I watched my daughter pick up a clutch of rosettes at the Slade school sports day yesterday afternoon. The poor kids had to do around 8 events each which included skipping, hooplaaing, football, dribbling skills, hockey stick dribbling skills and then lots of running races, which, lets face it, are the main reason most parents go along. I say rosettes because these days the prizes are stickers in the shape of a rosette, but let's not split hairs! At the risk of sounding obvious, what a scorcher! my goodness it was hot out on that field; still at least the children got to sit in the shade inbetween events while us poor parents had to endure sitting around on the grass, cheering and clapping (exhausting things like that) in the full heat of the day! Mrs Resche, the head teacher at Slade, was doing a wonderful job, marshalling, announcing, sirening (for the change of events) and generally keeping things ticking along in her usual amazingly cheerful way. Towards the end when the teams' scores were being totted up the call came for the older brothers and sisters race, then...the parents race! I thought they'd stopped doing these add on races these days so I came totally unprepared! I was persauded, not that I needed much persauding, to have a go so off I went, adrenaline pumping to the start line! Now I did used to be a bit nippy in my rugby playing days, even though I say so myself, but it has been quite a few years since I've really sprinted flat out, let alone in a race. I looked round at the other competitive dads, who were mostly younger than me (when the heck did that happen!) a couple of them wearing suit trousers, but most in shorts because of the weather. One guy was taking the race far too seriously as he went, Zola Bud style, bare foot to the start line, rolling up his shirt sleeves as he did! It could be that he had been wearing flip flops but I think that this was his secret weapon! No time to go home to search in the loft for my old running spikes, so I just simply took all the stuff out of my pockets, you know wallet, mobile phone, loose change, car keys, shop keys, house keys (all the stuff that weighs us all down in our adult lives!) then started to limber up, stretched the calf muscles, pulled my foot up behind my bum for the quad stretches, wheeled my shoulders and arms around a few times, (well at my age you can't take any chances with pulled muscles can you) more adrenalin pumping and we were off.... Poor start, around 90 kids, egged on by my daughter, were shouting "Come on Mr. Books" (I kid you not!) as I struggled to keep up with the rest of the field in the first 50 metres. Then something happened inside me (no I didn't need the toilet) I'm talking about the zone! I felt a little bit of the mist that only comes with total focus and concentration, something I haven't felt in a long while, come over me as I kicked into another gear. I pulled past the stragglers, then the third placed athlete with the bare feet, then the second lanky one, who'd tried to fool us all that he was old and past it, then the first place was in my peripheral vision on the far side of the track, this guy was fast, he must have been a county standard sprinter at some point, or at any rate he was a good twenty years younger than me! I was really flying by this time myself as a dug deep and reached inside myself for one last surge of energy, ah....then the tape, I'd only come second! But do you know what, with another twenty metres I reckon I'd have had him! I always did have a slow start and was much better at 200 hundred and 400. For a fleeting moment I thought of raising a stewards inquiry for, surely, the guy who won was too young to be in the dad's race! Surely you have to be over forty to really qualify these days! Still second wasn't so bad for an old git like me and there's always the egg and spoon race next year! The children seemed to be having a fantastic day, especially the ones who won lots of prizes and the school reintroduced a house system this year to bring back that competitive element with the names being based, the children's choice, on the natural elements. The red team "Fire" (pictured) narrowing won the day over "Earth" and lifted the trophy ("Water" were still running behind!; quite appropriate really that fire should win on such a scorching hot day....
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