Track & Field Day

The 2nd grade classes at Kasson Mantorville Elementary had T & F Day today. Various runs of 50, 100, 200, 400, 800 yards, 50 meter hurdles, relays, and a bunch of fun stuff like 3 legged run, egg on a spoon carry, soft ball toss, etc. I watched the first half of the day which was all the running events. Kids could only do 2 of these so a couple weeks back Jace decided to do the 400 and the 800. I asked why he picked those and he said "Cuz they didn't have the mile." I meant why didn't he pick a long and a short--he just said he didn't want to. That's fine. I don't like to brag, but as a parent, you have to boast a little. You never know how long they'll be interested in something, then not care about it at all. Right now, Jaces thing is running. However, that is a distant 2nd to FOOTBALL. Kid loves it. Anyway...

The first of the longer running events was the 800 (twice around the track). After about 200 yards into the race, Jace went from about 10 back, to the front, then opened up a pretty good gap. By the end of one lap he was about 50 yards up. One more lap to go and he finished about 75-100 yards up on the next kid. Time- 3:16. That's a 6:32 pace.

The 400 was a bit more challenging. He was about 5-6 kids back of about 20 kids until halfway into it. Then moved up to 3rd and in the last 100 yards on the straight-away to the finish he kicked it in, passed the last two in front of him and got about a 10 yard gap. Time- 1:25 (5:40 pace).

It was pretty exciting to watch. All the kids try so hard. They smile thru the whole 5o yard events. For the first 10 seconds of the longer ones they still manage to smile. After that they look like us (adults) when we race--they have that look on their face that says "And I signed up for this because...?"

I will try to load video, but I've never put video on the blog so we'll see how it goes.