Episode 344 - Guess Who?

00:00:00[intro theme playing]

Welcome

00:00:24Simon Mackley: Welcome to episode 344 of the parkrun adventurers podcast, a podcast about life if your life is all about parkrun. I'm Simon and I'm joining you from Quandamooka Country.

00:00:37Melissa Ellis: And I'm Melissa Ellis and I'm joining from Wurundjeri Country. Surprise! Surprise! It's good to have you, Mel. Thank you. Sadly, listeners, Sarah Jefferson isn't well and she lost her voice, Simon. She has lost her voice for almost a week now, yes. So she wasn't able to step in for me and record. So Simon and I are recording a day early.

00:01:07Simon Mackley: Yep, it is Sunday night so that Mel can still go to the Kikye World Cup tomorrow night with Ollie.

00:01:15Melissa Ellis: So yeah, here we are. Here we are. We haven't had as long to prepare, Simon, have we? No, we haven't. And that will be evident in the pod. But you had an adventure. So an adventure starting with Zee. Would you want to tell us about that?

00:01:35Simon Mackley: I did. So I volunteered to Zillmere on the land of the Turrbal people. So Zillmere is on the north side of Brisbane and obviously the only Z in Australia. So I was there with one of my good friends from Mosman, who's, she's one of the co-EDs, Aileen. So she flew up, finished her alphabet yesterday. And in me volunteering, I actually took my V index to seven. So It's been one of my goals for this year, and obviously it's taken a bit more than half a year to get there, but I finally did it.

00:02:10Melissa Ellis: That's pretty good, a V index of seven.

00:02:14Simon Mackley: Yeah, I'm pretty happy with it now. What role did you do? So I handed out the tokens.

00:02:19Melissa Ellis: Lovely. And did you meet some adventurers?

00:02:22Simon Mackley: I did meet some adventurers, and I actually surprised one of them in that I met Roberta Winters and I met Cherie Martin. And so I saw Roberta in her parkrun adventurers shirt and I went up to her and I said, oh, so you're a parkrun adventurer. What's your name? And she said, Roberta. And I said, Winters. And she looked at me and went, yes. And then I told her who I was and she was like, oh, my gosh. So then, yeah. And then I saw Cherie was wearing hers as well. So the three of us were actually volunteering.

00:02:55Melissa Ellis: I didn't see a selfie, Simon. No.

00:02:58Simon Mackley: Not with me, no. So yes, that was a, yeah, something that we didn't do. So the two of them have a selfie, but I, yes, I didn't think about it at the time because I was focused on Aileen and her finishing the alphabet.

00:03:16Melissa Ellis: Excellent. I hope Aileen had a wonderful morning. Shout out to Aileen, a dirty cheetah.

00:03:21Simon Mackley: She is a dirty cheetah indeed. So she wore her dirty cheetah shirt, but no ears this time. So ears didn't get the cheers.

00:03:27Melissa Ellis: And good numbers at Zillmere. They're having a few celebrations.

00:03:31Simon Mackley: They did. And I actually, yeah, I met Jill that did the 500 last week. She actually signed me in because the ED was, ED who's the RD, he was with someone else trying to sign them up. So, yeah, I met her. She had a 500 buff on. So they had 100 last weekend. They had 100 yesterday. And that's about 30 more than they get apparently. Good work. But as you can imagine, everyone wants to go to Zillmere to do their ZED, but they don't get a lot of volunteers. Well done. Congratulations. Thank you for volunteering, Simon. Thank you. Thank you very much. So you adventured as well. Where did you go?

00:04:10Melissa Ellis: I did. On Saturday, I was at Newy parkrun on the traditional lands of the Awabakal and Worimi people, and I flew up on – I flew up to Sydney on Friday morning and was collected by Sam and Luke Schroder for the drive north to Newcastle. Newy parkrun has been well covered over the years with the pods connection to Dave Robbo Robertson and our now infamous palm at The Beaches when we had a Newy Freedo on the Friday night. You can find notable content on Newy in episodes 31, 123, 161 and 177. But it was event 526 and we were amongst a crowd of 436 with 27 volunteers on a very mild winter morning and I didn't even need the puffer vest. I left the rain at home in Melbourne. We were joined by locals Sonja, Peter and Oscar Pohlman, as well as adventurer Caro Vos, who made the short trip from Woy Woy to join the frontally fun. Newy is a fast out and back course which hugs the Throsby Creek on a mixture of concrete path and gravel and starts adjacent to the Newcastle Rowing Club Boat Shed in Carrington. Parking is in the surrounding streets and toilets and cafes can be located nearby. I had a fabulous run, enjoying the energy of a large crowd, although somewhat bewildered by a giant moustache that adorned one of the event's speedier participants, like giant and above his head. Due to their large numbers, Newy have a funnel set up, which worked very well, and special kudos to all the junior volunteers. For those interested in the unofficial challenges, Newy offers a plethora of options. Firstly, It is a successor event, which is the second event to launch in New South Wales. It's also event seven in the Eye Index, the first 100 events to launch in Australia, and is part of the Region of Runners, 15 events within the region. It's a Crookbook parkrun. That challenge is to run an event profiled in David Crook's On Every Saturday book. And as discussed last week, it's a four-letter parkrun name for the adventurers Pyramid Challenge. Afterwards, we all piled into the Pohlman Mobile to be – well, not everybody at Newy, just us adventurers, just to be clear. We all piled into the Pohlman Mobile to be transported to the Bootleg Bakery, all very mysterious and with a deliberate rat-run route to ensure we had no idea of the location of the locals' best-kept secret – There were mouth-watering pastries to tempt the palate and we grabbed some with our takeaway coffee and headed to Bar Beach to sit on the grass and enjoy the warmth of the sun and a bit of dolphin spotting. After a very enjoyable morning, my chauffeurs and I bid farewell and headed off for more exploring. We stopped at Caves Beach, which, as its name suggests, is a beach with a network of sculptured sea caves to explore at low tide, then headed to Woy Woy for lunch and a Freedo of Woy Woy parkrun. And incidentally, on the Friday, we did San Remo Freedo too. I was back on a late flight home Saturday night and back at Junior's, albeit a tad bleary-eyed on Sunday morning. That's this morning. Much thanks to my friends Sam and Luke who entertained me over the two days and the Pohlmans, of course, for kidnapping us to their bootleg bakery. It was another memorable and very enjoyable adventure. And Simon, I thought I might just list those events of the Region of Runners. After I say their names, maybe you can tell us how many you've done. So aside from Newy in the Region of Runners, there is Avondale University College, Bill Rose Sports Complex, Blackbutt, Blue Gum Hills, Fingal Bay, Karoola Park, Lake Mac, Lakeview, Nulkaba, Singleton, Stockton, The Beaches, The Terrace and Maitland.

00:08:08Simon Mackley: I have done very few of them, which... Yeah, I wish that when I was living in Sydney, I had have done so many more of them. But yeah, I've done Blue Gum Hills. I've done the beaches for the palm. And oh, gosh, I can't think the other one was. It might actually be only two.

00:08:25Melissa Ellis: Okay.

00:08:26Simon Mackley: Yeah. So Blue Gum Hills purposely was done because it was the end of my Bee Gees challenge and because it was a Bee Gee as well.

00:08:33Melissa Ellis: Oh, yeah.

00:08:34Simon Mackley: So I got it for the Bee, but I just thought it was pretty cool to do a Bee Gee parkrun for the end of the Bee Gees.

00:08:40Melissa Ellis: Well, I've now only got two, being Newy and The Beaches as well, also on the Palm weekend.

00:08:47Simon Mackley: Yeah, Newy has been one I've always wanted to do and never actually got there.

00:08:51Melissa Ellis: Well, I recommend it.

00:08:53Simon Mackley: Perfect. I should get down there.

00:08:55Melissa Ellis: But if anybody wants to write and let me know about the moustache that ran at Newy, and I even think it was orange. It was like, you know, when the pacers are in the major events and they have a stick with a balloon or a sign on it to be noticeable. It was like that. It was just above the guy, a big moustache.

00:09:18Simon Mackley: Did he have a moustache as well?

00:09:20Melissa Ellis: I didn't. I maybe was too busy looking at it.

00:09:23Simon Mackley: A big moustache above his head. Yes. So I don't know. Interesting. Okay. Yeah, that will be very interesting.

00:09:32Melissa Ellis: So a bootleg bakery. I like the idea of that. It was very fun. We're a bit into our mysterious secret places. Yeah. Like speakeasies. Great.

parkrun news bulletin

00:09:43Simon Mackley: We've got a little bit of news and discussion for this week, so I might kick it off. So the last couple of weeks, the parkrun APAC office have been running hour-long sessions. So there's been three so far. So there's been one on communications, one on wellbeing, and last week, one on event support. But coming up this week on Tuesday is actually one that would be interesting for people who are starting a new event. So it's focused on a prospective ED or councils or landowners or anyone who's interested in starting a parkrun. So it might be a good one to drop into if you're interested in that sort of thing. There was a link sent to everybody who volunteered in the last year. So you should be able to get into that. And then on Thursday night, they're finishing out with the fifth one, which is going to be Carol talking about volunteers, which I think could be quite an interesting one, seeing as though it went out obviously to all the volunteers.

00:10:49Melissa Ellis: So that's Tuesday the 1st of August and Thursday the 3rd of August.

00:10:53Simon Mackley: Correct. Sorry, I should have said that.

00:10:56Melissa Ellis: Yeah, and likely to be already have occurred by the time I get the pod edited. Of course. But Simon, people can still click the link to listen to the recording.

00:11:10Simon Mackley: They can indeed. Exactly right. So all of those that have been recorded so far, they're available. And yeah, and these two will be as well.

00:11:18Melissa Ellis: Very good. So that is probably another example of parkrun making more effort with their communications, would you think?

00:11:27Simon Mackley: Definitely. So they're trying to get a bit closer to the parkrunners. I've got to say that a lot of the people on the call so far have been Event Directors or ambassadors, Run Directors, that sort of thing. But there's absolutely no reason why. anyone can't join the call. They're very, very open to it and they're answering questions on the fly as well.

00:11:48Melissa Ellis: I do believe people can submit questions ahead of time as well.

00:11:52Simon Mackley: They can. I submitted a question ahead of time and then there's been, yeah, you can write in the... Chat box. In the chat box, exactly. And they're answering everything. Nothing's sort of off limits, it seems. Very good.

00:12:04Melissa Ellis: Also in news this weekend, Simon, there was a bit of controversy, as was seen by myself on the parkrun Stats Geek group. PSH was scanned at both Horsham parkrun in the UK and at the launch in Queensland at Wes Mitchell Park. More on that launch later. But the general consensus is that it was an error at scanning at the Wes Mitchell Park event and not, as was also suggested, an elaborate prank by conspiracists. That is quite funny. So he wasn't here. I think some people got a bit excited at the thought that he may have been in Australia, but he was not, just to be clear, he was not here. It seems to have been... some sort of glitch.

00:12:55Simon Mackley: I wonder if there's another Paul Hewitt or something. Maybe it was their barcode that was looked up on the 5k app or something like that.

00:13:02Melissa Ellis: That's very possible. I was more thinking the old school way when you write down the barcode number, but I guess he's got a four digit parkrun barcode, has he not? Or is it even smaller?

00:13:15Simon Mackley: It's either four or five. I'll have a look at that and I'll come back to you on that.

00:13:21Melissa Ellis: I can play hold music.

00:13:29Simon Mackley: um I don't know everything else I was gonna say on that I actually helped someone yeah find their barcode using the 5k app over the weekend so he hadn't run in six years hadn't actually had never run and he was the first finisher so it was important to him that he actually got his um I'm recorded.

00:13:49Melissa Ellis: Oh, very good. Well done. Yeah. Finding that. We tend to use it to assist with adding volunteers to rosters when we don't know their barcode number. Yep. And when we look them up on the 5K app, when we have volunteers called John Smith.

00:14:07Rachel: Oh, exactly.

00:14:07Melissa Ellis: Which we actually do. We call him Pa, but he's John Smith and he's hard to find his barcode number.

00:14:13Simon Mackley: I can imagine. Hmm. So Paul Sinton-Hewitt does have a four-digit barcode. Yes. A four-digit athlete ID, should I say. Does it start with four? No. Oh, okay. He's A1674.

00:14:25Melissa Ellis: Okay.

00:14:25Simon Mackley: There is another Paul Sinton, though, who's from Town Moor, but he has a barcode with three million.

00:14:31Melissa Ellis: And is there a Paul Hewitt who's maybe registered it?

00:14:35Simon Mackley: I tried to look at that and I got an error, I think because I spelt Hewitt incorrectly. Okay. I'm going again.

00:14:44Melissa Ellis: There's a lot of Paul Hewitts.

00:14:45Simon Mackley: Let's have a look. Just a quick scan. I cannot see. But anyway, it's quite feasible that that is what occurred. Who knows? Anyway, and yes, something else that the parkrun Stats Geek group shared was that there's an eight-year-old holding the age grade record at Coomera. with an absolutely stonking 1847.

00:15:10Melissa Ellis: An eight-year-old ran 1847. Did they do two laps? Like, you know, I know Zoe got a ridiculous PB once at Berwick Springs and I had to get it removed because she'd only done one lap of a two-lap course and gone through the flags.

00:15:27Simon Mackley: This kid does look like he should be 18 and, you know, running at the front of a pack, just the way that he was dressed in a very, very high-vis singlet and wraparound glasses. Like, I think he's – sorry, from what I saw in the comments in the stats group, it was saying that he has to run with, like, friends from – sorry, adult friends.

00:15:50Melissa Ellis: Yeah, because mum and dad can't keep up, clearly.

00:15:53Simon Mackley: Exactly, with an adult that he knows, or at least his parents know. And yeah, so I think it was 94%. It was just, yeah, unbelievable. Very, very quick.

00:16:09Melissa Ellis: Well done him. And Simon, being a local Queenslander, where's Coomera?

00:16:15Simon Mackley: So Coomera is at the very northern end of the Gold Coast. It was actually the one that was started by Renee Gimbert. So the now APAC managing director, I can't think what her title is. So it's one of the very early ones in In Australia? It absolutely is. It's actually number eight. I was going to say I'm trying furiously to look up the number, but yes.

00:16:40Melissa Ellis: Yes, I know. It launched as the eighth event in Australia and it is the next one I need on the iIndex.

00:16:47Simon Mackley: Oh, is it?

00:16:48Melissa Ellis: Yes. Okay. It's in my sights. That's why I wanted to know where it was.

00:16:53Simon Mackley: Yes. So it's about, I think, a 40-minute drive for me south. It may even be closer than that, actually. But it's one I've got in my sights as well because for exactly that eye index reason, but I still have Ginninderra and Newy to do.

00:17:08Melissa Ellis: at six and seven so we should thank the stats geek group for helping us with our content this week indeed indeed because it was a little bit thin on the ground being Sunday night still those two things will both popped up in my social media feed bringing it to my attention so uh credit where credit's due I do follow that group it comes up with some interesting stats

00:17:34Simon Mackley: Yeah, I've got to say that table that they do that shows where you actually sit if you sit in, you know, 50 runs and 50 different events and things like that. I follow that very, very closely to see if I'm actually moving into another box.

00:17:48Melissa Ellis: I haven't looked at that for a while. I am familiar with the boxes and it's a bit of a thing to be actually become a dot, isn't it? It is. It is indeed.

00:18:00Simon Mackley: So I recently, like in the last week, four weeks I think it was I moved from into the 300 box but I'm still on 70 something so I haven't moved up a box yet but it was it's the first time I've moved into a box that's actually a triple digits I've always been a quadruple digit box in our break I'm going to look at mine and figure out where I am now I haven't looked for ages so yeah that is an interesting thing so thank you to those people that put those together indeed

Dazza's

00:18:28Melissa Ellis: But Simon, people were a bit excited about Dazza's being back last week. Well, Dazza's isn't gone anyway. Dazza's is always there. But the format, the way that we read out Dazza's and awarded an Obi.

00:18:39Simon Mackley: Exactly. People were very excited. In fact, we had 155 comments in Dazza's this week.

00:18:47Melissa Ellis: And you've selected some of those for us to read out.

00:18:52Simon Mackley: I have indeed. So I'm going to start off with Sonja Pohlman. So hers was quite simple. a frond packed into a car for park faffing. And in the picture were three peas. So there was Peter, Sonja and Oscar, Sam, yourself, Mel, Caro and Luke.

00:19:13Melissa Ellis: That was the kidnap vehicle.

00:19:18Simon Mackley: Excellent going off to that bakery.

00:19:21Melissa Ellis: Next we heard from Martine Barrot and she said, mostly sunny and definitely no rain for Andrew Johnston and I this morning at Umbagong District parkrun. Great to see Stephen and Val Warwick for the second week in a row. Enjoyed another walk and talk with Val. No time for park faff afterwards, unfortunately, as we had a plane to catch and there was a picture of Andrew, Martine, Val and Stephen at Umbagong District.

00:19:45Simon Mackley: Next one I chose was Roberta Winters, as I mentioned earlier. She was at Zillmere. So she said, sunny morning at Zillmere parkrun with many adventurers, lots of comments on the t-shirts. So that was a picture of Roberta, Cherie, the Viking Paul, who was all dressed up in his Raiders rugby league outfit, Coppo and Tony.

00:20:07Melissa Ellis: Are they standing out, our shirts, Simon?

00:20:10Simon Mackley: As soon as I walked up, I could see, like, yeah, I walked through the clearing, I could see The two, like Roberta and Cherie, I noticed them straight away because nobody seems to have a light blue shirt.

00:20:22Melissa Ellis: I think it stands out.

00:20:23Simon Mackley: I think it does.

00:20:24Melissa Ellis: Yeah. We might have to sell some more.

00:20:27Simon Mackley: I think that's a good idea.

00:20:30Melissa Ellis: We heard from Helen Davis. No rain, a little misty on the way there, but absolutely stunning abort. Nolen's Park parkrun. I think it's Nolen's Park parkrun, actually, from memory. But Helen sent a beautiful picture of sculptures by the water at Nolen's Park.

00:20:48Unidentified speaker: parkrun.

00:20:49Simon Mackley: The next one we've got is actually Margie Lewis. It did not rain on us today, although we need it. Beautiful summery feel at Taree parkrun. And there's a beautiful picture of the sun rising behind Margie and some people sort of out of focus, but they're trying to get into the photo. It might have been photobombing it.

00:21:08Melissa Ellis: Yeah, that was a pretty photo. I did notice that one tonight, Simon. We heard from Booze Dayton, Dayton, Dayton. And she said, oh, yes, it did. In fact, it waited until we gathered for the briefing to absolutely tip down and soak us all. But it wasn't enough to stop me from completing number 200 and my partner, number 50, at Allerpark parkrun wolfsburg or wolfsburg not quite sure but there was a photo of buzz at a very wet looking Allerpark I don't know how you say it I'm guessing might be Allerpark but yeah okay well let's go with that anyway it's in Germany it is in Germany she's having a holiday indeed the park I had to read about the park because I was wondering where it actually was in wolfsburg so on the site there it has the stadium where

00:22:00Simon Mackley: Wolfsburg football team play, Volkswagen Stadium. It has an ice skating rink. It's huge. Like, yeah, it's a massive park, it seems, with a lot to do. Next we had somebody from New Zealand. So Jackie Hancock. So she said, midwinter Christmas at Pegasus parkrun with Christmas cake made by the lovely Tanya and lots of Christmas dress-ups. And there was a picture of Jackie and a friend dressed up as elves. They looked amazing, but they were a week late for the Christmas in July.

00:22:36Melissa Ellis: Ah, yes, they were. But it's still July, technically. True. Well done. We also heard from Alison King, and she said, no rain but a frost instead at Puarenga. was one degree at parkrun time. No selfies as too cold to think about them. And there was a pic of a frosty, misty path at Puarenga.

00:22:58Simon Mackley: And then we went to South Africa, where Johan shared, I had an early morning start to make an impromptu but long overdue visit to Grundstad parkrun, South Africa again. As the sun started to rise, the first indications of the massive cold front approaching was visible. But apart from the bone-chilling wind, It was a perfect winter parkrun morning. And the photo he shared was just another one of Johan's ethereal photos that he seems to send through.

00:23:28Melissa Ellis: Is that a real word or are you doing an ollie on me? No, ethereal is definitely a real word.

00:23:33Simon Mackley: I promise you.

00:23:35Melissa Ellis: I'm going to look it up.

00:23:36Simon Mackley: You can't.

00:23:39Melissa Ellis: Excellent. Excellent. Thank you to everybody who contributed to Dazza's. Yeah, there was a lot of excitement going on, lots of great photos this week.

the Obi Award — Sonja Pohlman

00:23:47Melissa Ellis: But, Simon, there must be an envelope somewhere on your desk.

00:23:53Simon Mackley: Do you know what? I cleared out a lot of envelopes this afternoon, but I do have one here and I will open it up. What do we have? This week, who does it go to? Sonja Pohlman.

00:24:17Melissa Ellis: Has Sonja won one before? I'm not quite sure. We really should be tracking these things. If anybody listens to the back catalogue and feels like keeping a record, feel free. You always think of these things in retrospect. But yes, well-deserved and a lovely time we did have there at Newy. Would have been awesome to be there.

00:24:37Simon Mackley: So,

Club Corner

00:24:38Simon Mackley: I think it must be time that we throw to Rachel with Club Corner.

00:24:45[background music]

00:24:55Rachel: This is Rachel with Club Corner, where we talk about the what and why of parkrun clubs, and I am coming to you from Arrernte Country. Today I'm going to talk about running clubs, not the achievement club, but rather the mob of people we hang around with at parkruns. We, the listeners, are parkrun adventurers and our club is called, The adventurers. On the web page of each country, under the results tab, there is a standard report called, largest clubs. In the first few years of parkrun in Oz, this leaderboard was hotly contested, and different clubs had membership drives to push to the top. There were splits in families as people joined one club or another. There were also hair-splitting conversations where the number of parkrunners, or the number of runs was more important. People were convinced that their way was the way. Ha ha ha ha ha ha. In more recent times, a parkrunner can now have up to five clubs, so the pressure is markedly lessened, and families have been restored. Now to the nitty-gritty. Who has the bragging rights in Australia? Frankly, the leaderboard in Oz will be unchanged for some time to come. Leading Australia is RMA, Running Mums Australia. Following them are some ridiculously beautiful parkrunners, then some speedy, Brisbane-based parkrunners. We then head to some nationwide vets, and then down the table through various, more general, geographically-based running clubs. And remember, in parkrun life, all non-milestone clubs are unofficial and unsupported by parkrun, so stay tuned for our future club corners.

00:26:21Melissa Ellis: And thank you to Rachel giving us a bit of information about parkrun club Simon. And I thought it would be interesting for us to divulge our affiliations, seeing as we've had a bit of a couple of weeks of discussing this sort of thing. So what clubs do you have on your parkrun profile?

00:26:42Simon Mackley: So it'd be no surprise that my primary one is Dirty Cheetahs. I have The adventurers. I have runs with a barcode and I have with me now.

00:26:52Melissa Ellis: Ah, very good. What about you? I am very similar. So also no surprise, my primary is the adventurers and I've also got the Dirty Cheetahs and I've also got runs with a barcode, but I've got team veteran. Of course, that makes sense.

00:27:10Simon Mackley: So three out of four we cross over. We do. I wonder what Ollie's are.

00:27:14Melissa Ellis: I'll have to ask him next week.

Consolidated Club Report

00:27:17Melissa Ellis: Absolutely. But would you like to know about the Consolidated Club Report?

00:27:22Simon Mackley: I would love to.

00:27:24Melissa Ellis: Well, this week, the adventurers Consolidated Club report for Saturday, the 29th of July, 2023, of a total of 441 members. 349 took part in six countries across 166 locations. In the UK, there were adventurers at 21 events. Three in Ireland and South Africa and one in Germany. Locally, we had adventurers at... 37 in Victoria. We're back on top. Yay! Queensland and New South Wales, both 33. 11 in South Australia, 7 in WA, 5 on the North Island, 4 each in ACT and Tassie, and 2 on the South Island and the Northern Territory. That's another bowling strike.

the Frond

00:28:16Melissa Ellis: Now, the largest Frond was at Newy. Hooray! With myself, Sam and Luke Schroder, Sonja, Peter and Oscar Pohlman, Caro Vos and Lynette Pritchard. Only I didn't get to meet Lynette, so I'm sorry, Lynette, if you're a listener, I didn't know you were there. So next time. Now, Simon, I also wanted to give a special mention to the parkrun that is an island off Ireland with the name that I can't say.

Roving report Pippa White — Inis Meáin parkrun

00:28:43Melissa Ellis: So I enlisted the expert and I asked Pippa how to say it.

00:28:47Pippa White: Hi, Mel. You always ask the complicated things because actually we were just really cheerful and excited to be there and I completely forgot to check pronunciation. But let's try Inis Meáin. I hope that sort of works and you can pick it out. If not, it was the most surreally bonkers, bonkers day out. And for anybody who's looking for a totally amazing adventure, this is the place to go and do it.

00:29:16Melissa Ellis: So thank you, Pippa, then. So on the morning there was Pippa White, Christine Imbert, Linda Boskett, Claire Winozik and Cass Castleton. Now I looked up a little bit more about this event, Simon, for everybody's interest. It is an island off the coast of Ireland and it starts at 11am. 11am. It was event nine and 261 attended with only 11 of those having already run at the event. That means that aside from the 10 unknowns, there were 240 first timers. A tourist trip, I understand, organised by Andy Airey, involved a coach trip and a 30-minute ferry ride. So the reason that this event does start at 11am is because it's only accessible by the ferry and it is dependent on ferry scheduling. And it's the only one in the world to start at that time. Now, 261 was an attendance record, no surprise, as aside from the 102 participants that were at the launch, numbers have ranged somewhere between 14 and 36. The island is the middle and smallest of the three main Aran Islands in Galway Bay off Ireland's west coast. I hope I've said all that right. I probably haven't. And it only has a population of 184 as at the 2022 census. And according to Wikipedia, it has a strong traditional Irish culture with the residents being predominantly Irish-speaking. So hopefully we're going to hear a little bit more about this event in the future because it sounds like it's going to be a popular one with the tourists.

00:31:03Simon Mackley: Yeah, it sounds extremely unique with an 11am start. We'd be frying here in Australia if it started at 11.

00:31:13Melissa Ellis: And I believe the ferry ride was quite rocky. Oh, wow. Hairy, whatever, you know, bumpy.

00:31:22Simon Mackley: Anti-hairy? I know it's Andy Airey.

00:31:28Melissa Ellis: So I believe he does regular tourist events. He's popped up in the comms recently or in – there's been reference to Andy recently, hasn't there?

00:31:38Simon Mackley: I've definitely seen his name.

00:31:40Melissa Ellis: Maybe he popped up in a roving report recently and they sort of call it – is it Airey Airlines?

00:31:47Unidentified speaker: Yeah.

00:31:48Simon Mackley: That'd be a good idea.

00:31:49Melissa Ellis: He's either been interviewed as a roving report or somebody's referenced him recently, maybe with all the events that were happening over in Europe in the recent months. But anyway, there you go. So a little frond happening over there on the island off Ireland.

00:32:05Simon Mackley: Very, very good.

Launches and anniversaries"Where is the cake?"

00:32:07Simon Mackley: Well, the one thing that I've seen is that there was a launch in Queensland at Wes Mitchell Park. So that's in Tin Can Bay, so a little bit south of Maryborough in Queensland and sort of north of the Sunshine Coast. They had 112 parkrunners. And their website says that it's a scenic course along the foreshore of Tin Can Bay, beginning at Wes Mitchell Park near the playground, heading along the foreshore on the cement path to the turnaround point, then heading back south on the path past the start-finish area to the turnaround point just before Crab Creek boat ramp, then heading back north along the path to the finish area.

00:32:47Melissa Ellis: Is this one that's going to be within reach for you, Simon? Easy reach?

00:32:51Simon Mackley: So, yeah, I had a friend contact me today and say that it's only a couple of hours north of us. So it may be somewhere that I hit at some stage, but there's a lot that I still have to do in southeast Queensland. So it may not be one of my ones very soon. Uh-huh. Okay.

00:33:12Melissa Ellis: And friend of, well, adventurer Greg Garner, I believe, is the Event Director.

00:33:17Simon Mackley: Yeah, I noticed that too. I saw his name pop up in the socials this week.

Sign-off

00:33:22Melissa Ellis: So all the best, Greg, with your new event. And no doubt the Queensland Adventurers will start filtering through and hitting up those Wilson numbers that they need. Indeed they will. Now, looking forward, Simon, we're still reminding people about City to Surf. It's only two weeks away now. It's getting closer. So we're reminding everybody that we're having our Frond at Centennial parkrun. But I had an email just a couple of days ago saying, And I thought I would raise it in case there's any adventurers out there that have been planning to join us or join me with the Guinness World Record attempt of the Wonder Woman's at City to Surf. Because... the email that went out detailed the costume requirements. So because it is an actual official world record attempt, there is specific items that you need to be wearing and you need to be adjudicated before the event, a photo taken of you, ticked off. It's all very official. So If you want any of that information, if you are interested in turning up on the day dressed as a Wonder Woman and taking part, you can contact the Wonder Woman organisers. You can search on the City to Surf webpage for details or you could just message me and I can forward it to you. So please yourself. I'm happy with whatever.

00:34:48Simon Mackley: That's going to be amazing. I hope, yeah, I hope they do break that world record. Yeah. What are you doing on the next parkrun day, Mel?

00:34:56Melissa Ellis: Well, I'm going to stay near to home again. This is part of my new initiative to curtail some of my travel. But this is the exciting thing. I'm going to have a Bailey in town. So Bec Bailey is on her way home from her amazing holiday that she's been having and abroad and she's going to be overnight or the weekend in Victoria so she's going to go out to Studley parkrun and I'm going to go and catch up with her so looking forward to that very much that'll add another event to my Studley parkrun tally it's not going to ruin my current tourist streak which incidentally is currently at 36 events amazing and it'll give me more time at home again to do all those domestic things that I don't get time to do excellent what about you I'm

00:35:48Simon Mackley: go back to scribbly gum because my next thing that I'm trying to tick off for 2023 is to get my P index up to seven. So it's currently sitting at six. And having moved up here from Sydney, I'm starting to lose some of those Sydney events that I'd done six times. So I have a bit more of an effort to try and catch a few more up. So Yeah, Scribbly Gum is most likely to be my area this week.

00:36:19Melissa Ellis: Oh, very good. I feel your pain there. Most of my P-index events are in the southeast, and now that I live in the west, it makes it – yeah, you have to start building all over again.

00:36:33Simon Mackley: You do, indeed. So, yeah, I'm losing two of them, dropping off. North Sydney and Willoughby are about to drop off, so I have to do three events this Yeah, quite a few more times. I think Scribbly is only two more times, but I've got Cleveland and Redland Bay to do, I think, four more times. So it's not going to be an easy task. But soccer season is finishing, so I should be able to get down to those a little easier.

00:36:58Melissa Ellis: Fantastic. Now, we should say that next week I'm going to be recording with TOC, so Ollie's still going to be flitting around the country doing his kick-yay stuff and most likely having the time of his life. But, yeah, TOC's going to join me behind the microphone, so that should be fun. Thank you very much for joining me today, Simon.

00:37:22Simon Mackley: Thank you. I'm looking forward to seeing, but yeah, very much. Thank you for stepping in with Sarah being unwell. And hopefully I do get that opportunity to present with Sarah sometime soon. As always, you can contact us via parkrun adventurers on Facebook, not Mel and Ollie's personal, or our email address, which is parkrunadventurers at gmail.com. That's it for another week. We'll see you all next week for more adventures.

00:37:45[outro theme playing]