A Proper parkrunday In Rivendell

After the bunting and the big arrival into Kalgoorlie, the next morning started in the most obvious way possible.

parkrun.

Ols was up early enough to post from breakfast before I had even appeared. He called it a true athlete’s breakfast. Ben, naturally, had gone for fresh fruit and porridge. It was all very serious preparation for Ols’ first parkrun.

That might sound like a strange choice for a rest day, but HAA had started at Canning River parkrun two weeks earlier. Being in Kalgoorlie and not going to Kalgoorlie-Boulder parkrun would have felt wrong. By then, parkrun was one of the ways people kept finding us.

The morning was beautiful. The course put me in mind of running through Kings Park, which was not something I expected to be saying in the Goldfields. We were introduced during the run briefing, and the local parkrun community made us feel welcome.

The Strava activity for the day is that parkrun. It measures short of 5k, but that was a watch setting thing rather than a course thing. I still had my watch in UltraTrac mode, which worked fine on long straight stretches of road and not quite so well on a 5k course with lots of corners.

Ben and Ols ran their first parkrun that morning too, and both posted very respectable times. That still makes me smile. They had already spent two weeks driving, cooking, waiting, refilling, checking, laughing, and putting up with me after long days. Now they had official parkrun times as well.

Speaking of which, earlier that morning I had suggested that 87 minutes would be a good bet for the three-HAAmigos combined times competition. I was close (but still wrong), our official times gave us a combined total of 85 minutes 22 seconds!

Allison and Nigel, the local run directors, had already done a ridiculous amount for us before we even arrived in town. They had rallied runners, connected us with people, helped get the council and media aware, arranged a Coles voucher, put me in touch with local parkrunner Chris Woods of StixFX for vehicle stickers, and contacted Rydges, who ended up donating three nights of accommodation and breakfast for the three of us.

So when people ask whether I had a support crew, the short answer is Ben and Ols.

The fuller answer is more like: Ben and Ols in the van, parkrun people in each major town, Heart Foundation people, friends, friends of friends, strangers, businesses, and a hidden Facebook group full of people quietly helping the thing keep moving.

The boys set up the mobile heart display away from the parkrun itself, near the Queen Bees Coffee van. Wendy and John from Queen Bees made a donation, people stopped to talk, and the coffee-and-chat part of the morning did what coffee-and-chat at parkrun often does: it made a big thing feel ordinary and human.

Back at Rydges, Nicholas Parkinson-Bates had let us set the heart up outside the entrance, then later in reception. People could buy a small metal heart, write a message, and hang it on the display. Ryan Avery, world champion Toastmaster and keynote speaker, was in town for the same event as my friend Melinda and added his support. Shane and Louise Miller and family added theirs too. Nicholas and his family locked in the love as well.

Kalgoorlie kept working like that. One connection led to another. Someone happened to be in town. Someone knew someone. Someone offered the next useful thing.

Even the campervan managed to make itself part of the day. Ben had called Apollo because the heater was not working and there were a couple of mechanical things we wanted checked. We bought an electric heater at Harvey Norman, then RAC came out. The original things were apparently fine, which was good, but the mechanic found an oil pump leak.

Camper number two. Oil leak number two.

My prediction at the time was third time lucky. Spoiler alert… turned out I was right, thankfully!

The rest of the day had the Super Pit in daylight, which was exactly as massive as it looked, and another generous surprise from Rydges. Miranda and the day spa team offered me a complimentary half-hour sports massage for the next day. I was going to book anyway, so I stretched it to an hour. At that point a massage was not indulgence. It was maintenance.

That night, the Rydges and Nicholas support extended into the hotel bar and restaurant, where we met the Kalgoorlie Kangas at their function. Rydges sponsored the team, and we were introduced to the players, given a chance to speak, and able to encourage people to buy and sign hearts. There were best-and-fairest nominations, kind words from the club president and others, and a room full of people willing to listen to why three blokes and a red heart were making their way across the country.

There was also a fantastic fillet steak, because if Rydges was going to keep feeding us like that, getting back on foot was always going to be a little harder.

We did not put any more walking kilometres toward Brisbane that day, but Kalgoorlie became much more than the first big dot on the map. It became Allison and Nigel, parkrun, Queen Bees Coffee, Ryan Avery, Shane and Louise, Nicholas Parkinson-Bates and Rydges, Melinda, Miranda, a footy club, a giant hole in the ground, a suspicious campervan, and Ben and Ols becoming parkrunners.

For a rest day, it was pretty full.

Images From The Day

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