Meanwhile, back at the Woman’s Triathlon….
The Georgia Veterans’ Triathlon is held, appropriately, in Georgia Veterans’ State Park, in Cordele, Georgia: up the road from Tifton, and down the road from Macon on I-75.
The park is fabulous- we’ve camped there twice, in a huge campsite, and stayed at the Lodge once, in a beautiful room (in which I proceeded to put black marks on the wall with my bike- they came off, thank goodness). The park is on Lake Blackshear, and sports both a regular gold course and a disc golf course (giving me two different opportunities to suck at golf). There’s a great museum with some great military memorabilia, a swimming beach and a couple of great restaurants. So, once you’ve finished your morning workout, and have eaten your post-race sausage dog provided by Stripling’s General Store, and take your nap, there are lots of things to do.
As for the race itself- it’s one of my faves.
The swim is a 500 yard beach start in the very nice warm water of Lake Blackshear. The bike course is rolling and a little technical, following the road that follows the edge of Lake Blackshear. The run covers 3.1 miles of park road (and is sometimes brutally hot).
It’s a well-organized, fairly small, laid back race.
The women started in the last couple of waves, so it was basically a Woman’s Triathlon later on the course. This is a very good thing.
I believe that I’ve discussed the phenomenon in other blog posts. An all-woman triathlon is very different from a co-ed triathlon. . I over-generalize, I know- we do have very assertive and aggressive riders in my gender- but there’s a different vibe there, especially amongst us back-of-the-pack female athletes. Although Cordele is, of course, a co-ed triathlon, our starting position created a Virtual Woman’s Triathlon.
Two classic examples of Woman’s Triathlon behavior from the race:
I Had to Use the Mom Voice.
As a rule, I do not mind young people racing triathlon alongside me. There are some excellent young triathletes out there. The kid that I had to deal with on the bike course, that day, was another story entirely.
Kid was an absolute nuisance on the bike. I caught up to him a couple miles into the bike, on one of the more treacherous turns in the course. He was weaving all over the road; he’d call “on your left,” start to pass, change his mind and nearly ride into another cyclist. When someone tried to pass him, he looked over at them and sped up. He drafted. He blocked.
But when Kid finally started riding to the left of the center line, I had about enough. It was time for the Mom Voice.
“You need to get on the right side of the lane NOW! You are breaking the rules, and you are going to get hit by a car and then you won’t grow up to be a pro triathlete (actually, I pray that you don’t grow up to be a pro triathlete, period).”
The Mom Voice worked- at least, long enough to get around the little monster and get some distance between us.
[At this point in the report, I would really like to climb up on my soapbox and express my views about Kid’s participation in this triathlon. But, for the sake of brevity, I will refrain. Perhaps another time. Soon.]
No, No: You Go On. I’m Not Competing Today.
I was, thankfully, past Kid and on the final couple of miles of the bike course. I was thinking about passing the woman in front of me when, suddenly and inexplicably, she flew over her handlebars and lands, faces first, on the ground.
I unclipped and dropped my bike on the grass.
The poor girl was trying to sit up. There was blood dripping from her chin, and she had somehow woven herself into the bike when she crashed. One of her feet had lodged itself in the spokes of the front wheel, of all places. I wiggled her foot out of her shoe to free her, as there seemed to be no way in hell that I could free her shoe from inside of the spokes. We used the sock to put pressure on the gash in her chin, which was now dripping blood steadily onto the asphalt.
No fewer than 4 other women stopped, jumped off their bikes, and came over to help. Another woman slowed down to talk to us.
“Are any of you girls competing today? ‘Cause, if you are, you can go ahead, and I’ll stay with her.”
We all insisted “no, no, we’re fine. You go ahead and go. We’ll stay with her.”
And we all did, until a passing truck driver offered to carry her and her mangled bike back to transition. One of the girls helped her to the truck; another loaded her bike on to the bed of the truck; another loaded her own bike onto the truck and rode with them.
I got on my bike and rode out onto a now empty course. I wasn’t disappointed about the loss of a lot of time in the race, but I really didn’t want people to think that I was last in because I was an incredibly slow pathetic biker. This is also a very classic Woman’s Triathlon attitude: we are pathologically afraid of finishing last, because everyone will laugh at you and point and you will be completely humiliated and never do another triathlon again, if you ever do one to begin with, because what’s the point in doing a triathlon if that’s going to happen to you? This is why, of course, our beloved Sally Edwards always volunteers to be the Final Finisher in her Woman’s Triathlons.
Surprisingly, I was not dead last that day. I did manage to pass a few people on the run. Everything else ended fine. Kid disappeared before I could throw him (and his parents) in Time Out; the injured triathlete, I heard, needed stitches on her chin, but that was about it.
I had my sausage dog, and my nap, and then played a very bad game of disc golf. And I remembered, even though I don’t race as much as I want to, how awesome this sport is—and how awesome women triathletes are.
Showing posts with label swim. Show all posts
Showing posts with label swim. Show all posts
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Trek Women's Triathlon Race Report and Assorted Musings
My first triathlon, ever, was the Danskin Women’s Triathlon at Walt Disney World, in May of 2003. I was absolutely terrified.
When my feet stopped touching the bottom of Bay Lake, and I was suddenly swimming under my own power, I panicked. I couldn’t breathe. The fumes from the motor boats standing by were overwhelming me. I flailed around and turned back and started heading back to shore. But I turned around again, caught my breath and swam on.
The medal from that race reads “the woman who starts the race is not the same one who finishes the race.” I totally agree with that. When the announcer called out my name at that race, congratulating me, and saying the words “you are a triathlete!”—that memory is even more precious to me than Mike Reilly calling out “you are an Ironman!”
Wow. I wasn’t just a runner anymore. Do you see that word, ‘-athlete’-- in the word ‘triathlete’? I was an athlete. I never thought that I’d consider be one, but here I am today.
Not only athlete, but triathlete. And now, not only triathlete, but Ironman.
It’s been a while since I’ve done a women’s-only triathlon: a few years ago, before I became an Ironman for the second time.
The last women’s-only race I did, the Danskin Women’s Triathlon in 2005, was a super huge big deal for me. I was lucky to be racing at all at that point, in the midst of divorce drama. I had to jump through hoops just to get to the start line at that race. I tore it up that year, too—I was a serious bad-ass.
“How do you like me now?” I thought to myself back then. “Two years ago I thought that I was about to drown in Bay Lake— now, I’m flying out of the water and onto the aerobars, whizzing through the turns in the back lot of the Magic Kingdom, nearly puking as I hit the finish line after the run (that’s when you know you’ve had a real good run)”.
I wasn’t feeling like such a bad-ass at the Trek Women’s Triathlon a few weeks ago. I had plantar fasciitis. I had a sprained ankle from a motor scooter crash; my leg was still scabbed over, and now I’d developed a fear of two-wheeled things. I was fighting a pretty significant weight gain, secondary to the conditions described above.
And I was scared. Scared? Me, a two-time Ironman, afraid to race an all-women’s sprint triathlon? At Walt Disney World, of all places? How much more benign could it be?
My training has been nowhere near what it used to be, and my races have been few and far between. So I began to imagine all kinds of horrific race-day scenarios.
Would I get too tired on the swim, and have to backstroke to catch my breath (this would be almost too embarrassing for words to describe for me)? Would I bust my ankle running to transition? Would I clip in wrong on my bike-- and crash-- or touch wheels with someone--and crash--or take a corner too sharp--and crash? Would my left leg finally give out and refuse to support my excess body weight and cause me to collapse in a heap in the middle of the run course?
So there I was, with a very nervous stomach, standing on the shore of the lake shortly before the race start. I felt dumpy in my Ironman tri suit. I felt like I didn’t deserve that pink m-dot tattoo on my right shoulder.
And then I was in the chute with the rest of the purple caps. And there was Sally Edwards, always my heroine, giving us our Magic Words: “I am a gorgeous swimmer”. We repeated it, with the accompanying swimming motions: “I (stroke) am (stroke) a (stroke) gorgeous (stroke) swimmer!” (Husband says that a girl came running out of transition with her bike, proclaiming “I am sexy!” I can guess what her magic phrase was….) Lib and her friend practiced this for the rest of the weekend in the Fort Wilderness swimming pool: “All together now: ‘I (stroke) am (stroke) a (stroke) gorgeous (stroke) swimmer!’”
The Magic Words did the trick. I relaxed, and high-fived Sally, as I had seven (wow, seven) seasons ago, and hit the lake.
Bay Lake was beautiful, as Disney lakes always are. The water was a translucent green, and warm. It even tasted good, when you end up with a mouthful full of it from the girl flailing around and trying to breaststroke next to you.
It started to get fun for me again. I decided that I wanted to simply finish the race today, the same as my goal seven seasons ago.
My favorite part of all-women’s triathlons is the swim. No one swims over you; you don’t get your goggles knocked off, or get a foot upside your head. What you do get is a woman who bumps into you, stops swimming, and says “I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to do that! Are you ok?” Your reply: “Yes, thank you very much. I’m fine. Are you all right? Go on ahead of me, ok?”
The swim is usually the scariest part of the race for newbies. For a ‘seasoned veteran’ (I use the term loosely) like me, it’s the damned bike leg. Especially in a race full of newbies, like this one, the bike leg is hairy (even if our legs are not).
You call out “on your left!”, and that’s immediately the direction that they aim their bike. They ride two abreast; three abreast. They ride on the left. They block. They swerve. You name it. Add to it the usual treacherous segments of every Disney triathlon—the back lots, heading out into the open road—and I always have visions of potential disaster.
Surprisingly, it wasn’t so bad this year. I found only one pair of women riding side-by-side—which I (not so) gently attempted to remedy.
I made it back in without incident, always grateful to have my feet on solid ground (if you know me at all, that is my triathlon philosophy: just get your feet moving back on solid ground, not kicking them or peddling them, and you’re home free).
My run was a combination hobble-hop-jog affair, but it sort of resembled a run. I surprised myself. I understood the fact that this would lead to some pretty severe pain within the next few hours—but I was running, by God.
My cheering throng of supporters (all three of them) was waiting for me at the corner of the finisher’s chute. The announcer got my name wrong, which happens approximately 93% of the time when I cross the finish line. The finisher’s medal, this year, was a silver-plated chain and tag, which also doubled as a really nice piece of jewelry (smart race directors), and which I wore with pretty much everything the rest of the weekend.
I didn’t pay much attention to my finishing time-- I finished around the middle of the pack. My swim time was… what my swim time always is, and always will be. My bike time was lousy, which I attribute to being a chicken-shit on my tri-bike, and taking the corners too slowly (I hadn’t ridden the Cannondale in a while, and forgot that tri-bikes are meant to go in a straight line). My run time really wasn’t too bad, considering everything.
(All right. I will admit it. You caught me. I told you that I didn’t care much about my finishing time and my splits, but I was really checking them on my BlackBerry a couple of hours later, on the ferry boat, on the way to lunch. Come on- I am a triathlete, after all.)
It’s good to be at races like these, these women’s triathlons full of novice triathletes. When you see the final finishers limp in, but still beaming from ear to ear, you remember why you do this in the first place: triathlon is fun. Triathlon demonstrates to those nervous and insecure women that they really are more capable than they believe themselves to be. Triathlons like these remind us ‘seasoned veterans’ how far we’ve come, and how much farther we can still go.
And women’s triathlons like these help me to remember that I still am “gorgeous” and “sexy”, even though I think that everyone is watching the cellulite jiggle on my thighs, and snickering that my butt looks really big in all of that Lycra.
Lycra does make your butt look big.
So what?
Lycra’s comfortable. It dries really fast, so you don’t get on your bike dripping wet after you come out of the water after not actually drowning, like you knew that you were going to do when you thought about it before the race.
And Lycra goes really well with that shiny new triathlon finisher’s medal that you’re wearing around your neck, and those race numbers on the back of your calf that you are going to “accidentally” forget to wash off until after you stride into work on Monday in your skirt and high heels.
When my feet stopped touching the bottom of Bay Lake, and I was suddenly swimming under my own power, I panicked. I couldn’t breathe. The fumes from the motor boats standing by were overwhelming me. I flailed around and turned back and started heading back to shore. But I turned around again, caught my breath and swam on.
The medal from that race reads “the woman who starts the race is not the same one who finishes the race.” I totally agree with that. When the announcer called out my name at that race, congratulating me, and saying the words “you are a triathlete!”—that memory is even more precious to me than Mike Reilly calling out “you are an Ironman!”
Wow. I wasn’t just a runner anymore. Do you see that word, ‘-athlete’-- in the word ‘triathlete’? I was an athlete. I never thought that I’d consider be one, but here I am today.
Not only athlete, but triathlete. And now, not only triathlete, but Ironman.
It’s been a while since I’ve done a women’s-only triathlon: a few years ago, before I became an Ironman for the second time.
The last women’s-only race I did, the Danskin Women’s Triathlon in 2005, was a super huge big deal for me. I was lucky to be racing at all at that point, in the midst of divorce drama. I had to jump through hoops just to get to the start line at that race. I tore it up that year, too—I was a serious bad-ass.
“How do you like me now?” I thought to myself back then. “Two years ago I thought that I was about to drown in Bay Lake— now, I’m flying out of the water and onto the aerobars, whizzing through the turns in the back lot of the Magic Kingdom, nearly puking as I hit the finish line after the run (that’s when you know you’ve had a real good run)”.
I wasn’t feeling like such a bad-ass at the Trek Women’s Triathlon a few weeks ago. I had plantar fasciitis. I had a sprained ankle from a motor scooter crash; my leg was still scabbed over, and now I’d developed a fear of two-wheeled things. I was fighting a pretty significant weight gain, secondary to the conditions described above.
And I was scared. Scared? Me, a two-time Ironman, afraid to race an all-women’s sprint triathlon? At Walt Disney World, of all places? How much more benign could it be?
My training has been nowhere near what it used to be, and my races have been few and far between. So I began to imagine all kinds of horrific race-day scenarios.
Would I get too tired on the swim, and have to backstroke to catch my breath (this would be almost too embarrassing for words to describe for me)? Would I bust my ankle running to transition? Would I clip in wrong on my bike-- and crash-- or touch wheels with someone--and crash--or take a corner too sharp--and crash? Would my left leg finally give out and refuse to support my excess body weight and cause me to collapse in a heap in the middle of the run course?
So there I was, with a very nervous stomach, standing on the shore of the lake shortly before the race start. I felt dumpy in my Ironman tri suit. I felt like I didn’t deserve that pink m-dot tattoo on my right shoulder.
And then I was in the chute with the rest of the purple caps. And there was Sally Edwards, always my heroine, giving us our Magic Words: “I am a gorgeous swimmer”. We repeated it, with the accompanying swimming motions: “I (stroke) am (stroke) a (stroke) gorgeous (stroke) swimmer!” (Husband says that a girl came running out of transition with her bike, proclaiming “I am sexy!” I can guess what her magic phrase was….) Lib and her friend practiced this for the rest of the weekend in the Fort Wilderness swimming pool: “All together now: ‘I (stroke) am (stroke) a (stroke) gorgeous (stroke) swimmer!’”
The Magic Words did the trick. I relaxed, and high-fived Sally, as I had seven (wow, seven) seasons ago, and hit the lake.
Bay Lake was beautiful, as Disney lakes always are. The water was a translucent green, and warm. It even tasted good, when you end up with a mouthful full of it from the girl flailing around and trying to breaststroke next to you.
It started to get fun for me again. I decided that I wanted to simply finish the race today, the same as my goal seven seasons ago.
My favorite part of all-women’s triathlons is the swim. No one swims over you; you don’t get your goggles knocked off, or get a foot upside your head. What you do get is a woman who bumps into you, stops swimming, and says “I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to do that! Are you ok?” Your reply: “Yes, thank you very much. I’m fine. Are you all right? Go on ahead of me, ok?”
The swim is usually the scariest part of the race for newbies. For a ‘seasoned veteran’ (I use the term loosely) like me, it’s the damned bike leg. Especially in a race full of newbies, like this one, the bike leg is hairy (even if our legs are not).
You call out “on your left!”, and that’s immediately the direction that they aim their bike. They ride two abreast; three abreast. They ride on the left. They block. They swerve. You name it. Add to it the usual treacherous segments of every Disney triathlon—the back lots, heading out into the open road—and I always have visions of potential disaster.
Surprisingly, it wasn’t so bad this year. I found only one pair of women riding side-by-side—which I (not so) gently attempted to remedy.
I made it back in without incident, always grateful to have my feet on solid ground (if you know me at all, that is my triathlon philosophy: just get your feet moving back on solid ground, not kicking them or peddling them, and you’re home free).
My run was a combination hobble-hop-jog affair, but it sort of resembled a run. I surprised myself. I understood the fact that this would lead to some pretty severe pain within the next few hours—but I was running, by God.
My cheering throng of supporters (all three of them) was waiting for me at the corner of the finisher’s chute. The announcer got my name wrong, which happens approximately 93% of the time when I cross the finish line. The finisher’s medal, this year, was a silver-plated chain and tag, which also doubled as a really nice piece of jewelry (smart race directors), and which I wore with pretty much everything the rest of the weekend.
I didn’t pay much attention to my finishing time-- I finished around the middle of the pack. My swim time was… what my swim time always is, and always will be. My bike time was lousy, which I attribute to being a chicken-shit on my tri-bike, and taking the corners too slowly (I hadn’t ridden the Cannondale in a while, and forgot that tri-bikes are meant to go in a straight line). My run time really wasn’t too bad, considering everything.
(All right. I will admit it. You caught me. I told you that I didn’t care much about my finishing time and my splits, but I was really checking them on my BlackBerry a couple of hours later, on the ferry boat, on the way to lunch. Come on- I am a triathlete, after all.)
It’s good to be at races like these, these women’s triathlons full of novice triathletes. When you see the final finishers limp in, but still beaming from ear to ear, you remember why you do this in the first place: triathlon is fun. Triathlon demonstrates to those nervous and insecure women that they really are more capable than they believe themselves to be. Triathlons like these remind us ‘seasoned veterans’ how far we’ve come, and how much farther we can still go.
And women’s triathlons like these help me to remember that I still am “gorgeous” and “sexy”, even though I think that everyone is watching the cellulite jiggle on my thighs, and snickering that my butt looks really big in all of that Lycra.
Lycra does make your butt look big.
So what?
Lycra’s comfortable. It dries really fast, so you don’t get on your bike dripping wet after you come out of the water after not actually drowning, like you knew that you were going to do when you thought about it before the race.
And Lycra goes really well with that shiny new triathlon finisher’s medal that you’re wearing around your neck, and those race numbers on the back of your calf that you are going to “accidentally” forget to wash off until after you stride into work on Monday in your skirt and high heels.
Thursday, August 27, 2009
Your Kid's First Tri: Do's and Don'ts
Ben did his first triathlon this weekend: 75 yards in the Y pool, four laps around the ¼ mile track on his bike, and then 2 more laps running. He rocked. He was proud of himself. He got a medal, as did all of the other kids who finished the race.
After the race, he ate lots of bananas and claimed to be too tired to do anything other than watch TV the rest of the day.
The New York Times website ran an article today on kids’ triathlons, examining their increasing popularity and their associated risks (discussing their benefits: not so much).
Judy Berman, a contributor to Salon.com’s “Broadsheet”, commented on the Times’ article in today’s blog. One of the gems in the commentary was the following:
“…There is something distinctly disturbing about inducting preschool-aged children into a sport that, according to the Times, saw 14 deaths in official USA Triathlon-sponsored events between January 2006 and September 2008.”
I will discuss this assertion, as well as others contained within the articles, in a subsequent post, after I have finished gluing my head back on, because it’s about to blow off the rest of my body.
As pissed off as I am about the misinformation and erroneous conclusions contained within these articles, I do have to agree with some of the observations about The Triathlon Parent . These are triathlon’s equivalent of The Stage Parent. These are the parents that ruin it for the rest of us, and give our sport its sometimes bad rep.
From the Times:
“Robert Jones, race director of the Silicon Valley event, got an e-mail message two years ago from the mother of an 18-month-old, asking if her child could take part in the triathlon. He refused..”
I have witnessed years of egregious behavior from parents at kids’ triathlon. Sadly, I have committed a sin or two myself before I saw the light.
So, Multisport Parents: for the benefit of your little newbie triathletes, and to preserve the reputation of the sport in general, I present to you a list of the Do’s and Don’ts for your kid’s triathlon. I shouldn’t have to be telling you this stuff, but I understand that we just can’t help ourselves sometimes, and that we have to be reminded that we are behaving like idiot poser loser parents who are living their unfulfilled lives through their children.
Don’t show up with the tri bike tricked out with aerobars, a disc wheel and a set of Speedplays.
Do bring the bike with the streamers and the playing cards in the wheels.
Don’t call out split times, how many minutes he’s behind the leader in the 8-10 year old division, or how far he’s behind his brother.
Do leave your watch in the car.
Don’t unrack his bike, re-rack his bike, or tie his shoes—stay the hell out of transition altogether.
Do let him do it himself, even if transition takes twenty minutes and he leaves with his helmet and shirt both on backwards.
Don’t run with him, because you don’t think that he can do it alone. Trust me. He can. He should.
Do jump up and down, cheer, holler, take pictures, hold signs and wave pom poms-- by the side of the road.
Don’t critique his performance. No tips on how to improve his swim technique, transition time or run split. Period.
Do make sure he wears his medal to school on Monday. And try not to wash off the body marking, when you wash off the dirt.
Don’t immediately start him on a training program for a sprint triathlon. Kids’ triathlons exist for a reason. It’s because they are too young to do adult triathlons, and kids shouldn’t be “in training” for shit.
Do make sure he chills out and has fun. Triathlon is a big accomplishment, sure, but it’s also supposed to be fun- yes? It’s why you do it- I hope? You’re encouraging your kids to tri to get them off the couch and moving and running around with their friends and fostering a life long love of the outdoors and health and fitness- right?
I hope that you are nodding your head in agreement-- you agree that triathlon should be fun. If you, however, feel that your kid should learn that triathlon is a metaphor for life and is an exercise in discipline and the pathway to a glorious athletic future—kiss my ass, you idiot poser loser parent.
And a message to your kids from me: get out there, have a blast, get sweaty, get dirty, get a medal, and stick all of the leftover bananas at the refreshment table in your pants for later.
After the race, he ate lots of bananas and claimed to be too tired to do anything other than watch TV the rest of the day.
The New York Times website ran an article today on kids’ triathlons, examining their increasing popularity and their associated risks (discussing their benefits: not so much).
Judy Berman, a contributor to Salon.com’s “Broadsheet”, commented on the Times’ article in today’s blog. One of the gems in the commentary was the following:
“…There is something distinctly disturbing about inducting preschool-aged children into a sport that, according to the Times, saw 14 deaths in official USA Triathlon-sponsored events between January 2006 and September 2008.”
I will discuss this assertion, as well as others contained within the articles, in a subsequent post, after I have finished gluing my head back on, because it’s about to blow off the rest of my body.
As pissed off as I am about the misinformation and erroneous conclusions contained within these articles, I do have to agree with some of the observations about The Triathlon Parent . These are triathlon’s equivalent of The Stage Parent. These are the parents that ruin it for the rest of us, and give our sport its sometimes bad rep.
From the Times:
“Robert Jones, race director of the Silicon Valley event, got an e-mail message two years ago from the mother of an 18-month-old, asking if her child could take part in the triathlon. He refused..”
I have witnessed years of egregious behavior from parents at kids’ triathlon. Sadly, I have committed a sin or two myself before I saw the light.
So, Multisport Parents: for the benefit of your little newbie triathletes, and to preserve the reputation of the sport in general, I present to you a list of the Do’s and Don’ts for your kid’s triathlon. I shouldn’t have to be telling you this stuff, but I understand that we just can’t help ourselves sometimes, and that we have to be reminded that we are behaving like idiot poser loser parents who are living their unfulfilled lives through their children.
Don’t show up with the tri bike tricked out with aerobars, a disc wheel and a set of Speedplays.
Do bring the bike with the streamers and the playing cards in the wheels.
Don’t call out split times, how many minutes he’s behind the leader in the 8-10 year old division, or how far he’s behind his brother.
Do leave your watch in the car.
Don’t unrack his bike, re-rack his bike, or tie his shoes—stay the hell out of transition altogether.
Do let him do it himself, even if transition takes twenty minutes and he leaves with his helmet and shirt both on backwards.
Don’t run with him, because you don’t think that he can do it alone. Trust me. He can. He should.
Do jump up and down, cheer, holler, take pictures, hold signs and wave pom poms-- by the side of the road.
Don’t critique his performance. No tips on how to improve his swim technique, transition time or run split. Period.
Do make sure he wears his medal to school on Monday. And try not to wash off the body marking, when you wash off the dirt.
Don’t immediately start him on a training program for a sprint triathlon. Kids’ triathlons exist for a reason. It’s because they are too young to do adult triathlons, and kids shouldn’t be “in training” for shit.
Do make sure he chills out and has fun. Triathlon is a big accomplishment, sure, but it’s also supposed to be fun- yes? It’s why you do it- I hope? You’re encouraging your kids to tri to get them off the couch and moving and running around with their friends and fostering a life long love of the outdoors and health and fitness- right?
I hope that you are nodding your head in agreement-- you agree that triathlon should be fun. If you, however, feel that your kid should learn that triathlon is a metaphor for life and is an exercise in discipline and the pathway to a glorious athletic future—kiss my ass, you idiot poser loser parent.
And a message to your kids from me: get out there, have a blast, get sweaty, get dirty, get a medal, and stick all of the leftover bananas at the refreshment table in your pants for later.
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