Today is Sam & Ellie’s athletics carnival.

I am a dad who was a phys ed teacher, pretty keen athlete and trainer of athletes. When athletics carnivals came around I would be there before and after school for 3 months teaching, training and preparing kids for the carnival. We had some outstanding athletes and we developed some others because of the rigorous training we did. It was for sheep stations!

Last week I was in Sam’s pre-school class doing ‘dad duty’ when they went out for their ‘try outs’. Sam was in the third heat and waiting to run. The teacher called them up.

He stepped up to the line in racing pose – turned, smiled at me and gave me the thumbs up. The teacher said ‘go’ and suddenly they were off and racing – well the other 3 kids were. Sam had his hands cupped over his eyes and was pretending to run with binoculars on…

I still have no idea why… I think it was because the finish line looked so far away… needless to say Sam was a distant last place!

So our instructions to Sam today are ‘when you run do it without your binoculars! And try to go fast.’ (Nothing in Sam’s life happens fast)

I don’t think Sam is a phys ed teacher’s dream, but he is a wonderful little bloke.

Ellie on the other hand has been telling us how she is nervous and concerned that she might not win. She knows who her competition is and has been trying to figure out how to run faster. She is less likely to run with a pair of imaginary binoculars…