When I was in school in Colorado, we had field day in elementary school, with kids in their jeans running and jumping and just having a ball goofing off and having a day without class. In junior high, our teacher used to shove us out the door in 2 or 3 feet of snow, tell us to run the cross country course, then he'd head off for a cuppa'. Half the guys would cut through the trees, and a few would stop for a smoke or even a not-then legalized toke (which is why he'd shove us out in the snow, actually - he could track our footprints)
But "Marathon Day" in my town in Japan is a whole 'nother critter. The elementary school has been training for "Run-Run Time" for the last three weeks, my daughter's junior high only for about a week. Then yesterday was "Run-Run Time", and today was the junior high "Marathon Taikai (Competition).
The elementary kids didn't run a marathon, of course, they ran for set times around a 200m track. 1st and 2nd graders ran for 5 minutes, 3rd and 4th graders for 6, and 5th and 6th graders for 7. And for a bunch of video game-playing townies, they were pretty fast.
Then the junior high kids ran 3km today. And it was cold. Here I am, wearing a t-shirt, sweat top and coat, and my daughter comes blazing down the riverbank in shorts and a t-shirt.
I hate getting old!
No comments:
Post a Comment
Feel free to comment about my writing and content, but keep it clean, please. If you have anything you'd like to hear about, ask away and I'll try to address it in future postings.