Cooks Hill surf life saving club is where we started back in 2019. They have since moved the start/finish down to the next beach, a bit further south. It is the same course but just a different start to when we were there. Maybe that's why they call it The Beach as the event run across a few different beaches on the Newcastle water front. They would not get away with that nowadays as parkruns have to be named after the park where they start. We were there for a special meet up. Out here in Australia we have an unofficial parkrun podcast and once per year the have a listener meet up. They tend to pick the best locations. It was my first podcast listener meet up but Caroline had been to another the year before at a different location. It was not a massive crowd by parkrun standards. The sand running does make it a harder workout, but was great to meet a lot of Australia's most hard core parkrun tourists, most had been with parkrun from the start in Australia and had visit lots of different locations. I was a bit worried about running barefoot for five kilometre but it was fine on my feet and calf's though I made sure I took it easy.Most of the photos from this post are credit to the parkrun volunteer photographersTwo laps on the beach was great fun and the out and back meant we passed and saw everyone multiple times. The trick was to try and stay on the hard packed sand not the loose stuff.The Pod cast.While Caroline was watching the live podcast being made. I joined a few of the other parkrunners and did a one kilometre ocean swim.
