Kids' Triathlon

Pip participated in a kids' triathlon a couple of weeks ago.  It was pretty much on the spur of the moment---he had a week to prepare---but he gamely spent that week running, biking and swimming, doing some variety of workout every day.  He was pretty confident that he could handle the distances easily:  

Swim 8 laps

Bike 6 miles

Run 1 mile

It's not even 8 a.m and he's already weary of waiting.
We had to be there at 6:30 a.m!

 We learned a LOT from this tri, which is touted as one of the 10 largest in the country, although I was also told that it was the largest.  There were almost 900 kids (you can see how late we registered!)

That's his microchip on his ankle, which starts as soon as he hits the water.

 We had to go Saturday to pick up his race packet.  That's a good time to drop off your bike in Transition---and all the rest of your gear that's needed in Transition!  If you still need to get into Transition before the race on Sunday, you have to be finished by 7:30 when they close it.

They had places for kids to make signs.

 There wasn't much else to do but wait, wait, wait, wait, wait until his group was finally called around 10:30 a.m!  Experienced families knew to bring their own little canopy tent with chairs and a cooler full of goodies.    We did bring a few things, but our chairs ended up being in the wrong location to be useful, and I guess we would have moved them if we had known how long the wait would be.  

The Big Tent is finally clearing out because only the kids with the blue caps are left!

In the Cool Zone after the race!  I'm terrible about getting photos of moving objects!  We were able to watch him swim; saw him take off running with his bike out of Transition; we saw him at the end of the biking portion, and then he passed us twice on the run, and finished strong.

It was a very exciting event---once you got to the event itself!  I don't know how many more of these we will do, because its a huge family commitment, but he had been wanting to try one when we heard about this one that was very close to us.  Maybe it was the size of this particular Tri, but it was way more complicated than the 5k/10k runs that we're familiar with!

Have you or your kids ever done a triathlon?  Tell me about it!