Episode 368 - Gooey buttercake flavoured goodness

00:00:00[intro theme playing]

Welcome

00:00:23Tony O'Connell: And welcome to episode 368 of the parkrun adventurers podcast, a podcast about life. If your life is all about parkrun, I'm TOC and I'm coming to you from Bunurong Country.

00:00:35Melissa Ellis: And my name is Melissa Ellis and I'm coming to you from Wurundjeri Country. And welcome back, TOC. Good to see you. This is the first time we have recorded with the video cameras going, so we're both in blue. Yay! Yay!

00:00:50Tony O'Connell: Good to see you, Mel. It's been a long time. My last recording was back the first week of December. So, yeah, no, it has been a while. So, enjoying being back in the seat. Apart from our little guest appearance for the Christmas episode where we all pitched in and did a little bit.

00:01:04Melissa Ellis: Oh, that's correct.

00:01:06Tony O'Connell: Yes. Great to be back.

00:01:08Melissa Ellis: Did you have a good break then? We haven't really covered your Christmas.

00:01:11Tony O'Connell: I had an excellent break, Mel. We did the big road – or not the big road trip. We did a big road trip up to New South Wales this year. We decided that we'd forgo our usual South Australian New Year's celebrations and we went doing a little bit of letter chasing. So we started off our trip with a – I think about a 1300K day in the car and drove up to Inverell parkrun in northern New South Wales to get our second eye, which completed our second alphabet. Lovely, lovely place. We got up there on the Friday and... The rain came in and it was torrential and we started to think this is going to be a cancellation. Inverell runs along a river, has some drains and some things that run out over the course. And on the Saturday morning when we got up, they announced that they were running their B course, which was three laps out and back on a very short bit of concrete ground. instead of going the normal direction. So, yeah, a few lap courses there, but we got the parkrun in. Headed across for New Year's Day to Queen Elizabeth at Casino. Got to say, one of the more friendly parkruns that I've actually been to had an absolute ball there. Just felt like part of the family. But once again... The night before, lightning, thunder, rain. Woke up in the morning, clouds, lightning, thunder. Oh, no, this is a long, long drive to sit in the motel room. But the clouds moved away a little bit. They moved north of the town and they were heading away from the town. So parkrun went ahead. All but the grass that Casino runs on or Queen Elizabeth runs on was very wet. The whole course is on grass and some of it was a little bit deep. But the event team came out because none of the cafes were open New Year's Day in the area. They brought out cakes. They had Zooper Doopers and I love a Zooper Dooper. Great little event. And they were promoting, and I can't remember the date, Mel, but in May sometime, I believe it is, they have a cattle festival in the town. And parkrun actually get out and have a... Parade? A float in the parade? Yeah, they have a float in the parade. Well done. And I think they might have a Rodeo. Oh! Oh, hello. Mel, Rodeo, cattle. Right. Okay. And a difficult letter. Yeah. So from there, we ducked across to the coast and went to Yamba parkrun. Once again, lovely parkrun, talking to the ED's husband. He said, oh, there's about a foot of water over this course last week. So we timed that really well as well. A pretty hot week up there. Great little location once again. Caught up with Em Nico, which was really great. Em came down to the parkrun and we walked a bit and had a good chat with Em, which was fantastic. And then the big road trip home. So, yeah, that was our break. So, yeah, back into the real world and, yeah, back to Inverloch for a few weeks.

00:03:43[crosstalk]

00:04:34Melissa Ellis: You took a risk going north. I maintain that the southern states have the most stable weather at that Christmas period. So I'm glad that they all went ahead for you.

00:04:45Tony O'Connell: Mel, I think we were very lucky. There was cancellations going left, right and centre all round us to the north of us. We were in an area that had major flood warnings there. As I said, the lightning and thunder nearly every day, the humidity was building up up there. It was a bit crazy. So we dodged a bullet and had our good fun parkrunning.

00:05:09Melissa Ellis: Very good. Well, now let's move on. And we had, I've got some things that I wanted to clarify from last week's episode. We had a few contentious points, but one, well, it wasn't contentious, but the meaning of our pod title from last week, YMMV, that was something that was mentioned by Andrew Blanda in his Dazza's post, and it stands for Your Mileage May Vary. Now, Andrew did reply to our episode post saying, super honest to be mentioned on the podcast. YMMV, your mileage may vary. It means that you understand people may have different opinion or experiences to yours. And Andrew shared a link with us which explained the history of the term, and I quote, unlike other initialisms which were invented and grown on the internet, Your mileage may vary goes back to the 1970s and 80s in the US. During that time, automobile manufacturers frequently promoted their estimated mileages to compete. However, due to the variations in driving conditions, they had no way of guaranteeing the exact mileage customers would actually get. Therefore, these ads would feature the disclaimer, your mileage may vary. So I thought that was very apt for our pod title last week.

00:06:31Tony O'Connell: It is, Mel, and it does reflect that we come with a very diverse range of opinions and experience into parkrun, from the first-timers through to the people that are, you know, blue shirts and whatever colour our next iteration of 1,000 is going to be. So we do have a great depth and breadth of experience and opinion out there.

00:06:53Melissa Ellis: Especially when it comes to adventurer challenges, right?

00:06:57Tony O'Connell: as well yes yeah there's certainly a lot of uh varying ideas out there from the um yeah I guess from the stay-at-home variety through to the outright somewhere different every week but there's a couple of other um opinions to do with uh another thing that we mentioned last week that's right we also had some feedback from bill barker's email on creating an adventurers league Calum Burrell commented, I've been on some leagues, mainly linked to some tourism-related Facebook groups, and they've left me slightly underwhelmed. The leagues favour those participating who regularly have a 60% to 80% age-grade results. I certainly didn't feel the benefit of being in them, to be honest. Then we also had another comment from Helen Rudder, who added, Consistency pays off too, not just performance. An age grade is fairer than overall time. I like them. even though my age grade is very poor now. And that's probably due to the fact that Helen's been injured and she's out walking at the moment. Oh, but she's enjoying her walking, isn't she? She is. She had an excellent little trip over to Italy this week, a surprise trip.

00:08:08Melissa Ellis: I did see that in the socials. And we also heard, lastly, from Janet Reid, who chimed in on the episode post with the hashtag We Need Bucket Hats. And for those who aren't aware, Janet and Tracey Wood are campaigning for parkrun Australia to introduce bucket hats into their merch range, especially for the children and juniors. It was these bucket hats that Ollie was referring to in last week's pod, not the BBL KFC bucket hats, which is what I had in my brain.

00:08:38Tony O'Connell: Yes, Mel, I think it would present a difficult range of sponsorship. We started talking about wearing KFC bucket hats to juniors.

00:08:47Melissa Ellis: Yes, yeah, it doesn't really promote healthy eating, does it?

00:08:52Tony O'Connell: No, and especially with their little heads on the little kids' bucket hats, it'd just be right down over their head and it'd be like people running around crashing into things.

00:09:01Melissa Ellis: Okay, well, let's move on.

00:09:03Tony O'Connell: to our parkrun day just gone we're not going to talk about mine okay well I've seen our show notes we have a note not to ask so let's skip on shall we tell us about your day No, I had an awesome day. We had another road trip. Jack and Dano, our middle son, we piled into the car and headed to our mainland NENDY to complete event 134 at Jindabyne parkrun. And I say mainland NENDY, it was a seven and a half to eight hour drive for our friends in the UK that are literally surrounded by parkruns. That is the sort of thing that's becoming a little bit typical with a group of us now is our NENDYs are all eight or nine hour drives away. And now I know yours is a bit further.

00:09:59Melissa Ellis: Well, no, Tony, because Corowa has launched and we haven't been there yet.

00:10:04Tony O'Connell: Ah, okay. So we have one that's in the dot. We went up there. For me, it was a bit of an arbitrary completion of my volunteer alphabet, so I've volunteered at all the letters now. And we had a bit of a frond form. No, it was really great. Shout-outs to Helen and Stephen Davis, Bec Bailey, Jacqui and Dan O'Connell, Darren and Lucille Pead, Carolyn McRae, and Jan Manns, who all sort of rocked up, and a few of them, it wasn't their plan midweek, but They just noted where a couple of us were going, and we all got together and went out Friday night for tea, which was really good, and caught up on Saturday again. And another shout-out, and this one's from Ollie, for Michelle Harbour turned Jindy volunteer Galia Young, who was our Marshal on the day. So as I went around for the second time around the two-lap course, I actually walked back with Galia back and had a chat with her, which was really cool. Jindabyne, they're experiencing their second birth with the original event running from the 9th of June 2018 until the 14th of August 2021. And then they had a forced relocation due to Lake Jindabyne deciding that it wanted to be about two metres deep on the course. And they had to shift. They eventually... formed a secondary event up the hill a little bit, which became known as Jindabyne Sport and Recreation, which ran from the 30th of April 2022 until the 10th of June 2023. That was for 58 events. The venue is currently having a lot of building work in the area, so they had to relocate from there again. And fortunately, the flooding has receded, although some parts of the course are still showing almost water puddles. They're still fairly wet, relocated home for event 123 on the 25th of November. One of the highlights on the day was a bit funny. We were at the briefing. It was about two minutes' date. We were all just about ready to go. And all the pop-up sprinklers in the park all popped up and started sprinkling as they do. People were ducking and weaving everywhere. And, of course, the finish shoot, there's some great photos from the day. It's worth going and having a look. People jumping over sprinkler bursts and people running through and getting wet.

00:12:24Melissa Ellis: So they didn't get them turned off?

00:12:27Tony O'Connell: No, they're all automatically programmed thing and they're not something they can just go and turn a tap off, Mel. They ran for the entirety of parkrun and the finish chute was in the middle of a sprinkler zone for the whole of parkrun. I can actually picture it. Two-lap course. On the end of your first lap, you actually had to do the duck and weave as you came back through the sprinklers. So there were people going left, right and centre. And there's a great photo on the page of a fellow jumping over a squirt of water. It's really funny. And then quick breakfast after parky and back in the car for the eight-hour trip home. So that was my weekend, Mel.

00:13:09Melissa Ellis: Yeah, that sounds pretty good. And I can imagine that it isn't that long ago that I was actually up there myself at Jindabyne. I think I just went – towards the end of last year.

00:13:19Tony O'Connell: And it was a cracking day. I think they were expecting a top of 34 or 36 degrees or something up there on the edge of the lake. So there were plenty of people up there camping to make the most of the lakeside activities.

00:13:32Melissa Ellis: Now, time to move on to a little bit of news and discussion for this week.

Palm update

00:13:37Melissa Ellis: I believe you've got an update for us or some special announcements to do with Palm, Mr Party Planner.

00:13:45Tony O'Connell: We have an update, Mel. It is about time. It's probably overdue time for us to announce where... and when we'll be going to different places. And for those playing along at home, the event will be created on the parkrun adventurers Listener Meetup page in the next few days as well. And so we start off. Palm will kick off on Friday, the 12th of April, as we all know. Our first event, the Friday afternoon Freedo, will be at Picnic Point Parklands parkrun. And that is an alliteration. That is a lot of P's going on there, Mel. I've been practicing that one. Following that, we'll meet out for dinner and the venue that we're going out to for Friday night is the Southern Hotel in Ruthven Street in Toowoomba, naturally, since that's where Palm is. On to Saturday, our chosen event for the day is... South Toowoomba. Hooray! Where we will be hosted by our very own Eman as the Run Director for the day. So that will be sensational. And I really must thank Eman. Eman's done all the work on the ground this year. He's booked the venues. He's organised things. So big shout out to Eman. The podcast will be relocating. The actual cafe for South Toowoomba is a little bit away, so we're going to go to a venue that we can have for ourselves. We're going to a place called the Copper Bench Cafe where we have the whole venue booked for breakfast, following, and then our podcast recording. Wow. So we're all at the one place, similar to WA last year where we didn't have to move halfway through or anything. We have a whole cafe booked out. Just for ourselves, exclusive use. Saturday afternoon, we do another Freedo. And by then, it's usually a freedom walk for a lot of people, walk and talk. And that will be at Toowoomba Queen's parkrun course. Saturday night, we know the theme because everyone listened to our podcast last week, naturally. And for those that didn't, maybe you need to go back and listen to last week. But the Saturday night venue will be the Toowoomba Sports Club. Um, Once again, we have a function room booked for ourselves. Food and drink will be off the menu, so you can go and select whatever you like. We're not having any set menus or anything, but there will be a small cover charge on the Saturday night just because we've booked an exclusive room for ourselves. That'll be great. It'll be a great night. It's probably one of the highlights, the recording and then the night out, the fancy dress. Looking forward to seeing how people interpret our fancy dress theme this year, Mel. I think that's going to be a bit of an interesting assortment. I don't think we're going to have one theme running for the night. I think there's going to be several themes around a theme. Right. Moving on. Sunday morning, for those that haven't had enough of parkrun, and that's all of us, hopefully, Sunday morning, we're doing a Freedom Run again at Highfields parkrun. And then we go out for a Sunday breakfast, and we've chosen the Abbey Lane Cafe for breakfast, or Eman has organised the Abbey Cafe. Lane Cafe and from there the rest of the days for people to fill in around Toowoomba as they see fit or in our case jump in a car drive back quickly to Brisbane hop on a plane and fly home yes I've finally booked my flights I'm going to be flying in and out of Brisbane as well

00:17:38Melissa Ellis: And I'll be travelling from Brisbane on the Friday night with the lovely Belinda Taylor. But I don't know if I'm going to make it. I'm not going to make it in time for the Friday Freedo. Might make it for dinner. Depends how quickly we can get out of the CBD, I guess.

00:17:56Tony O'Connell: One of the things, Mel, with the events that go up on the page, we would like people to respond if they can, particularly for the Friday night dinner and the Saturday night, just so we have some indication of numbers that we can provide the venue with a bit of an update there. And for those people that are new to Palm, we actually have a messenger group that we've got set up. So by all means, flick us a message through the events and we can add you into the messenger group just so you can stay up to date. And they're designed not to be a general chit chat, but more a bit of information about the events and any changes and a heads up and that sort of thing over the weekend.

00:18:38Melissa Ellis: That's a really good point, TOC. So we would ask that as we get closer to the actual events that if people wanted to maybe have a little bit of a conversation with other people in the group, take that offline, take that into another chat and just leave that specific group for us to get information across.

00:18:56Tony O'Connell: Yeah, and that'll be information about the events and start times and all that sort of thing will all pop up in there.

00:19:03Melissa Ellis: Thank you. Thank you for bringing us all that. It's exciting. It's getting closer and closer, so something to look forward to.

00:19:12Tony O'Connell: Hard to believe, Mel, that it's only just over two months away now.

00:19:16Melissa Ellis: I've got to organise my costume and start dieting, I think. Anyway, thank you.

parkrun news bulletin

00:19:23Melissa Ellis: Very good. So next on our list of things to discuss, this is something that I've spotted in the media this week and I decided to bring it up and I'll be fair. I thought it was interesting that a Victorian beach is won the best beach in Australia and it was squeaky beach at the prom and it actually beat the farm in New South Wales the Killalea beach uh in taking out number one spot. I put this in to have a little dig and to cement our place as the greatest state, being that we've got the greatest beach. But you came in and edited my notes, Tony, and put a little twist. Credit where credit's due. I'll read what you've written. So Squeaky Beach announced as number one beach this year, betting the farm, which of course is the location of the beautiful Shellharbour parkrun. So despite the most beautiful being located near the magnificent and sunny Inverloch parkrun, this technically makes Shellharbour parkrun the most beautiful beach parkrun location in the country.

00:20:37Tony O'Connell: Now, I'm going to have to fess up here and say I didn't add that in. I'm thinking that. I'm thinking Ollie's been in the show notes this week.

00:20:54Melissa Ellis: Oh, now I know what the trick is to get him to do some work on the show notes. Oh, my God, I thought that was you that did that.

00:21:07Tony O'Connell: No, no, I would have just claimed it as being near Inverloch and left it at that. I wouldn't have then gone on to say it makes Shellharbour the most beautiful beach parkrun. Ooh. Because I can see an Ingrid out there with steam coming out of her ears saying, hang on, we're right on the beach.

00:21:24Melissa Ellis: Oh, I can't believe I didn't realise that he did that. Oh, you're so naughty, Ollie. I'm going to get you back just a few ways.

00:21:33Tony O'Connell: That's funny. Oh, well. Moving along from the Australian Tourism Awards, which clearly believe that Victoria has the best beaches, and moving into a bigger sense, Australia, Mel. We've blown apart our attendance record for the week, or for all time, with a whopping 81,222 participants this weekend. What?

00:22:02Melissa Ellis: How did this go up that quickly?

00:22:07Tony O'Connell: So every week. We go from record to record in Australia. That's across 467 events with an awesome 4,728 first-timers to parkrun. So the numbers every week are just growing and growing. That is about an average of 175 people per event. And so I'm doing some projection forward and I'm thinking – When we get to 571 events, we're going to hit 100,000 people. But then I went backwards, Mel, and I started to look at some of our previous highs pre-COVID, and the numbers per parkrun were actually higher, but we had less events. So I think we're going to hit 100,000. It's probably still a year away, but I think the numbers are just trending up and up every week. I know we've got our resolution runners at the moment, and we're still in that honeymoon period where people want to come along from their New Year's Eve We have, you know, in the southern states, we have footy season starting soon. and where we lose a number of people to football and netball and those sports. But I can see even towards the end of October where those sports are finished. Our numbers are going to start to peak earlier than they have previously. And by the time we get to next New Year's Eve, our numbers are just going to explode.

00:23:32Melissa Ellis: I'm sure that stats geeks must have graphs to show that growth as well.

00:23:38Tony O'Connell: Yeah, there's actually one on the parkrun Australia website.

00:23:42Melissa Ellis: Okay.

00:23:42Tony O'Connell: I use that because if you move your cursor along, it gives you the dot and tells you where things are.

00:23:47Melissa Ellis: Oh, okay, yeah.

00:23:48Tony O'Connell: I've been out of the loop. These numbers include the junior parkruns on the numbers that I've just given you. Obviously, we have five junior parkruns in Australia. Yeah. But even interestingly, Mel, 31 Australian events this week recorded attendance records. So it's 31. That's a big jump. And they range from Palm Creek up in northern Queensland, just up above Townsville, where they had an attendance record of 44, to one of my favourites, Cyril Curtain Reserve had 120. And the mothership, Lochiel came in with an attendance record of 524 this week without Janet. Janet took off and the numbers spiked. Janet was down at Meningie, of course, riding the ostriches. So, yeah, just interesting. One of the ones I've picked out of the 31, Launceston topped their record. They topped it by about 80 or 90 people. They had Festival in town, which is a three-day food, wine, cider, beer and music festival. And apparently... The big spike in people was in that 20 to 30-year age group. The friends that do parkrun dragged along friends. But interestingly, on the day, they had a junior RD, a young lass by the name of Abby, and she handled it beautifully. Such a big lot of numbers. Obviously, Abby had someone else with her, but yeah, Abby handled the crowd beautifully, apparently.

00:25:20Melissa Ellis: Very good. Well, that's exciting. But speaking of Launceston, there's a nice little link there to the next bit of information we've got, and that was that Martin Dent's 10-year main beach course record of 1443 has been overtaken by Launceston's very own James Hansen in a time of 1433. This record has stood for 10 years on a course that includes grass sections, and some trail and amongst James other highlights is that he is the Australian male parkrun record holder in 1353 and he set that back in august of 22 at launceston so there you go that was that was big news again in the socials um on Saturday a lot of things seem to be happening at launceston now and I haven't been there yet that's on my hit list I'm hoping to get there

00:26:15Tony O'Connell: We've done the course, but I think we may have done it on an older course. I think they've relocated since we did it slightly. I think part of their course has changed. We did it probably eight years ago, so I think they've had a little bit of a relocation. The start and finish is the same, but I don't think they cover some of the middle bit.

00:26:28[crosstalk]

00:26:34Paul - visiting parkrun tourist at Kangaroo Island: Okay.

00:26:34Tony O'Connell: It might have been a little bit too much like a road. Okay. Yeah, well, Patty Oshimo, last week he issued a bit of a nottie bingo challenge. So I thought, right here, I'm going to go and have a look at my weekly stats. We've had 190 weeks of notties so far. And I'm missing three times. My Bingoe card on the weekly results, I'm missing an 8, a 9, and a 39. So I think Paddy from Memory City had one to go, so he's actually got the wood on me there, Mel. But I'm pretty confident if I go in and break down my 1,327 individual notties, I've probably got most of the times covered.

00:27:18Melissa Ellis: Well, that's interesting because we don't know if Paddy's – actually basing his on his individual notties or the one that they only record one for the week, don't they?

00:27:29Tony O'Connell: They only show one for the week on your page, yeah.

00:27:32Melissa Ellis: And can you see that through the 5K app?

00:27:35Tony O'Connell: You can actually see it through your parkrun page when you go into the results. Oh, yeah, of course. Yeah. I haven't looked for it on the app, so I'm not sure.

00:27:43Melissa Ellis: Oh, okay. Oh, well, very good. Anyway, Paddy's got the wood on me with that one. Well done, Paddy.

00:27:48Tony O'Connell: I'm going to… Have to keep going with my notties. I'm just going to have to keep doing them.

00:27:52Melissa Ellis: Look out, Paddy. You've got someone breathing down your neck now. It's on. It's on like Donkey Kong.

00:27:59Tony O'Connell: I'm just going to have to keep doing notties. No excuse to let up.

00:28:03Melissa Ellis: Now, we've got some notes about reminders. That is that we do have and we are yet to announce the Palm exclusive merch, so stay tuned for that. And there was the reminder of the dress-up theme. Are we going to say it, TOC, or are we going to make them listen to last week?

00:28:24Tony O'Connell: I reckon we make them listen to last week.

00:28:26Melissa Ellis: Okay.

00:28:27Tony O'Connell: For those that are involved in that messenger group, there was a spoiler put on there as well. I know. There was. Someone beat me to it. I was going to put up a post and say, when you listen to the pod, don't give a spoiler. And I went to bed and woke up the next day to a spoiler. Some people actually get the pod mail and they listen to it straight away, apparently. Yes. Some of us save it for the road trip to parkrun or whatever. Some of us listen to it.

00:28:56Melissa Ellis: straight away yeah yeah yeah yeah and you can tell I could tell who hasn't listened and I who isn't a listener because of all the messages I received to say you weren't at parkrun are you okay and I'm like oh I know you haven't listened to this anyway okay I think that's long enough for our intro which has gone for half an hour um

00:29:20[background music]

Roving reports & the Channel 5 News crew

00:29:23Melissa Ellis: It's time now for us to throw to our roving reports. So let's have a listen.

Roving report Paul Kitching — Kangaroo Island parkrun

00:29:37Paul Kitching: Good morning, parkrun adventurers. This is PK checking in for a roving report from overseas. Okay, not overseas, but over some one sea. I'm coming to you from Kangaroo Island. Kangaroo Island is the massive island to the south of Adelaide. And I'm here... to do parkrun oh okay to do parkrun and also to tour around this beautiful beautiful part of the world which I think is like in the top 10 places to visit in the world now anyway and it is certainly a divine beautiful part of the world come and check it out and we're about to do its parkrun so let's go and check it out see who's here

00:30:21Paul Kitching: and now I'm uh at the end of the beautiful course and I've caught up with some legends who I saw out on the course uh g'day Paul how you going I'm doing well actually after that yeah well done you are from Gunnersbury ealing eagles reading your um your vitality parkrun top which is of course from the UK it is indeed yeah fantastic and Jackie how you going I'm I'm great thanks feeling a lot better having done that Well done. So why did you choose to come to Kangaroo Island parkrun?

00:30:50Paul - visiting parkrun tourist at Kangaroo Island: To the parkrun because it's here. Yeah, exactly. Correct answer. Because there's so much beautiful stuff to see and visit here.

00:30:51[crosstalk]

00:30:56Jackie - visiting parkrun tourist at Kangaroo Island: Yeah, touring South Australia and we had to include Kangaroo Island. Yes.

00:30:59[crosstalk]

00:30:59Paul Kitching: Which has been amazing. Well done. And what's been your favourite thing so far?

00:31:05Jackie - visiting parkrun tourist at Kangaroo Island: We did a tour yesterday, a wildlife and nature tour and that was stunning.

00:31:08Paul Kitching: Whereabouts was that? uh well we started here we went to flinders chase yes seal bay oh yes up to stokes bay beautiful Vivonne, Vivonne, Vivonne Bay it was just fabulous saw the sea lions the seals lots of dolphins did you have lunch in Vivonne Bay we did did you have the whiting burger we did of course same same well done uh and what's parkrun mean to you Paul

00:31:13[crosstalk]

00:31:22[crosstalk]

00:31:32Paul - visiting parkrun tourist at Kangaroo Island: It means collecting, I think.

00:31:34Paul Kitching: Collecting, I like it.

00:31:35Paul - visiting parkrun tourist at Kangaroo Island: I seem to be collecting them over the years. That's good. This is my 88th venue. Oh, wow, that's impressive. 330th run.

00:31:37[crosstalk]

00:31:42Jackie - visiting parkrun tourist at Kangaroo Island: We've done the whole alphabet. Oh, wow.

00:31:44Paul - visiting parkrun tourist at Kangaroo Island: I'm starting now on an Australian alphabet.

00:31:46Paul Kitching: Oh, my gosh. That's impressive. Thank you so much for coming out to parkrun.

00:31:51Paul Kitching: I'm going to talk to these legends who are here from Perth. G'day.

00:31:53Joan - visiting parkrunner from Perth: Hi, how are you?

00:31:54Paul Kitching: What's your name again? I'm so sorry. Hello, Joan. I'm PK and... Jim. Hello, Jim. Joan and Jim. I love it. And what's your home, parkrun?

00:32:01Joan - visiting parkrunner from Perth: We're at Mount Helena in Perth.

00:32:03Paul Kitching: Fantastic. And what brings you to Kangaroo Island?

00:32:06Joan - visiting parkrunner from Perth: Well, again, we're touring around and you cannot not come to Kangaroo Island when you're this far south. Indeed. And we've heard so many wonderful things about it, so we're here for 10 days to explore. Yes.

00:32:15Paul Kitching: Well done.

00:32:16Joan - visiting parkrunner from Perth: And, of course, tick off a strange parkrun.

00:32:20Paul Kitching: Yes. What does parkrun mean to you, Jim?

00:32:22Jim - visiting parkrunner from Perth: Well, it's a community thing and it's something that can get the whole community together. And we particularly enjoy our friends at Mount Helena where that's our home run. So we enjoy that. And it's just great to help to keep yourself fit and a bit motivated to do something.

00:32:38Paul Kitching: Love it. Fantastic. Thank you so much. You're welcome. Short and sweet. We can now go and enjoy our breakfast that we've earned, right? Absolutely. Well done. Thank you, guys. Thank you. Cheers.

00:32:48Paul Kitching: And now I'm with Deb, who I said, are you one of the EDs here? And she's like, I might as well be. I think everyone just pitches in, right?

00:32:55Deb - Kangaroo Island parkrun volunteer and local park ranger: Yeah, we're a small little community here. Fantastic. So I guess we could all say we're equally EDs. But no, Tessa, shall I? she put in the hard yards and got this set up.

00:33:03Paul Kitching: Awesome. Nice one.

00:33:04Deb - Kangaroo Island parkrun volunteer and local park ranger: Just a little wingman.

00:33:05Paul Kitching: Well, I did mention the halfway marker that says, woohoo! And did you claim to do that?

00:33:11Deb - Kangaroo Island parkrun volunteer and local park ranger: Yes, that's my park ranger in me about positive messaging.

00:33:11[crosstalk]

00:33:14Paul Kitching: Yeah, I love it. Well, it certainly helped when I got to the halfway mark and actually on the turnaround post, it says, woohoo! You've got to love that at a parkrun. This is a beautiful parkrun. This is your local?

00:33:26Deb - Kangaroo Island parkrun volunteer and local park ranger: This is at my local, yes. So I think this parkrun's been going for... I'm going to say at least just over eight years because I have been pregnant and had four children in the duration of parkrun here on Kangaroo Island. So that's how I remember how long it's been going.

00:33:38Paul Kitching: Awesome. Well, it's a beautiful parkrun. What's the average number you get here?

00:33:42Deb - Kangaroo Island parkrun volunteer and local park ranger: Well, Tess is probably good with that because she enters in the data. But I would say what we've got today, we've got close to 30. I would say it really peaks in the summer, obviously, to reflect the tourism. But I would say around 20. But then I think the actual record, Tess was only saying this the other day, was well over 100. So after the bushfires, we had the army over here helping. Of course. And I think we had over 100. Wow. But we had like the literal drill sergeant.

00:34:00[crosstalk]

00:34:07Paul Kitching: Yeah, man, they would have been probably lots of fast finishes.

00:34:12Deb - Kangaroo Island parkrun volunteer and local park ranger: Yeah, but winter's tough and it probably drops down to under 10. Yeah, that's right.

00:34:15[crosstalk]

00:34:16Paul Kitching: That's when you can come and get your top 10 finish.

00:34:19Deb - Kangaroo Island parkrun volunteer and local park ranger: Yes, that's right.

00:34:19Paul Kitching: That's the beautiful thing about it.

00:34:20Deb - Kangaroo Island parkrun volunteer and local park ranger: That's the best thing about this. Like today I looked at you and I was trying to chase you because I was thinking about our age group, at least a different gender, because usually you can go home and you can look at your results and go, you got best in your age group.

00:34:31Unidentified speaker: Woo-hoo!

00:34:32Paul Kitching: Well done. Thank you so much, Deb. Maybe have a jump in the pool. We'll see. Thank you so much. No problem. Cheers. Yes, well, I have done Kangaroo Island parkrun and it is beautiful. And I'm now doing what any sensible person who has just sweated it out at any parkrun should do, have a swim. So this is me signing off saying see you later, Kangaroo Island parkrun. It's been amazing. I'm going to go and have a swim and literally I'm going to hand my phone over to Esme. Thanks, Es. What am I doing now?

00:35:06Esme - PK's daughter: He's walking into the tidal pool. Oh, he's fully in the... Oh... There he goes. How is it, Dad?

00:35:15Paul Kitching: Oh, yeah. That's good. Good action shot.

00:35:19Deb - Kangaroo Island parkrun volunteer and local park ranger: Yeah. Thank you.

Roving report Sarah Jefferson

Interview Tim Franklin — ultra-runner running around the world; Brisbane parkrunner (South Bank and New Farm)

00:35:23Sarah Jefferson: Good morning, parkrun adventurers. It's Sarah here from the West Side, and this morning I'm checking in with Tim Franklin. Good morning, Tim.

00:35:30[background music]

00:35:30Tim Franklin: Morning, Sarah. Morning, Tim.

00:35:32Sarah Jefferson: So it's actually a Sunday morning, and Tim has just completed, is it 30Ks this morning?

00:35:37Tim Franklin: 30Ks, yep.

00:35:38Sarah Jefferson: Nice. So Tim arrived back in Australia yesterday at Cottesloe parkrun. Tim, could you tell us where you'd come from and a little bit about your story?

00:35:46Tim Franklin: So most recently, I just flew in from Singapore, but I'm on the adventure of a lifetime. I'm actually running around the world. I'm from Brisbane, Australia. I started with South Bank parkrun in Brisbane 428 days ago, and I've been lucky enough to run across New Zealand, North America, South America, Europe, and just most recently Malaysia and Singapore for my little Asian stint and I'm 19,170 kilometres into my 26,000 kilometre journey across the world.

00:36:10[background music]

00:36:18Sarah Jefferson: Crazy. So that's about 7,000 Ks to go?

00:36:22Tim Franklin: Yeah, 7,000 Ks to go. Just hugging the coastline of southern Australia.

00:36:27Sarah Jefferson: So the home stretch, right?

00:36:30Tim Franklin: The world's longest sprint finish.

00:36:33Sarah Jefferson: So no doubt you've had some incredible adventures. Could you maybe share, say, three top adventures or three memorable places or experiences with the listeners?

00:36:44Tim Franklin: can do. The first one and one of the highlights I had was running over the Andes in South America, down in Patagonia region of Argentina and Chile, just phenomenal part of the world. I'd never been there before. Chileans were lovely. Argentinians were lovely. There was snow over my head that pushed onto the roads, but the sun was out. One of the best experiences of my life running across two countries, 3,000 metres above sea level. Unreal. And then I ran the Thames Path in London, and that was awesome. That was a great little adventure running through London, private paddocks along the river, through pubs, unreal experience. And, oh, third one. Third one had to have been landing back here in Oz and seeing a beach and people out enjoying the sun. I've been in the cold for so much of this trip. That was amazing. And I was really lucky to have my sister and my brother had flown in to see me land here in Perth. So, yeah, they're probably the three highlights.

00:37:25[background music]

00:37:52Sarah Jefferson: Awesome. And we were stoked that you chose Cottesloe parkrun as your starting place back in Australia. So how many kilometres would you run a day on average?

00:38:05Tim Franklin: So running wise, every time I run, I think my daily average is about 53 and a half kilometres. And then I think all up, it's about 47 and a half, 48 Ks as an average, including all my rest and travel days and injury and everything.

00:38:21Sarah Jefferson: And that's 428 days straight.

00:38:23Tim Franklin: Of doing that. Yeah, 428 days straight.

00:38:23[crosstalk]

00:38:26Sarah Jefferson: Phenomenal. And can you share a little bit about your inspirations for beginning this crazy journey?

00:38:33Tim Franklin: Yeah, so my why, if you will, is a few fold. One is I wanted to go on an adventure of a lifetime. I'd just gone school, uni, full-time work. And I got to an age where it's a now or never to have a bit of a gap year. So that was one of the reasons I wanted an adventure. But it's deeper than that. Is we just lived through COVID. I myself at one stage had a really sedentary life. And then I started moving. And... what movement has done for me and the people I've met, but my health, both physically, mentally and emotionally, just, it's done everything for me. It's now my lifestyle. You know, it's what I do for a living. I'm lucky enough to coach adults and kids. Um, so that, that's a why. I'd love everyone, if everyone can feel the endorphin release of, you know, like coming across the finish line in a parkrun, knowing that you've achieved that when you didn't think that was possible is the coolest thing ever. And I want everyone to feel that. Um, And then I've obviously got charity partners for my run, which are more than just, I'm just going to pick a charity and go with it. But I work with them. I've been involved with them for years. And that's Inspiring Brighter Futures, which helps at-risk kids. I've also got the Lung Foundation. One of my support crew lost her mother to lung cancer. So I'd love to... help out there, find a cure or quality of life for longer. And then there is Wings for Life, which is spinal cord injuries. And you know, those guys don't have the privilege of running like or walking and I'd hate to take that for granted. So if I can find a cure or raise awareness for those guys, then yeah, that's probably my wise.

00:39:00[background music]

00:39:45[background music]

00:40:05[background music]

00:40:07Sarah Jefferson: Yeah, I love that. And you're right, it puts things into perspective of how much we do actually have and how many opportunities we all do have. Now, Tim, you are a parkrunner. Is that right? Tim's just grabbing a drink. It's okay. You can have your drink. You've just been running for 30 k's. So you are a parkrunner. Is that correct?

00:40:24[crosstalk]

00:40:24Tim Franklin: I am. I love it. Every Saturday. You'll find me.

00:40:25[background music]

00:40:27Sarah Jefferson: South Bank, generally?

00:40:28Tim Franklin: Yeah, so South Bank, New Farm.

00:40:31Sarah Jefferson: Yep.

00:40:32Tim Franklin: And just coming out of COVID, I actually did a tour to parkrun. So we did sort of Brisbane and every week we went to a different one that we hadn't been to before. But yeah, I'm a parkrunner from way back.

00:40:42Sarah Jefferson: Awesome. And I did have a look at your profile yesterday. So I think we said, was it 8806, your quickest?

00:40:47[crosstalk]

00:40:47Tim Franklin: 8806 is my quickest, yeah.

00:40:48Sarah Jefferson: 8806, your quickest time. So not only are you fast, but you've got the stamina as well. So phenomenal. Also, just a little bit of your inspiration. No doubt you've been on a bit of a roller coaster of emotions throughout this journey. So... For those people who might not have been to parkrun, they're still listening to the podcast, maybe they haven't been to parkrun for a little while, what are some inspirations you can just share when you've been struggling to get you out there?

00:41:15[background music]

00:41:16Tim Franklin: Yeah, I think... One thing is surround yourself with people that wanna make you better or that you wanna be better around. And usually people that parkrun are driven people, positive people, successful people that just wanna be better. So if you can surround yourself with those type of people, life's gonna be a lot easier. And then also, when you're motivated, and motivation doesn't necessarily last forever, when you're motivated, build habits that do last forever. So for instance, if you know that you're on a parkrun on a Saturday morning, lay all your clothes out on a Friday night. Give yourself no excuse as to why you can't get up and then you might wake up at 6.30, 7 and be like, oh, I'm tired. Look over, your clothes are there. Just get up, do the habit, put the clothes on, have your coffee or your drink or your banana or whatever and just get out the door.

00:42:00[background music]

00:42:07Sarah Jefferson: Love that. And then before too long, it's done, right?

00:42:09Tim Franklin: And then it's done. It's done. It's over. And by nine o'clock, you're off to a flyer. You're ahead of the game. You can enjoy your weekend. Awesome.

00:42:17Sarah Jefferson: If people want to follow your journey, because it is an incredible journey and you've still got a little bit to go, not too far to go, where can they find you?

00:42:23Tim Franklin: The best place to find me is on Instagram, just at Timmy R Franklin, or just search Tim runs the world. And then my website's just Tim runs the world.com.

00:42:34Sarah Jefferson: Yep. Fabulous. And hopefully when you're on the home stretch, you'll be aiming to finish. Where would you hope to finish?

00:42:40Tim Franklin: I have to finish. I have to finish where I started, which is South bank in Brisbane. And the aim now is I started with South bank parkrun and the aim is to finish with South bank parkrun. And also I want to do parkruns all the way across. So if I land near a parkrun and it happens to be a Saturday morning, I'll be there.

00:43:00Sarah Jefferson: Yeah, fabulous. So if there's anyone in Adelaide, I guess anywhere along the south coast, Albany, up the north coast of New South Wales as well, keep following Tim's journey. Hopefully you can meet him somewhere, catch him for a parkrun. He's a true inspiration and we've loved having him in WA. So we had to get down here this morning and have a run with him. So thank you for sharing your journey and good luck for the rest of your journey.

00:43:20[background music]

00:43:24Tim Franklin: Awesome. Thanks for having me.

00:43:25Sarah Jefferson: Thank you.

Roving report Lyndell Murray — Newy parkrun

00:43:27Lyndell Murray: Good morning, parkrun adventurers. It's Lyndell and I am visiting the lands of the Awabakal people. And I've tracked down Run Director Simon at Newy parkrun. G'day, Simon. How are you today?

00:43:35[background music]

00:43:40Simon - Run Director, Newy parkrun: G'day. Yeah, very well. It's a beautiful day here at Newy today. It's lovely temperatures. Nice bit of breeze to keep everyone cool. It's been a great day for an event.

00:43:47Lyndell Murray: It has been. I'm from Queensland. This is absolutely, absolutely pleasant for me.

00:43:51[crosstalk]

00:43:51Simon - Run Director, Newy parkrun: Yeah, I'm sure, yeah. You should be wearing a jacket or something.

00:43:54Lyndell Murray: Yes, pretty much.

00:43:55[background music]

00:43:55Simon - Run Director, Newy parkrun: I think it's going to heat up here over the weekend. I think it's going to get to 38 maybe Monday. Yeah. Yeah, hang around.

00:44:00Lyndell Murray: Okay, yes. Now, Newy parkrun, event 555. I dragged a 555, even though that was always unofficial and now it's frowned upon. It's still something that people recognise and you had quite a big crowd here today.

00:44:13Simon - Run Director, Newy parkrun: The numbers have been up since the beginning of the year. We often see a big influx of new runners, obviously people making news resolutions and that sort of thing. So the numbers have been very high since then. They will drop off. I mean, we normally manage about 500 to 600 comfortably most weeks. We're up over 700 at the moment, I think. But when things like school sports and Saturday sports and things start kicking off on Saturday mornings, the numbers will start to dwindle a little bit and we might get back to what our normal sort of run numbers are.

00:44:38[crosstalk]

00:44:40Lyndell Murray: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Now, Event 555 also means that you have been going quite a while here in Newy.

00:44:45Simon - Run Director, Newy parkrun: Yeah. So it started over 10, ooh, 11 years ago now. Dave Robertson started it off with, I think it was about maybe 27 runners initially. Yeah. We've... We've just had our first 500-runner finish. There was a big celebration for that. That occurred towards the end of last year, I think in November last year. And that's a runner who's been primarily running Newcastle parkrun. She pretty much lives on course, actually. I think she's got a house over the creek there. So, yeah, there's big numbers here now. We have come in regularly in the top few parkruns, around Australia in terms of numbers. I think there's been a couple of times, I think, where we've been the biggest. So, yeah, it's a big event. It takes a lot of volunteers to run it. As you can see as you look around now, there's an awful lot of people wearing the red parkrun volunteer vests making it all happen.

00:45:00[background music]

00:45:30[background music]

00:45:37Lyndell Murray: There is. You have a lot of volunteers on course. What number of volunteers do you need here?

00:45:41Simon - Run Director, Newy parkrun: It's normally about 25 or so to get the thing running. As you can see, we haven't got an awful lot of space here for the finish. So we have to kind of manage a large number of people finishing a race in a relatively small amount of room. So the system has been evolving over time and continues to do so as you make little improvements here or there. You may notice... For this event, we started putting some seeding information on our flag line there to give people a good idea about where they should be placing themselves to try and thin out some of the early part of the race, particularly around that first bend where things can get a bit congested.

00:45:55[background music]

00:46:09[crosstalk]

00:46:17Lyndell Murray: Yep, yep, yep. All right. Now, I did see Robbo out on course. Robbo is a longtime friend of the podcast, actually. Do you have lots of runners that have just been here the whole time? Are you one of them, Simon?

00:46:30Simon - Run Director, Newy parkrun: That does seem to be the way. I wouldn't count myself amongst that crew, no. I think I'm coming up, I'll be doing my 250th this year.

00:46:38Unidentified speaker: Yep.

00:46:40Simon - Run Director, Newy parkrun: Now, that may seem like a lot, but when you look at some of the numbers some of the people are getting now, like the 500s, you're still a rookie. To be part of the crew, though, and actually to know some of the guys and to be able to work with them on keeping this thing running is a real honour. It's good to see them still coming back. The more you do this every week, the more faces you realise you just see every week, the more friendlier it gets. The crowds are starting to thin out now, but the amount of people who are just standing around having a chat... at the end of the race is all really encouraging, which gives me an opportunity, of course, to get back on the mic and start to harass people to volunteer again a little bit for the next couple of weeks.

00:46:45[crosstalk]

00:46:55[background music]

00:47:02[crosstalk]

00:47:14[crosstalk]

00:47:17Lyndell Murray: Now, I'll let you go in a moment, just quickly, a description for Newy of the course.

00:47:23Simon - Run Director, Newy parkrun: Okay, so the course is around the creek, the Crosby, Throsby, sorry, Throsby Creek. It's an out-and-back course. The creek's on one side of you. There's normally houses and residential areas on the other. It runs around a bit of a mangrove swamp at one end as well. A very attractive mangrove swamp. It is a very attractive mangrove swamp. And in certain times of the year, you'll see it's just full of bats and it can get pretty noisy. It's pretty exciting. It is a beautiful place to run. You're out two and a half. You've got 180 degrees switchback and then you're back the same two and a half that you've run. It's... A bit of mixed terrain? Yeah, a bit of mixed terrain. It's mostly paths. It's pebble creek in some areas. There's a little cafe on the road, you know, but we don't encourage anyone to stop and have a coffee midway through because it tends to hold up the volunteers getting home. And, I mean, being in Newy, the weather's always pretty temperate. It can get a bit warm here in some mornings, get a bit sweaty, but those are rare. Normally, there's a lovely breeze coming off the sea like today to keep everyone a bit cool and fresh. Yeah, it's a beautiful place to work.

00:47:25[background music]

00:48:25Lyndell Murray: Excellent. Now, is there anything else you'd like the parkrun adventurers to know about Newy?

00:48:29Simon - Run Director, Newy parkrun: Only that, I guess if you haven't run here, come and run here, I guess. I mean, we are, I didn't want it to come across that we're complaining about big numbers. Of course we're not. You know, the more, the better here. So if you haven't come to Newy, you find yourself in the area. I know Newcastle doesn't necessarily get an awful lot of tourists in, which is kind of why we like it. But in terms of parkrun tourism, yeah, get yourselves down here. Get yourself down here fairly early. Parking can be a bit of a problem if it's a big week. So get down here a little bit early, get yourself a parking spot locally and get into it. It's a great run.

00:48:35[background music]

00:49:02Lyndell Murray: Brilliant. Thank you, Simon. Thank you for taking the time out of your busy day to talk to me. And thank you for everything that you have done and will continue to do for Newy parkrun.

00:49:12Simon - Run Director, Newy parkrun: No problem. Thank you very much.

00:49:22Tony O'Connell: And there we go, Mel. That was an excellent set of three roving reports. We heard from PK at Kangaroo Island, and that has to be one of the ideal bucket list destinations. KI to me is just a place. I have a list in my phone, and KI is one of those. The list isn't that long. I've only got about 15 or so in Australia that are on the list. 15? Well, there's a lot I want to go to, but there's a bucket, bucket list. And KI is definitely one of them. And PK was talking to some of the tourists there and one of the event team, Deb. We heard from Sarah with Tim Franklin. As a person that likes running some distance, Mel, I cannot conceive how you would possibly run that far for that many consecutive days and still look forward to getting out and doing a parkrun. That's just amazing. You know, cars get serviced more often than that. I mean, how does he handle fatigue? How does he handle just the body wearing down? It's an amazing run, and congrats to him. And he didn't actually say, though, when he was planning on getting back to South Bank, he did say that was where he was going to finish, but he didn't actually give us a date for it.

00:50:44Melissa Ellis: No, we'll have to follow along on Insta, I suppose.

00:50:48Tony O'Connell: Follow along and listen to it.

00:50:49Melissa Ellis: But I liked the comments around yourself with driven people. That's really something that I've always sort of aspired to do, not only with my running but just generally in life, like people that are – I don't know.

00:51:06Tony O'Connell: People with a purpose and a goal. People with a purpose, yeah. Yeah, a focus.

00:51:07[crosstalk]

00:51:10Melissa Ellis: And when you're doing things, build a team of experts, you know. Oh, jeez, and you brought me in to sit and talk about a podcast.

00:51:19Tony O'Connell: Oh, fail. No, not at all. And lastly – Sorry.

00:51:24Melissa Ellis: No, no, I was just going to add that I find that runners are generally really positive people because, look, you don't get out of bed to go for a run unless you're a happy, positive person, do you? All those grumpy people don't get out of bed.

00:51:38Tony O'Connell: No, unless you've got a bit of a function.

00:51:41Melissa Ellis: Yeah.

00:51:41Tony O'Connell: Maybe the grumpy people are the ones that run at midday. I don't know. I don't see them. I see happy people in the morning and the evening.

00:51:48Melissa Ellis: Exactly. Anyway.

00:51:49Tony O'Connell: And lastly, we heard from Lyndell at Newy. Lyndell was having a chat with the RD, Simon, and he said, Yeah, it was a course that featured on a couple of years ago, O'Neill Palm up at Newcastle.

00:52:03Melissa Ellis: Yeah, our Friday Freedo it was at Newy. And Lyndell's up there, of course, for the Oceania. Oceania? How do you say that word, Tony?

00:52:12Tony O'Connell: Oceania. Oceania.

00:52:14Melissa Ellis: their triathlon para championships. And she commented that Robbo, he was also at Newy on Saturday and also Lauren Parker. He was her personal handler on Saturday and Sunday to help her win the Oceania championship for para triathlon wheelchair category. Wow.

00:52:33Tony O'Connell: And he's a top bloke, Robbo. And well done to Lauren as well on her win.

Dazza's

00:52:39Melissa Ellis: Absolutely. But now it's time for Dazza's. And this week, Dazza said, it's ice cream for breakfast day. Come on in. Tell us if there was ice cream included in your breakfast and share your parkrun stories.

00:52:54Tony O'Connell: And some of our comments, Mel, this week, and I think there was about 150 comments, and I must apologise early for people out there that... Put some emojis into their comments, my little cut-paste effort. All the emojis disappeared, Mel, so if there's a bit of blank silence there, that's because I've made a mistake. But firstly, we heard from Heather Hunter from New South Wales, of course. Apparently, I couldn't decide whether I wanted to wear short or long tights today for marshalling at Forster. I almost ordered pancakes with ice cream for breakfast but changed my mind at the last minute. If only I'd known about this special day. And the pick was Heather in the volunteer vest out marshalling on course. And I'm not sure whether she's got one leg in long shorts and the other one in short longs or what, but one's up above the knee and one's well down below the knee. So, yeah, an odd picture, Heather, but well done for marshalling.

00:53:54Melissa Ellis: We also heard from Alison King coming to us from New Zealand and she said, ice cream for breakfast, you say? I'll take that and raise you breakfast, lunch and dinner. Vicky Bruin and I met up after our respective parkruns. I was RD at Paranga and she ran a new PB at the University of Waikato, for an ice cream crawl around Hamilton. Five stops and nine scoops later, the winning stop was stop number three at Duck Island, where I had fig leaf and raspberry ripple and toasted marshmallow, while Vicky had blueberry buttermilk and gooey butter cake and coconut caramel sesame chocolate peanut. Oh, my goodness. Here we are at our fifth and final stop, and Alison sent a really good photo of herself and Vicky walking holding those very yummy sounding ice creams. And we wanted to say a special congratulations to Alison as actually her 250th, I think it was last week. And because we didn't have our usual reports provided, we missed it. So we're very sorry, Alison, but congratulations on your 250th.

00:54:59Tony O'Connell: And congratulations on a fantastic description of a couple of ice creams that make me want to go to New Zealand now to taste test ice creams.

00:55:07Melissa Ellis: Makes me want to eat ice cream.

00:55:10Tony O'Connell: Next we heard from Anne Fry. Oh, salted caramel or golden north giant twinned. Today I RD'd at Anstey with some fantastic volunteers, including three at the finish line who were either taking on new roles and or volunteering at our event for the first time, plus a couple of amazing regulars and Buffy who cheered everyone on. At the picture there was Anne and the Anstey team in a beautiful looking bush setting and that Actually made me think that sounds pretty cool looking track, Mel. I like the bush and the trails. That one looked really good.

00:55:48Melissa Ellis: It is very good. I've done Anstey. You would love it. Go and do it in the cold weather and it's all misty and lovely.

00:55:56Rachel - Club Corner contributor: Cool.

00:55:57Melissa Ellis: Now, we also heard from Cathy Crispin coming to us from Queensland and she said, no ice cream and I forgot to have a selfie with Rocky at Panania parkrun. I was just too excited being back at my home event and seeing people. And there was a pic of Cathy with a great big smile. So she obviously likes being at home at Panania.

00:56:16Tony O'Connell: Well done. Back in South Australia, Jonathan Morgan. Ice cream would not have survived long at South Para Reservoir parkrun, given the high of 35 degrees Celsius today, but plenty of fruit and cake to celebrate the RD's 29th, again, birthday. Volunteered as roving photographer out on the course. And there's a picture of Jonathan and the South Para volunteer team sheltering from the sun under a big tree and all around them, bright, bright sunshine.

00:56:47Melissa Ellis: I believe our friend Brendan Peel was out at South Para this weekend as well. Now, we heard from the lovely Rebecca Bailey, also coming to us from New South Wales. New South Wales is well represented this week, I just might say. And she said, well, Dazza, there's a mountain bike race on in Thredbo this afternoon. So I thought, why not make a weekend of it and grab a new event location as well? Check the volley roster for Jindabyne on Wednesday to make sure they were all good and didn't need any more volleys. What do I see? A Tony O'Connell on the roster. Message the one and only TOC that I know. Turns out it's him. And there's a frond at Jindy this Saturday. Fantastic. Love an unplanned frond. Well, me being in this frond was unplanned. Left work at 5pm Friday for a nice five-hour drive down, set up my tent at NRMA and went off to sleep. Beautiful view to wake up to in the morning and the course runs right past the campsite. Bonus! Ten-minute walk to the start with the stunning lake views on a bluebird day. Had a jog around, had nice coffee, said goodbye to the friendly friends, then off 30 minutes up the hill to Thredbo for a great day's riding and racing. Dazza... I think this Saturday just pushed Jindabyne parkrun into my top three and I get to ride more bikes tomorrow. And we had a lovely photo. And Bec shared a pic doing a zoomie in front of Lake Jindabyne.

00:58:10Tony O'Connell: Yeah, it was really good to see Bec up there as a bit of an unplanned and surprise day. And her campsite, while I was walking the second lap, Bec was back packing her campsite up because she had to take off for the bike run. And her campsite was almost on the parkrun course at the same time as being on the edge of a lake. So very convenient for parkrun. Right, staying in New South Wales and continuing a bit of a trend up there, we heard from Sam Schroder. Filled up a bus and joined some friends at Two Rivers Wines parkrun. What a blast. And the photo that Sam shared was a pic of a bus and a large group of occupants. And for those that are not familiar with what Sam's up to at the moment, Sam is organising a couple of trips with a group of parkrun friends and taking them out to different parkruns, out to, I guess, different areas. There's a Facebook group called Sam's Plans for those that are interested and It's just a group of like-minded people getting away and experiencing a new parkrun in a different area.

00:59:21Melissa Ellis: Much like the way that Andy Airey does it over in the UK. Very much. Now, I had to throw some Victorian ones into this, Dazza's. This week, TOC and I chose Billo coming to us from Victoria. And he said, hey, Dazza, what a great day with these legends at Maribyrnong parkrun, followed by an ice cream iced coffee for myself and Jamie, while the lovely Jodie Maisie had an ice cream iced chai latte. Now, say that three times fast. There was a pic of Billo, Jamie and Jodie with their ice cream milkshakes.

00:59:55Tony O'Connell: Very good. Now, going a bit further afield, Tracy May from the UK. That almost rolls off the tongue really well. Half a triple choc muffin and a cup of tea to celebrate my 100 volunteer at Irchester Country parkrun this morning. It was a little cold for ice cream. And Tracy provided a picture of the muffin. And congratulations, Tracy, on the 100 volunteer milestone. Excellent work.

01:00:22Melissa Ellis: Wonderful. And we heard also from Phil Olson in the UK, and he said 250 venues completed at Dinton Pastures yesterday. And he shared a picture of himself showing his custom 250 shirt, which was really cool. Had all these little boxes sort of on the back like pixelations. Couldn't see the writing. Don't know if it named events or not. But, yeah, looked really cool. So well done, Phil. That's a good achievement. Cool.

the Obi Award — Alison Fraser (King)

01:00:51Melissa Ellis: Yeah. Now, an envelope. Mr O'Connell, do you have it there?

01:00:58Tony O'Connell: Well, I have an envelope in my hot little hands.

01:01:02Melissa Ellis: Oh, I can see. I got the camera ready.

01:01:04Tony O'Connell: And what's more, the envelope has a name in it. Now, this week's Obi is... Alison King. Alison King.

01:01:25Melissa Ellis: Oh, I'm trying to get that in. There we go. Excellent. Thank you. Congratulations, Alison. It was a week late, but well-deserved for your 250th and some really cool-sounding ice creams.

01:01:38Tony O'Connell: Yeah, the ice cream's got me. Congrats on the 250, Alison. But, yeah, I'm going to have to find this Duck Island. It sounds really awesome.

Emails

01:01:46Melissa Ellis: Now, would you like to read the email?

01:01:50Tony O'Connell: Certainly, Mel. This week we had an email from Eman, and it says, Hey, team, looking forward to hosting you all in April at Australia's Garden City. We are pumped to have so many adventurers check out our little part of regional Australia. On Saturday, Team Vergara went on a cheeky parkrun adventure a long weekend to Tokyo and participated in – oh, hang on, Mel, you've stitched me here – Futakotamagawa parkrun in Tokyo. Thanks, Mel. The country's first parkrun event. I should have read that. No wonder you didn't have a name beside this on the running sheet. Back to the email. It was cold and windy, but clear skies allowed us to see Mount Fuji in the distant horizon. We joined the event team for coffee afterwards, and it was great to hear how parkrun Japan is growing. Here's a couple of pics from the morning. Eman.

01:02:50Melissa Ellis: And he shared a photo of himself with the lovely Christine and little baby Juno in the running pram out there, I would imagine, at the event because I can see some Marshals wearing their volley vests in the background. One of them's got a rainbow mohawk. That's quite interesting. Unless I'm looking at that wrong. And another one with the parkrun flag and their Toowoomba Roadrunners team flag. Yeah.

01:03:14Tony O'Connell: That team flag gets around a little bit. I think I've seen that at a couple of events in photos at events.

01:03:19Melissa Ellis: Yeah.

01:03:20Tony O'Connell: Yeah, great to hear from Eman. And as I said earlier, Mel, Eman has really carried the load with setting up Palm this year and getting events sorted out and that. So, yeah, huge thanks to Team Vergara.

01:03:32Melissa Ellis: Yeah, we really do appreciate the people that we have on the ground that help us out organising. It really is helpful to have local knowledge. Yeah.

Club Corner

01:03:42Melissa Ellis: It's time for us to jump across to Club Corner. So let's have a listen to Rachel.

01:03:50[background music]

01:04:02Rachel - Club Corner contributor: This is Rachel with Club Corner, coming to you from Arrernte Country, and in 2024 I am being snappy. Podcasts, we love them. Well, we love at least this one. Unless you're a new listener, in which case, welcome, and please don't be too disturbed by me. There have been a variety of people who have loved parkrun enough to want to keep talking about it, well beyond the usual park faff on a sat. These are the currently live parkrun podcasts, in no particular order. Winky face. parkrun adventurers. With me now, the current incarnation are Danny and Nicola from the UK. Pro parkrun, a podcast in Russian, which began in 2021 before the suspension of Russia as a parkrun country, and continues with the current iterations of 5K events on a sat in Russia. And that's it. Pod adjacent is the parkrun audiozine, which is a selection of stories from the parkrun magazine in audio format. Let us know if you have a favourite, or not, parkrun pod that I have missed and stay tuned for our future club corners, and next up will be the defunct pods.

01:05:06Tony O'Connell: And thanks, Rachel, for that information. Rachel, of course, mentioned our lovely little podcast, The Australian One, with me now from the UK, and one that I haven't heard of, Pro parkrun, the Russian version. So I might have a listen and see how that's changed. It'd be interesting to see how that changed when... Russian parkruns changed from not being parkruns.

01:05:29Melissa Ellis: But wouldn't it be in Russian? Yes. Oh, can you speak Russian?

01:05:35Tony O'Connell: Good point. That could be slightly difficult. Oh, that's... I hadn't thought that one through.

01:05:40[crosstalk]

01:05:43Jim - visiting parkrunner from Perth: Yeah.

01:05:46Tony O'Connell: Okay. Okay. I might just stick with the adventurers and with me now. How's that sound?

01:05:54Melissa Ellis: That sounds good.

Consolidated Club Report

01:05:56Melissa Ellis: Tony, the adventurers Consolidated Club Report for Saturday the 3rd of February 2024. Of a total of 550 members, 433 took part on this date in eight countries across 222 locations. Two, two, two. In the UK, there were adventurers at 38 events. Three in South Africa, two in the USA and one each in Canada, Italy and Japan. Locally, we had adventurers at... 44 events in the greatest state. 42 events in New South Wales. 39 events in Queensland. 12 in SA. 11 on the West Side. 10 in Tassie. 9 on the North Island. ACT had 7. There was 2 on the South Island and none in the Northern Territory.

01:06:43Tony O'Connell: And Mel, it's interesting to see those UK numbers growing. Only one or less event than Queensland.

01:06:50Melissa Ellis: I know. I was really surprised when I saw 38 events. So, yeah, that just goes to show the UK is nearly, the adventure is nearly as numerous as those in now three top Australian states.

01:07:05Tony O'Connell: Yeah, which is really good. It's nice to have met a few people over there and be able to associate with a couple of people.

the Frond — Stuart, Tamsin and Morglen Smith at Fareham parkrun, UK (international); a frond of 19 at Two Rivers Wines parkrun, New South Wales (largest local)

01:07:12Tony O'Connell: And internationally, our largest frond, naturally enough, was in the UK. It was at Fareham where the Smiths family have taken it out again, Stuart, Tamsin and Morglen. And surely there is a group, now that we have 38 events in the UK, surely we can get some people to sign up, a few friends, and challenge the Smiths in their quest for global domination every week.

01:07:38Melissa Ellis: Yes, and if anybody's interested in being a roving reporter in the UK too, get in touch. But locally, TOC, our largest frond, not surprisingly, was a frond of 19 at Two Rivers Wines in New South Wales. And there was Karen and Kayleigh Hamilton, Richard Folchon, Joe McLean, Louise Garbers, Andrew Johnston, Em Niko, Lee Cabarita.

01:08:01Unidentified speaker: That's her board.

01:08:03Melissa Ellis: Kim Marnie, Sherry Bradman, Martine Barrot, Luke and Sam Schroder, Caro Vos, Lys and Pete Coorey, Michael Gentle, Roberta Winters and Paris Lawrence. And of course, Eric Banner.

Launches and anniversaries"Where is the cake?"

01:08:16Tony O'Connell: Mel, this week, despite there being a huge number of anniversaries, and there was anniversaries globally everywhere, there was a huge number, there was no launches this week worldwide. Wow, none.

01:08:30Melissa Ellis: How can that be?

01:08:31Tony O'Connell: I don't know. I've had a look at the figures, and I checked it just before we recorded, and yep, at this stage, there is no launches showing globally. Wow.

Adventurers PBs

01:08:40Melissa Ellis: Okay, now over to adventurer PBs and this week we had Julie Jackson who ran a PB at Sandon Point of 57 minutes 42. We had Craig Ryan who ran a PB at Diamond Creek, an all-time PB these are too, don't forget. So 22.06. So well done, Craig, for getting an all-time PB. Zali Spake at Shellharbour, one hour and 26 seconds 42. Cara McLeod at Lochiel, 40 minutes and 44 seconds. Jeff Reed, PB'd at Meningie with 30.23. Anita Alomes, I'm not sure how you say your surname, Anita, so I hope that's correct, ran a PB at Kingston Park, 46.10. And Stephen Walsh. Ran a PB at Alexandra of 22.27.

01:09:24Tony O'Connell: And, Mel, we were lucky to have a number of adventurers achieve milestones this week. We had Susan Rodak, who ran their 100th milestone at San Remo. Jason Andrews ran a 100th milestone at Aurora. Michael Burke ran a 250 at Toolern Creek. The Creek! And our good friend and friend of the podcast, Schultzy, Michael Schultz did his V100 at Des Connor Juniors. So well done, Schultzy.

01:09:57Melissa Ellis: And we got a lovely photo too sent in of Schultzy holding, I think it was biscuits that's in the figure of 100 with Tracey Wood and Parth Bomber Canty there. So congratulations, Schultzy. Hope you're doing well.

01:10:14Tony O'Connell: Yeah, well done, Schultzy. Susan Rodak also commented in Dazza's. Celebrating my 100th parkrun at San Remo parkrun. No ice cream, but we had something better. My sister Sally made the most amazing red velvet celebration cake.

01:10:30Melissa Ellis: Hooray.

01:10:32Tony O'Connell: So well done, everyone, on your milestones.

01:10:34Melissa Ellis: Nice to get those cakes. Yeah, and nice to hear Toolern Creek getting a shout-out too. Yeah, I have to get back there soon.

Adventurer shirts pre-order

01:10:43Melissa Ellis: Now, we also want to give reminders that the adventurers shirts that are currently on sale are going to be closing very soon. So they will be closing on Sunday, the 11th of February. So if you haven't ordered and you've been thinking about it, Don't miss out. You haven't got much more time. And production will start on the shirts after they close for orders. And you should expect delivery to your home approximately five weeks after that. If you have any questions, pop them in the comments or shoot the Office Lady a message.

Sign-off

01:11:16Tony O'Connell: Mel, all through all that, last week was a zip. What's your plans this Saturday?

01:11:24Melissa Ellis: An adventure. Hooray. Hooray. I knew that I wasn't going to be parkrunning last weekend, so I made sure I had something exciting to do, and I'm going to head off to North Wollongong, catch up with some Sydney friends, maybe even the lovely Bec Bailey, if I'm really lucky. So I am very much looking forward to that. But what about you?

01:11:50Tony O'Connell: Mel, just before we go on to me, North Wollongong, just refresh my memory. Is that the course we did as the Friday Freedo, the Shellharbour year that Chris Fraser made the maps up for?

01:12:01Melissa Ellis: I believe so because – but I didn't do that one. We did the – Shellharbour course on the Friday, but there was an A and a B option back in the day. Back in the day. OG palm. Yes. So I do believe you're right.

01:12:21Tony O'Connell: Mel, our Saturday this week, we don't have a plan at this, and I have absolutely no idea at this stage of recording. It will be somewhere in Gippsland. It will be somewhere local after – a eight hours each way road trip last week and a couple more adventures coming up soon but I'd like to work on a maybe a p index and go to one of the courses around or we might just end up back at the sunny stump because it's going to be nice and warm on Saturday and a swim after it sounds good Speaking of warm and following the conversation last week about the Australian of the Year, I'd just like to remind everyone to get your skin checked. Late last year, I had a fairly large lump cut off my leg that wasn't all that good. And I think it's just a great reminder. And the Australian of the Year is a parkrunner. Get your skin checked, especially anyone that spends any time outdoors.

01:13:23Melissa Ellis: Thank you. Great reminder to us all. Now, thanks for joining me again this week, TOC. It was lovely to catch up and enjoy your parkrun day, whichever you choose to do, whichever event you choose to do even. Now, as always, you can contact us via parkrun adventurers on Facebook or our email, which is parkrunadventurers at gmail.com. That's it for another week. We'll see you all next week for more adventures.

01:13:45[outro theme playing]