In this episode, Trisha continues her conversation with Tim Oberg, who brought Parkrun to Australia in 2011 and now leads the Healthy Kids Project and its flagship RAD Run Club.

Parkrun has a reputation for changing lives, but some people are still missing from the start line. Trisha and Tim look at who they are, what it takes for an event to reflect its local community, and where Parkrun is reaching people you might not expect. For anyone working across cultures, it raises a practical Cultural Intelligence (CQ) question: what helps people from different backgrounds feel they belong?

The conversation then moves to the school oval, where Tim has rebuilt what he learned at Parkrun for primary school kids.

If you're trying to start something, whether it's a community group or a program inside your organisation, what makes people come back week after week? Tim shares the principles he'd pass on to anyone trying to seed a movement, and why they travel well beyond running.

Connect with Tim Oberg: LinkedIn

• Learn more about his current work at RAD Run Club and the Healthy Kids Project.

Make sure you join Trisha in this journey of growth and discovery throughout the year via Substack or LinkedIn.

Resources mentioned:

• Parkrun - parkrun.com.au
• Rad Run Club - radrun.club
• Situated: Find the People and Places That Bring Out Your Best by Angela Duckworth
• Grit by Angela Duckworth

Referenced in this episode:

Episode 88: Tim Oberg - Part 1 - Why Parkrun Isn't Just About Running

Episode 86 — Can Sport Build Bridges - Or Burn Them?

I would like to acknowledge the Dharawal people, the Aboriginal people of Australia, whose country I live and work on. I would like to pay my respects to their elders, past, present, and emerging, and thank them for sharing their cultural knowledge and awareness with us.

Hi there, everyone. I'm Trisha Carter, an organizational psychologist and an explorer of cultural intelligence. I'm on a quest to discover what enables us to see things from different perspectives, especially different cultural perspectives, and why sometimes it's easier than others to experience those moments of awareness, the shifts in our thinking.

Well, today, everyone, I'm joined by Tim Oberg. Tim founded Parkrun in Australia back in 2011. I spoke about Parkrun two episodes ago, and we'll include that reference in the show notes for you if you haven't listened to it. Parkrun was begun as a single event on the Gold Coast, and it's grown into one of the country's largest participation movements.

Tim is now the founder of the Healthy Kids Project, whose flagship program is the RAD Run Club everyone, here we are again. We're talking about Parkrun with Tim Oberg, and today we're gonna talk a little bit more about not just Parkrun, but also some other aspects that he's thinking about, and we want to speak also about Parkrun and its inclusiveness.

- So welcome back, Tim.

Great to be back.

Yes. And thank you again. I, I want to talk a little bit about something that struck me just recently 'cause I've been reading her new book. It's Angela Duckworth's new book, Situated. And I don't know if you know Angela Duckworth's work.

She wrote Grit. So she is the grit expert coming out of psychology which for many years has told us, you know, to knuckle down and work hard and that that grit sort of is equal to talent and genius, or actually surpasses talent and genius to ensure success. But this time, in this book, she's saying that sometimes we give too much credit or too much blame for sheer willpower when it's really the situation around us, who's watching, what's within arm's reach, she says, picking up her phone, that makes behavior change or doesn't make behavior change.

And it struck me when I was reading the book I'm still only halfway through, but it struck me that the Parkrun structure and culture creates that situation. You know, you, you're with a group of people, so you have the peers. You get your results, so you can see how you've performed, how you've improved.

You can count how many Parkruns you've done, so you can gain the sense of satisfaction. On the app, you can follow your friends, you can see their results, or you can sit down with them over coffee and share. So when you were thinking about things, you know, did you think about how the situation of Parkrun, and then I guess the app as well, was a kind of built-in accountability?

Or, you know, did, did you just discover it and go, "Yay, it's working"?

Look, there's no doubt that the group aspect of Parkrun creates, as you say, an accountability that isn't there if you just run by yourself or exercise by yourself or do anything by yourself. So as soon as you're in a group environment, that, that scales up. And, and, and, you know, so many people come to Parkrun with friends, with family, et cetera.

So if you don't come, you, rest assured you're gonna get a phone call or a text message saying, "Hey, we were at Parkrun. Where were you?" Uh, and Yeah. exactly. So, so, so I think that is, that is significant the fact that it's, you know, doing something in a group creates accountability and, and, and that's age old, right?

So that's, that's not a, a Parkrun phenomenon, but Parkrun does it really well. I think the other things you talked about, which I, I would call gamification is you know, almost like Parkrun has almost kind of stumbled across it or stumbled into it because now, like, gamification is, is commonplace in terms of, well, obviously computer games, but you know, so many things in the world now Are gamified to replicate these kind of experiences that we have in the digital world.

And so the gamifica- the gameification of Park run is all those things that you mentioned. It's the stats It's the app it's the milestone T-shirts that you get that you're wearing. So you know, you've played the game, you've done 100 parkruns, you've got the shirt, right? So it's a milestone, it's a reward, but, you know, bigger picture, it's gamifying this process of turning up to Parkrun. And I think there's a lot that can be learned for, particularly for community sport around how do we encourage volunteering you know, how do we get people to come and do our activity, whatever that may be.

How do we get them to come back, more importantly. And it's that gamification and that's certainly something that, and we'll, I'm sure we'll talk about this later, but in terms of what I'm doing now it's, you know, bringing gamification into that as a way to motivate in my case, children now is, is really, really important.

if you didn't listen last week, listeners I personally believe Parkrun is, is pretty amazing, and I've gained friends, I've improved my fitness, got a greater sense of belonging in my own neighborhood because of it. And from reading some of the Parkrun stories and last week Tim mentioned himself how he had received a lot of emails about people who told him that Parkrun had changed their life.

And so we, we acknowledge that it has this really moving experience, but not everyone experiences it that way. So young adults are the most underrepresented group in Parkrun. And we know that they sometimes join, but they might drift from what we think of as the central social core. And we know that young adults themselves are, you know, the highest suicide risk, the highest mental health risk is for young adults at the moment.

And we know that men who in society carry a much higher risk of chronic isolation they actually volunteer at Parkrun at lower rates than women. So we've got a story that Parkrun works, but it's also, you know, we've got real areas for improvement. So what's your read on, on why for some of these demographics, and do you have any ideas?

Great question. I think if we, if we unpick the Parkrun data, I, I, I think we would find that the- if we wanna talk about the ratio of younger people has increased in recent, in recent years because running is cool again. So you know, there is a global running boom going on, so not even talking about Australia, but the number of young people who are joining run clubs, social run clubs, so not Parkrun but you know, they're, they're, you know, sort of during the week and, and I'm not talking about athletics clubs or running clubs as we might know them, but just social run clubs.

They're popping up everywhere. You know, it's sort of like the new kind of modern-day dating is you join a run club. But a lot of those people are coming to Parkrun as well. They're translating. And they might not be coming as regularly you know, they might not come every week but they're certainly discovering running through this social run club lens And coming along.

But I think, you know, I, I guess younger people, typically it's like, well, they're gonna do the thing that is perceived as cool. If their parents are going, they probably don't think it's cool, right? So

may not see volunteering as cool.

that's right. So, so look, you know, that do- that doesn't surprise me and I think it's one of the challenges and I think I'm sure Parkrun recognizes this, is how can we you know, get, get more of that dem- demographic coming along?

How to... And again, it gets down to the words and the imagery. You know, more photos within the Parkrun sort of social media and newsletters of younger people at Parkrun, you know? And then they will start to say, "Oh, well, maybe I will go 'cause I'm seeing people like me." and I think that goes no matter what sort of demographic we're talking about.

It's, you know, do you see yourself in the people that you see at that event currently? And, and if the answer is yes, then you'll feel more inclined to go along. So but it's definitely, it's definitely a challenge. I mean everyone, you know, it's, it's well, it's well known that teenagers are all fall- are falling out of sport at a, at a higher rate now than ever.

You know, you get to sort of 14, 15, and girls, female participation or teenage girl partic- participation falls off a cliff, unfortunately. So, you know, there's a big challenge there, not just for Parkrun, but for all of society. You know, how do we, how do we keep teenagers moving? You know, get them off the screens.

Obviously that's at an age where they're getting part-time jobs and school's getting harder and all that kind of stuff, but you know, it's 30 minutes, right? Or 60, you know, 60 minutes on a Saturday morning. You know, everyone can find the time. But it's just a case of, you know, having that motivation.

And again, it's that gamification, you know, getting, getting people involved and, and, you know, getting them to wanna aspire to get that shirt that you're wearing. You know, you didn't get that shirt by accident. I'm sure once you got your 50, you wanted your 100, right? So, and it just goes, it, it just goes like that.

So, but you know, it's a challenge that's not unique to Parkrun in terms of how do we engage younger people and keep them coming for all those reasons that you just mentioned.

Mm, mm. And the men

Yeah, I said it earlier, girl- w- f- women are just more organized, right? They're gonna, they're g- they're gonna come along and they're gonna, and they're g- and they're gonna be... They're gonna gravitate to, to, to groups probably more so than men just because of that safety factor. But y- again, it's a, look, it's a challenge, right?

You know, you, you can, you can cut the d- the data any way you want and, and look at where the gaps are and, and That's that's the challenge, right? So how do we, how do we get more people coming along? You know, I, I mentioned in the last episode about you know, a man who was a farmer and his only interaction with humans was coming into Parkrun 250 kilometers from his home once a week.

And, and so that's where, you know, those stories have to be told because you tell those stories and then w- that will, you know, gravitate and resonate with, with people who'll go, "Well, if it worked for them, it might work for me." And you know, so I think that's where the storytelling is really important

And what about, and, and I guess this matters to me a lot that aspect that the majority of Parkrunners come from more English-speaking Caucasian backgrounds in Australia. I'm not sure if that's the same in the UK. And from, you know, there's some aspects of the, the research that sort of biases it towards it because the research that was done that I referenced last, last week, and we will put a link to it in the show notes did require English for people to respond.

So it may have been the research itself that was a bit of a bias, but I'm, I'm thinking how can, how can Parkrun be sort of a doorway for, you know, people from other language backgrounds and different ethnic groups to become part of that community as well?

Mm. Yeah.

what do you, think?

Well, it definitely, it definitely can, and I'll give you a great example which is The Ponds parkrun in Sydney. Have you been to The Ponds at all? Okay

so go to The Ponds 'cause it is incredible. It's like, you know, huge Filipino population in that part of Sydney. But not just Filipinos, it is like the United Nations when you go to The Ponds, and it is an incredible feeling because it's representative of, of that area.

You know, that is, that is at a very multicultural area, and The Ponds parkrun is h- represents that. And it, and it is, it is great to see. And it's, and they're not doing anything different. Like it's, it's a parkrun. They're not, you know, necessarily reaching out in lots of different languages. You know, we're in Australia, so English is obviously the first language.

But I think you know, there's a lot of other groups you know, I do some work with the Australian Sports Commission, and we talk about this, which is if you, if you really wanna outreach to different groups, you do have to talk to them in their language because you've got so many migrants who live in Australia now who have come from non-English-speaking countries.

If you wanna get them, you gotta talk to them in, in, in their language, and you've gotta show them the imagery that. says you're gonna belong. So it's, it's incredibly important. But there's lots of, as I say, there are lots of case studies. The Ponds is the one that really comes to mind for me and, and as I say, being Sydney, you gotta go, and I want you to go and you're gonna talk about it on this podcast at some

love that. Yeah.

But Yeah. it, it, it definitely does have, have that ability to, to bring cultures together. We used to... In, in the early days of parkrun, we did acknowledge it was a middle-aged white man's club, 100%. Like, y- you know, you could see- You would just look at a parkrun and you'd say, "It's white people."

Whether that was the UK or Australia. And so parkrun you know, here in Australia, but globally, has done an incredible amount of outreach work to do e- exactly what we're talking about here, which is to reach out to not just different ethnicities, but people with disabilities, people with different health conditions.

There's a lot of work that's gone on in terms of using parkrun as a, a, a rehab tool for cancer. You know, there's just... I, I could go all day about the different things that parkrun's done in ter- in terms of reaching out to, to different groups that are sort of otherwise underrepresented. Parkrun's even in prisons.

So,

Yes. I, I only heard about that in the, in the context of doing the research here. Is that in Queensland or

No, there, there's a number of prisons around Australia. It's not really publicized as to where they are and, and who's doing it. But...

put, that on your tourism

Correct. exactly

You can't, you can't be a parkrun tourist at a prison. But but you know, the, the, but the point of that is that you've got people who are inside the prison doing parkrun, and it gives them something to integrate into when they come out.

Because y- you know, there's a lot of research around people re-offending simply because they get out And they don't have a-- their only network is their, their bad network that they had before they went in. And so they just gravitate back towards that, whereas you come out, you, you're already engaged with parkrun through doing it in the prison.

And then you come out and sure enough, it's kind of the same thing. It's you know, 5K, your barcode still counts, et cetera. And and,

And you've already got-- hopefully you've already got the pattern and you wanna get to the next

Correct.

Yeah, exactly. So

as you described

yeah, that's exactly right. So, so it's a, it's something, you know, Parkrun really prides itself on, on, on the fact it. does outreach into lots of different, lots of different groups. And ultimately, you know, the vision of Parkrun is that e- each Parkrun you go to will reflect that area, just like the Ponds does, as I said

Yes. And so the problematic is if you have a poor white group, but you're actually in a different demographic. Yeah,

Yeah, and, and it's... Look, you know, I, I probably, I probably wouldn't want to use the term problematic, 'cause it's not their fault, you know, if, if there's a bunch of white people who just happen to be the ones that set it up or whatever. But, you know, w- what you want is to, is to have that spirit of y- you know, we want our event to, to look like our community, and we want everyone to feel welcome, and regardless of who may be the core group of people that set it up to begin with and and, and whatnot, you know, no one's setting it up with bad intentions.

So, but like for a long time, Albert Park in Melbourne was w- you know, you know, that was the, the fast running parkrun because all the running clubs would go there. And so y- it, it was actually to your kind of average parkrunner, it was quite an intimidating event to go to, and as such a lot of people kind of kept away from it because, you know, it didn't feel as inclusive.

Now, it couldn't be anything further from that fact these days. But Yeah

in the first couple of years just because it, you know, it was kind of set up with the support of local running clubs and all the local running clubs would come down. It just felt a bit, yeah, it just felt a bit different, that event.

And even comparing parkrun UK And parkrun Australia, the majority of parkrun events in the UK in the early days were set up by kind of running clubs, so there was much more of a running club culture there than there was in Australia. We only really had Albert Park that was like that, but the rest were just, you know, set up by normal folk in the community.

So, but again, that's, you know, that's all evolved out in time now as, a- as well and you know, they all sort of have that community feel now.

Having evolved over time is, is sort of the key of what I wanna talk about now, because you've taken the same logic that you've gained and the experience that you've gained in setting up Parkrun here and as we said, in APAC. So it's sort of like make it simple, make it social, make it accessible, and you've turned-- you've created RAD.

Do we say RAD or do we say R-A-D?

No we say Rad. It's definitely rad

R- and Run Club and Fresh Fruit Friday into schools. So tell me about them. Tell me what's the philosophy and, and what's the initiatives

so when I left Parkrun in Australia in 2022 after, you know, an incredible 11 years I wanted to specifically, I guess, try and have an impact in the health of specifically children the way that Parkrun has had on, shall we say, the wider society. B- because the number of, the number of children who actually participate at Parkrun is quite low.

It's probably about 5% of overall participation, because five kilometers is a l- is a long way.

Yeah.

your average, you know, eight-year-old can't do that. I mean, I mean, maybe they can, but they don't want to. And, and so, so I thought, "All right, well..."

fast little kids at our

Yeah

look, there, there's there's plenty of outliers in terms of kids.

No, don't worry about that. But but you know, I wanted to have that sort of mass impact and, and so I created a charity called the Healthy Kids Project. And our flagship program is called the RAD Run Club. And it's got Parkrun's DNA written all over it. I'll ex- I'll explain it. And and the name RAD was quite specific.

Obviously, you know, people our age think of the word radical but I'm not sure if kids these days use that word. But but actually RAD is an acronym, which is resilience, attitude, and determination because sadly, those three traits are quite lacking in a, in a lot of kids these days. And that's just, that's not my opinion.

The, that, you know, that's, that's a bit of a fact. And and so I thought I want to create a program which is a physical activity like Parkrun it'll be in primary schools and by participating in that program, children will enhance their resilience, they'll develop a positive attitude towards physical activity and hopefully school and they'll be determined to do better each time they come along.

And so that's the, that's the sort of foundation of what the RAD Run Club is all about. Now, what it actually looks like when you see it is a, a bunch of kids running around, they're running and walking and rolling in wheelchairs if they, if, if, if need be around their school oval or whatever the space is at the primary school.

They've got little QR codes, much like the Parkrun barcode and you'll see a s- you'll see a, a series of laptops or iPads or whatever set up, and they basically jog past, they scan their QR code after each lap, they get this very loud audible beep that they love and they run, and they run off and they do it again.

And so it's, it's laps of the oval you know, all the, the words that you mentioned a moment ago, I think it was accessible, it was simple, it was consistent. You know, this is what RAD Run Club is all about, all this Parkrun DNA. And if anything, we've taken the Parkrun kind of model, simplified it even more- we've put it in schools.

The teachers own it, the kids own it. A lot of schools have the kids actually managing it, obviously supervised by a teacher. But it is incredibly simple. It's all run by a digital platform, much, much like Parkrun. It's gamified like Parkrun, and it's gamified in, in three ways. So the individual child, as they participate, they obviously accrue laps over time.

Each school's lap distance is factored into the system so that that, that child then accrues a distance and they earn digital badges for, you know, the 5K badge, the 10K badge. We have the 14K badge, which is called the City to Surf, 'cause that's the city, you know, the City2Surf. Ex- you know, et cetera.

So you've got this journey of accruing digital badges or, or you know, as Parkrun would call it, milestones. So you get the milestones along the way Then within the school, each time you do a lap, you earn a house point. So, so all their houses are recorded, so you then have a house points competition going on within the school.

And, you know, most schools already have that for other things. This is just adding a new layer into their house points competition. So you've got the gamification of which house is the best and you know which house will get the reward at the end of term. It might be, you know, the pizza party or the free dress day or whatever it would be.

And then you've got the, the third layer of gamification, which is the macro level, which is our national schools leaderboard where you can see actually which schools have got the highest level of participation. So again, all of that is derived from my time at Parkrun, understanding, like what makes people tick, what, what-- how can you gamify the, the physical act of moving you know, running and walking?

How can you gamify that in a way that will appeal to, in this case, children who otherwise if... You know, most kids, you say to them, "Hey, we're just gonna go and do 10 laps of the oval," they'll look at you and go, "I couldn't think of anything worse." but

you say to them, "Take this QR code. You're gonna run around, you're gonna scan it, you're gonna do it with your friends, and it doesn't matter how fast you go, it doesn't matter how many laps you do and you're gonna earn points, and that's the task."

They'll go, Oh I like that." and, and that's the Radrun Club, and it's going incredibly well. We've got over 120 schools around Australia participating. We've got one school in South Africa. I'm actually in talks now with some schools in Colombia in South America, so to be our first Spanish-speaking Radrun club.

So Yeah.

there's a real vision for this to become a global program. But obviously looking at Australia, we've got Brisbane 2032 in six years. So what better legacy of a, of an Olympic Games than more children moving more often? And, you know, that's what I wanna see. And, you know, the, the goal ultimately, this isn't about faster kids, it's not about a better cross country team at the school.

The goal is that, that the kids finish And they're, they're better ready to learn. That's actually the goal. You know, they're, they're ready to go to class. The- any sort of crazy morning energy that they, that they had before they started doing RAD that's gone or it's minimized. They get to class, they're proud of themselves.

The first thing they say to their teacher is, "Guess what? I did 10 laps today." And it gi- it gives the teacher automatically something to say, "Well done," like, "You're incredible." So it just creates this pride within the school. It sort of builds school culture, it builds house culture. And you know, a lot of kids hate school it's, unfortunately.

But that's one little thing in the day that they can say, "If I achieved nothing else today, if I didn't enjoy anything else today, I did this thing with my friends and I achieved something and I feel good about myself for doing it." it just happens to be laps of the oval, just like Parkrun just ha- Parkrun just happens to be a 5K run or walk, but it's the vehicle to just make people feel better and c- and, and feel connected and, you know, more, more connected in schools.

We've actually just added a new feature in the RRAD platform where parents can now actually get QR codes and run with their kids and earn points. They can earn points as well for their, for their child's house. And likewise, teachers. So, so I've kinda, I've got this vision of a, of a whole school community, children, parents, teachers all participating together.

You know, it's a 15-minute, 20-minute thing before school. But it's beautiful. I was just at one. I'm, I'm in, in a hotel room in Melbourne Right. now, as you know, and I was, I was at one this morning Ivanhoe Primary School. And it's just, you can't help but feel joyous when you're around a sea of children moving and laughing.

And there weren't parents participating today, but there were parents there encouraging their kids, and not in a bad way. They were just so happy to see their kids moving and doing this thing before school. So, and I, and I owe so much of it to, you know, my 11 years at Parkrun and understanding what works and what doesn't work and how people think and how...

And you know, my, my experiences as a father of four and as a teacher as well, you know, how, what h- what goes on in schools and how schools tick and how can we fit this into a school day where it works. And yeah, so it's, it's incredible and it's going really, really well and as I say, I owe it all kind of to Parkrun

That's brilliant. I love it. I often end with a couple of questions, and one, we didn't do that last episode because we were in the middle of this, so we're gonna end with thinking about, ... It's a little bit about your advice because of what you've achieved, and so I want to slant it towards someone who's trying to seed a movement.

So what's the thing that you've learnt from building Parkrun and now RAD that you learnt while doing it and that you'd tell someone else if they were trying to seed a movement or get something going?

Yeah, I mean, there's some core principles that, that work at Parkrun, that work at Rad Run Club that can be applied in any setting, as you say. So I mean, first of all, consistency. So whatever your movement is, whatever your thing is, you can't just do it once. You know, that's not gonna create anything.

You know, your podcast, right.

has to be-- you can't just do one. You have to do it every week or every fortnight or what-whatever. So whatever your version of consistency is, whether it's daily, weekly, monthly, you know, determine what that is and then, and then that, And, then you, you have to stick to it. So and that can flex, you know.

So with, with Rad Run-- well, with Parkrun, it's every Saturday morning, same time, same place. Rad Run Club, the schools determine what works for them. So I don't prescribe to them that you have to do it on a certain day at a certain time so there's flexibility there. But once they work out what that is, they're all consistent. So it has to be consistent.

Inclusion. You know, we've talked so much about inclusion in this, but, you know, you've got to think about who are you trying to engage in your movement, and you might not be trying to engage everyone. There's no re- there's nothing that says every movement has to be for everyone.

But you've got to think about who actually is your customer, if we wanna call it that. And then you have to make sure that whoever they are, it is inclusive for them to whatever that looks like. So you can't go out there and say, "I wanna create a program for people in wheelchairs," and then where you're gonna do it, there's lots of stairs and rough terrain and so on.

So it's not gonna work, right? So you, you have to have you know, look through- have a, have an inclusion lens as you go. You have to remove barriers to participation and remove friction. And what I'm ... You know, we all know what the word friction is, but in th- in this case, it's like, what are all the reasons why someone wouldn't join your movement?

Because it get ... 'Cause essentially it might be too hard. So you gotta get rid of those things. And, like, one of the things that I did with Rad Run Club was the original registration form for parents was about 20 questions. And it was all you know, what languages are spoken at home, and what is your background, and what is your child's current level of physical activity?

And I realized I hate doing signup forms that ask lots of questions. So i got rid of all of it and, and and cause I thought all those questions I can find out later through surveying and so on. I want to make the experience of registering for, for Rad as fast and as easy as possible. So ask the bare minimum. You know, just, you know, you, you've gotta remove the friction, remove every reason why someone wouldn't wanna do it. So I think, you know, those, those principles there if all you do is focus on those things to begin with, that's a good

That's gonna get you started. Because if you think about what the opposite is to everything I just said there, if you make it hard for people to register, if it doesn't feel inclusive if it's not simple if it's not consistent It's not gonna work. It's just, it's just not gonna work. What- whatever that would be.

And, you know, I've had my, my mother who's very engaged with her, with the Anglican church and she said to me, "How c- what can we learn from you about how we can get more people, A, coming to church and, and volunteering?" and all those principles apply, you know. So whether it's you know, a, a movement like a Parkrun or a RadRun club or your local church the same things apply.

So, so I think they're universal. And yeah, there's just so much to be learnt from the success of Parkrun, much of which Parkrun just stumbled into. You know, as, as I said, as I said in the last episode, it just happened to be the right thing at the right time, and the technology evolved and developed in a way that enabled it to, to, to be what it is today.

and there were elements that you brought to it, Tim, let's not deny that in terms

yeah

own thinking and, and thinking about how it would work well. Yeah.

Yeah

Yeah, that's exactly right. And, and, and look, obviously dig- you know, digital is a, is a huge thing. You know, the way you can scale anything with, you know, by it being digitally enabled. You know, Parkrun ultimately is a tech platform. That's what it is. Rad Run Club is a tech platform. You then build the human element around it.

But without the tech platform, you could you couldn't do it. And so again, whatever your movement is, you know, how are you gonna integrate technology, artificial intelligence? You know, how can you use those things as a tool to help you grow your movement? It-- That may not look like exactly what Parkrun's use of it is or Rad Run Club's, but it is, it is utilizing the tools to do it.

And then I think the last thing is, is, you know, being community-led. You know, Parkrun has a head office, Parkrun has staff, but ultimately Parkrun is all about the local events. It's about those empowering the, the way that, that those local people, those local volunteers are empowered to deliver the product.

And so the more you can empower local communities, that could be online, that could be offline, it doesn't have to be, you know, face-to-face like we talk about with Parkrun, but how can you empower your community to own it? And then they do the work. They actually do the work for you. So, so yeah, I think all those, all those things are, are key.

That is really encouraging. Thank you. And for the final question Tim, if I look at an Australian primary school or a local park run in 10 years, so this will be after Brisbane 2032, which will be the Olympics for those of you listening in other parts of the world, in Australia, what will it look like when the effect that you're working on and have been working on for years has properly landed?

What are you hoping for, is what I'm asking. Yeah.

the, the vision, whether it, whether it's, whether it's Parkrun, whether it's Rad Run Club, it's more people moving more often, you know? So it's about movement and using movement as, as the vehicle to create connectedness. So in case of Parkrun, it's, it's community connectedness. In the case of Rad Run Club, it's school connectedness, school culture.

So I think there's 6,000 primary schools in Australia. Now I'm not gonna pretend that every primary school in Australia is gonna do Rad Run Club, but my vision is why not? You know, why, why, why not? Because what it provides, everyone needs. Every, every k- every kid should have the opportunity to move before school and, and in a way that's fun and gamified and building that whole school community culture and so on.

You know, it's so simple. It's incredibly simple. Like I said, this morning I was at an event, the teacher literally put some laptops on the table, hit start, start, start, and then he just stood back. The kids did the rest. The kids just came and grabbed their QR codes and start running, and it's, it's so simple.

So, so look, I've, I've got a, a vision that w- what we're gonna see in 10 years is more children moving more often, and that the, the knock-on effect from that is children with a more p- positive attitude towards coming to school, a more positive attitude towards movement. They're happier to go into the classroom in the morning, and who knows?

Better academic results, you know? Like, you know, all those things. Better behavioral, behavioral outcomes in schools. You know, they're all the sorts of things that I, I believe a program like Rad Run Club can have That impact. And so as we scale it that, you know, that's what I hope for. So,

That is brilliant. Well, Tim, thank you so much for giving us your time today. I deeply appreciate it. It's been really encouraging speaking with you and great to connect and bond over Parkrun. And I thank you for your work because it's had an impact on me and my life.

Thanks, Trisha. It's been great. And you know, for any listeners who wanna find out more about Rad Run Club, and I know you're gonna put it in the show notes, but I'll give it, I'll give it a plug anyway. It's quite simply radrun.club. And I'd love, particularly if we've got any teachers out there or obviously people who have children in primary schools, please get in touch.

It's probably the simplest program your school will ever put on with the highest, you know, amount of impact. So the return on investment. When, when I say investment, it's free. But the return on investment, which is time, is, is really high. So no, I've loved talking to you, Trisha. Thank you so much

You're very welcome. Thank you. And dear listeners, I'm looking forward to meeting with you again next episode, so please make sure that you're following along with The Shift.