Week Of The Race

I have some pretty athletic kiddos. They get it from their dad’s side of the family (national champions and Olympians in the sport of triathlon…me? I was just a cheerleader.). But since they’ve grown up in it, people have always assumed we have been the hard-core pushing parents who trained our children like mad.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

When little Daly Kay, Ryli and Blissy were 7,6, and 5 years old, we decided it was time to sign them up for their first triathlon and headed over to St. Anthony’s Tri in St. Petersburg. They had all been on swim team but little Ryli and Blissy had never been on a bike.

“Week of the race, time to start training!”

Said my husband, in all seriousness. He bought them little pink bikes with plastic baskets and sparkly streamers on the handlebars. Up and down the road for a few minutes the Thursday before we left town and by Friday we attempted to ride without training wheels. I won’t tell you that the ride at the race wasn’t without a few scraped knees and some seriously harrowing moments, nor am I endorsing this kind of attempt at triathlons, but I am going to give you a little tidbit of advice based on our somewhat laid back approach to training.

Don’t wait until your kids are perfect or even somewhat good at something before you throw them into it. Don’t think that they have to have it all figured out before they get into something. Sometimes, it’s best to help them develop a “why not?” kind of an attitude and just jump into things headfirst.

[bctt tweet=”Don’t wait until your kids are perfect at something before you throw them into it.”]

“Week of the race, time to start training!” is now a bit of a proverb around our home and it always means, “Why not? We can do anything we put our minds to!” It has helped to get my kids through some pretty tough stuff, athletics and otherwise, when they realize it doesn’t always have to be perfect or planned through, they just have to attempt and do their best. They may get a few scraped knees along the way, but the flexibility and why-not-ability is worth every opportunity they seize along the way.

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