School Sports Day

 On Friday I took a half-day to attend Hannah's school's  Sports Day with Rika.

warm-up boogie

This is the first Sports Day Ive been to.  I understand the tradition for attending Dads is to try to look important by typing obsessively into their Blackberries and thus miss their kids' events, and then get over-competitive or injured in the Parents' race.  (maximum points for a heart-attack!).

It was a good occasion and managed to fell neatly between bursts of heavy rain in both the morning and the late afternoon.    Hannah was 3rd in her race (although I missed it because it was the very first race and I was checking my I-phone).

Hannah race

Then there were a range of team games between the red, yellow and blue teams.

Throwing game

Finally the dreaded (and potentially lethal) parent-child rely.    I remembered how my boss in the UK had ruptured his Achilles tendon on sports day.   So my modest goal was to avoid injury without being last!    I took care to stretch as I chatted to other Dads about potential injuries and how many years since our last race (30 in my case).

Parent-child relay : Hannah papa in light blue shirt

The kids ran first and Hannah did well to come in 3rd and do a smooth hand-over.  But as I turned to accelerate,  I felt my outer left hamstring tear!    I started to pull-up but then realized I could still run so I dashed as hard as I could to overtake the slowest parent and come in 2nd-last.  If we had won our race the 3-points would have been enough for Blue-team to tie with Red in the final scores.

Final scores

Fortunately it was a minor tear and I was able to walk with only a slight-limp, and it cleared-up in a week.   We got soaked in a downpour as we walked to the buss-stop but all stayed in a good mood and were thankful the rain had held-off during the actual sports event.  

And I was glad to have play my role in this important tradition.