Chariots of Fire meets ER

Today was my high school's Sports Festival, when the students (hopefully) show their best school spirit and participate in many different athletic activities. I missed it last year because of a typhoon, so I was looking forward to seeing it this time around. Unfortunately, because of my stupidity, I ended up missing half the festivities.

The very first thing on the schedule was a 4 x 200-meter relay. There were 3 of them, divided by grade, and every time, there were 6 teams of students and a teachers' team. Originally, I wasn't scheduled to participate, but by the third round, some of the teachers were too tired to continue. One of them called me over to fill in. Excited, and without stretching, warming up or anything like that, I immediately went over to the baton exchange area, about 30 seconds before the baton was handed to me. At that point, we were in 2nd place. My goal was to not let us slip into last.

But then, as I started running, I kicked it into a gear that I didn't know I had. I couldn't believe how fast I was going! It was like running on air. I hadn't run that fast since my own high school days. Not only did I maintain our 2nd place position, I almost took over 1st from the kid in front of me. Unfortunately, the anchor, who was after me, couldn't capitalize, and we wound up finishing 2nd. As I made my way back to my chair on the sidelines, teachers and students alike were coming up to me, saying Hayai! (You're fast!) I was enjoying the attention and basking in the limelight.

About 10 minutes later, I was feeling kind of dizzy, so I took a walk away from the festivities to try to calm myself down. But I ended up having to lay on the ground, too weak to stand up. The vice-principal, who happened to be nearby, panicked and went for help. Next thing I know, I was in the nurses room and being told to take a nap until lunchtime. The consensus among the nurses and the P.E. teachers was that running that fast without doing the proper warmups put sudden stress on my heart, which caused me to almost faint. Oh well... I had my 200 meters of glory. Anyway, the moral of the story: do your stretches and warmups, kids.