Episode 383 - Big Kahunas

00:00:00[intro theme playing]

Welcome

00:00:24Melissa Ellis: Welcome to episode 383 of the parkrun adventurers podcast, a podcast about life, if your life is all about parkrun. My name is Melissa Ellis and I'm coming to you from Wurundjeri Country.

00:00:36Tony O'Connell: Good evening Mel, my name is TOC and I'm coming to you from Bunurong Country, hello TOC welcome back we've missed you it's good to be back Mel after our little skipped episode now it's really good to be back in the uh hot seat and back up on level two sorry about that oopsie that's my fault and no we had a great adventure so that sort of balanced it out it was all good

00:01:01Melissa Ellis: We did. We did a live. And then I got COVID.

00:01:05Tony O'Connell: Yeah. And we got wet. It rained. And rained.

00:01:08Melissa Ellis: Yes. I thought actually when I got sick, I thought it was because of how wet and soaked I got and travelling home in my wet jeans from Sydney. I thought that was the reason that I was feeling unwell last Sunday. Unbeknownst to me, no, I had COVID. Yeah.

00:01:27Tony O'Connell: You know you're really wet when you go through an airport and they pull you aside for a pat-down search because the body camera is showing that you've got something on you and it's just your clothes are that wet that they pull you over for a pat-down.

00:01:41Melissa Ellis: Is that what happened to you? I wondered what that was.

00:01:43Tony O'Connell: Yeah, no, everything was that wet. He said, your body's showing a dense matter. I thought, oh, that's just me. I'm stupid, but I'm dense.

00:01:54Melissa Ellis: I didn't travel with enough clothes, Tony, because I'm so used to travelling sort of overnight with just the carry-on and, you know, the active wear and one change of clothes. When that one change of clothes gets drenched to the skin and the... The choice is to change back into your smelly active wear or go home in your wet clothes. I'm like, my wet clothes are going to weigh more. That might put me overweight. I better stay in the wet clothes. But it was fun.

00:02:27Tony O'Connell: It was a great trip, Mel. It was a great little weekend getaway. So, no, thank you for joining us.

00:02:32Melissa Ellis: Oh, no, thank you for taking me. But this week there was more to celebrate and back up in, oh, no, it wasn't in Sydney. Where's Sandgate? Oh, don't ask me.

00:02:42Tony O'Connell: That's in Queensland. It's Brisbane near the airport.

00:02:45Melissa Ellis: I'm challenged, remember? Yeah, okay.

00:02:48Tony O'Connell: Remember, we did a free day walk at Brisbane after the Nambour Palm. That's right. We walked down and out on the jetty.

00:02:56Melissa Ellis: I'm still really keen to get back to Sandgate because it really feels like it's an A1 course. And I really do want to get there and do it officially. But last week, of course, it was Speed Week. And wow, it went off, didn't it?

00:03:14Tony O'Connell: Now, the number of runners that finished so quickly right throughout the field, it was just amazing. You look at the times.

00:03:22Melissa Ellis: Yep, 873 finishes, 10 of those sub-15. 319 sub 20 and 655 sub 30 now they were just the markers that I decided to highlight but it's just incredible and I think you looked up where you would have come if you had a ran an all-time PB is that right yeah no I think if I ran an all-time PB I think I would have been about 290 somethings

00:03:52Tony O'Connell: You're slow. That's just incredible. And the amazing thing about Sandgate, the Speed Week, I had a look. They had three RDs on the day, but they had one timer. A lady by the name of Sarah Haywood. Imagine being the sole timer. And when you look at some of the blocks, between the 16th and the 17th minute, there were 66 runners. So she's clicking more than one a second. Wow. at the 16-minute mark of a parkrun. That just blows my mind.

00:04:23Melissa Ellis: She's a brave lady, that's all I can say. Do you remember the first time I did timing, TOC? I was even scared.

00:04:30Tony O'Connell: I can remember you came down and got Jack to give you a hand.

00:04:33Melissa Ellis: Yes, yes. And I don't do it very often. I do it at juniors where, you know, it's not a secret at Eynesbury that we have usually less than 15 kids. So it's not a stretch to do timekeeping at juniors. But no, it's like, wow, hats off to Sarah. That's amazing.

00:04:52Tony O'Connell: Some of the other stuff across Sandgate, they had 29 volunteers on the day, but that was actually less... than they had the week before when they had half the number of finishers. So they didn't even stack up their volley roster. They had one less than when they had half the people. And across the field, there are 170 PBs across the field. And they were spread right through. I think the last PB was at about the 55-minute mark. So the PBs were spread out right across the field.

00:05:23Melissa Ellis: It's amazing. I'm sure they had their A team on the day. They would have been stacking their roster with their best volleys, 100%. But something else I noticed, TOC, I did have a little look at the results. There was a lot of unknowns. I'm assuming... say somebody who was going for a sub 20 that might have just come over the 20 minute mark maybe didn't scan yeah Mel across the field there were 90 unknowns on the day yeah so some people weren't very happy with how they did might have cracked it and decided to uh not scan the barcode that day

00:06:01Tony O'Connell: Yeah, interestingly enough, though, they had 17 people do their first ever PB. And I assume they're probably running club people, and not first ever PB, but first ever parkrun. Yes. And I assume it's probably the running club people that were turning up and bringing some people along.

00:06:18Melissa Ellis: Nice, a little introduction to parkrun. It's not a race.

00:06:22Tony O'Connell: It's not a race. And the average age of the participants was 37, so it wasn't even a young field.

00:06:29Melissa Ellis: Wow.

00:06:30Tony O'Connell: So, yeah, pretty happy to see the number of people that took place.

00:06:34Melissa Ellis: Those competitive old farts. Wow. Good on them. That's great.

00:06:39Tony O'Connell: And now across the weekend as well. Finally, we had the start of Longest Weekend.

00:06:45Melissa Ellis: Longest Weekend or Longest Run?

00:06:48Tony O'Connell: the longest weekend for me a three-day weekend in the great estate so we can have the longest run on the longest weekend so we kicked off with a number of longest runs across Victoria um I went and ran at two of the events so I had a bit of a sleep in and only got up and went to the last two in gippsland but they're all pretty well participated and we've got another couple coming up Sunny Coast is 16th of June as well as WA and SA and Sydney are the 30th of June.

00:07:21Melissa Ellis: Yes and I do believe that Sydney 1 has altered their week so they've pushed it back to the 30th of June still preparing but you were also doing some backyard training is that right Tony?

00:07:38Tony O'Connell: Yeah, got a backyard ultra coming up, as has Simon, the two co-hosts we've jumped on board. I'm not looking at you, Mel, but how soon before you're taking on one?

00:07:50Melissa Ellis: No. No?

00:07:51Tony O'Connell: No. Don't blame me either. It sounds painful.

00:07:54Melissa Ellis: Not until I retire from work. No. I shall leave that to the males in this format. But that's pretty exciting. This is going to be your first backyard. Yeah.

00:08:05Tony O'Connell: Yeah, got it coming up in under two weeks now, Mel. So the next time we chat, technically I will have finished already unless I'm still running. If I'm still running, I won't be here.

00:08:21Melissa Ellis: Sarah, Sarah, you're on the bench.

00:08:23Tony O'Connell: Potentially if I get to 72 hours, I'll be dead. No, I won't be still running. Don't even think of it.

00:08:33Melissa Ellis: No, that's really exciting. Yeah, that's fabulous. We wish you all the best for that.

00:08:40Tony O'Connell: So what could go wrong, Mel? What could go wrong? A backyard ultra in Victoria, late in June, out on a country farm. I mean, what could go wrong? Oh, dear.

00:08:48[crosstalk]

00:08:52Melissa Ellis: Yeah, okay.

00:08:54Tony O'Connell: No, really looking forward to it. Training's going well. Long weekend today, so we went out and did five yards. And it's not the running that's the important bit. The best bit about doing one of these, I've discovered, is it's a long-distance food fest. This morning, for our five laps, we had custard pulled apart from Baker's Delight. We had pasta. We had muffins. We had chalky milks.

00:09:18Melissa Ellis: Oh, my God.

00:09:18[crosstalk]

00:09:20Tony O'Connell: So imagine how we're going to go for 24 hours.

00:09:22Melissa Ellis: This is not nutrition. I'm going to get Avi Charlton on. We are going to start doing some low-carb sessions here.

00:09:33Tony O'Connell: This is peak nutrition.

00:09:34Melissa Ellis: You're going to die of diabetes.

00:09:35Tony O'Connell: This is peak nutrition.

00:09:37Melissa Ellis: It's not. Oh, dear. Okay. No, I know. It's fuel.

00:09:41Tony O'Connell: It's well known in the ultra running community that they're just a mobile food eating fest.

00:09:47Melissa Ellis: Yeah.

00:09:48Tony O'Connell: It's not about the running. It's about the eating.

00:09:50Melissa Ellis: Okay.

00:09:51Tony O'Connell: They say parkruns about the coffee. Well, we're about the eating.

00:09:55Melissa Ellis: Fair enough. Yeah.

00:09:57Tony O'Connell: Anyway, Mel, parkrun Day on the weekend, where did you go to?

00:10:01Melissa Ellis: Well, I stayed local. Obviously, I was still recovering from, I had a week off work. Thank you, COVID. I have had a nice rest. from work. Um, but I did recover. I wasn't actually too sick. I got to be honest. I wasn't very symptomatic, mild cold symptoms, a bit of sneezing. I've got a bit of a viral cough and that's the extent of it. I didn't suffer very badly from COVID, which is great. And I was testing negative by the The Belinda Fairy was in town. She was in the Geelong greater area and was going to the You Yangs. So I thought I would wander down there, which meant a little bit of a sleep in for me. No humongous drives because You Yangs is probably within, you know, my circle of closest events um 40 minute trip for me pretty pretty cruisy although I gotta say I struggled to find the start yes it's my fourth visit there and he's peek behind the curtain Belinda and I have each other on find my friend on um on our iPhones so that we at all times we know where each other is Belinda's sitting at the You Yangs parkrun, seeing me wandering around, driving around the You Yangs nowhere near her. And she's thinking, is she in the right place? What's going on? Why is Mel not like coming anywhere near her? Well, I had my navigation system on avoid dirt roads. Not really useful when you're going to the You Yangs.

00:11:50Tony O'Connell: No, National Park with dirt roads.

00:11:52Melissa Ellis: Dirt roads, yeah. And I wondered why I wasn't taken on the route that I expected to be taken on when I set my GPS from home. Yeah, very silly of me. Anyway, eventually, after doing a loop of the You Yangs, when I realised I wasn't... Because I'd been there three times before, so I kind of knew... I knew I'd entered the park at the correct point, but I knew it wasn't taking me where I needed to go. So I luckily pulled over, went to the parkrun website and Rachel will be very pleased with me. I went to the course page and I brought up the course on the Google Maps through the course page to see where I should be going. And that led me to the correct place. So, yeah, I walked parkrun. I took my mum's advice. I didn't try to run. I actually think I might have been able to run, but I didn't push myself because Belinda was there. So it was rather nice just to walk and have a walk chat. And you know how pretty it is out at the You Yangs. So it's a lovely place. Beautiful course. Yeah. Beautiful bushland. And it was just a lovely place. 50 minutes 55 minutes of uh walk chat so thoroughly enjoyed that but Belinda didn't have chance for coffee she had to get going for her daily activities so um yeah that was it that was my day very enjoyable once I found where I was supposed to be now I gotta ask when you drove into the You Yangs the last time I did the You Yangs parkrun they actually had a couple of signs that they put on the side of the road So that's the thing, TOC, because Belinda had asked me, is it hard to find? And I said to her, no. It's fine. They have signs that point you so you know you're going down the right roads. And so in my head when I entered, I was also looking for those signs. They weren't out.

00:12:54[crosstalk]

00:13:47Tony O'Connell: Ah.

00:13:48Melissa Ellis: They didn't have them.

00:13:49Tony O'Connell: That explains a bit.

00:13:50Melissa Ellis: Yes. Yeah, and I just got taken on a big loop of the park and not directed off any of the off-road tracks, which are actually a problem for my little Barina because some of the divots in those dirt tracks are quite... Are bigger than your Barina. Pretty. Yes, a bigger yes, which is why I'm upgrading. It was something I found with a lot of parkrun tourism. I'm often taken off the beaten track and my little Barina is not quite up to the task. So just wait for my little Suzuki Jiminy, my little four-wheel drive that I'm planning on getting. I'll be good. I'll be able to navigate. all those things. But anyway, that's me. Um, enough said of all of that. Um, please tell me about your parkrun day.

00:14:46Tony O'Connell: Mel, I returned to the stump as always. It was sunny. Actually, it was cloudy, but we're going to call it was sunny. Um, one of our RDs down there, JJ was celebrating her 250th run and she had a bit of a theme run going. Um, bow ties or lipstick and uh I thought about you know cherry red lipstick I'd look good in that yeah and then I thought no I wouldn't actually no that's not gonna unfortunately I left it till late on Friday night to um look for a bow tie and I have a bow tie somewhere but could not find it costume box I have a big bright red clown bow tie Of course you do. If I'm going to wear a clown bow tie, you might as well wear the multicolour clown hair as well. And so I turned up at Inverloch dressed like a clown or dressed as myself, we had an absolutely awesome day it was great the vibe was really great one of those days you know we parkrun just ticks and it's just great to be there um had a young bloke come up and ask if I could run with him um he just turned eight it was actually his eighth birthday on the day he said, oh TOC, can you run with him yeah okay so I ran along um Little Archer Castellan, his mum flicks an RD at Inverloch and she's also ED at Kearney. He ran a six-minute PB, all-time PB. And he chatted with me the whole way. It was great. He talks as much as I do when we're running. And that takes a lot of trying to butt in and get a word in to talk as much as I do, um jj the rd we had a great day for her 250th and was complete she brought along mimosas for everyone so once again following on our Europe trip which was 12 months ago where they have prosecco and champagne come in block we have mimosas party on where was my invite that's what I wanted damn it mimosas that's amazing Nah, we had an awesome time, Mel. Mel, moving on from Inverloch, though, parkrun, on their social medias this week, on the parkrun Global page have posted, calling all parkrun enthusiasts in Geneva. As we continue to look at opportunities to establish new parkrun in new countries, the parkrun team will be visiting Geneva on Friday and Saturday, the 28th and 29th of June. Please get in touch with us at Switzerland at parkrun.com if you or someone you know would like to join us over this weekend or get involved to set up parkrun in Geneva. This is on top of the previous parkrun headquarters trips recently to both Lithuania and Portugal. And so they seem to be expanding out a little bit, Mel. And... Looking at some new countries, I know there's a couple of countries, Spain and Brussels, that are in the wings that there's been a fair bit of discussion. I know headquarters have visited them probably a number of years ago. So there seems to be a little bit of discussion to branch out. And Geneva would be a very interesting one because one of the French parkruns is only a couple of kilometres on the other side of the border from Geneva. Geneva's actually based right on the Switzerland border, and french border and there was a number of comments on that post about other places around switzerland as well that people would be keen to see them set up so it looks like they're having a bit of a concerted push to try and look at a few new countries that's exciting I would be very interested in parkruns in the swiss alps yeah look it'd be uh It would definitely be interesting, Mel. I don't know, there's a couple of places there that you'd love to see them set up, and I know there's a lot of expats, mainly from the UK, that are keen to see them at a few different places as well. So, yeah, I guess stay tuned, watch this space, and we'll see if parkrun does get some expansion going. As we know, they've got a global... plan to double the number of parkruns and this is probably one of the ways that they'll need to look at to achieve that given that the UK is not at saturation but certainly the number of new events is slowing down because there is a lot of events in the UK um We've seen the USA has just really expanded. I can remember the first four or five years I was involved with parkrun, USA sat on five parkruns. They had five and it just never grew. And now I think they're up to 78 and that's been a fairly, you know, fairly quick rise. So I think they need to look at new countries if they're going to try and achieve their aim.

00:19:44Melissa Ellis: That's really good. Actually, somebody mentioned to me, Tony, and I was supposed to raise it with you. Whoopsie. How are we tracking with your prediction for the first half of the year with parkrun in Australia?

00:19:58Tony O'Connell: I can tell you, Mel, that we are nowhere near my predictions for parkrun in Victoria. Damn it. A number of events that are getting closer, a number of events fairly close, but we're A couple of the ones that I had heard were going to get going are not on pause, but they're just taking a little bit more time with things like council permits, course approvals, and the all-important funding to get them up and going. Yeah. But that might be something I take on notice for homework for the next episode because I'm not really sure how we're going against my tracking, but I know Victoria's definitely not jumped up as quick. I know some of the events that I look or help with as an event ambassador, one of them's got an issue with a car park that the Councillor have said they're going to address, but they haven't got to yet, so that event's sitting on hold waiting.

00:20:55Unidentified speaker: Yeah.

00:20:56Tony O'Connell: And that's one that we're really looking forward to. We thought that would probably launch in April. So, yeah, it's not quite ready to go yet. And there's a couple in a similar sort of boat. So, yeah.

00:21:08Melissa Ellis: Well, it's important that we get all those things ticked, all those boxes ticked before we proceed. So all in due course. But TOC, there was more exciting news. Now, this involves parkrunner Liam Adams. He's had a late call up for the Paris Marathon. So electrician Liam Adams had his Paris 2024 Olympic Marathon hopes rekindled with the 37-year-old's official selection to the Australian Olympic team today, just 50 days out from the opening ceremony in Paris. Australia's best finishing male marathon runner at both the Rio and Tokyo Games, Adams will compete in his third Games after weeks of uncertainty over his qualification. While Adams initially finished the qualification period amongst the top 80 based on his fastest time during the qualifying period, the addition of several universality places pushed the Victorian Out of the quota numbers leaving questions about his return for his third Olympic Games, World Athletics reinstated his quota allocation on Wednesday morning Australian time with the running Sparky officially selected this morning. Now, I looked up what universality places are, TOC, and it says universality places are a lifeline to athletics from underrepresented national Olympic committees they are designed to increase the diversity of participating nations across the sports program of the Olympic games so that was the reason that Australia risked missing out on one of their qualifying places I guess and why Liam was in question but good news he has had his spot reinstated and he is going to run so I looked up Liam hasn't ran a parkrun since December But we still claim him. We do still claim him as a parkrunner.

00:23:09Tony O'Connell: That could be a bit of homework, Mel, if we had someone that was particularly good at looking up that sort of reference and trying to work out how many parkrunners there will be participating at the Paris Olympics.

00:23:21Melissa Ellis: Yes, if we only had a stats person that could look all that stuff up.

00:23:26Unidentified speaker: LAUGHTER

00:23:28Tony O'Connell: Yes, who do we know? Who have we got in our back pocket? Who do we know? Yeah, it would give that underrepresented nationality. Probably means you don't get to see the fastest, but in some of the events, I think you'd find that there'd be certain countries that would, if you were purely looking at the fastest, some countries would probably have eight or ten representatives and many countries would have no one.

00:24:07Melissa Ellis: Yeah, I know. It is important and it does give... It probably goes a long way to encourage those nations seeing some of their sports people competing that otherwise wouldn't be there. And that's important, absolutely important. And we're looking at it from a selfish aspect, I guess, getting upset that maybe one of our athletes was going to miss out.

00:24:37Tony O'Connell: And as always, we're still going to claim Eleanor Patterson as Koonwarra's own parkrun high jumping athlete.

00:24:46Melissa Ellis: Right. Okay.

00:24:47Tony O'Connell: That's random. Eleanor has participated in a couple of parkruns before. And yeah, Eleanor's mum is a fairly regular Koonwarra.

00:24:56Melissa Ellis: Hooray. So we've got more people to follow in the Olympics.

00:25:00Tony O'Connell: So we're claiming her.

00:25:01Melissa Ellis: Well, I'm claiming Liam. Maribyrnong. Did Liam run at Maribyrnong? I'm sure he did. Anyway.

00:25:10Tony O'Connell: Well, speaking of running events, Comrades was on in South Africa this weekend and the annual swelling of the numbers at North Beach parkrun took place. They jumped up to 1,174 finishes this week, which is something that happens every Comrades. They have a big jump in numbers. And that put them in second place, I believe, as far as the biggest parkruns in the world this week. Wow, okay. I looked at their numbers and I thought, 1,174, surely that's amongst their biggest. And then I actually jumped onto their website and they had a number of weeks where they went over 2,000 finishes every week for a number of weeks in a row. So at 1,174, it's well below their maximum numbers.

00:26:01Melissa Ellis: Okay, so numbers down for comrades, that would indicate. Is it an up year?

00:26:09Tony O'Connell: I'm not sure whether it's an up year or a down year, and that would probably have a big difference in their numbers because there's 100 kilometres difference between the start and finish lines. And one year they go run one way, one year they run the other. So that would have a big impact because I imagine that most runners are trying to hang around somewhere close to the start line rather than travelling a lot the day before you run 100 kilometres. Yeah.

00:26:34Melissa Ellis: Absolutely. Yeah, wow. Anyway, thank you for bringing us that stat this week. That's good to know.

00:26:40[background music]

00:26:41Tony O'Connell: Yeah, just an interesting thing. I saw their numbers that jump up.

Roving reports & the Channel 5 News crew

00:26:45Tony O'Connell: Righty-o now, I think it's time for us to jump over to some roving reports.

Roving report Paul Kitching — Nuriootpa parkrun

00:26:57Paul Kitching: Good morning, it's PK checking in for another roving report. Coming to you live from the beautiful, bold, brisk Barossa Valley. This gorgeous parkrun day. Up here doing the Nuri Utpa, not Nuri Upta. The T comes first for those playing at home. The Nuriootpa parkrun. This is the second time I've done this one. And we're just walking to the start-finish line. It's a five-minute walk for those playing at home. Also, make sure you leave yourself at least five minutes leeway time to get to the start-finish. But it is beautiful up here. Looking forward to checking it out once again and meeting some of the locals. A few people up here for the Barossa Half Marathon tomorrow. It'll be interesting to see how many people they get out here. I can't remember when I was here last. I came up here for the very, very first Nuriootpa parkrun, whenever that was, so long ago that... The original hosts of this podcast joined me here, both Mel and Scotty, which was the first time I met them, which was pretty weird because it's about an hour 15 drive from Adelaide, depending on where you live. But anyway, enough of me yapping. Let's go and find the start-finish line and see what goes on up here in the beautiful Barossa Valley in South Australia.

Talking to Mel — Run Director, Nuriootpa parkrun (South Australia)

00:28:28Paul Kitching: Alrighty then, I've finished this gorgeous course. Far out, stunning once again. And I'm now with Mel, one of the Run Directors. G'day.

00:28:36Mel: Good morning, how are you?

00:28:37Paul Kitching: I'm great, thank you Mel. Thank you for everything you do for parkrun. Beautiful parkrun course, event. I was just saying in my intro that I came to the opening and for the life of me I can't remember when that was. 2017, 18? It's been a few years. Yeah, I reckon. Anyway, I'll fix this in post. So I think we had 260, oh there you go gosh yeah fantastic I'll go and check it out when um later and add that in that bit in but anyway um yeah uh congratulations it's great is this um normal numbers today what do you usually get

00:28:51[crosstalk]

00:29:10Mel: So it's starting to grow. Our normal numbers used to be around 40 or 50. But since the start of the year, we had up to 100, 106, I think. So we've really sort of increased numbers, which is fantastic. It means more visitors to parkrun, more visitors to the Barossa Valley. And then there's more people getting out there. We're seeing a lot more children getting on board. It's fantastic. It's slowly growing and it's a really good community feel down here at Nuri.

00:29:35Paul Kitching: Yeah, it is a beautiful part of the world. The park is beautiful. So we're in one of the reserves here?

00:29:40Mel: We are, Coulthard Reserve.

00:29:41Paul Kitching: Coulthard Reserve, yeah. And so this is used, most people like walking or riding through here?

00:29:46Mel: Absolutely. So it's next to the caravan parks. We get lots of visitors. But I live about 100 metres down the road. Oh, easy. So we're here daily. So lots of dog walkers, lots of local people, bike riders. Fantastic. And I actually run here quite a lot.

00:29:55[crosstalk]

00:29:57Paul Kitching: Yeah, right. What's your nearest parkrun to here then?

00:30:00Mel: The nearest to here, I believe, would be Parra Wirra. Oh, yeah, right. Lindock there, I believe, is probably the closest one to here.

00:30:00[crosstalk]

00:30:09Paul Kitching: Love it. And final question, why do you do parkrun?

00:30:13Mel: to get involved in the community. Yeah. Yeah, so I'm a foreigner from Victoria. Well done. So I moved to South Australia for work and it's just a good way to meet people in a new environment when I moved down here and bought a house and it's just such a fantastic kind of close-knit group that sort of opens everybody and I quite enjoy that.

00:30:14[crosstalk]

00:30:31Paul Kitching: Love it.

00:30:31[crosstalk]

00:30:31Mel: Yeah.

00:30:31Paul Kitching: Beautiful. Thank you for everything you do.

00:30:33Mel: No worries.

00:30:33Paul Kitching: The parkrun. Let's go and have some breakfast.

00:30:36[crosstalk]

00:30:36Mel: Fantastic.

00:30:36Paul Kitching: I'm going to go and chat to that person who's here from New Zealand. Yes. How about that? Fantastic. I'm going to go and have a chat. Thanks so much, Mel.

Talking to Debbie — Hagley parkrun volunteer, Christchurch, New Zealand

00:30:41Unidentified speaker: Pleasure.

00:30:42Paul Kitching: So when they did the whole, who's here from, you know, another parkrun? We had Mount Barker, we had Newcastle, I think, and then Debbie said... Christchurch, New Zealand. Ha-ha, there you go.

00:30:51[crosstalk]

00:30:52Colin: Hagley Park, to be precise.

00:30:53Paul Kitching: Hagley Park. So Hagley Park. Hagley. Hagley.

00:30:57Debbie: That's your... 800 runners. Are you serious? It's the biggest one in New Zealand. Oh my gosh.

00:31:03Paul Kitching: Wow. So how long have you been doing parkrun?

00:31:06Debbie: I've been going, not so much doing the parkrun, but I volunteer. Awesome. So I've got my 25. Oh yeah, you do. Look at that. You're wearing the purple. I love it. My kids and grandkids all do parkrun as well.

00:31:10[crosstalk]

00:31:16[crosstalk]

00:31:16Paul Kitching: Awesome. Yeah, far out. My daughter's over 300. Wow. And what brings you to South Australia and the Barossa Valley? Yeah. Half marathon tomorrow.

Talking to Colin — parkrun tourist from Christchurch, New Zealand

00:31:25Paul Kitching: Half marathon. Colin. Colin. Colin. Sorry, mate. G'day. Oh, you're doing it tomorrow? Half marathon. Oh, mate. Congrats. This is my warm-up.

00:31:30[crosstalk]

00:31:32Unidentified speaker: Fantastic.

00:31:33Paul Kitching: Oh, that's brilliant. So when did you plan to do and why did you choose to do the half marathon in South Australia?

00:31:39Colin: I've been planning since 2019. Okay. COVID kicked in. Yes. Bits and pieces. Yes. So, yeah, yeah.

00:31:44Paul Kitching: We're here this year. I love it. Lapping up the beautiful Barossa Valley, hey? Yeah, it's amazing.

00:31:49Colin: Fantastic. I've been off it for three months, but after tomorrow.

00:31:52Paul Kitching: You've been off the booze. I've had a weird wine, mate. You will have earned that wine. I think a lot of people will be doing the same thing. Why did you start doing parkrun?

00:32:01Debbie: I think, oh, it was my daughter. Yeah, my daughter. She had a baby. Yeah. And the woman that she nannied for did parkrun. Awesome. And so as soon as she, oh, before she got out the baby.

00:32:02[crosstalk]

00:32:08[crosstalk]

00:32:10Paul Kitching: See Ashley? Sorry, some Mount Barker locals saying goodbye to them. Sorry. Sorry to interrupt.

00:32:14Debbie: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it was, and now that granddaughter's eight years old and she parkruns as well. She's done.

00:32:18[crosstalk]

00:32:18Paul Kitching: How good is that?

00:32:19Debbie: Oh, not quite. Oh, my gosh. Yeah, nearly. It was kind of under, yeah. Yeah, fantastic. It's a big family thing and everyone's obsessed, aren't you? Yeah, I know, right? We are.

00:32:26Paul Kitching: It's so good that you've chosen to come here. And you're going to do another one whilst you're in town, do you think? Torrens. Yeah, Torrens. Nice. Good choice.

00:32:33Colin: We'll come back next year. We'll come and do your one.

00:32:35Paul Kitching: Yeah, come and do Mount Barker. Please do. Well, I want to get over to New Zealand. So we're in Christchurch, is it? Wow. I do have relatives in New Zealand, cousins, so I need to get over there and do it.

00:32:43[crosstalk]

00:32:43Debbie: There's a brand new one out at the beach, Sumner Beach. Wow. Which has only started at the end of April.

00:32:48Colin: Because, like, Hagley's getting uncomfortable now with that number. Yeah, too many. 800 was the most, but there's usually 650 up most weeks. Right. Even in the frost.

00:32:55Paul Kitching: Yeah, well, that's what happened with town, with Torrens. So Torrens was the very, very first one. And now there's Pakapakanthi, which has more people than Torrens because it's just a poppy. But that's good. As we know, it just grows and we keep doing it. Well, thanks, legends. I'll let you go and enjoy your breakfast. All the best for tomorrow, Colin. I hope it goes well. Lovely to meet you. Cheers, mate. See you later, Debbie. Lovely to meet you. What's your podcast? It's called The parkrun adventurers. Well then, we are now walking back to our car so we can have some breakfast because that is the Noori Utpa parkrun. And it was beautiful. And I've just checked the records, found the photo of me, Scotty and Mel from the 16th of September 2017. Far out. This parkrun has been around for nearly seven years. So there you go. Should have done my research before, but that's okay. Still got the data in. Hey, thank you for listening, legends. Keep doing great things. Enjoy parkrun and PK over and out for another parkrun adventure.

00:33:04[crosstalk]

00:33:13[crosstalk]

Roving report Lyndell Murray — South Bank parkrun

Talking to Matt and Jodie — Event Director, South Bank parkrun (Brisbane)

00:33:55Lyndell Murray: G'day, parkrun adventurers. It's Lyndell, and today I am on the lands of the Turrbal and Yuggera, right in the heart of Brisbane City at South Bank parkrun, and I have got... Matt. And... Jodie. Now, we are in onesies today... at South Bank parkrun. You made a note, Matt, in your welcome that We do it for winter here in Queensland in the onesies and it doesn't feel like winter.

00:34:22Matt: Yeah, today's the 1st of June, the first day of winter here in Brisbane and it's quite, quite warm and quite humid. So we've been doing this for a number of years now. I think we've been doing it for about eight years, the onesie run. We do it on the first Saturday in winter and it's always, always somehow hotter and sweatier than it normally is. I don't understand how it works but somehow it just works out that it's always like this for our onesie run.

00:34:44Lyndell Murray: I mean, it seemed like a good idea.

00:34:45Matt: It always seems like a great idea. And when you book it months ago and you think 1st of June, it's going to cool down, it's going to cool down. In the last couple of weeks here in Brisbane, it's been getting a little bit cooler. But then today, for some reason, it ramped up again.

00:34:55[crosstalk]

00:34:55Lyndell Murray: It's 23 degrees today.

00:34:56Matt: 23 degrees and about 85% humidity.

00:34:58Lyndell Murray: No wonder I'm sweaty. Yeah. All right, South Bank parkrun, as I said, right in the heart of Brisbane City. So it is like the quintessential Brisbane parkrun, I think. It's been through a couple of different changes of courses over the years. Can someone, one of you, describe the course as it is today? That would probably be my job to do.

00:35:20Jodie: I'm the one who put this course together. So we start here at the... Brisbane Riverfront in near the Piazza at South Bank. We head out and over the Goodwill Bridge. We head up towards the Botanic Gardens but we don't go into the Botanic Gardens anymore. That was one of our previous courses. Now we turn around come back down the hill and back over the bridge and we go back past the start line and we head out to the museum area which is down near the Kurilpa area, Kurilpa Bridge, and come back. We get a lot of feedback that this course is a lot faster, a lot flatter, and one of the best things about it, especially today on a day when you get to see everyone in their onesies, is we pass everyone multiple times because that's out and back in two different directions.

00:36:05Lyndell Murray: Out and back in two different directions. You had to keep that hill up past QUT in, didn't you? We did.

00:36:10Jodie: We came out here with a wheel and measured it, and when it was spot on 5km to come to the top of the hill and back, we were like, oh, that's just the perfect turnaround point.

00:36:19Lyndell Murray: Indeed. So it goes past a lot of the Brisbane landmarks over the Goodwill Bridge, which was built for the Goodwill Games here in Brisbane, up past QUT and you see the gardens but don't go through the Botanic gardens anymore South Bank which was the site of Brisbane Expo in 1988 along past the museum and the art gallery and the wheel of Brisbane so you see everything don't you really sure do it's a very scenic course we love it we're locals but we love showing it off to tourists as well

00:36:47Jodie: Because where we're standing right now, we have a 180-degree view of the parklands, the river, and all the high-rises, and people out for their morning walks, bike rides, and enjoying our beautiful city out here.

00:36:59Matt: It's super close to all the accommodation and all the restaurants, so we get a lot of visitors to our town every week. Doing my briefing every week, it's always 100 or 150 people that are doing South Bank for the first time. It blows me away every time we do it. It's crazy.

00:37:09[crosstalk]

00:37:12Lyndell Murray: All right, so we've talked about the city location and your very now famous Onesie Day, but it's also a big Christmas Day crowd here at South Bank, isn't it?

00:37:20Matt: Yeah, Christmas is probably our biggest day ever. We had 2017, I think it was, was our largest parkrun ever, and it was the biggest in Australia for a long time until Albert Park recently broke that record when Taylor Swift was in town, I think. So it was a crazy day here, and we don't want to repeat it, but at the time we asked everybody to bring their friends along and we were actually actively trying to break the record. Crazy day, over 1,000 people, and it was just an incredible atmosphere with everybody having a really great time.

00:37:47Lyndell Murray: I needed Taylor Swift to break it.

00:37:49Matt: Yeah, exactly. That's right. Albert Park did an awesome job. We've talked to those guys every now and again. An amazing job to break that record and hopefully it stands for a long time. Yeah.

00:37:57Lyndell Murray: Alrighty. Now, on to you guys. You guys are Event Directors here at South Bank. That's correct. And so I get the feeling that you probably run here a lot, but you've probably done a bit of touristing in your time. This podcast is for people who like adventuring to different parkruns. So what would you say is a top three parkruns apart from South Bank? Or alternatively, do you have a funny or interesting story about somewhere where you went that was unusual?

00:38:23Matt: My favourite parkrun is where I did my PB. I did a sub 20 down at Greenbank, which is here in Brisbane. It's a fairway. It's about a 45-minute drive from here at South Bank, but it is a flat and fast course, and it's an incredible course if you're ever looking for a PB. It's on pathways. There's no switchback corners, and the crowd out there are amazing, really helpful. That's probably my favourite one of all time.

00:38:42Jodie: All right. And what about you, Jodie? I don't know. Um...

00:38:48Matt: We do love to travel.

00:38:48Jodie: We do love to travel. Singapore? Yes, we've done a few overseas. Singapore. We've done a couple in Singapore, which we love. We also have travelled a lot in New South Wales. So we were actually only down a few weeks ago and did the one in Huskisson. Kamay in Sydney is another favourite of ours that we've been down to a few times. And another one that we've been involved in is Wagga Wagga in rural New South Wales. Yeah.

00:39:14Lyndell Murray: Brilliant.

00:39:15Jodie: Yeah, so we got involved a little bit with helping the team down there that went up originally many years ago. Because that's our hometown, that's where we originally came from. So it's always a nice one to go home and run around Lake Albert down there.

00:39:27Lyndell Murray: Brilliant. And so you got involved down in Wagga. Is that your parkrun story? Did you get involved running or volunteering or...?

00:39:36Jodie: Sorry, no, we actually got involved in parkrun here in Brisbane. But when they were starting one in Wagga, they contacted us because they knew we were from Wagga and we helped the team out with some advice and went down there for the trial they had before they launched.

00:39:49Matt: So our parkrun story started when we moved here to Brisbane about 13 years ago now. I heard about parkrun through the ABC newspaper and was like, okay, let's have a little bit of a look at this. So we went over to New Farm, which New Farm had just started up at the time, did a few out at New Farm, got really enjoying it. And then South Bank started up, so that was close to where we lived. So we thought, oh, we'll come along and we'll start South Bank here. So we did the first event here at South Bank back in the day and then started volunteering more and then became Run Directors. And then when our old Event Director retired about seven years ago, Jodie and I stepped up and we've been doing it ever since.

00:40:19Lyndell Murray: Brilliant. And so you're obviously very avid volunteers as well. What's the best thing about volunteering at parkrun?

00:40:26Matt: I love barcode scanning. That's my favourite job. I love standing around after your run, seeing everybody absolutely dead to the world and just going, how was your run? And having a great time. I just love the look on everybody's faces. They've completed 5Ks on a Saturday morning before breakfast. Most people haven't even got out of bed yet. That's my favourite thing. I just love the smiles and the feedback that you get from people. I did the briefing this morning and I had three or four people come up to me and say, that's a great briefing. I really enjoy it. And it's nice when people give you that feedback. That's my favourite thing about it is the feedback I get.

00:40:55Lyndell Murray: Plus one for me was an excellent briefing. Oh, thank you. What about you, Jodie? What do you like about volunteering?

00:41:00Jodie: I like meeting the other volunteers and interacting with the other people. Like our two Tail Walkers today emailed about six weeks ago to say that they were tourists and they would like to be our Tail Walkers, please. I didn't realise they were from New Zealand until I met them this morning, but I booked them in and had a great chat to them and they're here in town for a conference and, you know, it's great that it just brings people together. Yeah.

00:41:21Lyndell Murray: Absolutely. And one of the things, again, I'll shout out for South Bank, you print up name tags for your volunteers. Yeah, we do. So I've volunteered here before and I volunteered on Friday night and turned up on Saturday and had a name tag with Linda Womack, which would have had to have been made especially for me. And today, whenever I run here, I always try and have a look at the name tag and say, thanks, Adam. Thanks, you know, Erin. Thanks, Eric.

00:41:43Matt: Yeah, I think it's really important that people know who they're volunteering for, right? It's really nice that you're able to run past and say, thank you, Caroline, for doing the volunteer, for giving up their run for the day. It just makes it that little bit more special. And if we've got somebody who's volunteering for their 100th time or 20th time or anything like that, we're able to call them out and say, hey, make sure you say hi to Lyndell. She's doing the 25th volunteer today. So that just gives out that little bit of extra stuff for us.

00:42:04Lyndell Murray: That's super cool. Yeah. Alrighty. Is there anything else that you can think of that the parkrun adventurers should know about South Bank parkrun?

00:42:12Matt: We had 595 people here today and it ran as smooth as silk. So don't think that the big crowds at South Bank mean that you can't do a good time here or that you can't have a nice time. It's very well organised. We make sure that everybody gets to the start lining time and we make sure that everybody gets to do their run that they want to do. It is a little bit congested here, but as long as you have a great time and make sure you're looking after everybody, then you're going to do fine. So yeah, 600 people today and not a single hitch. Went smooth as silk.

00:42:30[background music]

00:42:37Jodie: Brilliant. Anything else, Jodie, you want to add? We may be right in the centre of the city, but we have a lot of public transport near us. And we also have one of the best kept secrets around here, which is $2 parking. So a lot of Brisbane people don't realise they can come into the city and park underground here for $2 and... and enjoy parkrun right in the centre of amazing location. Brilliant.

00:42:59Lyndell Murray: Well, thank you, Matt. Thank you, Jodie. Thank you for everything that you have done for parkrun, not only here in South Bank, but also in your hometown of Wagga. Thanks so much. Thank you. Thanks.

Roving report Johan Duvenhage — Emerald Resort parkrun

00:43:11Johan Duvenhage: Good morning adventurers. It's Johan and I'm back on my feet after four weeks away from parkrun as a participant. Um, it was quite tough and, um, I had a bit of coaxing to get to a parkrun and as you may recall, Simon last week talked about one of our new launches in South Africa and that's Emerald Resort parkrun. It is in Vanderbijlpark on the banks of the Vaal River in the Gauteng Province, if I'm correct. And with me is Rory, the Event Director, Craig, one of the Run Directors and Alet that does the communications. Good morning, guys. Morning.

Talking to Rory — Event Director, Emerald Resort parkrun (South Africa)

00:43:51Johan Duvenhage: Let me start with Rory. Rory, so you started last week. Tell us about your launch. We saw the numbers were quite good.

00:43:58Rory: Yeah, thanks, man. But it was actually, mate, it was an awesome launch. We had 565 people coming here. The launch was amazing. The vibe was good. The feeling was good. The people were here running in the wild in South Africa between the wild animals. We have on this game resort, we have eland, gazelles, kudus, buffalo, and they're all tame animals due to the safaris which are usually happening in this area. it was an awesome experience to for the local community in this area to come run in a game farm where you have the river on the one side and you have the the zoo on the other side and you have the game farm together all combined together and this this makes this a greater awesome environment to be in the bush and to just run and to have nature next to you and you it's nothing for everybody to just run and have a couple of springbok running past you you know and and We're not talking about the Springbok rugby players. We're talking about the Springbok animals, yeah, on this thing. But, you know, when the Springbok passed you, you know it's actually probably one of our own Springboks, you know, that are so fast, you know. So, yeah, it was actually an awesome run and the vibe was awesome.

00:45:12Johan Duvenhage: So in your briefing, you did mention lions and hippos. And I actually told one of our presenters, hosts of the show, that no, there's no hippo. But you did mention hippos. So are there hippos around here? Yeah.

00:45:25Rory: yeah they are actually hippos yeah and lions but they're in the zoo they're actually in the zoo they're caged up they are caged up and we have hyenas and a few other wild animals and and a few apes and stuff like that but they're all engaged and they won't get out but it's always a good joke it's always it's always a good joke to tell the guys you know you've got to be faster than the Tail Walker so Craig tell me what's your involvement so far been with the event uh

00:45:37[crosstalk]

Talking to Craig — Run Director, Emerald Resort parkrun (South Africa)

00:45:49Craig: uh I've been it's Craig speaking um I'm here helping at the moment time keeping and um assisting Rory and all of the stuff but I'm very passionate about parkrun really I enjoy going to different events throughout and today We have a very special visitor with us that has done 285 different parkruns in South Africa. And that's Jabo Mkize.

00:46:14[crosstalk]

00:46:15Johan Duvenhage: We've interviewed Jabo on the show before.

00:46:17Craig: It's awesome to see friends from different parkruns, people that were in the Cape and we meet them here again now. It's fantastic seeing all these people. It's really enjoying it, really.

Talking to Alet — Communications, Emerald Resort parkrun (South Africa)

00:46:29Craig: It's wonderful.

00:46:30Johan Duvenhage: Let me go to Arlette. So, Arlette, you're doing communication. So, are you the one responsible for the little notices all around the course?

00:46:37Alet: Yes, definitely.

00:46:38Johan Duvenhage: Tell us, what's the story behind that?

00:46:40Alet: The story behind the notices, but I just want to say Rory got me involved in the parkrun. So, yes, and I'm excited for the Emerald one to help him with everything. So, yes, I'm actually doing all the notices and everything.

00:46:56Johan Duvenhage: So, listeners, as you go around the course, you'll get these motivational signs all around. Some of them a little bit tongue in the cheek and others very motivational. So, yeah, it was very nice to see that. So I want to ask you something, and I don't mind to answer it. You are relatively close to at least three, four other parkruns, which is relatively unusual in South Africa. Do you think that that is going to affect numbers in any of the other parkruns?

00:47:26Rory: So what we're doing is that we actually have what we call a brotherhood between the parkruns. So the idea is that we want to create a community partnership of different parkruns in our area where we want people to do all four, all four different parkruns. So the idea is that if you do one and you know, let's be honest, no matter where you do a run, it can get boring after a while. It can be boring after a while. So we want the people who are on our neighbour parkrun to come here, and go there we go there and we just have fun you know I mean so wherever you are in the morning and and with you within six seven kilometres from any any parkrun in the area in the parkrun area so if you get up in the morning and you want a more quieter run you go to one of the parkruns that are more quieter you understand saying if you um our parkrun because of the wild over here we cannot have dogs on our route. So some people will prefer going to the other parkrun because they can walk with their dogs on that parkrun. And that is one of the things you can do because we have so many parkruns nearby. And the problem is our animals see any dog as a wild dog and it becomes a challenge. So we're trying to create between the three, four parkruns, each parkrun having its unique flavour of activity. So this morning you get up, you want to go to Sasolburg parkrun, which is at Sasolburg Stadium, which is an awesome parkrun, and I want to say it's really an awesome parkrun as well. When I go there, they have a different type of vibe they could try and create there for their people. We want to create the nature part of it. They create the vibe part. So every parkrun has a little bit of a generous effect on them, which we like to see at those parkruns. And yeah, our goal is to get a total number of people in between the four parkruns up as a large number so our goal is not to get a thousand young too many there we want to get in total a large volume of people in the old in the Vaal Triangle community and we want to attract the people from coming here to yeah and the other areas coming here to the tourists to come to Our Park and to say this is different and then while you're here next week if you come come try our other park and try another park and so there's there's no um competition between us because we actually we're actually being friends all between there are these we're all friends with gregor's Mark D, ED at other parkrun and I'm ED here. My other friends are ED at Sasolburg. So we're all friends and we actually encourage each other to see how much we can bring the numbers up in our whole community. Because remember something, the amount and number of people running parkrun in this community is a reflection of how involved the community is in the parkrun. So our goal is, to bring large numbers to all the parkruns. That's actually our goal.

00:50:02Alet: To get people active and get out there again, just like before COVID.

00:50:02[crosstalk]

00:50:06Johan Duvenhage: And, well, what a nicer place can you have than the Emerald Resort? So, guys, thank you very much and all the best for Emerald Resort parkrun. We hope you go from strength to strength, as well as all the other parkruns in the vicinity, and that would be Phoenix Park. Phoenix Park, Sasolburg Stadium. And Rivera.

00:50:24Rory: And Rivera over in Laval, yeah. And if you're coming from overseas, you have to come visit. You have to come visit. You have to come visit.

00:50:31Johan Duvenhage: Thank you very much.

00:50:31Alet: And then Emerald's also got the wine tasting this afternoon.

00:50:35Johan Duvenhage: All right, so I may have to delay my departure back home. Thank you very much. Well, adventurers, it was really good to be park walking again. Emerald Resort parkrun, event number two, took place on a chilly, Highveld winter's morning and had 220 finishers ably supported by 22 volunteers, of these 128 were first-timers as new events in Gauteng attracts a lot of visitors in the first few events. Six parkrunners achieved their 25 parkrun milestones. This event is a one-lap course and takes place on a flat jeep track through the Emerald Resort Animal World Game Reserve next to the Vaal River and has several scenic views. As you've heard Rory say, a variety of antelope can be found in the reserve and whilst the animals are used to people running and segwaying in the reserve, the higher numbers of runners during the parkrun is causing them to be a bit more alert. The team has thus requested that the course be reversed from the initially approved route to ensure a less stressful experience for the game. Returning to the route for additional laps are also not allowed for this reason. The facility consists of the game reserve where the run takes place, but also has a small zoo where several other local, exotic and farm animals are hosted, including two hippos, Mel. As we started off, the roar of the lions next door could be heard despite the pounding running shoes. A friendly little giraffe and her cow mate sets off the runners at the start. parkrunners are given free entry to the facility via a side gate on presentation of their barcodes. This also allows them free access to the zoo and facilities. should you be unable to present your parkrun barcode you will however be required to enter via the main entrance gate and pay for entry to the facility so if you've ever had a good reason not to forget your barcode this is it so well that's it for now and happy parkrunning

00:52:20[background music]

00:52:34Melissa Ellis: And thank you very much to our roving reporters. So two of those were held over for a week. We had PK at Nuriootpa and Lyndell at South Bank and Johan coming to us from Emerald Resort. Now, Simon and I discussed Emerald Resort last week, TOC, and good to know that those lions and hippos are in the zoo.

00:52:57[crosstalk]

00:52:57Tony O'Connell: Not out and about, no.

00:52:58Melissa Ellis: No, not out and about, safely in the zoo. So thank you for clearing that up, Johan.

Dazza's

00:53:05Tony O'Connell: And Mel, speaking of being out and about, we venture over to Dazza's and this week Dazza has said it's World Oceans Day. We had a couple of little jellyfish emoji and they're out and about. This year's theme is Awaken New Depths. Did you parkrun near an ocean today? Come on in and tell us all about your morning.

00:53:24Melissa Ellis: And first up, we had Tracy Leiper coming to us from Queensland. And she said,

00:53:29[18 seconds of audio that could not be transcribed]

00:53:47Melissa Ellis: And Tracy posted a photo of herself in the selfie frame, decked out in all her blueness, including her beautiful skirt that I am very envious of.

00:53:57Tony O'Connell: Mel jumping down to Victoria and Catherine O'Connor no ocean but there was a swamp slash creek celebrating the other 10th birthday today at Frog Hollow parkrun also with an ear emoji and a monkey emoji and the picture was Catherine in the selfie frame with the Frog Hollow froggy mascot an interesting fun fact there Mel if it wasn't for the Frog Hollow launch 10 years ago Inverloch probably wouldn't be in existence I attended that launch and I got that enthused about parkrun that I actually went home that day and emailed headquarters and said, how do I set up a parkrun?

00:54:36Melissa Ellis: Wow. Well, look at that.

00:54:39Tony O'Connell: Froggy have a little bit to do with Inverloch. Getting going.

00:54:43Melissa Ellis: I've got a very soft spot for Froggy. I always used to do my Christmas Day parkrun at Froggy. I don't know about a swamp and a creek, though. They are definitely... More a lake. Yeah. It's a lake, Catherine. Not really a swamp, but yes good oh now we also heard from josh button coming to us from New South Wales and he said felt like an ocean soccer was washed out so 10 year old Ben came for his first ever parkrun pretty soggy morning at Whalan Reserve parkrun but we got it done he even got a hot chocolate afterwards from the local cafe and josh put an ear emoji are you sensing a theme and there was a photo of josh and his little friend in the selfie frame

00:55:32Tony O'Connell: Mel, moving across to the Northern Territory, and we heard from Claire Corkill. Not an ocean, but a hot springs. And that actually sounds probably better than how the ocean temperatures are at the moment. Ticking off the Peel and Oberg clubs this morning at Katherine Hot Springs parkrun, Jack Corkill. And surprisingly, there was also an ear emoji. And the picture was the famous Corkles in the selfie frame.

00:56:00Melissa Ellis: I'm pretty impressed. They've done a Peel and Oberg Club. We named the Oberg Club, Tony. We need to maybe reiterate what that is for the listeners.

00:56:11Tony O'Connell: So, Mel, the Oberg Club is having done a parkrun in every state and territory of Australia, plus the North and South Island over New Zealand. So I'm not a member of that club yet, Mel. I've still got one to go, either but who's it named after that would be named after the one and only Tim Oberg the sensational gentleman who got parkrun up and going in Australia and probably led to the the birth of just about every parkrun up for the first three or four hundred events go Tim

00:56:46Melissa Ellis: Now we also heard from Heather Morgan coming to us from the UK and she said a very long train journey to Newcastle upon Tyne to bag the third last letter of my fourth alphabet at Jubilee parkrun with an ear emoji and there was no picture but it was nice to hear from Heather. Newcastle upon Tyne is also the home parkrun of some friends of mine so it was very nice to hear that Heather was out there.

00:57:15Tony O'Connell: Well, moving a lot south of the UK and back south in Australian geographical terms, Charles Gregory sent us a message in from Tassie. He ran and volunteered at our parkrun facing the Pacific Ocean. Or is it the Southern Ocean? Not sure. Didn't take a pic, but he included an ear emoji.

00:57:40Melissa Ellis: Good work, Charles. Now, Maria Wicks, she was coming to us from the UK, and she said, And Maria posted a picture of herself by the flag and the pop-up in Harrow in a T-shirt, and Sunny's looking very warm over there in the UK. Thank you, Maria. Yeah.

00:57:55[13 seconds of audio that could not be transcribed]

00:58:08Tony O'Connell: And now while you were looking that one up, I just did a quick Google and I don't think it's the Pacific Ocean or the Southern Ocean. I think it might be the Tasman Sea that it faces.

00:58:18Melissa Ellis: It could very well be from our park.

00:58:21Tony O'Connell: Right. Staying in the UK, we heard from Helen Rudder. Hi, Dazza. I heard, ear emoji, that there was a new North East parkrun. So off we went to Fulwell Quarry to re-complete our Regionnaire. Week four, don't worry. It was really lovely. Andy and I walked around together and the pick was Helen and Andy out on the course.

00:58:43Melissa Ellis: Ah, good work, Helen. And nice to know that she was attending week four. And a good time maybe for us to mention how we like to encourage people not to go to week one or even week two, TOC.

00:58:59Tony O'Connell: Yeah, let the team settle in. Let them find their feet. And you actually get a much better parkrun experience, I think, going in week three or four because the numbers have backed off a little bit. You get a better sense of how the parkrun is.

00:59:13Melissa Ellis: And I think it's worth mentioning a lot of us do that more so out of a courtesy to the event teams rather than as a direction from parkrun. There is a lot of tourists out there that will... indicate that it's not a rule that's in any way in writing from parkrun so maybe it doesn't need to be adhered to it's it's more of a I guess an unwritten courtesy would you agree

00:59:46Tony O'Connell: I do know, yeah.

00:59:47Melissa Ellis: Yeah, okay. Alrighty, so next we heard from Sarah from the West Side and she said, Hey Dazza, happy World Oceans Day. Visited Edinburgh, oh I can't sign this, Edinburgh Oval parkrun for two friends 250th this week, followed by a lovely brekkie with the ear emoji. Yet to swim, but the day's only young and headed down there soon. What about you, Andrew Yeatman? Had your weekend swim yet? Smiley face emoji. Hashtag worst is best. And Sarah posted a photo of herself and Matt with their friends at a very green looking Edinburgh Oval. And I really love how they're having this little ongoing banter about their swims.

01:00:31Tony O'Connell: Mel, I'm going to come in here and say I reckon they're all soft. They're all swimming up in Queensland and Western Australia and it's warm water and it's all wonderful. Down in Victoria, there's a group of us still jumping in once a week and our water's 13 degrees at the moment. So come on, Sarah, get down to Victoria, come back to Inverloch and let's have a swim and let's just see how you enjoy the water. Yeah.

01:00:57Melissa Ellis: I'm seeing the gauntlet thrown. Are you saying you have the big kahunas?

01:01:04Tony O'Connell: I did see that message from Andrew Yeatman on his post this week and I'm thinking, well, to be fair to Sarah, I'd probably take her across to the Phillip Island parkrun and we could jump in over there because she's already done Inverloch and we know the adventurers like to do a new course. So it would be fair. Yeah.

01:01:22Melissa Ellis: Oh, look, if Sarah wants to come down in the next couple of weeks, I'll meet her out at Phillip Island. I won't swim, but I'll make the trip just to see her jump in the cold water.

01:01:34Tony O'Connell: Fair enough, Mel. And moving back to the warm water, to the soft people up north, Laura Amos. Not near the ocean, but picked up a Z at the very friendly Zillmere parkrun with the family yesterday. Followed up with adults volunteering and kids running at Des Connor Park Junior parkrun this morning. For us Sydneysiders, it was a much pleasure to have two parkrun days in a weekend. Happy smiley face and the ear emoji. And the pick that came in was Laura and her family in the Zillmere selfie frame.

01:02:08Melissa Ellis: And we probably should thank all the people that we issued the challenge to last week to include an ear emoji in their Dazza's post. It was really lovely to see all those ears popping up and knowing that you all had listened to the episode. So thank you for doing that. You don't have to continue to do an ear emoji. We're going to change it up. So keep listening. We'll give you more information later on.

the Obi Award — Catherine O'Connor

01:02:33Melissa Ellis: But now, TOC, it's time for an Obi loop.

01:02:37Tony O'Connell: An Obi loop. I think I've got one prepared, Mel. I'm not sure about this, but let's pull it out and have a look.

01:02:45[background music]

01:02:45Unidentified speaker: Okay.

01:02:45Tony O'Connell: Our envelope is... Mel, our winner of the Obi for this week is... Catherine O'Connor from Froggy.

01:03:02Melissa Ellis: Hooray! Hooray! Congratulations, Catherine, and happy birthday, Frog Hollow parkrun. Also having their 10th birthday along with the wonderful Shellharbour.

01:03:14Tony O'Connell: Yeah, great to see a few tents going around now. Yes. Rightio.

Club Corner

01:03:20Tony O'Connell: Mel, I think that's enough from us. I think it's time to hear from Rachel.

01:03:25[background music]

01:03:37Rachel: 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 The Common People. Not the song of Pulp Infamy, but if you love the song, you should definitely hit up the version by William Shatner. In the hottest 100 of 2004 from Triple J, his cover version was ranked at 21. And then in 30 seconds time she said, I want to live like common people. I want to do whatever common people do. Want to sleep with common people. I want to sleep with common people like you. Well, what else could I do? I said, I'll, I'll see what I can do. No, I am looking through the latest cheat sheet in and spotted a new club. Common. Is it very common? No, there are only three. Wentworth Common and Bungendore Common from New South Wales and Westbury Town Common from Tassie. A common is a piece of open land for public use. So just a fancy pants word for park. Smiley face. That's what we could re-brand parkrun to. Common run? And I couldn't resist talking about people in the same week as Common, for the aforementioned song Joke, and it's a better choice than Bums. The People Club is for parkrun events that have people's names in their event name, e.g. Albert, Bill, Clyde, Claire, Catherine, etc. There are 45 events with people's names and they are spread throughout the entire country, so anyone can get a start on this club. And remember, in parkrun life, all non-Milestone clubs are unofficial and unsupported by parkrun, so stay tuned for our future club corners.

01:05:11Melissa Ellis: Thank you very much, Rachel, for bringing us more information about the Common Club, I guess. I haven't done any of those, Tony. I don't know about you. Bungendore is high on my list, my to-do list. It would be one of my NENDYs. But Wentworth Common, Westbury Town Common, neither of such I have done.

01:05:34Tony O'Connell: No, neither of them on my list, Mel. So that's a club that I haven't even dipped my toe into.

01:05:40Melissa Ellis: No. And then the people club, I haven't even tried to look at the names of people out of the 45 in Australia that I might have. I assume I've got a good proportion of those. So there's some homework for me to have a look at that.

Consolidated Club Report

01:05:59Melissa Ellis: But what I have looked at is the Consolidated Club report for Saturday, the 8th of June 2024. And of a total of 647 members, 472 took part on this date in nine countries across 243 locations. Now, in the UK, there were adventurers at 49 events taking out first place this week. Ten in South Africa, so big numbers coming to us from Sudafrique. Two in the USA and one each in Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Poland. Locally, we had ventures at... 45 events in the greater state. And 41 events in Queensland. 39 events in New South Wales. 14 on the West Side, taking out South Australia, who were on 13. Nine in Tassie. Seven in the ACT. Six on the North Island. Three in the Northern Tree. And there was one on the South Island because the Baileys are in Queensland. [Afrikaans or French: "Ten in South Africa, so big numbers coming to us from South Africa."] [translation uncertain]

the Frond

01:07:10Tony O'Connell: Mel, our largest international frond. We had a frond of 10 people at Queen's at Belfast, which is a UK event. They were Ian and Alexander Thompson, Cameron Storey, our very own Event Director elite from the University of Western Australia, Charlotte Minchell, Darren and Lucille Pead from Sydney, Laura Davenport, Nedge Rudder, Cass Castleton, and Linda Boziak.

01:07:41Melissa Ellis: And we also had Ian Thompson that popped into Dazza's and he said, part of a large frond at Queen's Belfast, Tim Tams and plenty of Uber tourists in attendance. What's the missing letter though? Now that reference was related to the photo that Ian posted, which was of a pizzeria. Is that how you say it? I can't say that word. Pizzeria.

01:08:05Tony O'Connell: Pizzeria.

01:08:06Melissa Ellis: Pizzeria. I can't say it. Pizzeria. Showing the signage.

01:08:12Tony O'Connell: Is that pizza ear? Oh. We've got our ears going again.

01:08:19Melissa Ellis: Anyway, the photo was of a building and on the signage of the building there was a missing N. But we also did have a photo posted on a different post from Andy Airey showing the Cassabeteers. Is that right, TOC? Now, what is the relevance with the Cassabeteers?

01:08:40Tony O'Connell: Okay, the relevance, Mel, is Darren and Lucille Pead this week became members of the Cassiopeia Club, and that's completing six alphabets. There's only five people in the world that have achieved the six alphabets, so they're the fourth and fifth members into it. The other members are Cass Castleton and... Andy and his lovely wife. And in Deberry, yeah. Yes. And the photo was the five of them in their Cassiopeia T-shirts. And I saw that they had lists and everything already pre-prepared before the day. So they've been working on a very tight schedule, Darren and Lucille, to get to the Cassiopeia. Apparently they called it about 12 months ago, the event and the date that they were going to achieve that on.

01:09:33Melissa Ellis: That's amazing. Congratulations, guys. I haven't even got one yet, but I might not have one, but I am aware of how many I need to complete three. Now, largest frond in Australia. It is no surprise that this week the largest frond was at our very beloved Shellharbour. There were 17 adventurers and they were Andrew Banner, Ingrid Botha, Jason Green, Louise Aitkin, Christine McKenzie, David Foster, Julie and Gordon Turner, Julie Wells, Karen and Kayleigh Hamilton, Sam and Luke Schroder, Rebecca Bailey, Tracey Wood, Gaillyn Cooper and Catherine Pirotta. And our very own co-host, Ollie Spake, was the RD. So we would like to wish a very happy 10th birthday to Schlaba.

01:10:24Tony O'Connell: Well done, Schlaba. And remember that you can add the Adventurous Club as one of your five affiliations on your parkrun profile. It's fairly easy to just jump in, Mel. You look at your results email in the week and it gives you an opportunity to edit your profile and you can add us there.

01:10:42Melissa Ellis: You can, and we can grow, even though you can't see us on any largest groups list anymore.

01:10:50Tony O'Connell: No.

01:10:51Melissa Ellis: No.

Launches and anniversaries"Where is the cake?"

01:10:52Tony O'Connell: Never mind. No launches this week. No. What an exciting week for parkrun. We had no launches. Well, that's not quite right. We didn't have any 5K launches. There was one junior event that launched in Ireland, but no launches in the 5K events this week.

01:11:10Melissa Ellis: Oh, never mind. We had ample last week, so perhaps there'll be more next week. Oh, yes.

01:11:17Tony O'Connell: Next week. We probably will. What are we looking forward to next week, Mel?

01:11:21Melissa Ellis: Oh, what are we going to look forward to?

parkrun adventure challengelistener challenge

01:11:23Melissa Ellis: Well, we're going to issue another challenge to our listeners, so don't tell the others. But...

01:11:29Tony O'Connell: And don't post it in Friday night.

01:11:31Melissa Ellis: Don't put it in the Friday night post. Shh, we don't want to tip them off, those people that don't listen. What we want you to do this week, we want you to mention the word community in your Dazza post on Saturday. So when you've listened to the podcast on Saturday, pop in to Facebook in our social media Dazza's Saturday post and put the word community in your post. And we will choose our selection of comments to read out next week based on who uses that word, like we did this week with the ear emoji.

Sign-off

01:12:09Tony O'Connell: Mel, that sounds awesome. And hopefully we'll get lots of community love from our community. But Mel, nearly wrapped up. Where are you heading this week?

01:12:19Melissa Ellis: Well, I have another adventure planned. So I've had my week sitting at home feeling sorry for myself with COVID and staying local. And I am going to jump on an aeroplane with my buddies, Andrew and Martine. And I'm going to head to Tasweejar. And we are headed for Risdon Brook, I hope. That is the plan. And I was going to ask Ryan Stoddart if you are...

01:12:45Tony O'Connell: hanging around in the general area where are you going to be we might cross paths but what about you Tony where are you gonna oh do you know yet where you're gonna be well I haven't quite decided yet it's gonna be a mystery location I think I think we'll call that one later later in the week closer to the weekend but um yeah I'm sure we'll find somewhere new and exciting to head to

01:13:09Melissa Ellis: Well, that sounds good to me because you can't always know where you're going to be. It's early in the week. It's only Monday night, so appreciate that.

01:13:17Tony O'Connell: Well, as always, you can contact us via our 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.

01:13:25[outro theme playing]