Jackson's first triathlon

Auntie Laura signed Jack up for a triathlon a few months ago and we have been "training" for it off and on since then. Really it was just for excuses to practice swimming across the pool and learning to ride his bike better. We thought he was doing great. He swims better than any other 5-year old I know. He has also gotten a lot faster on his bike and learned to control it. We think he's probably about ready to take his training wheels off. We bought some new shoes to help him grip his pedals better and jack took them for a test run around the store to make sure they were triathlon worthy. We have also been working on the emotional aspects of racing. Jackson has a tendency to compare himself with other kids, even ones that are much older than him. This can be frustrating because he gets upset when he can't do things as well or ride as fast as the older kids. So I have been coaching him alot lately that in the triathlon, other kids would be faster than him and that he wasn't competing against them, but against himself and that if he did his best and didn't quit, he could be proud of himself and we would be proud of him too. My biggest fear was that he would get frustrated when the older kids passed him and throw a fit or have a bad experience. We looked up the racers on line and there were only 5 boys in his division so we secretly hoped he would do well enough to place or get some sort of award.

Friday night Jack came down with a temperature and was very sick and lethargic. Saturday morning, he felt ok so we packed up the minivan and drove 2.5 hours down to North Carolina for the infamous triathlon. The whole event was a little intimidating. What they had advertised as a low-key family friendly event had over 200 children participating with just as many ambitious parents running around coaching their kids on transition techniques and last minute racing advice. Many of the kids had special triathlon suites and their families had triathlon team shirts. The music was loud and Jack's age group ended up with 19 boys instead of 5 and they were the first to race.

Here is jack showing his muscles and loving that they wrote numbers on his arms in permanent markers. The swim did not go so well. The other boys (in speedos) looked like they might have been on swim teams. Jack's nerves got the best of him, he grabbed the lane line and the life guard stuck his buoy in to pull him the last yard to the wall. I helped him transition but he was nearly the last boy out of the water (except for the one that had to be really rescued by the life guard).
He ran about 200 yards to get on his bike and then biked .3 miles around a little trail.
Apparently he and this boy were neck and neck but only one or two of the other boys had training wheels. I missed this part because I was hurrying back over from the pool.

We waited and waited and finally Jack ran around the corner holding a volunteer's hand. He was coughing and I heard her saying "You can do it." On his last 20 feet he had a really big burst of speed and the announcer said she had never seen such speed. His time was 8:20 and he came in 18th.

Here is a very tired boy who is just happy to be done.
He and Charlie had a fun time playing on the bouncys
and a very happy toothless boy got some cotton candy rewards and we went out to eat to celebrate. Jack did what I asked him to do- he finished and didn't seem to mind that he didn't win. (although he did apologize for having the lifeguard save him). I on the other hand, kept thinking about how I should have prepared him better and we should have driven down another day so he could have run through the course beforehand. How do parents not live vicariously through their kids? Laura and I were so excited the day before, we wanted to take him out to carbo-load and Laura coached him on visualization techniques.