My parents are going to the NCAA champs tonight. How should I get them ready for the meet? Will they be bored as hell?

Call them and let them know what they should know.

You really have to ask? Do you feel estranged from either or both?

sounds like your asking for something that you should probably make

Your parents must be amazing people because they created such a special boy who went on to run a 2:23 thon, get a degree from a major school, set up a very extremely successful website where we are all know. There would be no such thing as Banana Bread if it wasn't for you and your amazing brother(who ran 2:17 and paced a woman to a WR). Your parents are so lucky to have had you and your brother. They gave athletics one of it's greatest gifts. I hope the meet is as amazing for your parents as you are to the running community. Maybe you could tell your parents all about Bekele. If they are not hooked afterwards than running isn't for them.

It's in Austin pre-game it

Banana Bread wrote:

Your parents must be amazing people because they created such a special boy who went on to run a 2:23 thon, get a degree from a major school, set up a very extremely successful website where we are all know. There would be no such thing as Banana Bread if it wasn't for you and your amazing brother(who ran 2:17 and paced a woman to a WR). Your parents are so lucky to have had you and your brother. They gave athletics one of it's greatest gifts. I hope the meet is as amazing for your parents as you are to the running community. Maybe you could tell your parents all about Bekele. If they are not hooked afterwards than running isn't for them.

Pretty sure their parent's hold 28:06 as their greatest accomplishment.

Tell them a bunch of randoms are going to run around a track, over and over, for 3-4 hours.

rojo wrote:

My parents live in Austin and want to go to the meet.

They know very little about track, how would you get them informed for the meet? I mean if you don't understand what you are watching, I imagine it can be VERY boring.

I don't think any newspaper does an event by event preview. We here at LRC only previewed in depth the distances.

Does anyone produce "A fan's guide" to the whole NCAA champs.

I was talking to my dad about it and he was like, "Well they'll have a program I can read right?"

So how can I get them ready for the meet.

The one saving grace is they do sell beer at the meet - something I've never seen at NCAAs before.

The beer is a good fallback, but didn't they go to meets to watch you and your brother run?

You're kidding, right? It was a nanny or a driver at those silver spoons meets.

If they had had children who participated as a reference.

Yes, they went to Weldon's Olympic Trial races. Yes, they are sports fan. No, we didn't have a nanny.

But they haven't been following the sport since Weldon retired. When a casual sports fan goes to a gold tournament, it's pretty easy to understand. Look at the leaderboard. At a track meet, there are like 20 individual events and then one team event.

Robert / ROJO:

Sure hoping you're not trolling your own board.

Presuming they're not into running that much:

- understand the events going on , when, and give them options to move around to see the ones they want

- pick a few that you want to watch and splain to them why they're interesting to you

- I'm a new parent to running, so the biggest weirdness of running was the sloooow pace.

It's really too bad that there isn't some sort of online running focused website that could have a guide. Maybe one that bills itself as the home to internet running. With a front page setup like a tacky newspaper.

Didn't you guys run track in high school? High and college track meets are not that different.

Pre-meet@ Scholtzs... the rest takes care of itself..!!!

I trust your parents have met Jonathan, right? He’ll be able to steer them in the right direction.

mo_farah wrote:

Encourage them each to sneak in a small flask. A little booze will make it more fun.

+1

I was going to suggest they go to Applebees beforehand, have lots of drinks, and try to stay awake during the distance races.

Track is boring unless you have a dog in the hunt.