Week Four

Everybody was in good spirits today, what with the sun shining and the promise of a warm, sunny weekend.

We ran through where the organs are found in the body and talked a little bit about function. We tried to keep this simple - the heart pumps blood around the body and to the lungs. The liver helps to detoxify the body. The stomach stores food and begins the digestion process. For the most part, we were able to remain along these lines, although the kids being as they are, were keen to know quite a bit about poo and where it goes in the digestion process. There was lots of "eeewwwing" and "ugghhhing" but generally, they all learned something. There was a slightly dicey moment when we were talking about blood sugar. "Does anyone know what raises blood sugar?" was the question we asked, looking for "insulin" as the answer. One of the older kids, entirely innocently, shouted out "heroin!" which took us completely by surprise! A little inappropriate though it was, her answer was correct! When her mum reprimanded her, she was quite upset and said, "but it's what they said on The Simpsons!" Fair enough. David pointed out that, although there are very "bad" things such as drugs and alcohol that can play havoc with blood sugar levels, sugar itself in any form can be harmful if intake is excessive. Which then led back to diabetes and insulin - nicely done.

We then took them outside at which point they all ran riot around the playing field. Shouting "last one back here does 10 push ups!" worked quite well in getting them back in some kind of order though. We asked them to take their shoes off and the universal response was, "ah, that feels so much nicer than sweaty shoes". Exactly! The rest of the session involved a warm up, running drills, follow the leader and some sprint work.

The kids loved the sprinting! There's something about speed when you're little - I used to love running as fast as I could and feel the exhileration of wind rushing at my face and by my ears. We don't tend to do that as adults - when was the last time you saw an adult run as fast as they could and then fall over laughing? Most adult runners I see look absolutley miserable and this is the problem with running - people forget to enjoy it! This is one of our aims with the course - for the children to recognise their love of running and for adults to rediscover it.

Tired, happy people at the end of the session. We've given each family an inspirational runner who will be the topic of the project they'll be working on from now until the end of the course. Next week we'll be talking more about barefoot running and introducing legends who've overcome injuries with the help of barefoot running.