The Gerbil World Cup at the Bluestocking!

[Magpiecomplex]

New thread.

No pushing at the back, please, we have plenty of scones and kilts for everyone.

I remember running the 1600 metres at school. At the time I thought it was an exercise in sadism. With hindsight I suspect the teacher was hungover and wanted us all doing something that required minimal intervention or supervision.

I shouldn't be at all surprised. P.E. teachers are a rum lot.

I remember that too. Three laps of the field & most of the other girls lapped me.

If they’d taught us C25K it would have been much more to the point.

I used to do a lot of distance running in my 30s. Several trophies at half marathon distance and a Spot- over- 4hr marathon.
I loved it.
Can't run at all now!

My major memory of games at school was playing hockey in the middle of winter and the PE teacher running up and down the sidelines dressed in a track suit, hat, scarf and gloves, while we shivered in shorts, and her calling out "take your sweaters off girls - it's not cold!"

Pasta, I should have done that earlier, as well! what a strange thread, a mixture of unbelievably wrong law and toilet safety discussion - I lost the will to respond after a while.

Bar gerbils, a mojito with extra lime, extra ice, and a little umbrella please (Welsh flag style). I'm celebrating the fact that it is below 25C upstairs (so I might sleep in my own bed tonight) and my shingles rash is almost gone from my chest! (Now realizing that the whole of Mumsnet can read that) 😧Oh well.

I have never enjoyed jogging, which is why I walk instead, but I did have a phase of taking up long-distance running when I was in high school. I didn't like the sprinting. It was all about the start, was over was too quickly with no time to make up mistakes. I found it demoralizing to know within two seconds that I was going to come in fourth again. At least with long-distance, there was time to think.

Bar Gerbils, the same drink as @AngleofRepose complete with Welsh flag umbrella, but extra rum and no ice please. I am celebrating having my new front door fitted today. It's a reclaimed door as I live in a Victorian house, but it's new to me, and I have painted it purple. I 💜 it.

As the name suggests, I never have and probably never will be a runner. I was useless at PE but still did it for GCSE. I no longer remember my reasoning behind that!

I’ve never been a runner. I did have some attempts some years ago but got hip pain on pavements. I was ok on the towpath but that’s too muddy in winter. And I couldn’t ever get much speed…DH reckons he can walk faster than my run!😂

But we’re walkers. Too much on the flat of late though.

I did couch 2 10k & later ran / walked a half marathon along the Thames once for charity. It was the first time I hadn’t come last in a race so I was especially proud of that.

Same drink as @RumNotRun but without the umbrella please, bar gerbils.

If England win & all the gerbils go into a seed-induced high, will we have to take turns behind the bar?

I'm having a tinto de verano in the sunshine while I read the last of my ridiculously enormous book.

I dug up the first garlic of the year to see if they were ready yet. They are.

I don’t remember the PE/Games staff ever actually teaching us anything, apart from explaining the rules of the games and where on the pitch various players could go.

I used to work in one school (A) and also volunteer for a very few hours per week in another, (B). Most people at either school, and definitely the students, didn’t know that I was also at the other.

School B used to occasionally come to A to use the facilities, eg the swimming pool. Public benefit, no charge. Then it was arranged that a group from B would come to A for a weekly hour’s lesson of sport: I decided to join the first session to be a link between them.

Well, I was completely amazed. It was such a well-structured hour, the young teacher directing the students and adapting all the time to how they were taking it. I learned more about different types of exercise and their purpose, various ball skills and so on in that time than I had in 7 years of secondary school.
So that’s why some schools are better at sport than others - their teachers actually teach them rather than just watching them get on with it.

I sometimes wish I was a runner - it needs almost no special equipment or pricy gym membership and would get me fit and all outdoorsy. But even at school I was hopelessly unsporty, and PE was utterly miserable - hence my current embonpoint.

It was C25K that made the difference for me, especially since I could run as slowly as I wanted & repeat all the steps as needed.

I’d probably need to start from scratch if I took it up again though.

I'm not a runner for the same reason, the dreadnorks would make it impossible. Also I'm not terribly well coordinated and have been told I run like an ostrich. For everyone's sakes, I therefore don't run.

I dug up my garlic today too! National Garlic Digging Day.
It has so much more flavour than shop bought.

@Magpiecomplex I'll never be a runner - I can't do slopes because of the weird knees, so after the Riverside Park Run I'll be sticking to the two runs which just go round local lochs. The orthotics and decent trainers mean that I can now sort of jog on the flat, so I'm making the most of it while I can.

Me too! I bloody hated hockey, not least because the windswept pitch was very poorly drained, and one end was often ankle-deep in freezing water.

And there was Mrs PE Teacher, wrapped up as described, refusing to allow us to wear sweatshirts. And there was Edith, 'playing' at LB (and seeing none of the action, owing to being shocking at hockey), in a divided skirt and soaking wet canvas hockey boots and an Aertex shirt, and usually nursing sinusitis.

To add insult to injury, we often seemed to have hockey last thing, and the pavilion was bloody miles from school - it doubled my trip to the bus, and since we were never let out early, and were sometimes late, missing the sodding bus was a very real possibility,

It's hard to express how much I hate hockey.

See, I preferred hockey to netball. There was only one reason for that though - when I fell over while playing hockey, I landed on grass rather than gravelly tarmac. Less painful.

I wasn't much of a faller-over, despite being a bit of a klutz. I quite liked netball, because I was tall, and could throw the ball (and catch it) well above the heads of half the other girls.

I also quite liked running (I was in a sports-day winning relay team at least once), and did C25K a few years ago, until I did something to my leg, stopped while it healed and then never took it up again. I should do it again. B&B would appreciate it.

All in all, I wasn't much of a fan of school sports. I preferred wandering the countryside, riding any horse I got a chance on and climbing things.

I preferred hockey too. Being a shortarse, I hated netball.

I had my aunt’s old hockey stick, which was a proper hefty wooden one with a real hook, & played one of the backs. I offered it to my niece when she started secondary but apparently she wasn’t allowed to use it.

When I was put in as goalie in netball, the other girls complained to the teacher that I was cheating because I was too tall...

The teacher didn't back me, so I was more or less bullied into stepping back from the net.

@EdithStourton - my MIL hated hockey when she was at school. She ipused to hide in the changing rooms, and do the other girls’ french homework, in exchange for them lying about where she was. She is my icon.

One of my aunts broke her arm while she was at school. She managed to use this an excuse to stay off PE for about a month after she was fully recovered, until someone thought of checking with her parents.

When I moved to th UK I convinced th head of year that it was a waste of my time and strengths to do PE and she should let me work with the year 7 and 8s who struggled with literacy in those lessons instead.

I don't think she'd ever had a pupil attempt something like that before and she was so flabbergasted she agreed.