It was Luca's first sports day today, with the above picture featuring a (semi) victorious scoundrel after his first race this morning. The first event was a straight sprint in which he came a very creditable 2nd, despite exhausting his pent up energy with an - admittedly speedy - false start. Still, he looked quite pleased with his efforts!
And here he is in full flight! I was a little dubious of the girl in pinks (to the left of the picture)
claim of being under three years of age -I'm certain her voice had broken too - but despite this Luca pumped those little arms and legs for all they were worth!
Is there any order to my photo's? Nope, here he is at the race start (for those of you with binoculars)
And again. I really need to more selective with the pictures I upload.
This is better. Although similar in fashion to the other photo's already featured, this race was the penultimate race of his age group. The intention in this event was to have each child bounce as furiously as possible to the finish line. Luca, no doubt pumped up a little too much by an over eager father at the start line quickly decided - after only 3 bounces - that this method was unnecessarily slow and instead improvised by sprinting the rest of the way. Cheating? No. "Thinking outside the box" is more like it!
He still only finished second though....
Joking aside, he competed very well throughout, and across the three events (the other being the potato and spoon race) finished second, third and second. Impressively consistent I feel, and most gratifying was the determination and desire to win he showed. He was genuinely excited before each race, and very visibly gave his all. Promising....
Which side does this grit come from? Carole, all the way!
Though a little from me too. Mum will be unsurprised by my mention of this, but I did win the parents race. Convincingly.
Sad to say, but despite my advancing years and injured calf I genuinely wanted to win and really put my foot down from half way to ensure it. I certainly wasn't alone though as one of the other dads (a competing distance cyclist) came up for a chat afterwards, openly admitting he was devastated not to have won!
Dads eh? Then again, I have memories of a childhood spent attempting to tackle my Dad when he had a football. Would he ever let me? With his innate competitive instinct? You bet he didn't!
Indeed, he's now 60 and I still don't think I've taken the ball from him.....
Unfortunately Carole missed this first sports day, due to a culmination of fitness classes and shopping. Her 5K "Race for Life" is tomorrow necessitating a final burst of training. Worryingly however, she appears to have caught a little of the running bug and is already talking about competing in future races. A disquieting thought when considering the injuries Dad and Kelly have bestowed upon themselves with the trials they put their bodies through competing in half and full marathons.
It was Luca's Gran and myself who took Luca to the sports day today, and his Gran has been around him for almost 24 hours now. She picked him up from nursery yesterday afternoon and took him home for the night, allowing Carole and I an evening to ourselves. As a romantic prelude to the evenings main event I took Carole for a meal at the award winning "Cinnamon" restaurant, which vaunts it's specialty Indian/domestic fusion dishes. Perhaps I'm a bit of a troglodyte, but it tasted simply like normal Indian food to me!
That's not to say the quality wasn't high. Indeed Carole reckoned it was the best Indian food she's ever eaten. I assumed she wasn't counting my own concoctions, and closed my mind to the possibility she was.
The main event of the evening was a much anticipated event - a trip to the cinema to watch "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen". Carole, obviously teasingly, fell asleep twice during the movie, and proclaimed it a "load of rubbish" at the end. I like to think she was jesting, and personally enjoyed with gusto this two and a half hour spectacle of transforming robots beating each other up. Best movie ever!
I'll take Carole to see it again next week too.
**Useless fact of the day - The sun is 330,330 times larger than the earth*
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