Adelaide Marathon Festival

Ms HOOD (Adelaide) (11:34): By leave, I move my motion in amended form:

That this house:

(a) acknowledges that Sunday 25 August marked the 46^th Adelaide Marathon Festival, South Australia’s premier running event that runs along all the scenic locations of Adelaide’s CBD;

(b) congratulates the organisers and participants of this year’s festival and recognises its long-term success, given it is one of the only races in Australia that was held during the heights of the COVID-19 pandemic, in a safe setting;

(c) acknowledges the rise of community running clubs, parkruns and running festivals across South Australia, and how they contribute to more active, connected, healthier communities; and

(d) acknowledges the many volunteers across our state who allow these clubs and running events to happen.

Just for the information of the house, the amendments there were just changing in (a) the Saturday to Sunday, in (b) adding the word 'the' after 'during the heights of' and, also in (a) removing the final letter 'e' from premiere.

On Sunday, my alarm went off at 5am, but I was not upset about that because it meant that I was getting up bright and early to head to the Adelaide Marathon Festival at Adelaide Oval. The festival features the marathon, half marathon, 10km, 5km and the kids' run, and it is organised by the tremendous South Australian Road Runners Club. While many of the capital city marathons are actually run by major event companies, this is a marathon festival still run by a not-for-profit volunteer running club, so what they achieve is just absolutely incredible.

I want to congratulate Adam Taylor and Jeremy Zieseniss, and all of the other organisers and volunteers on a terrific morning. Thanks to their amazing sponsors, partners and charity partners. There is PREPD Hydration, Aussie Home Loans, RunDNA, OzHarvest and also the government of South Australia who help make this day happen.

A special mention to the Indigenous Marathon Foundation. It was great to have the 1983 marathon world champ Rob de Castella at the event supporting the IM Foundation's amazing athletes. There was just so much joy on Sunday morning amongst all of those athletes as they prepared to run.

There was also some Olympic star power at this year’s festival. Jessica Stenson was at the festival. She has just returned from Paris. Jess and I both grew up in our hometown of Naracoorte, and attended Naracoorte Primary School, running the cross countries there. I can tell you with absolute certainty that I was not as fast as Jess. Seeing her lead the marathon during the Paris Olympics was just so incredible, and we are so proud of her for coming in at 13^th. But having just returned from that incredible experience with so much training, the fact that she gave up her Sunday morning to come down and support the Adelaide Marathon Festival really is just a testament to the kind and caring nature of Jess. She was actually a pacer in the 10km run, which I am sure for Jess is pretty much the equivalent of a leisurely Sunday stroll.

To all the runners, you came out in droves, and you gave it your all. I would like to inform the house of the following winners: for the 5km race in female, it was Victoria Bath, Rosamond Gilden and Indiah Staniford; in the males it was Ben Van Raalte, Patrick Hunt and Finlay Crisp; in the 10km female Izzi Batt-Doyle, an incredible Olympian herself, Georgia Wilson and Sophie Morphett; in the males Adam Goddard, Adrian Potter and Thomas Elfenbein.

In the half marathon—this is where things start getting serious—in the females it was Tara Palm, Penny Townshend and Emma Kraft; in the males it was Jacob Cocks, Frankie Conway and Matthew Smith; then for the marathon—I cannot even imagine running this far—for the females it was Acacia Wadham, Georgia Darcy and Amelia Spring, and for the males Kaleb Laker, Fraser Darcy and Ryan Waddington. It was just incredible.

Many of the runners on Sunday are also part of local running groups, and so I wish to acknowledge them today and the enormous contribution they make to our community. In my suburb of Prospect, we have the Prospect Run Club. Their motto is Running for No Reason. It was started up a few years ago by a group of local dads just for fitness and for friendship, and promoting mental health, so to all of those who are part of our beautiful run club—Mikey, Renee, Zols, Pup, Clutsy, Dave, or the Beacon as they call him—there are just so many people involved in making this club special.

What started with just a few dads on a Friday morning has now exploded to more than 100 runners every Friday at 5.30am. Sometimes I am there trotting along next to them. They also do intervals on Tuesdays and a long run on Sunday mornings, all ending up at our fabulous Cotto coffee shop on Prospect Road. So there is that element as well of our run clubs really supporting our local cafes and coffee shops.

A shout-out goes to the Walkerville Run club. They run from the former YMCA site on Thursday mornings at 6am. Thank you to Natalie and everyone involved with that wonderful run club. We are lucky enough in my community to have three amazing park runs. I give a shout-out to all the volunteers who make that happen, from the timekeepers, walkers, scanners, those providing the tokens to the race directors—they all do an amazing job.

We have Pakapakanthi at Victoria Park, the Torrens parkrun along Karrawirra Parri—the River Torrens, where you often find me trotting along—and the Nantu Wama parkrun in North Adelaide as well. These are more than just run clubs; they are keeping our community healthy, connected and engaged. It really makes for such a healthier and strong community. So I just want to congratulate everyone who is involved, whether they are from the Adelaide Marathon Festival, the South Australian Road Runners Club or parkrun and all our community running clubs. We really do appreciate you, and I look forward to setting my alarm this Friday for a trot out with the Prospect Run Club. I commend this motion to the house.

Mr BATTY (Bragg) (11:40): I rise in support of the member for Adelaide's motion acknowledging the Adelaide Marathon Festival, a very long-running festival since 1979, and most recently—this last weekend, on 25 August—when there were five races held. The first of them was the main event, the marathon, which is over 42 kilometres. It started very early in the day at Adelaide Oval on Memorial Drive passing many landmarks in our city, heading through Bonython Park and our Parklands along the River Torrens, and looping back through the Adelaide Oval gardens. I would like to congratulate Kaleb Laker who placed first in the marathon this year, completing it in two hours, 23 minutes and 32 seconds.

I presume that I have been asked to speak on this motion because I am an international athlete. I have never done the Adelaide Marathon but I have completed the London Marathon, and I can tell you I did it in a much, much longer time than Kaleb Laker. Doing a difficult thing is difficult, doing a difficult thing for a long time is even more difficult, so I would say the six or seven hours in which I completed the London Marathon was an impressive effort nevertheless.

You can actually look up the statistics of how many people beat you—how many women over the age of 90 beat you—and it does not make for happy reading. With that, I am going to move on, because the second race on the weekend was the half marathon, and I would like to commend Jacob Cocks, who took out first place with a very impressive time of one hour and six minutes. Of course, there was a 10-kilometre race, a five-kilometre race and also the Kids Dash as well.

I mentioned that the Adelaide Marathon Festival has been running since 1979 every year including, as this motion acknowledges, during the heights of the COVID-19 pandemic—one of the few marathon events in Australia that took place during that time. It is an event that is hosted and organised by the South Australian Road Runners Club, which is the largest running group in South Australia. It is a not-for-profit member-based organisation, which has been supporting runners and organising events such as this festival for over 40 years. Indeed, they are responsible for 11 events across the state every year, and I want to take this opportunity to thank and acknowledge the work that they do and all the volunteers associated with the Road Runners Club do as well.

Many local community clubs are acknowledged in this motion. Many of them are registered with Running SA, which is the hub for recreational running in South Australia and hosts its own events, such as the City-Bay Fun Run every year as well.

I want to particularly acknowledge all the community running clubs throughout metropolitan Adelaide and in our regions as well that provide an activity for many South Australians every weekend, often very early. Parkrun is an excellent example mentioned by the member for Adelaide, a free community event held across the state every weekend. The Victoria Park parkrun is very close to me, and it is a major event when it is occurring. My new puppy, Chester, I know is very much looking forward to participating in the parkrun when he is a little bit older. There are 28 clubs across Adelaide and 23 in the regions and I would like to acknowledge them all.

Another running club that operates around my local area is RunAsOne, which was started by one of my constituents, recently returned Olympian Izzi Batt-Doyle. Following her Tokyo Olympics debut, she returned to Paris and competed in the women's 5,000-metre race and represented us extremely well. Izzi is a very talented long-distance runner. She competes in the five kilometre but also the 10-kilometre race and the marathon as well. Indeed, I think she holds the South Australian record for many of those events. She is a very impressive athlete but, importantly, she is also a really passionate member of our local community.

Together with her partner, Riley Cocks, she founded the popular running community, RunAsOne. Since quite humble beginnings in 2020, that has grown into a very large community running club and, indeed, a thriving business offering Olympic-level coaching to members of our community, improving fitness levels and welcoming everyone, and, again, really building on that sense of community. Their runs often finish at the Runhouse cafe, which is a cafe that Izzi herself has started up to service the running community in our local area.

I commend all our local athletes, particularly those very impressive athletes who represented our country at the Paris Olympic Games, including Izzi Batt-Doyle in the 5,000-metre race. With that, I commend this motion, acknowledge the marathon being held on the weekend as a wonderful community event, and put on the record our thanks and acknowledgement for all those involved in helping to organise it.

Mr HUGHES (Giles) (11:47): I think I might as well add a few words to this great motion. I want to acknowledge all the clubs throughout the state, both in the metropolitan area and the regions, when it comes to distance running. Indeed, some years back I was a very active runner. I was running for the Whyalla Harriers and in the A grade the Adelaide Harriers here in Adelaide. I took part in a number of half marathons, lots of 10k races and 5k races, and it is good to see the long history of the Adelaide Marathon has continued through all of those years.

Indeed, there are a number of special races out in the regions, including the Pichi Richi Marathon, half marathon and 10k. I thought I would turn up there the other week to do the 10k walk but also to check on the record that I held for over 20 years when it came to the half marathon. Records are meant to be broken, and this year it was broken at long last.

One of the things about running is—there was a book of short stories written many years ago by an author from the north of England, and it was called TheLoneliness of the Long-Distance Runner—I tell you what, there was nothing lonely about being a long-distance runner. The training, the group of people that you would train with and the camaraderie that developed were particularly special. I have really good memories. A lot of them were Scottish runners in Whyalla who were in the Harriers who took me under their wing and I guess developed me as a runner. It is great to see these days. There was always that element of participation; not everyone was at the pointy end of the race, so it is great to see the parkruns and other contributions that enable people to participate.

Like I said, I was a competitive runner. It was never a fun run, it was always intense, and the intent was to either set a PB or to win the race. The discipline that goes with that meant that you trained every day. You would knock off work, you would go out and you would train. On Sunday mornings with a group of men—and it was all men—we would get up early and just about every Sunday morning we would do anywhere between 28 kilometres and 32 kilometres, and we would sometimes front up in the evening to do another 10 kilometres to get that massive glycogen depletion so that we were prepared to race marathons at a reasonable speed.

I have very good memories of those days. I wish I was that fit now. It came to an end because I would come home from work ready to go out running, but we had twins, and my partner at the time quite rightly said no. She had been home all day with the twins when they were very young, so I stopped running at that stage with the intent of coming back, but I never came back in the competitive sense.

Running is important. It is one of those participation sports that does not take much in the way of money. You just need a pair of shoes and you do not need any fancy gear. I remember John Bannon used to run marathons here and in Whyalla, and he did not have any fancy gear whatsoever, but he was a regular and each year he would run. At the time, it was from Gawler into the city for 42.2 kilometres. I would encourage as many people as possible to take up running, whether you are fast or whether you are slow, because it is an important thing to do. I do not do much of it these days, but I do walk. The fitter the community is, the better. Like I said, it was always the group participation and the camaraderie that had a good impact.

Motion carried.