The Kids Are Alright

A recap from Saturday's race is forthcoming, just waiting for some pics.  Here's a sneak peak: Angelia cut 6 minutes off her 10k time in her first 10k race!  I just missed a PR (sort of) in my first 5k race, scoring 2nd in my division!  Julian, the 5k veteran, took home his usual 1st place prize!  It was a cold, windy, but successful affair!

In the meantime, I thought I'd talk a bit about the younger triathletes in our house.  Do they suffer from Mommy and Daddy's training schedules?  Well, sometimes.  But they also pick up a lot of good habits.  They ask questions about nutrition and Connor is always coming up with new "exercises".  The last few days have had several reminders of the things they grasp through simple observation.

Yes, the dinosaur horn made it safely
 from the old bike to the new.

As you may recall from a previous post, Connor had a new bike waiting for him upon his return from Disney.  He turned 4 while there and has recently sprouted upwards.  The 12" bike was just not going to get the job done any longer.  The nice folks at Rockwall Cycling gave us some value for his Specialized HotRock and we upgraded him to a new 16" (same brand and model).  Finally, the opportunity had arrived for him to take it for a spin around the block!  When it comes to Connor and cycling he typically refuses to ride less than 1.5 miles.  For some reason, even with the excitement of a new bike he called this ride short.  I was quite surprised when he wanted to go back to the house.  We get his bike up to the garage, he dismounts, gets me to help with his helmet, and then ....... he's off running down the driveway calling for me to follow!  I jog behind him for a bit until he asks me if he's run enough yet.  I tell him he can do whatever he wants.  He runs back to the house, up to the garage, and what's the first thing he says to me?  "We don't have a place to swim."  Uh, no, we don't ..... and when did my 4yr old start doing brick workouts?

The day after the Trinity River Levee Run (race recap coming), I had a 2hr recovery ride on my schedule.  I'd been looking forward to this as the whole week had been run-centric.  My bike wasn't completely neglected though.  I gave it some new red tires, red handlebar tape, and clip-on aerobars.  The nice thing about a weekend recovery ride is it provides a rare opportunity to ride with Julian.  Frankly, I'm horrible at holding my pace back for recovery so this situation is a win-win.  Julian gets to go on an extended bike ride and on top of the father-son bonding stuff I also get a nice safety mechanism to keep me from pushing too hard.  We take off along some of our usual roads, sometimes side by side, sometimes single-file.  When Julian was riding ahead of me he started doing something I hadn't seen him do before --- he used hand signals to warn me of debris!  We've worked on signals for turning, slowing, and such before but the debris warnings were out of the blue, something he's picked up through observation.  It provided a perfect opening to expand upon regarding communication when riding in a group and we ended up doing some skills work while cruising down an empty road.  In the end he knocked out about 15 miles at a solid pace for him before stopping at home.  I continued riding another half-hour or so to round out my ride but was pleased with our hour together.  Side note: it also gave him a chance to wear his new Rockwall Cycling jersey Angelia was kind enough to grab for him!

So, there you have it.  We may be crazy, we may be eternally busy, but our boys are learning good things and enjoy getting outside to be active with Mommy and Daddy.  Is that so bad?