My 11 year old sister has been a gymnast her whole life, but now for a variety of reasons (injury, friends quit, problems with the coach), is talking about wrapping up her career in the sport. She has been showing interest in triathlon, and I’m all for it. She is very strong, and has been putting in crazy training volume for the past few years (16-20 hours per week), plus her work ethic is pretty impressive. Due to this, I feel like she would enjoy triathlon, especially since she is interested.
What are some ways people have had success getting their kids into it? What are good ways to get them into training, I know she’d like something structured if she could find it. Also, what about road bikes for kids? Are there any good budget solutions until she knows if she’s really into it or not?
Any other advice? We really just want her to have fun with it, but have something to take the place of gymnastics in her life.
1’st thought would be to NOT have her train 16-20 hours a week - that seems more like work than fun to me.
My boys got into it from watching me and me taking them to the pool, track and out for bike rides Doing something with Dad is what got them into it. They also joined the swim team because they wanted to. (there is your structure) Once hooked on swim/bike/run, I asked them if they wanted to race and they chose to. Its all about having them enjoy the individual sports and then the racing comes. I think a big key was that we do the sport together.
As for cost - just about any of the bike manufacturers make a very good road bike in a small enough size (not sure her size, but I was able to get my 11 year old son one this year) for under $1,000. Even if she does not like triathlon - she has a bike to ride. FWIW - The swim team and membership to the pool is much more expensive than the bike and I’m sure gymnastics for her was even more.
Swim team is a good idea. Have her run with you (obviously scale it down a bit in terms of distance and pace) to see if she can pick that up as well. There are some kid’s triathlon teams and if you are fortunate enough to be near enough to one, they may help you find an entry level bike. Look for a local (or nearby) running program for kids if there isn’t a tri team anywhere close.
Even consider doing a relay with her (or have some of friends do one with her).
My daughter saw some old pix of me doing tris in the late 80s. She asked what it was all about. That was a year ago. Now she has done sprints, Olympics and just signed up for her first half iron all at the age of 15. She smiles and coasts throughout the races, begs us to take her to the gym or pool and trains about 2 hours a day. We have to slow her down and make her take a day off when she has 4 wisdom teeth pulled. It is a healthy, expensive sport and if your sister is excited about it, she certainly has the mentality. All the best.
It may be hard her first year as kids her age have been doing swim team for 5-6 years by age 11, but if she can stick with it, she will build her engine, swim more than 95% of adult triathletes, and hopefully enjoy being part of a team in an individual sport.
Biking we do as a family and my kids take part in a running club at their school during recess. Mine are younger and we have worked our way up from bike paths to easier mountain bike trails. The key is always make it fun and not training.
Get her in some races as soon as she’s comfortable with whatever the swim distance is, my kids love the races and it motivates them to bike more, run more, swim team takes care of the swim more part. They only do a couple a year but they are those events circled on the calendar each year as must dos.
Definitely swim team.
There are sometimes kids’ races when there are “parent” races (we had one today following my university’s tri). I don’t know if, at 11, you’d want her doing small, local sprints?
1’st thought would be to NOT have her train 16-20 hours a week - that seems more like work than fun to me.
+1
My son is only 8. But I just had him do some running and biking with me as part of my warm ups, but that was about it for training. I wanted him to have fun and he has done two tris and placed third in his second tri. He lost the second tri on the run, so he is now interested in more running. The swim at his age is a joke (they basically wade) but if he wants to hit the pool with me at the Y, I plan on bringing him along. If he continues to show a strong interest I’ll introduce some more structure, but as bmcmaster11 says above, I’ll stop short of making it “work.”
My daughter will be 16 next month. She started swimming competitively when she was 8 years old and did a few kids triathlons when she was 10 and 11. She hasn’t done a triathlon since she got her first provincial qualifying time in swimming. When she started high school (gr. 9 in Ontario) she began running competitively on the school team that I coach. This past summer she swam at the national championships for her age group and ran at the national youth track championships in the 1500m and 3000m. No triathlons for the past 4 years. I believe that this is the best approach for long term development of a triathlete … get fast in the swim, then the run and keep working to maximize these before introducing biking and triathlon racing.
I would get your sister into an organized swim program first to make sure it is something that she likes to do and then gradually introduce the other aspects of the sport. If, however, the gymnastics has worn out her competitive drive then dabbling in all 3 sports for fun and fitness is a good idea. Either way, starting with a swim club is a good idea.
just signed up for her first half iron all at the age of 15. What 1/2 allows a 15 year old to race? The ITU switch Jr Elites from Oly to Sprint for a reason.
Triathlon Canada has distance rules that would prohibit anyone under 18 from racing that long. 17 & under must ride a road bike and can only use mini tri bars (same set up rules as ITU elite regardless of the race being draft legal or not).
As the others have said, my 13 year old daughter starting swimming in club first. She then started to run with me at age 12. She does cross country and track in middle school. This summer she did her first 2 sprint “adult” triathlons. I run and bike with her. I don’t push her, I just ask her when I go if she would like to come along. She gets the swimming from being in club, besides she is way too fast for me in the water.
One thing, if she starts swimming in club, a lot of those girls have already been swimming for years and can be very fast at 11-12 years old. Tell her not to get discouraged as it is going to take her some time to learn her form and catch up.
By the way, don’t be shocked at how fast she can get. My daughter can swim 1:10ish for 100 yards and run mid 6 minute miles.
Also for bikes, I ended up getting a road bike off of Bikes Direct, they have some smaller sizes and I am impressed for the $400 that I spent.
Thanks for the replies. I’ll talk to her and see if she is interested in starting with a swim club. I’ll start looking for local tri clubs with kids involved too. I know there is a local race with a parent child division next summer, I would love to do that with her if we could.
Triathlon starts them young. Below 8 they are usually riding on daisy bikes, and don’t go to fast. By 10 there will be MTB, daisy beach cruisers and carbon bikes with disc, deep, or combination wheels. I love working those events but if you volunteer to help. Think safety, safety, safety. Some of those kids can go the first minute at above 25mph passing guys on training wheels and solid tires on the course.
Most dangerous is the bike stopper. Some come a little hot (Like Joey is OK) viral this week. I have actually grabbed kids in my arms that were coming in a mach speeds and my buddy caught the flying rocket bike before a slow transition kid got nailed. If she was good in gymnastics, she was probably burned out a little. Make it as fun as you can.
The reason for this is not really for training but for the coaching. Everyone does better and trains harder in a well organized well coached program. My experience has been that track coaching at the youth level can be hit or miss but the depth of coaching talent in swimming at the age group level is probably the highest of any youth sport in the US. It is possible to find a mediocre swim coach but its also the only youth sport where someone coming off the street who is willing to shop around has a real shot at getting to work with someone who is training national level athletes. Any kid who is truly interested in triathlon would be crazy not to take advantage of the coaching available in swimming.
(As an aside, these days almost all the top divers come from a gymnastics background. If she’s looking for something fun to do in high school, she’d be a shoein for the diving team. A girl on my kids swim team transitioned from gynastics to diving at the start of her junior year and ended up becoming one of the top divers in the state and got a great college scholarship).
At this age it’s less important to think triathlon, and more important to think about a strong foundation in the book-end sports of swimming and running. There is a narrow window of time in the pre-teen and early teen years to do this. Despite the obsession here with the bike - that will come later. Get them in with a good age-group swimming program and then running for the varsity cross-country and track teams.