It didn't make me hold my breath

Yesterday we went to our 13 y.o. son's second track meet for the season. It again evoked many feelings for me. Track and field is the "sport" that I know best of all the sports that CAJ fields teams in. I was a participant for many years, and represented my school for a number of years too, particularly in short distance events. So it brings back many memories and it makes me feel old. I reflected on some of those feelings in this blog post.

After a track meet two years ago I blogged about the difference in the sports programs drawing on our experience in an American-style international school and Australian schools. I'm surprised as I read it now that I could easily just copy and paste it and it would be suitable to post today!

Thankfully the difference between yesterday and the last blog link above, is that we didn't travel for 2 1/2 hrs each way in Tokyo traffic yesterday. These country-bumpkin Australians are finally realising that sometimes it is just easier to take the train. We had quite relaxing trips there and back, taking under 1 1/2 hrs each way. On the way back we even had SQUIRT time on a train for half an hour (even if we didn't call it that, the boys naturally took out their books and read).

It was much more relaxing than going to a wrestling meet. For starters, it isn't really our son's forte, so I wasn't nervous. Plus athletics is much more off and on. Rarely to you see a tussle that makes you hold your breathe like wrestling does. It is less personal. Often times there's nothing to see. They're doing discus in the far corner of the field, lining up athletes for a race, and registering the times and places of various runners for the previous race. Wrestling is far more intense, as a spectator, with one bout barely finished when another is on the floor in front of you.

I have to say, though, that you are far less at the mercy of the weather in wrestling. You sit in a comfortably warm gym. Yesterday we watched as the weather closed in. Thankfully we made it almost home before it started to rain in earnest! Some other athletes and their families weren't so lucky because they competed later in the day.

For the record, my son was very pleased with it 8.6m shot put "throw". He broke his PB by 1.6m!