[Closed] school sports day!

I saw similar at an event last year - it was a county cross country race and one of my daughters (along with a couple of boys in her year) had qualified. We got to Dalby Forest and messed around in the playground whilst watching many other kids being taken through various warm-up exercises before the 1500m race. They were 7/8 years old FFS.

Honestly couldn't fault Mums and Dads limbering up - Pulled hamstrings, torn achillies, thrown backs, school sports day is Christmas come early for the local physios.

The parents race at my kids' school was cancelled years ago due to too many injuries. Rightly so. It's a kids sports day, not an opportunity for parents to make fools of themselves.

Just saunter in your work clothes OP.

Didn't someone post a humourous video the other week, parodying this sort of thing? I didn't get it, cos I've never seen a sports day like that, but clearly this behaviour does exist!

Something like "Lycra Dad" wasn't it? I'll do a search.

(judging by the no. of replies, I wasn't alone...  https://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/lycra-dad/  )

Mate! you should try going to an under tens football match on a Sunday morning if you want to see deranged parents in action.

Dez - the ladies race was just like that vid!! 🙂

<div class="bbp-reply-author">johndoh
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I saw similar at an event last year – it was a county cross country race and one of my daughters (along with a couple of boys in her year) had qualified. We got to Dalby Forest and messed around in the playground whilst watching many other kids being taken through various warm-up exercises before the 1500m race. They were 7/8 years old FFS.

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1500m?  Anyone of any age racing over that distance should be warming up. In fact, racing over any distance warrants a warm up. My 9 year old only races over track sprint distances, but warms up for at least 20 minutes before training and racing.

Cross-country, a lap of the course to warm up before the race.

A wee story about my mates’ daughter’s sports day (She’s eight)...

clearly there’s one pretty athletic girl in the year who wins all the running events and plenty of others. She won 6 out of the 8 events and finished 2nd in the other two. In the last event, the 400m, she crossed the finish line before the rest of the field had even made it half way round. She continued to do another lap until she caught up with the girl in last place, and jogged with her over the line encouraging her all the way. Sometimes good stuff happens. 🙂

At our school one of the children with mild learning difficulties was complaining about how she always finishes last and wasnt that interested in taking part again. Anyway she was encouraged to take part by the other pupils and without her or the teachers knowledge as the starting whistle went the rest of the girls all held hands and jogged behind the girl. She finished first and burst in to tears with happiness, plenty of parents with dusty eyes, fantastic gesture by the kids.

also another story i heard from somewhere else was that as all the dads lined up for what was clearly a competitive group,some of the dads suddenly realised that one of the dads happened to be Daley Thompson. He soundly thrashed the lot of them.

We don't have a parents race at our sports days. Ours usually involves us going for the first hour before heading off to work and getting to see our kids do quoit throwing or chest push. If we're really lucky, our kids first activity on the rotation might be rest!

1500m?  Anyone of any age racing over that distance should be warming up. In fact, racing over any distance warrants a warm up. My 9 year old only races over track sprint distances, but warms up for at least 20 minutes before training and racing.

Cross-country, a lap of the course to warm up before the race.

Well none of them did on that day (and none of them ever do in all the other events they compete in) but they consistently win pretty much every competition they enter. And I don't know about any of the other kids but my daughters don't train either. Still, now I know we are doing it wrong...

You are. I’m not trying to be dickish about it, but proper racing warrants proper preparation. Just because the competitors are young, doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be doing it properly. All children (including mine) at my athletics club will be warming up properly before any training or competition, it’s just what you do in order to perform at your best.