I was in a sprint tri recently and I noticed that there was a very young competitor I ask his age he told me that he is 10 yrs old.(his parents were there but not racing)
The race was really short 300 yard swim, 9 mi bike and a 5k run.
I was surprised how well that kid did. His results were
5:35 for the swim, 42:48 for the bike and 25:32 for the 5k run.
I was thinking how proud his parent must be but at the same time I was also thinking does the kid really want to do triathlons or is he being pushed by the parents to do it. Because when I was 10 yrs old I was still playing with legos. LOL
What do you guys think? especially the ones with children around that age, would your kid volunteer to do a triathlon?
What kid really wants to do anything. 
Up here there are parents that have their 2 year olds on the ice. Does any two year old ask for that?
Nothing wrong with placing kids in a sport, just look for the signs that they are actually enjoying it and having fun. Don’t live vicariously through them like some jack ass hockey parents do.
M~
I have a 9 year old son who will be doing his first Tri next month. He has never been to one of my races and this last year finally learned how to ride a bike. (I have to admit it was painful for me to have an 8 year old who would rather be on rollerblades than on 2 wheels like his old man, but I wouldn’t push). He always had an aptitude towards swimming and did a short road race with me 2 years ago. He really got into watching the Tour on OLN last year and knows more about professional cycling, team tactics, stages that I thought he would. He also watches the Tri’s that I have on Tivo.
I really didn’t push him into trying a race but he knows how much I enjoy the sport so he wanted to give it a try. He talked a friend into doing the race with him and his buddy constantly tells me about “how many laps this, and how many times around the block he has done for the week”. I think it’s great. If he enjoys it he can do more, if he doesn’t I can always put him up for adoption! (I’m kidding!)
I should add: If I were going to push him into a sport it wouldn’t be triathlons, I can barely afford the sport myself, double race and travel fees and I’ll be broke in no time.
My four year old daughter would volunteer to do a tri, until she realized it involves swimming (I’ve tried, REALLY tried, to get her in the water – for some reason she’s afraid).
One of my daughter’s (12 y/o) is a swimmer and she runs track. Track is still on for another week and swimming started up again 2 weeks ago so she is doubling up. She’s does about 3000 yds in the pool then goes right to track practice and runs 6 to 8 miles.
She’s doing it because she wants to and she loves hanging out with her friends. It is amazing to me how nonchalant she is about the whole thing. She just comes home and if you didn’t know what she had been up to you’d think she had just spend the afternoon goofing off. It takes 10 minutes of “who said what that was funny” stories before she lets out, in passing, what the workouts were. I don’t think she has a clue that this is anything out of the ordinary.
That damned kid’s faster that I am! Please delete this post before SAC reads it. P-L-E-A-S-E…
My 8 yo daughter has done more Tris this year than me. She is an excellent swimmer and usually does the races with 2-3 other girls from the swim team - they race the swim and then regroup in T1 and do the rest of the race joined at the hip just chit chatting. I admit I want to yell RUN FASTER but if she is having a good time so be it - better than playing video games.
Ooh - you just brought up one of my two big triathlon pet peeves (that and the fawning television coverage of “IronCEOs”).
I think the concept is okay in general, and cool when it’s something a parent and kid can share. BUT like most things there have to be people who totally overdo it. I was at a triathlon last year where there were a group of 10-12 year olds with UNIFORMS and they were warming up before the race with heart rate monitors and their coach was yelling at them. They all had very good-looking tri-specific bikes as well.
In my opinion, and from what I have read about kids who are pushed this way in general, even if the kids like it at the time, it’s too much. Children aren’t meant to be endurance athletes (and even a sprint tri is an endurance event, in a way). A lot of kids who get pushed like this wind up getting burned out. Most of the best triathletes, from what I recall, come from a well-rounded athletic background with sports like soccer, gymnastics, skiing, etc. in their past. Save for folks like Mr. Armstrong, champion triathletes/cyclists were not laser-focused like this from such a young age.
So if you “sports moms and dads” can accept the reality that your child is not going to be the next Simon Lessing or Natascha Badmann, then by all means, have fun with multisport! Oh, and by the way, when your kids compete in one of my races, they can have the after-race food, but you can’t. That’s for me and the other slow people who finish later. Stay away from my food table!
i would have loved to do it at that age.
my parents just supported, never really pushed. generally though, i did pretty good at the things i was in–but they never knew about anything specifically (like what a good time for the 100 free was, or an 800 in track, or what it meant when i said we just threw a basket toss through the roof, etc. they just said, “you did great kiddo”). i believe they were too caught up with my asshole sister to get too involved in the details, but it was great to have them show up at things and they seemed to enjoy it.
i think it’s good for parents to be supportive but not to push too much. but we all know those parents that are trying to live their dreams through their kids…and that’s just awful. the ones that nearly beat up a coach because their kid didn’t play that day.
"Don’t live vicariously through them like some jack ass hockey parents do. "
The “hockey parents”. That horrific Canadian phenomena. Had one for a neighbour once.
Last night on Bravo they had a show “sports moms and dads” watch it next time it’s on, it will blow your mind…and make you want to smack some of these people around.
I think they are “re-airing” it tonight.
My 7 year old is planning on her first du this September, .25mi-3mi-.5mi. Our training runs are pretty intense as there are usually catipillers, frogs or turtles to rescue from the road, leaves and flowers to invesigate and oh yea, run a little.
I started swimming competitively when I was 9 and ended up taking only one summer off between then and the time I “retired” 12 years later after my last college meet. That’s really not that young to start competitive athletics now; I see some kids that appear only a couple years older than my 3 year old at organized soccer and T Ball practice in our subdivision. I personally did not feel pressure from my parents to compete in swimming, and I think that swimming competitively was my idea, not my parents.
My 6 year old and 8 year old begged me to let them run in a 5K I did this past weekend. They loved it and cannot wait to do it again. They ran nearly a 10:00 min pace. My 8 year old wants to do a kids triathlon, now. They are both outstanding swimmers. My 8 year old routinely beats me at any stroke 50 yards or less.
The cup is half full not half empty. I find it funny that people who have their kids do this are crazy sports parents rather than caring parents who spend every possible minute with their kids.
Not to mention, there is something to be said about helping instill a healthy lifestyle early on.
Kids should just play a variety of team sports at a young age. Endurance comes naturally by riding your bike to soccer games, playing the game and riding home, playing hockey, lacrosse etc etc etc. If a kid wants to enter a tri, then great, but I would not push my 8 year old to do one. He hates water anyway, but like to ride, but really, he only wants to do sports that his friends/peers are doing. If not, he would prefer to hang out at home and trade Yu-gi-oh cards or play Lego.
I have two daughters aged 9 and 13. The 13 year old is not interested in anything competitive at all. Last week at her school “track meet” (which all students were forced to compete in) she won every race from 100m to 1500m for the grade 7 and 8 kids but refuses to compete in the county meet because she does enjoy it. My 9 year old is the exact opposite. She has just finished her first year of competitive swimming and goes out and runs with her mother twice a week. I have to constantly tell her not to go and workout because she just loves it. She also has an excellent attitude and is always trying to outperform her previous best and not worrying about what others are doing in the race. I started running at age 11 and had a former competitve runner (and phys-ed teacher) for a father. My classmates always asked me if my dad “made” me run. If that was the case I sure wouldn’t be at it 28 years later. I saw some parents at a kids of steel race that my daughter did last summer yelling at their child to speed up his transition and bitching to officials about the setup of the transition area and how it would slow the athletes down … my 9 year old is racing this weekend and can’t wait because she knows that she’ll swim better than last year and she is really excited to race on her new bike but she is still out there for fun.
As a first-year swimming parent I see some problems with the way many swimming programs are set up. I think that the competitive swimmers do way too much at too young an age and just get burned out. For 15 and 16 year old kids to be focused enough to be at the pool 16-20 hours every week and passing up many of the social things that their friends are doing takes a lot of maturity and drive. I think that the reason you don’t see to many 30 year old swimmers kicking ass at the Olympics is the burnout factor. Most other sports have a lot of competitve “older” athletes but swimming seems to be a sport that the top athletes hang onto until they get through college and then drop out. Former competive swimmers … am I way off base with this assessment?
I catch a lot of crap about pushing my son (also 10) into triathlons. And some say it is not healthy. Fact is that I have to restrict him (for health reasons and it messes up some of my party trips with the guys). He loves them. His times are a little faster than the kid you saw on the swim (beats most of my buddies) and similar on the bike but slower on the run. He swims competitively year round, bikes some (he does time trials, mountain bikes and we have a nice tandem), but rarely runs except for the races and a few stand alone 5 ks. I have tried to encourage more ball/traditional activites, but he really prefers the triathlons. He has done 4 adult sprint races this year in the NC Set-Up Series and plans on doing a total of 6+ so that he qualifies for the series awards (10-15 yr age group). He can’t really compete against 15 year olds but sometimes there are so few competitors that he places anyway. The running is the only thing about which I have concern, but it would break his heart if I told him he could not race. If I thought it was harming him, I would not let him do it. He has a great time, I enjoy having him around and the other competitors and observers are fantastic to him.
My 6 year old and 8 year old begged me to let them run in a 5K I did this past weekend. They loved it and cannot wait to do it again. They ran nearly a 10:00 min pace. My 8 year old wants to do a kids triathlon, now. They are both outstanding swimmers. My 8 year old routinely beats me at any stroke 50 yards or less.
The cup is half full not half empty. I find it funny that people who have their kids do this are crazy sports parents rather than caring parents who spend every possible minute with their kids.
Not to mention, there is something to be said about helping instill a healthy lifestyle early on.
I think you are a bit off track here. It’s not having kids that want to do it that make a crazy parent, but ones who push them, spend $15,000 a year on training for an 8 year old (true life from that Bravo show I mentioned) or have their 7 year old doing hill sprints in sand with a personal trainer (same show). Watch the show and you’ll get it.
We have a lot of youth tri’s in North Carolina and the ag start as early as 6. I was an rd for a race for about 4 years. Like most things 95% of the parents are great but then the other 5 percent are nuts. We saw all kinds of antics from parents
demanding splits
yelling at their kids for taking too long in transition
telling there kids to catch the other kids in front of them since that kid looked realley bad
arguing over transition spots
running behind the kid yelling at the top of their lungs for the kids to go faster
I could go on, but you get the point.
My kids started doing the races at age 6 or 7. They liked them, (i think) they barely trained for them but had a lot of fun, especially the body marking. I do my best not to push them into tri’s and hopefully keep it fun for them. My daughter is 11 and i am not sure if I will let her do an open water swim for a couple of more years. But she already asks about doing a “real” non kids tri.
I could see some of the stronger swimmer kids doing open water swims, but I will not until I am 100% confident she could take a blow to the head/body and not be in danger. Mind you she is all of 55 lbs.
So yeah I could envision some over bearing parents, but hopefully they are the exception and and most kids do the races to have fun.
Peace,
RF