Wind In My Head: Something Old in Something New
Wind In My Head
Tuesday, March 22, 2005
Something Old in Something New
Sunday was spent under the blazing sun watching my kids at a relay championship. It is the same relay championship that I ran at when I was in school. Of course, we had supporters and we swept all the medals. Yup, we entered every darn race they could come up with- it is the only meet I know of where there is a 4 x 800m relay. How boring is that to watch?? Anyway, we were always entered for all the races then and we used to win all of them. On Sunday, my team was entered for ONE race because we ONLY had 4 runners in the whole school who could put one foot in front of another in rapid succession.They didn't do that badly, as in there were no major mishaps or cause for disqualification. But they didn't do that brilliantly either because well, what do you expect when out of a student of population of about 1600, we could only find 4 volunteers to run the easiest race in the book? There is a little bit of rivalry going on between the girls' and the guys' teams though. Possiblly because I coach the girls and the guys are coached by someone else who well, some would call eccentric and weird. I've known this guy way back from my own running days and his methods were weird then too. He insisted on, instead of carbo-loading* for the race, banana loading, in that you didn't eat anything but bananas before a race. I think once he relented, and gave us sugar cane! I see the merit in bananas, but a Nothing But Banana diet, to me now, is just a little bit over the top. So, the boys' team were eating enough bananas to feed a colony of stray monkeys and I didn't insist that the girls do the same. In fact, the girls asked if they could go out for lunch and ended up at Kentucky Fried Chicken. Inwardly, I cringed, because I knew how the oil would make me feel and I could only imagine what havoc it would wreak in the stomachs already filled with butterflies. But I figured, let it be. I shall not impose my neuroses on them. :)
And at the end of the day, the banana eating boys did worse than the fried chicken girls. I rest my case.
What was surreal for me though of the whole experience, was that the people at these meets don't change. The people who were around when I was racing, are still there, some coaching the same teams, some not, but all looking as sun-dried as they did more than a decade ago. I was recognised and well, slightly embarrassed by the same comments that relatives make at family functions about how you've grown and how they hadn't seen you since you were yea' tall. Also weirded out when my contacts were asked for so that I could be invited to the VETERAN'S Meet in the next few years! Veterans? Me? Crap, it is a sign of age. But I must admit I have the battle scars from my experiences on the track to warrant the name.
Ask me sometime and I'll tell you some stories from the front line.
*carbo loading- Before any sort of intense competition, atheletes are encouraged to create an additional store of glycogen which is needed for long drawn out muscle activity. They do this by actually increasing the amount of carbohydrate rich food they consume.
Ondine tossed this thought in at 09:23
1 thoughts...
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At 7:58 pm
Tym said... Yay for fried chicken girls!
Don't scared, go and run in the Veterans' Meet. I'm sure you can do it!