back in the park walk vests. Aside from Jen and Stephen, this visit gave me the opportunity to meet, for the first time, many adventurers, including Melissa Currie and husband Peter, as well as Brett and Tanya Bailey and Tanya Pollard. And with a count of 24 adventurers in attendance, plus Heather Morgan, it was a lively and festive morning.

00:05:16Oliver Spake: Subtle.

00:05:18Melissa Ellis: And our biggest non-Palm crowd. Now, I can't give a recap without mentioning that being the 22nd of the month, we all donned our tutus, even Ollie. And as well as making for a colourful and celebratory group photo, we recorded a rendition of Happy Birthday for our adventurer friend, Janet Reid, who was celebrating her relatively low-key birthday on board the mothership. Toot-toot. Ollie, we joined the Bailey shot either side of their Juicy Fruit camper camping at the Bathurst showgrounds.

Mel's top tourist tips

00:05:52Melissa Ellis: And if you're listening with anticipation for one of Mel's top tourist tips, well, here it is. When taking an inflatable mattress camping, you would be well advised to also bring some form of electric pump. Anyway, as much as I could talk for hours about all the fun we had over the weekend at numerous brunches, lunches and dinners, we were there to conquer a mountain and conquer it where you did. 774 enthusiasts completed one hot lap of the iconic Mount Panorama racetrack with all adventurers getting through the cutoff at the top, which I think is Skyline, if I remember correctly. Congratulations to you, Ollie, on your overall 33rd placing and also to Karen Hamilton and Dennis Peden who picked up podiums in their age categories.

00:06:49Oliver Spake: Yes. Well done, guys. Well done. And look, I have to echo your commendation to Jen and Steven. They were so welcoming. And I think just their organisational skills left me in absolute awe. So not only did they welcome us behind the scenes, they had their hands full, of course, with race collection on parkrun morning. But, you know, they were there. They were woven through the whole event. But setting up the pasta dinner, welcoming us all to brunch and Sunday morning at the Punish was just, as you said, it was iconic. It was spectacular. And what an experience to get ready to congregate and really feel the buzz in the pits by the racetrack there in the morning. So, guys, you're just wonderful. And what a... Fantastic advertisement for the lovely place that is Bathurst, which, Mel, I didn't explore nearly enough, so I really do hope to be able to make it back next year to go and explore the town a little further. I have to say thank you to our Office Lady who is always prepared with, in this case, extra tutus. So if I can add an Ollie travel tip, buy some tutus. You'll be very popular. But as you said, what a wonderful experience park walking amongst a record crowd there at Bathurst and enjoying the company of so many adventurers, particularly whilst I enjoyed my monster mug of coffee. That was a big mug of coffee. It was. It was.

00:08:29Melissa Ellis: I just want to say I think that Bathurst or the Panorama Punish needs to become a regular on our adventurer calendar because I think that coupled with City to Surf are nicely spaced to complement our regular annual Palm event.

00:08:45Oliver Spake: Well, I think so. I think so. And I know for a number of people, is that a special event that it might be in their top three? I mean, we can get into the discussion last week's episode from Mel and Scotty around top three, or we can leave it for another week. But I think the Punish is one of those events that has that combination of something a bit unique. And I think that that would be a great thing to revisit. Again and again.

00:09:16Melissa Ellis: Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Let's pencil it in for next year.

00:09:21Oliver Spake: Not saying I can make it yet, of course, but I highly recommend it.

00:09:25Melissa Ellis: You have to come back because you'll go into the next age category, Ollie. You're a little bit unlucky, you could say, that you just came in under that age category cutoff.

00:09:38Oliver Spake: Well, a lot of us were unlucky, Melody. A lot of us were unlucky.

00:09:43Melissa Ellis: I can just say that you finished that event when I only just reached the top of the mountain.

00:09:49Oliver Spake: And it was a great wake-up call because it is now less than three weeks to another event that was mentioned in last week's pod, the Point to Pinnacle, and I needed that reality check because after recovering from tonsillitis, I really haven't trained much and I've been quite anxious about the idea of running up that mountain. Yeah. Three Ks up Mount Panorama. I know it's not the same as Mount Wellington or Kunanyi, but it was a good, really good opportunity to test the legs. And I have to say, I mean, that was really hard. It was a particular highlight having some of our adventurer community on the way up as Marshals. So a huge thank you to all the volunteers, in particular, my mum and half of Team Scarborough for being out there along the way. But the downhill was quite difficult too.

00:10:36Melissa Ellis: I did think it was funny that Scott wants to run a Point to Pinnacle type event on the downhill. I don't think he knew. I don't think he's listening, Ollie. He doesn't realise that you're running it this month or next month. No, this month by the time the pod comes out.

00:10:53Oliver Spake: I'm sure he is, but the idea of running downhill, that scares me more.

00:10:58Unidentified speaker: That would hurt.

00:11:00Oliver Spake: However, I'm all for the idea of running straight into the ocean at the end of a run, at the end of an event. You know what you need to do.

00:11:07Melissa Ellis: So I'm out for that. This is my challenge to you, Ollie, my friend, and I think Toc will be behind me here. We have an event here in Victoria that's called Two Bays. Oh, yes. There's a bit of a qualifier that's required for Two Bays. One, so there's a 26, 27 kilometre event that runs from the beach uphill. and finishes at a lighthouse. But if you run the double, what would you call it, double that? I can't remember the exact kilometres that the full Two Bays is, but you start at the top and you run down to the beach.

00:11:52Oliver Spake: Yep.

00:11:52Melissa Ellis: So you could theoretically go into the water, but then you've got to turn around and run back up the hill again.

00:11:58Oliver Spake: Yeah, that changes it.

00:12:03Melissa Ellis: But what a challenge it is. And I should give a shout out, Tony does it every year and he's usually one of the sweepers.

00:12:11Oliver Spake: Yes, he's certainly got some stamina, our Toc.

00:12:15Melissa Ellis: But we're going off track.

00:12:17Oliver Spake: We are. We are. Because there's been another week as well, Mel. So are we playing catch up? Did you get up to anything this week?

00:12:25Melissa Ellis: Moving on to the weekend just gone, Ollie, we both enjoyed a quiet Saturday back at home. But is it ever a quiet Saturday morning at parkrun? Toolern Creek was celebrating a Nelson Challenge event, number 333, which, coupled with more local cancellations, saw a swarm of 11 adventurers gather together, including myself, Eman, Christine and Juno visiting from South Toowoomba, Irene and Parth, Adrian Hillyer, Kevin Green, Dawn Branton, Errol Poole, Cheryl Smit and Jordan Fuessel. I don't know if that's how you say it, Ollie, but I'm going with Fusel. It's worth a mention that my research indicates Jordan Fusil ran an all-time PB of 17.35, proving that the creek is a nice, fast track, and Eman cruised in, pushing Juno in the pram in fourth place with 19.01. I'm sorry that I didn't get to catch up with Jordan on the morning. However, I do know that Eman had a chat with him after they finished. I believe most of the adventurers headed off to Urban 35 for brunch. However, I had a date with my hairdresser on the other side of town, so sadly I was unable to attend. 132 participants was, again, a good crowd for the creek, being their eighth largest attendance and the biggest since the 2nd of January 2020. Perhaps attendances are on the rise. Thanks to all the fabulous volunteers, including parkwalker Colin, who was very friendly and modelling exactly what the role of parkwalker imbibes. To finish off my recap, I volunteered again on Sunday at Eynesbury Juniors where we had nine kids splashing along the soggy trail in lovely mild conditions. We also welcomed some new first-time volunteers, including Paul's dad who is newly validated. So we were happy to welcome him to our Eynesbury Juniors volley family.

00:14:29Oliver Spake: Yeah, as you say, not often is there a quiet weekend at parkrun. Yeah. But it sounds like a lovely time and obviously so nice to have everyone come and join at the creek.

00:14:42Melissa Ellis: It was. There was even more people. I had unexpected tourists turn up that I knew from my previous life over at Berwick Springs. And, Ollie, now I have notched up event 20 at Toolern Creek. So I am on my way to beat Brendan Peel on the Alice Peel Cup or the Peel – I think he says the Peel Alice Cup – Anyway.

00:15:10Oliver Spake: Well, maybe the name can be determined once the cup is awarded. Maybe that would be fitting.

00:15:17Melissa Ellis: That would be mine honours, wouldn't it?

00:15:19Oliver Spake: That's right.

00:15:20Melissa Ellis: And what about you, Ollie? Where were you on Saturday?

00:15:23Oliver Spake: Saturday just gone. I stayed home. I volunteered and I volunteered at my beloved Shellharbour. The weather was glorious. Glorious. Glorious. And perhaps I have to thank a certain surprise visitor for having something to do with that. We had Nathan from Inverloch pop past, you know, the approximately half a day travel to pop past at Shellharbour. But nonetheless, Nathan was there. So it was great to see him as well as visitors from, well, really a number of other locations across Australia. And, yeah, look, our numbers remain a fairly modest size. Our new course is nowhere near as popular as the previous one. So we had 120 parkrunners and obviously a healthy walker contingent as a part of that. We didn't do a themed event, but shout out to Sue, who... Did have a bit of fancy dress, so I did dig out my favourite Halloween costume just to make a bit of fun while I was out there marshalling and being photographer.

00:16:28Melissa Ellis: I didn't see any photos of you in fancy dress. Are you not posting in Dazza's? Oliver!

00:16:35Oliver Spake: Well, there was actually a post of it in Dazza's.

00:16:39Melissa Ellis: Was there?

00:16:40Oliver Spake: There was.

00:16:41Melissa Ellis: Oh, that was you! That's right. Excuse me for not realising.

00:16:48Oliver Spake: That's right. I have one Halloween costume. It comes out every year. That's the one. Yes.

00:16:54Melissa Ellis: The listeners will have to go back through the Dazza's posts to figure out who you were dressed as.

00:17:00Oliver Spake: Yeah, why not? Fairly low key, but enjoyable as always. Great. Look, I'm not sure what we've got in the way of feedback. We do have a couple of updates though, don't we, Mel?

00:17:15Melissa Ellis: Yeah, but Ollie, we should say coming up.

00:17:18Oliver Spake: Oh, yes.

00:17:19Melissa Ellis: What have we got coming up?

00:17:21Oliver Spake: Well, yeah, we haven't even mentioned this. I mean, we're going to have people listening to this podcast just to hear a very special feature a little later on. So we do have a roving report, which is off the back of a particularly impressive achievement. We'll get to that soon. But later we have a fabulous, fabulous, Fabulous, Johan, with a very, very special interview direct from South Africa.

00:17:47Melissa Ellis: Looking forward to that, absolutely. But going back to the 22nd of October, Marg Prowse, who I met recently when I was at Toolern Creek, she came and volunteered at Juniors and earned herself her I Volunteered at Juniors badge.

00:18:02Oliver Spake: Well done, Marg, and thank you for volunteering.

00:18:06Melissa Ellis: And also, going on to a bit of news, Ollie, also on the 22nd of October, our ideas man, Mr Bruce Purdy, became a greatsman at Phillip Island. And we want to give our warmest congratulations to Bruce.

00:18:24Oliver Spake: And for those not following at home, that is a Victorian statesman named after its title, the alleged Great State.

00:18:32Melissa Ellis: Alleged.

00:18:33Oliver Spake: Congratulations, Bruce.

00:18:35Melissa Ellis: He also became a Gippslander, but that's arbitrary.

00:18:39Oliver Spake: Uh-huh. Uh-huh. What else? What else?

00:18:44Melissa Ellis: Well, we could follow on from the theme of the Great Estate. That's true. I have a little bit of news today. Oh. I don't know if it's reached you up there in New South Wales. The Great Estate could also be now known as the Diamond State. Do you know why that is?

00:19:00Oliver Spake: You like Neil Diamond music?

00:19:03Melissa Ellis: Well, we do, but no. Yeah. Are you familiar with the current controversy with the netball team, the Diamonds, and losing their backing of Gina Rinehart? Yes.

00:19:16Oliver Spake: Yes, yes, and there is a new sponsor.

00:19:18Unidentified speaker: There is.

00:19:18Oliver Spake: I see where we're going here.

00:19:24Melissa Ellis: Victoria Tourism is sponsoring the Diamond, so we are the Diamond State.

00:19:30Oliver Spake: Nice.

00:19:31Melissa Ellis: Nice, yes.

00:19:32Oliver Spake: Has a better ring to it, I think. But, well, whatever we call it, congratulations, Bruce, on the achievement. And, well, Mel, that's a lot of recapping. I was going to start chatting around Mel and Scotty's challenge because, of course, they did issue a challenge to our adventurer community. But I think more so let's just remind people, if they haven't listened to the last episode, episode 308, there is a challenge and I think it's a great way to –

00:20:04Melissa Ellis: continue to build on the journey and relationships in parkrun but maybe more on that in another episode yeah probably we better move on time is ticking and we've got a big interview to get into this pod this week so maybe it's time to throw to

Roving reports & the Channel 5 News crew

00:20:22Melissa Ellis: It's not really a roving report, but we did have some feedback or some audio come in, Ollie, from a recent accomplishment. Our friend and Shipwreck Creek Event Director, Phil Gore, had a big, big, big, big achievement recently with a Backyard Ultra race win. So we got some audio coming to us. So let's have a listen to that now.

00:20:59Gemma Gore: Hi, my name's Gemma.

00:21:01Phil Gore: And I'm Phil, and we're the Event Directors at Shipwreck parkrun in WA.

00:21:05Gemma Gore: Yeah, our parkrun journey's been pretty interesting, really. You've discovered parkrun, what, 2014? Yeah. And what was it?

00:21:13Phil Gore: I went for probably three years before I was able to convince you to come along. True. And even after your first parkrun, it was still a bit longer after that before you really started getting into it.

00:21:24Gemma Gore: Yeah, yeah. I loved my Saturday morning lines, which has changed a little bit over the years. But yeah, so Phil went on his own for a few years to do his 5K a day. And I just kept saying, why would anyone get up on a Saturday morning to do this crazy thing in the middle of winter? Like, it's ridiculous. But then... slowly I started to get it that it's not about the running it's got nothing to do with running which sounds ridiculous it's about the people the community the social side um it helped both of us come out of our shells and gave us amazing confidence um yeah I would never speak in front of the crowd the first rd shift I did was just so nerve-wracking I think I've done 70 race Run Director shifts since then um And now you can't shut me up. And I'm just the loud, annoying person that I've become. And I blame parkrun for that.

00:22:22Phil Gore: And why are we doing this video? So we've just finished the Backyard Satellite World Championships here at Mirra and Wernert. So I've been running for basically the last three and a bit days. Cool.

00:22:36Gemma Gore: Let's be fair. 76 hours.

00:22:39Phil Gore: 76 hours. So 6.7K loop on the hour, every hour, and just keep going through this month. So parkrun ultra.

00:22:47Gemma Gore: Yeah, exactly. Yep.

00:22:49Phil Gore: Cool. Where'd you come in the race? That was the last one standing. So I finished with 76 yards or hours. Awesome. Number one in Australia.

00:23:03Gemma Gore: Yep.

00:23:04Phil Gore: Awesome. And I even beat Harvey Lewis in this event.

00:23:07Gemma Gore: You did one more hour, one more loop than Harvey Lewis, which he's... Our idol, I would say.

00:23:14Unidentified speaker: Yeah, it's good.

00:23:15Gemma Gore: We can't wait, yeah, to meet him hopefully next year. We've got the Masters up at Dead Cow Gully with Tim Walsh. Harvey's coming. We're going. It's going to be amazing.

00:23:25Phil Gore: Awesome.

00:23:26Gemma Gore: Yeah.

00:23:27Phil Gore: And it all started from parkrun.

00:23:28Gemma Gore: All of it. All of it.

00:23:30Phil Gore: As with a lot of people, I think 5K leads into it. 10K and then a half marathon. And, yeah, if you don't stop, you just end up doing backyard ultras.

00:23:38Unidentified speaker: So I did my way.

00:23:41Phil Gore: But 76 hours was over 500km. And that all started with just a 5km run. On a Saturday morning.

00:23:49Gemma Gore: On a Saturday morning. Where else would you rather be? With your friends. Doing your parkrun.

00:24:02Oliver Spake: And thank you very much to, well, Gregory, Phil and Gemma. And Mel, it just blows me away. Blows me away what Phil does manage.

00:24:12Melissa Ellis: Yes.

00:24:12Oliver Spake: Huge achievement. So great support always as well. That goes a long way, but yeah, huge achievement.

00:24:18Melissa Ellis: Many of us adventurers were watching eagerly and tuning in for the lapse of that Backyard Ultra. And we're very happy when Phil went across the line. How far can Phil go? We just don't know yet.

00:24:34Oliver Spake: It needs to be tested more. No, no, fantastic. Well done, Phil. But Mel, I believe you've got some stats for us.

00:24:43Melissa Ellis: I do, Ollie. I had a look through the last week's achievements, and this is what I've come up with in the absence of our beloved informant, who we don't really know where he's gone, let's be honest. There's been signings, and there may still be signings, who knows? But anyway, we've We had Chloe and David Bravos who grabbed a Fibonacci 55 at Homestead parkrun over in WA. And Chris and Karen Gore picked up their 377, also for the Fibonacci at Bibra Lake. Everyone at Toolern Creek got a 333 for the Nelson Challenge. Have I dropped enough Toolern Creeks in this pod yet?

00:25:23Oliver Spake: Nowhere near enough.

00:25:25Melissa Ellis: Wendy Glen earned her 100 volunteer milestone at Gardiners Creek. Anne Fry celebrated her seventh parkrunniversary at Lochiel Park, the mother ship. Christine Imbert added Namibia to her parkrun countries. Christine is getting around, Ollie.

00:25:42Oliver Spake: Some fantastic travels there, Christine. And well done, everyone.

Dazza's

00:25:46Oliver Spake: But Mel, I think it's time for Dazza's because we don't actually have any mail this week. So we're going to jump straight to Dazza's because we know we've been catching up for a while already and we do want to get to the interview that we have promised. So at Dazza's this week, he said, Zoomies. Dazza, I find Zoomies quite challenging, but he would love to see yours. Come on in, share your morning and show us your Zoomies. And... Coming on in this week, this week, yep, just double-checking that, was Claire Stutchbury, who was volunteering, saying, finally cracked out the new purple shirt to volley at Mansfield, Queensland.

00:26:23Melissa Ellis: And Bruce Purdy, he had the most likes. A funny thing happened in Nell. As I did the Zoomie, someone yelled out, you must be a parkrun adventurer, which surely is an indemnity for the flag fine. Bruce posted a photo of himself zooming in through the finish flags, Blackwoods flags, not Bruce.

00:26:45Oliver Spake: Well, that's the indemnity. Yep, yep.

00:26:48Melissa Ellis: Plus a photo with some very cute parkrunners in a pram and buggy. And I think the Office Lady let him off. Am I right?

00:26:57Oliver Spake: Yep, that's right. It's official. So moving on, Chantelle Hosking had a bit of an achievement. She travelled over the border, and this is Chantelle's words, not mine, travelled over the border to South Australia to do Mount Gambier. ABC South Australia was present and interviewed me. Also completed run around UK and Ireland. And appropriately, Chantelle added a heart. A whole lot of love to you, Chantelle. That's a big achievement and congratulations.

00:27:28Melissa Ellis: Wendy Glen was celebrating a milestone. Volume number 100 for me, as I previously mentioned, and 50 for hubby, tail walking at Gardiners Creek. And Wendy shared a photo of herself and her husband, Ross, in their high-vis.

00:27:44Oliver Spake: And we also heard from Kirstie Ganji, who I believe is a newbie to Dazza's, and said, course PB for me at Goldfields Reservoir's third birthday. And Kirstie shared a photo of her getting some air with a bit of a jump shot on the course. Well done.

00:28:02Melissa Ellis: Good jump shot, Kirsty. Now, Kylie Ritchie posted, also a newbie to Dazza's Toolern Creek as Ballarat cancelled. And a frame photo at a much-loved Victorian parkrun. And can I just say, I took that photo only. LAUGHTER I know Kylie from back at Berwick Springs.

00:28:19[laughter]

00:28:25Oliver Spake: Oh, nice. That was good to have the crew together there, clearly. Yvette Turner had a bit of a frond going on and said a group of us travelled to Goulburn and did pre-start zoomies. And what a group. There was a whole squadron of zoomies in that photo at the top of the Goulburn parkrun zipper.

00:28:43Melissa Ellis: I like that, a squadron, a squadron of zoomies. There's a challenge.

00:28:48Oliver Spake: Collective noun, yes.

00:28:49Melissa Ellis: There you go, guys. Don't gather together with a photo in a selfie frame. Gather together with a zoomie shot. Yep. And we heard from Christine Imbert who was in Namibia. No zoomies but was Tail Walker at Swakopmund. I knew I'd get stuck. Swakopmund, run in Namibia I'm so sorry Namibia lovely out and back course on a paved path alongside the beach saw a flock of flamingos flying overhead several times Christine shared a photo with the sea in the background oh wow fancy having photo with flamingos and not just boring seagulls poor seagulls boring.

00:29:34Oliver Spake: Only because we get to enjoy them so much.

00:29:36Melissa Ellis: At least they steal your chips and they're everywhere.

00:29:39Oliver Spake: True. They are pretty obnoxious. Ian Shaw had a bit of touristic. I'm going to start with the easy part. Ian shared a photo of him zooming along the course. But thanks, Ian. Ian said, a late booking at Dazza's for me after much tribulation to ensure my parkrun day remained complete. Originally, a trip to Panboola Wetlands parkrun was the order of the morning with the sole purpose of obtaining event number 31 to boost my Wilson index from 30 to 48 with the coveted number 31, the key ingredient for that to occur. Despite ensuring weather forecasts and field volunteer rosters aligned, Mother Nature had other plans and Panboola Wetlands lived up to its namesake and remained too wet for the event to go ahead today. A panicked investigation discovered that a Melbourne-based parkrun in Warrandyte River Reserve was also hosting events. Event number 31 today. And yes, I did contemplate a trip down the Princes Highway to get there. A six hour plus early morning drive, Ian, seriously. However, flooded conditions also has seen Warrandyte River Reserve parkrun cancelled today.

00:30:49Melissa Ellis: That's a tongue twister.

00:30:52Oliver Spake: I'm pretty sure those words swapped around, but that's okay. That only left Charters Towers Airport with event number 31 or an international trip to Wozniesienie Ossowie parkrun in Poland to obtain the coveted number 31. My frustration was apparent but somewhat remediated with the knowledge that I could post the name Wozniesienie Ossowie parkrun not once, not twice, but three times twice. I'm sorry, not three times, but four times. I'm getting tongue-tied over that part. To hear Oli get his tongue around pronouncing, was-ne-s-e-n-e-o-s-e-v-e, parkrun. Was-ne-s-e-n-e-o-s-e-v-e, parkrun. parkrun. I was determined to not have my stay near Panboola Wetlands parkrun wasted and planned a feasible early morning start after a late afternoon nap and early night bedtime to drive down the Princes Highway to get my NENDY done at Traralgon parkrun for unique location number 91 and, of course, to brandish a zoomie shot to show off to Dazza.

00:32:00Melissa Ellis: Wow.

00:32:02Oliver Spake: Ian, thank you. And just because we're having so much fun at Dazza's, there's a slight selection from the week before which we acknowledge we didn't capture and Mel and Scotty didn't capture. So, Mel, would you like to read off one of those from last week?

00:32:18Melissa Ellis: Absolutely. Our friend and artistic director Chris Fraser had an achievement in found my long lost New South Wales statesman status at Jindabyne Sport and Recreation. And we had a photo from Chris, a shot on the start line, plus some countryside snaps from along the way. Well done, Chris. We're glad you are back as a New South Wales statesman.

00:32:43Oliver Spake: Yes. Right back onto it. Now, a very much liked post, the most liked from the week of episode 308 from TOC saying, congrats to the ideas man, Bruce Purdy, for achieving the highest possible parkrun achievement, Gippslander, and for becoming a statesman. But that was incidental. He said statesman. Yeah. Plenty of tutus at The Rock as well and Phillip Island. So, and Toc shared the Gippslander image in celebration there.

00:33:13Melissa Ellis: I do love our Aussie blokes. Not afraid to wear a tutu. Yeah. Good on yous.

00:33:19Oliver Spake: Yeah.

00:33:19Melissa Ellis: Oh, okay. Michael Blain. He, a newbie to Dazza's. Are we sure he's a newbie to I met Michael when I did Des Connor Juniors, I believe. But thank you, Michael, if this is the first time that you've posted. Well, since Inverell was underwater, I made the short trip down to the Beaches on my way further south. I forgot to do my zoomies celebrating the new logo. And I also refrained from the handstands that occurred on the beach afterwards. But we did have a photo between the flags on the beach. And hey, they can be held the right way around after all. So that was an interesting photo, Ollie, because I do believe at the same time that that was being taken, there was also an event team photo being taken in the opposite direction.

00:34:07Oliver Spake: Yes. Michael dispelling some myths there. And finally, another newbie, I think, was Booze Dayton, who said, gave the first-time RD briefing at Whalan Reserve today, then did a bit of park walking with family and furry friends. And the photo... Proved it with some gorgeous-looking bark runners with Booze there in the crew.

00:34:28Melissa Ellis: Booze. Booze. That's very Aussie.

00:34:32Oliver Spake: That's right.

00:34:33Melissa Ellis: Welcome, Booze.

00:34:34Oliver Spake: That's right.

the Obi Award — Yvette Turner

00:34:36Oliver Spake: But, Mel, we have an Obi to award.

00:34:39Melissa Ellis: Yep. And you usually have the envelope, the silent envelope.

00:34:45Oliver Spake: I've actually got a Post-it note here with it. Really? So it's less of a secret. It's a Post-it note. There's no envelope, envelope well I the secret I found the envelope earlier but I was concerned that I would lose it because I moved a few things so I wrote a post-it note and it's here amongst all my post-it notes so I have the award winner uh and the Obi this week uh and acknowledging we didn't have an Obi winner last week so the first Obi winner in two weeks is Yvette Turner Congratulations, Yvette. Yes. And well done to everyone at Goulburn parkrun there. But thank you also to everyone for joining and sharing your adventures at Dazza's last week and this.

00:35:35Melissa Ellis: Yes. But, Ollie, now I think it's time. We've chatted enough and it's time for us to listen to Johan chatting to Bruce and Gill Fordyce.

Interview Bruce Fordyce and Gill Fordyce — President and CEO, parkrun Southern Africa; nine-time Comrades Marathon winner;…

00:35:52Johan Duvenhage: G'day parkrun adventurers. Today I have the privilege of talking to two very special people in parkrun South Africa. Welcome and thank you very much for the opportunity, Gill and Bruce Fordyce. Thank you, Johan. Great to be here.

00:36:04Gill Fordyce: Yes, thank you, Johan. I'm looking forward to what the questions are.

00:36:08Johan Duvenhage: I hope it's not too difficult. So, most of our listeners are well aware who you are, but just to remind those that are not, Bruce is the President and CEO of parkrun Southern Africa, and Gill, you're the Territory Manager. Yes, that's correct. So, Bruce, you often joke at the pre-event briefings when you're introduced as the boss of parkrun. Would you like to share us what you then say?

00:36:30Bruce Fordyce: Yeah, so the joke is I'm the president and CEO, as you said, but the boss of parkrun is sitting next to me. She's the boss. So somebody might come with some outrageous idea for parkrun, and I'll say, well, we'll think about it. Let's chat about it. And Gill will just give a blunt no. That's the difference.

00:36:48Gill Fordyce: I try not to be too blunt, but I'm getting better with age.

00:36:52Johan Duvenhage: So, Gill, what does the job of the territory manager entail?

00:36:55Gill Fordyce: Well, I pretty much do just about everything. I mean, Cara also helps us. So I will be sending courier parcels if they need to be sent because there are only really two of us in the office. I will check incidents, if they've been updated. Cara does the incidents, but I make sure that they have been done, things like that. On Monday, I look at what's happened, all the problems with our results and see if there are any issues we need to address. I deal with the volunteer management in South Africa, so the ambassadors and all the volunteers. I am in communication with all our ambassadors. My role is I've got kind of a global role. We all sit in a group, volunteer management group. And so there's one person from each country basically there. We also sit on another group, a global group, which is Global Weekly Updates. So that is with Tom Williams, and all the countries are representative from most of the countries, except America because of the time difference. It's just difficult for them to come into... a meeting at the time and we have the meeting which is 10 o'clock our time it's in the evening for Australians but it's and we only one hour difference between us and the UK so it's it's pretty simple our meetings are easy I do everything I deal with issues people want a sponsorship people want you to sponsor people want you to do branding and they can't have branding there and replying to them and explaining to them why also I also help with the new events not all the admin behind it, but just checking that they are rolling through properly. And I look at those every couple of weeks just to see that the emails are being replied to and people are coming through with their routes and their risk assessments and things like that. I pretty much can do, and like I did today, I process results. Oh, wonderful.

00:38:56Johan Duvenhage: So before we continue talking about parkrun, Bruce, of course, you're probably better known as an ultra marathon athlete, most notably the Comrades Marathon that I think you finished 30 times, if I recall correctly.

00:39:09Bruce Fordyce: Yeah, I've run 30.

00:39:10Johan Duvenhage: Yeah, and you won for an unequaled nine times, if I recall correctly.

00:39:15Bruce Fordyce: Yeah, no, one nine, but that was a long time ago, long before parkrun.

00:39:18Johan Duvenhage: So how did Comrades change your life?

00:39:21Bruce Fordyce: Oh, Comrades got me into running. I ran quite well at school when we had to, school athletics day, but I started running again in my second year at university with only one aim in mind and that was to run Comrades because here in South Africa that is our biggest marathon and because South Africans are strange and we're quite tough, we don't run a marathon. We don't count that as a race, running a marathon. So we have to run double a marathon to double the distance with hills over a brutal course. Comrades is going to be 100 years old in two years' time, and everyone knows about it. So when I started running, I started with a specific aim of running Comrades Marathon, and that hooked me in. So that was June 1976. And apart from a week or two off here or there for a rest or for injury, I've never stopped. And then parkrun has been a wonderful, wonderful new door to open into the sport and I'm absolutely loving it. So I've gone from being an ultra runner running 90k, hilly k's and 100k races and stuff like that to actually my favourite distance is 5k's free on a Saturday morning. Don't forget your barcode.

00:40:29Johan Duvenhage: Yes. 5K is actually fantastic. It's a lovely distance. It's just far enough to be challenging and short enough so that virtually everybody can do it.

00:40:37Bruce Fordyce: Honey, if you run it honestly, if you run it honestly, which is that you go out hard, halfway through a parkrun, and let me tell you, I'm huffing and puffing. I had someone trying to chat to me this morning when we ran parkrun, and eventually I had to say to him, mate, I'm on the red line here. I can answer one-syllable answers. I'm on the red line. I'm trying to breathe. I can't talk.

00:40:57Johan Duvenhage: All right. So let's look a little bit at the history of parkrun in South Africa. The first event took place on the 12th of November 2011 at Delta parkrun, and you were both there. So it will soon be 11 years, and today was the 500th event. So you ran that event, Bruce, and you finished a little close second behind the first finisher. Can you still remember that day?

00:41:19Bruce Fordyce: I remember very well because we only had 26 runners, and it was still an exciting moment. I have to say we had no idea that it would grow like it has and what it would be, but we were excited to start and see what would happen. It was like we were there with our little baby, and I ran, and all I can remember about it is that I think I ran a time that today I would have been going through halfway in that time, and But there were so few of us in the parkrun that I couldn't see the guy who was leading. He was too far ahead of me. But I also couldn't see the third place person because they were so far behind me. So I ran flat out on my own for 5Ks. And we just had no idea what it would be. But we did realise we had launched. Here we go. We've launched and we've started.

00:42:10Johan Duvenhage: So, Gill, you volunteered at that first event. Can you still remember what role you did that day, and what's your favourite volunteering role?

00:42:18Gill Fordyce: I'm fairly certain I probably would have processed results, I would think. And the results processing in those days was a nightmare. It was a different system and basically your laptop had to update the entire data of the world. And we didn't have fibre in those days and computers would be crashing and people would complain. I had one Event Director that used to come to our house to process results in the end because he couldn't do it at home because of the updating of the data on his laptop. So I think I did results processing. I was there, so I don't know if I scanned. I can't remember. I'll have to go and look back and see.

00:43:00Johan Duvenhage: And your favourite role? Volunteering role?

00:43:03Gill Fordyce: I enjoyed doing the results today. I like scanning. Timing is a little bit stressful for me because you have to really focus and if anyone talks to you, it's difficult. It's a big part of people coming in. And Bruce can't ever be given any of those roles because people always chat to him. I don't think he's ever done timing or scanning, have you?

00:43:26Bruce Fordyce: I've done timing. Scanning terrifies me. And for precisely that, because I'm a gregarious person, I want to chat to people and they want to talk to me. So the moment that one of my friends crosses the line, hi, how are you? In the meantime, three people have crossed the line behind him and forgotten to scan them. So better to keep me away from that role.

00:43:42Gill Fordyce: Okay. What I do remember from the early days of Delta is we used to go there and set up. We had 42 cones that we would carry, these big things of orange. Orange cones. And three of us would set up different areas. So Bruce and I would set up the top area, but 42 cones because there were so few people, no one knew where to go. And then, no, they don't need any cones.

00:44:05Bruce Fordyce: No, you don't need a single cone because it's a solid stream around the spot.

00:44:07Gill Fordyce: Yeah, and then one, Daryl used to set up at the bottom and Kyra would do the finish.

00:44:13Bruce Fordyce: Yeah.

00:44:13Gill Fordyce: And I would do the middle.

00:44:15Bruce Fordyce: In fact, I should have a few more volunteer roles because it's called this event setup.

00:44:20Gill Fordyce: Well, we didn't have those in those days.

00:44:22Bruce Fordyce: That was my warm-up was to go and put the cones up at the top end of the Delta Park course. Pre-event course check. Pre-event course check. We got millions of volunteers, but we didn't have those roles in those days.

00:44:35Johan Duvenhage: So, Bruce, can you tell us a little bit more about how parkrun actually came to South Africa in 2011?

00:44:41Bruce Fordyce: Yeah, so I went across to run the London Marathon. And Gill came with me and we stayed with my sister who lives in London. And I gave a speech about the Comrades Marathon in Reading on the Friday afternoon. And Paul Sinton Hewitt, who started parkrun, he came to that talk.

00:45:03Gill Fordyce: He came with Tom.

00:45:04Bruce Fordyce: He came with Tom Williams.

00:45:05Gill Fordyce: And Peter Fordham.

00:45:05Bruce Fordyce: And Peter Fordham, who we all know Tom Williams as CEO now globally. I mean COO globally. And Paul, of course, is the founder. And they put pressure on Gill and me to come to the park on the next day. I didn't want to go because I had a marathon on the Sunday and I was going to go quite hard in the marathon. So the best thing to do the day before a marathon is to do nothing. You know, I certainly didn't want to run 5Ks. And now I've got a very, it's just odd, I've got a competitive element in me. Once somebody says, ready, steady, go, you know, on your marks, go. I can't help, probably most times, got to go. So I didn't want to go, but they put so much pressure on me. So in the end, we said, okay, we'll go. And Peter came and picked us up and took us there. They even printed our barcodes. I didn't know what, what's this barcode thing?

00:45:53Gill Fordyce: Paul registered us.

00:45:54Bruce Fordyce: Yeah, Paul registered us. And interestingly enough, 136,000. 682 is my barcode number. So that's how many people there were in parkrun in 2011. And I'm two after you.

00:46:07Gill Fordyce: So in the time he was registering, someone registered in between us.

00:46:11Bruce Fordyce: Yeah, but now we're 8 million. I mean, you know, it's astonishing. And so then we went. It was a beautiful day in Bushy Park. And I think there were 600 runners. And I went hard. I mean, I ran as hard as I could. I think I did 18 minutes and a bit of change, and I came 19th. So that was a bit of an eye-opener. 18 minutes and you come 19th. I think there were a couple of Kenyans there who I saw briefly in the first 200 metres and then they were gone. But I was more concerned about Gill and will she hate the experience. And then I saw her coming in and I realised, no, but there's so many people behind her. Some people who are walking, some people who are just shuffling. And so we saw the magic. So that was the whole thing. So then we said to Paul, we've got to start this in South Africa. And he said, that's why I invited you. And then it took us, because you procrastinate, It took us kind of like 11 months or 9 months or something to get it going. And we tried various parks. And in the end, Johannesburg Park said to us, Delta Park. And so we started. It took us from April 2011 to November 2011. So we've got a huge gap, Gill and I, between our first parkrun and our second one. And then we started, as we said, 26 people came and that was it.

00:47:22Gill Fordyce: What I do also remember about that we're starting at Delta was six weeks prior to our official start. We rehearsed. We practiced timing, scanning, everything for six weeks before. We were that nervous. Yeah, we were very nervous about messing it up, yeah.

00:47:38Bruce Fordyce: And then the following week we had 17 people because it was raining. And then after about, I don't know, after a month or two, suddenly we had 30 people and then 50 people. You know how it grows. And then one of our parkrunners who ran regularly with us said, no, he lives quite far away. Could he start another parkrun in Roodepoort? And the same thing, one of our parkrunners said, can I start one in Benoni? So for Australians, that's the east of Johannesburg and the west of Johannesburg. And so now we had three. And then one of our great mates came up from a coastal city called East London, ran the parkrun and said, I absolutely love this. I want to start it in East London. And after that, it starts to go.

00:48:18Johan Duvenhage: So what do you consider some of the greatest achievements of parkrun in South Africa?

00:48:24Gill Fordyce: Oh, definitely the walkers. So from the very beginning, people said, can they walk? And Bruce said, you're welcome to walk. And there was a little bit of a challenge with the global team. They weren't so happy. They said, we can't ask volunteers to wait for walkers. And Bruce said, well, our volunteers will wait for walkers. And so actually we had the walking thing going from the very beginning. So it's not, now they're pushing this globally, but it just rolled on. And we have a lot of walkers in South Africa.

00:48:55Bruce Fordyce: I think it's 30%. We're proud of the fact that our parkrun average time is the slowest in the world. That's exactly what parkrun should be doing. Not the fastest in the world, because then what you've got is a time trial or an elite cross-country race. with elite runners. The fact that we have a Tandi Zalilo or a Tani Labuskakhni who take one hour and ten minutes, we're absolutely delighted with that. That's what parkrun is. And I've been injured. I've been injured at times in the last 11 years of parkrun where I've been more than happy to walk with the people at the back. Chat to them.

00:49:31Gill Fordyce: But that's also where you make the biggest difference to people's health and well-being is those people that are the slower people, those kind of reluctant people to exercise. When they get to parkrun, it's hugely beneficial. I mean, runners will run anyway. I mean, whatever.

00:49:49Bruce Fordyce: But those people that we're talking about now, you make a huge... And I think the other achievement which we need to make more of is that we've taken parkruns to some of the townships where it's difficult to get a parkrun. And we're conditioned. They're not pretty parkruns. But the vibe is fantastic. The people love them. So we need more of that. We'd like to, if we could, take parkrun more into Africa. I mean, we parkrun Southern Africa. But that's South Africa, Eswatini at this stage, and Namibia. We would like Botswana, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Malawi. If we could get that going, that would be... I think the barcodes, the wrist barcodes, weren't they?

00:50:32Gill Fordyce: They were started in South Africa, the wristbands.

00:50:34Bruce Fordyce: Oh, cool.

00:50:35Gill Fordyce: I didn't know that. So I remember we presented this to Paul and we used to have a weekly call with other countries way back in those days. And we said, well, we've come up with this idea, and we showed them a picture, and Paul said some F-words. That is F-ing awesome. Yeah, yeah.

00:50:59[other]

00:50:59Johan Duvenhage: I think we may have to bleep that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:51:02Gill Fordyce: But he did say that, and he was blown away by the wristband. Yeah. And it did make a big difference, and look, it's caught on now, so it's fantastic. It's now funding a lot of partners.

00:51:14Bruce Fordyce: And volunteer T-shirts, came out of South Africa. We suggested that and we, well, Gill did, and that was the opposite. She got a lot of swear words there and, no, you don't understand volunteering, it's for no reward, blah, blah, blah, blah. You've got no understanding of it all. And a few weeks later, the global team thought of a brilliant idea, t-shirts for volunteers.

00:51:40Johan Duvenhage: And I'm so glad that we now actually recognise our volunteers even more with the 50, 100.

00:51:46Gill Fordyce: You must. Because they are integral to the pipeline. I mean, you couldn't have it without them.

00:51:54Bruce Fordyce: In a year's time, I'll get my 500 shirt. But I'm more driven to get my 100 shirt for volunteering. I've got a couple more to go to get that black volunteer 100 shirt. That I'll wear with pride.

00:52:05Johan Duvenhage: So I assume, as with all organisations and volunteer organisations, it's not always plain sailing. Is there anything that's been particularly challenging over the last 11 years?

00:52:16Bruce Fordyce: Well, we've had our differences. We've had fights quite often with the global team. But I think the one thing that's remained constant, everyone's got the same thing in mind, and that is the love of parkrun. and wanting to grow parkrun and make it better. So I think that's what happens in any relationships. You'll have arguments and fights about things, but the end goal is the same, you know, a greater love of what you do. Obviously, Losing two years to being locked down, almost two years in South Africa, it was almost a mortal blow. I think if we'd had another six months, we would have never survived. But we just got back and we've been meeting our teams around the country, our various volunteer teams, and they have been absolutely incredible. I've been thanking them for hanging in, for that time and then being there again at the end of it all and so that's been amazing those are probably the most challenging otherwise the rest is just little nitty gritty things that you have to deal with with any big organisation you always have stuff you know that you've got to deal with every single week so for us Monday is always quite a stressful day after parkrun because stuff comes in that you've got to deal with incidents and challenges or if there's any issues so Monday is a busy day Monday is a hectic day But every time, almost every time if I've had a bad week, a tough week, nothing restores my good mood better than to wake up on a Saturday morning, put on my parkrun t-shirt off you go there are all your friends all your mates or maybe you're in a new parkrun that you haven't done before and it's exciting to see what it's like Saturday mornings are absolutely just the greatest they're fantastic love them it is a wonderful it's a wonderful concept but what has been amazing is to watch it morphing into what it is today from where it started which is not what it is today and and being part of that change and it's getting better and better

00:54:16Johan Duvenhage: Fantastic. So you've touched on your global expansion or African expansion. So apart from that, what's other hopes and dreams for parkrun in Southern Africa?

00:54:27Bruce Fordyce: I think just more, you know, getting more parkruns. We plus minus 200. We look at Australia with envy because there are over 300 parkruns. We'd like to get to that. So we would really like it in a situation where wherever you are on a Friday evening in South Africa, there's a parkrun near at hand on the Saturday morning. You know, if you're travelling or whatever. Obviously, there's certain areas we can't go into our game parks, but we can be on the borders. We've got a lot of parkruns right on the borders of the Kruger Park and places like that, but you can't put a parkrun inside the Kruger Park. Yeah, I think that's it. Just to grow it more, and particularly, I think, into the townships and rural areas.

00:55:12Gill Fordyce: I think we also need to increase the participation again. It's dropped off from where we were before lockdowns. It's picking up slowly, but we would like to get it back to where it was and beyond. So we would need more events and getting the message out there that we're back. A lot of people somehow don't know that we're back.

00:55:35Johan Duvenhage: Yeah. So lockdown has been quite a blow for us in terms of attendance. So how's the recovery going? And when do you think we'll be back to around about where we were before lockdown?

00:55:50Bruce Fordyce: Well, I mean, the recovery is going well. I think when we finally opened up, what did we have? 12,000 people. Before lockdown, we were 40 to 60,000 people. When we started again, we were at 12,000. Now, I think this weekend as we speak, I expect we're going to be nudging 30,000 participants around the country. We've seen our numbers growing again at all our parkruns. We've got some very big ones. Each week, they seem to be growing by another 150 participants. You can see it happening. parkrun was locked down for 18 months. I have always said to Tom and to the global team, give us 18 months to recover. I think I'm more or less right. This month, October, we've been a year back on the road and in the parks again. I think give us another six months. And January for us, as we all know, is particularly in South Africa because we have our summer holidays, December, January. January, the second week, the second Saturday of January, we all call New Year's Resolution Saturday. That's when everyone comes back from holiday and they all think they drank too much and they ate too much and they're right and they put on too much weight and we get a big influx of people coming to parkrun.

00:57:22Johan Duvenhage: So is there anything that you would like to see different in parkrun in the future?

00:57:28Bruce Fordyce: I can hardly think of it. Can you think of anything, Gill, that we'd like to see different?

00:57:33Gill Fordyce: No, I haven't actually thought about that, no. What I do love about parkrun, and I think this is where it's different from any other event in the world, is that the evils of money, politics and religion that separate people do not exist at a parkrun. We very seldom get a place or group of people together where none of those barriers are up. As soon as any of those go up, people separate. They're either this side or that side. And parkrun is very special in that aspect. Everyone's the same altogether. That's very important, I think, to have that feeling that there are no differences between people. So that whole issue of inclusivity, everyone is welcome. Everyone's welcome.

00:58:22Johan Duvenhage: All capabilities, doesn't matter, race, creed, whatever.

00:58:24Gill Fordyce: It's amazing. That is amazing. And you just don't see that anywhere. In anything that you see around the world, you just don't see that.

00:58:31Bruce Fordyce: You could be running a parkrun next to a millionaire and on the other side is an unemployed person. It doesn't matter. You're all running together.

00:58:39Johan Duvenhage: So, Bruce, recently it was announced that parkrun SA intends to supply automatic electronic defibrillators to all its events. Why is this so important and what can parkrun communities do to help?

00:58:53Bruce Fordyce: So, yes, it is massively important. So, as we know, parkruns are very safe. I mean, if I think of my own incidents over the years, I've fallen a few times. And it's more embarrassment. You get up, you've got a graze on your knee, and you're embarrassed in case anyone saw you. But we have had some cardiac issues globally. I mean, I don't think there's a country in parkrun that's not being touched, um and one of the bad if I boast about how proud we are of our statistic about our average time being the slowest in the world unfortunately we we also have the worst per capita incident of fatalities but it's very very small still but you know that we need to sort it out and if you can get defibrillators or aeds at every single parkland that's our aim They definitely save lives. We've seen, we've been dealing with the global team about it. I think, I stand open to correction, but last year in the UK, they had 17 collapses and they saved 16 people with defibrillators. And here in South Africa, we've had a couple of instances where people were saved, but we don't, with defibrillators, the great parkrun, the uMhlanga parkrun, one of our parkrunners there was saved by one, not because parkrun had a defibrillator, but because the uMhlanga's on the beach and the lifesavers had a defibrillator and they used it with him and it saved him. So that's our big drive is to get a defibrillator at every single park in South Africa. It will happen. It will definitely happen. But it's a major project, so we're asking people to donate. And I know that the global team will support us in the end if necessary, but we would like as soon as possible every single parkrun because those defibrillators save lives.

01:00:41Gill Fordyce: So if people do want to donate on the parkrun South Africa, which is parkrun.co.za page, there's a link there to where you can donate at Backer Buddy to help our cause. So if people are interested, please donate. We are ordering our first 10 this coming week, but we've got to get 200. It's a long way to go.

01:01:05Unidentified speaker: It's a long way to go, yeah.

01:01:06Gill Fordyce: Yeah.

01:01:07Johan Duvenhage: Right, so let's continue. So the parkrun adventurers in this podcast are a bunch of dedicated tourists. And both of you are members of the Freyne Club, so you've done 250 different events. So you've done a fair bit of touristing yourself. Yeah, I love it. Although in some cases I think it's a little bit of work as well, not just pleasure. So what do you enjoy most about visiting other parkruns?

01:01:32Bruce Fordyce: So what it is, is that every parkrun is the same. but every parkrun is different. And I love that, and I love meeting other people at different countries. So, as you said, we've done one in Russia, we've done, well, in Australia, I think I've done seven or eight parkruns. So, it's the adventure of exploring the world and seeing the different parkruns, meeting people who have the same mind, similar mindset, the welcome you get if you're a A foreign visitor to a parkrun, you're spoilt a little bit. Everyone turns around and gives you a clap when they say, oh, we've got two people from South Africa.

01:02:09Gill Fordyce: I think it's also the belonging. You feel you belong to the family.

01:02:12Bruce Fordyce: International family. And yeah, I absolutely love it. And sometimes learning from other parkruns, in different countries because you see that they do things slightly differently and maybe you pick up something, a great idea from another parkrun in a different country. And yeah, long may we be parkrun tourists. We really enjoy it. And I think people understand the addiction that in our day we have driven for eight hours in a Kombi to a faraway parkrun in South Africa like Springbok or Aggeneys in the desert. All that way for 5Ks and all the way back and not for one moment do you think you wasted that journey. Yeah, it's fantastic.

01:02:58Johan Duvenhage: So the parkrun tourists are also very known for looking at all the challenges and achievements on the apps and the extensions. And I see you've not been so lucky as enough to have the Groundhog achievement, but you did one better. You did exactly the same finish time in Comrades in 1985 and 87.

01:03:17Bruce Fordyce: Yeah, I've got Groundhog in a very famous ultramarathon. Yeah, 5.37.01. You can't stage manage that because you can have your own watch, but you don't know what the official... Yeah, I think that's also a lot of fun. But there's so many different things. There's so many different challenges and goals, that you can set for yourself in parkrun that I think is just that the word is fun and if I had to use one adjective to describe parkrun it's a corny one it's happy people are happy on a Saturday morning when they're parkrunning and yeah and then I think another wonderful message from our parkrunner who got his 500th today Dieter Mayer he's done 500 parkruns he's done quite a few different ones and somebody said to him Dieter which is your favourite parkrun he said the ones where my friends are running

01:04:07Johan Duvenhage: That's awesome.

01:04:07Bruce Fordyce: It's a wonderful answer, yeah. We've run a parkrun today. I can't wait for next Saturday because next Saturday we'll probably do a new one that we haven't done before, meet some more people who we may not have met at parkrun.

01:04:23Gill Fordyce: Do we know where we're going next week?

01:04:26Bruce Fordyce: Well, the boss will tell me where we're going, but I'm hoping the boss will say we're going to the Reeds next week because we haven't done it.

01:04:33Johan Duvenhage: So do you keep track of these challenges? Is there anything specific that you would like to do? No, we don't.

01:04:39Bruce Fordyce: A little bit. I like to every now and again, but we're not driven to follow the challenges. It's just interesting. I think I've got the full Monty, which is every second of a second of the minute or something, think I've got that but I only found that out because somebody mentioned it and I went to look at it um no we're not we I think we more just enjoy doing being at parkrun and if you happen to meet one or two of those challenges in the meantime well that's interesting you know the flags of the world are um for instance that's a tricky one we would have to get to Canada we'd have to get to New Zealand yeah um yeah so you know that that's not going to But if, by chance, I happen to get an invitation to be a speaker or something in Canada, well, boy, you can go and do it. It's for sure that if they said to me, and Bruce, you're coming to Canada or New Zealand and you're speaking on Saturday morning to our runners. I said, no, I'm not. I'm speaking on Saturday afternoon. Saturday morning, I'm taking a parkrun in your country.

01:05:48Johan Duvenhage: So I assume parkrun takes up an incredible amount of your time. So what do you like to do in the little bit of free time that you've got?

01:05:57Bruce Fordyce: Wow. We love going to the bush. So if you talk about holidays and stuff, we are fanatical bush people. So, you know, the last time we were there, we were fortunate to be invited by a great friend who's also a parkrunner to go and watch some rangers collaring, putting radio collars on lions. And that was an unbelievable experience because... They had to put a carcass of an Inyala bull, tie this carcass to a tree, put branches around so that the lions can only have access to get to the meat through one little entrance. So that then the lions, as they go in, they present their backside to the vet. So he can shoot the dart, the tranquilizing dart into them. Then they play, the loudspeaker, they play a warthogs in distress. Wah, wah. And the lions come. The lions come because they know there's something here. They come for the meat. And then when this lion goes in and starts eating, and the vet takes out his special rifle with a dart in it, and he fires, it's whack, like that, when it hits the lion. And the lion turns around, really, really angry. And because lions just want to eat, he wonders what happens. He thinks he got stung by a bee, turns around and carries on eating, and the next thing he'll fall asleep. And when the lion's lying on the ground and you help to put a collar around its mane, around its neck, for me that's been one of the most magical experiences. I had no idea that a lion's mane is so soft. It's so soft, but their hide is so hard, and covered in scars and so that was an incredible experience and I mean I'm now going to sound like I'm making it up but while we were there a big bull elephant arrived to try and kill the lions because lion and elephant don't love each other a lot and so we were then had to spend our time trying to to drive away a massive bull elephant with tusks okay but that was an exceptional exceptional experience but Gill and I we in December we're taking our children to the Kruger Park I can go and sit and watch frogs spawning in a pond and be happy if I'm in the wild. Yeah, that, I'd say, was probably our favourite thing, one of our favourite things. We're keen bird spotters, so we love Australia, by the way, because the birds are so totally different. My very first trip to Australia, I woke up in the morning, had massive jet lag, and I knew I was in another country because of the squawks and the squeaks and the cackles and all those noises. Well, not the noises of Africa, you know, they're just different bird sounds.

01:08:42Johan Duvenhage: But Africa still stays the best noise.

01:08:45Bruce Fordyce: Oh, yeah, no, no, I'm not knocking. It's just fascinating to go. Yeah, it's just, you know, we've had an amazing hospitality in Australia. We've run, I'm trying to think, we've run Manly. Mossman. Mossman, yeah. Mossman, I mean, we've run Mosman. Parramatta. Parramatta, Curl Curl.

01:09:03Gill Fordyce: South Bank.

01:09:04Bruce Fordyce: Yeah, South Bank, Claisebrook Cove in Perth. We've got a few. They've got a list that we've still got to do. Yeah, it can take quite a while. Yeah, they've got to run parkrun.

01:09:17Johan Duvenhage: So, Bruce and Gill, thank you so much for your time and your continued efforts to bring parkrun to every community in South Africa that wants an event. Any last words for our adventurer listeners right around the globe?

01:09:30Bruce Fordyce: Yeah, please, guys, come to South Africa and run a parkrun here. If you can come for a month, we could recommend for you a township parkrun where they play reggae music or whatever to warm up. Not pretty, but what a vibe. We could recommend a national park parkrun where you're on the borders of the parkrun. Sorry, of the national park. And then you can go and visit. We could recommend a Cape parkrun where you run through the vineyards. The beautiful, the Cape parkruns are so beautiful. And then a whole host of others. I mean, some on the beaches, some in the mountains. Zulu parkrun, Cannibal's Cave. You have to do that one. All the instructions are in Zulu. And then when you turn, it's an out and back. When you turn, there in front of you is the whole Drakensberg. The mountain's known as the barrier of spears in front of you. Incredible. No, we put it on your bucket list. Enough. I've insulted all the other parkruns by not mentioning them. There are so many that are fantastic. And we're going to get the X. For those of you who collect the alphabet, we will get the X because we have a province in South Africa called the Eastern Cape. And in the Eastern Cape are the Xhosa people. And their name starts with an X. And so there are millions of villages and towns and cities that have the X in them.

01:11:00Gill Fordyce: We will get the X. I wonder if anyone's going to have an X ever. I think it might be something that doesn't happen. I don't know.

01:11:09Bruce Fordyce: If there's a chance, it's us.

01:11:11Johan Duvenhage: But so in the meantime, we still have to work on our queue.

01:11:14Bruce Fordyce: Yeah, we don't have a queue, which is annoying. Yeah, but we'll get that.

01:11:18Gill Fordyce: I think there might be one coming.

01:11:21Johan Duvenhage: Thank you so much and all of the best.

01:11:23Gill Fordyce: Thank you so much, Johan.

01:11:24Johan Duvenhage: Yeah, thanks, Johan.

01:11:33Oliver Spake: And, wow, thank you so much to Johan for bringing us that interview and to Bruce and Gill, some spectacular supporters of parkrun South Africa and just obviously Bruce's achievements speak for themselves, Mel.

01:11:50Melissa Ellis: He is very famous, just in his own country, Olly, everywhere. He knows Bruce Fordyce. He has completed, I believe, 30 comrades and won it nine times. He is synonymous with not only comrades but comrades parkrun in South Africa. So thank you, Johan, for bringing us that exclusive with Bruce and Gill.

01:12:17Oliver Spake: That's right. And little do our listeners know, Mel, that we actually issued a secret challenge to Johan, so secret that Johan didn't know either.

01:12:27Melissa Ellis: He didn't know. No, no. Surprise.

01:12:30Oliver Spake: Yes, yes.

Roving reports & the Channel 5 News crew

01:12:32Oliver Spake: And that challenge was to interview not just Bruce but also Gill.

01:12:39Melissa Ellis: So, Ollie, we are very excited to announce our latest Channel 5 News Crew member, no other than Johan Duvenhage.

01:12:51[applause]

01:12:51Oliver Spake: That's me clapping. I'm taking a fine for that. Welcome, Johan. And we have certainly enjoyed a number of roving reports.

01:13:01Melissa Ellis: Multiple.

01:13:03Oliver Spake: Yeah, over from not just South Africa, but really showcasing. Eswatini. That's right. Wonderful parts of that great continent. So thank you, Johan. We look forward to many, many more. That's going to be a big one to top.

Consolidated Club Report

01:13:19Oliver Spake: Ah, but Mel, is it time for the Consolidated Club Report?

01:13:24Melissa Ellis: Let's move on, Ollie. The adventurers Consolidated Club Report for the 29th of October 2022. Of a total of 326 members, 262 took part at this date at 140 locations. PHONE RINGS

01:13:32[other]

the Frond

01:13:42Melissa Ellis: The largest frond, as previously mentioned, was at the creek with 11 members plus Heather. Also, we had five adventurers volunteering at Eynesbury Heritage Trail Junior parkrun for largest frond. I don't know if that was the largest frond. Perhaps Shellharbour could also beat that.

01:14:05Oliver Spake: I don't know, but that's a fine. Thanks, Mel. No. No, I'm not sure we can beat that this week. Not that it's a competition. Who's counting?

01:14:15Melissa Ellis: No. No, it's not a race. But we had parkrunners in Australia, New Zealand, the UK, South Africa, USA, Namibia and Denmark. Queensland topped the table this week with 32 events. That's a bit of a shock. Mm-hmm. Victoria was 29, 24 in New South Wales with South Australia and WA on nine each. We had five on the North Island, three in ACT, while there were two in Tasmania and two on the South Island.

01:14:50Oliver Spake: Lots of venturing, lots of parkrunning, lots of volunteering as well, of course, and well done to the pineapple state.

01:14:56Melissa Ellis: Let's not go there. Let's not talk about that. Moving straight along, moving swiftly on, moving.

01:15:01Oliver Spake: Looking to the future. Yes.

01:15:03Melissa Ellis: Correct.

01:15:04Oliver Spake: Yes. We don't really know what's in the future, do we?

01:15:07Melissa Ellis: No, we don't. No, we haven't got anything looking forward.

International Ugly Christmas Singlet Day

01:15:10Melissa Ellis: I think there'll be some ugly singlets turning up in mailboxes in the next week.

01:15:14Oliver Spake: Yes, yes. And well, no, that's a good point. It's a good reminder looking forward. It was mentioned in the podcast by none other than associate of the Ugly Christmas Singlet or Shirt Day elves, Mel Erbacher, suggesting that us or you lot are far too beautiful and we need more ugly out there.

01:15:34Melissa Ellis: Oh, really?

01:15:35Oliver Spake: Yeah. There's going to be another release.

01:15:37Melissa Ellis: Oh, yes. So Renee, Abby's mum, Renee, here is your reminder. And Scott, who also needs to order because there's no free visors for any of us, let's be honest. Uh, Yeah, look out for upcoming news on the Ugly Christmas Singlet and shirt page that a release, a second chance release will be imminent. But for those people that did the right thing and listened to the instructions and ordered on time, we should be expecting deliveries in our mailbox very soon.

Sign-off

01:16:14Oliver Spake: Very exciting. I look forward to cracking it out. But in the meantime, Mel, where's parkrun taking you next week? Oh.

01:16:25Melissa Ellis: not ready to think about that yet Ollie it's too soon I don't know and it's it's such a cop-out isn't it um not at all I might be thinking about getting to Boort, which is Nolen's Park parkrun I haven't got there yet. I need to catch that event up to regain my complete set of Victorian events. Yeah, there's still a lot of floodwaters around in Victoria, so I think I'll get there. I could also just jump in the car and go for a very long drive. I just, I don't know. What about you? Let's change the subject.

01:17:04Oliver Spake: There's always a bit of love for home and that's certainly my plan for the weekend. We have a few of our Shellharbour parkrunners with a couple of milestones to celebrate. So I'm looking forward to being there and welcoming back some of the adventurers to celebrate that. I'm really hoping to stay at home until I'm travelling in a couple of weeks. So that'll be me, probably volunteering.

01:17:27Melissa Ellis: Oh, travelling in a couple of weeks. That'll be the Tassie trip, won't it?

01:17:31Oliver Spake: That's right. That's right. So yes, the plan is Queen's Domain. It's a fleeting trip to Tassie with Cathy. And I am certainly planning on doing Queen's Domain on the Saturday morning. Excellent. That's the 19th. So that's a couple of weeks away.

01:17:47Melissa Ellis: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:17:48Oliver Spake: But heaps of time, heaps of time.

01:17:50Melissa Ellis: It is, Ollie. Well, we have crammed as much as we could and we apologise if this week's pod has gone longer than, but you had a short one last week, so.

01:18:00Oliver Spake: Well, it was still about an hour, but yes, yeah.

01:18:04Melissa Ellis: Oh, was it? Oh, okay, with the roving report.

01:18:07Oliver Spake: Oh, well. Yeah, that's right. It was totally, totally worth the long pod this week, Mel. I think, you know, listening to the wonderful interview and hearing a bit more of Phil's achievements and all of the catch-up, it's been great to get to catch up again. Thank you very much. And thank you for being my fellow adventurer out there camping in the rain.

01:18:30Melissa Ellis: We had fun. Camping is really underrated. It is fun. I really enjoyed it. I think camping is much more social and I will do it again. I just need a few more adventures to join me on my camping trips. I'm getting better and better at it. But, Ollie, we've talked long enough this week. The pod is going to be a big one. As always, you can contact us via Facebook or our email, which is parkrunadventurers@gmail.com. That is it for another week. We'll see you all next week for more adventures.

01:19:57Unidentified speaker: Bye.

01:20:10Asher - listener, child: Hello, everyone. My name is Asher. On Saturday, my grandpa Luke and his friend Patrick are doing their 100th parkrun. I'm very, very, very proud of them. They'll be at Shellharbour parkrun. My grandma is the Office Lady, so please don't fine me for saying Shellharbour, Mel and Ollie.