Marathon Me

Saturday morning the Livaudais family woke up early! As I heard Shelley get out of bed I looked at the clock and it was 4:15am, which was far too early for me and Christopher. We held out until 5am. It was tough getting me Christopher out of bed, so eventually I just carried him to his chair and sat him in front of his oatmeal.I showered and finished loading all of Christopher’s gear into the car and we rolled out of the house about 5:30. Christopher’s first triathlon would start at 7am in Kyle, Texas about an hour away from our house.

We arrived and got him all checked in and then went to set up his transition area.

The race would consist of a 100m swim (versus the 25m we were hoping for earlier in the week), as USAT rules base your division off your age on December 31st, which meant Christopher would compete in the 7-8 year old division instead of the 5-6. He and Shelley had gone to the pool a couple times to make sure he could do the distance, and with some resting he was able to.

He, having learned from his dad’s debacle in Idaho, decided he should probably warm up before the swim start.

His warm up left him quite cold, and he was quick to point out the irony (and not the black fly in your chardonnay brand of irony either).

The swim is pretty funny to watch as the kids run and jump off the side of the pool after crossing the timing mats (I saw several cannon balls, but Christopher was all business), they swim down to the other side, dive under the ropes and repeat until they’ve gone the 100m. Then a volunteer forcibly yanks them out by their arms helps them out of the pool and into the first transition area.

Christopher ran out of the pool area and got a little disoriented as to where he had to run to find his bike, but he got squared away and headed to his bike.

I was telling him what to do gently encouraging him to get his shoes and socks on faster. He got his shoes on, snapped on his number belt, put on his helmet and headed to the mounting line. The bike leg was 2.5 miles, which was farther than he had ever gone by himself. So I ran with him during the bike and run portions, trying to get encouraging him to go faster. He has only been riding his big-boy bike for a little while , so he kept braking on the (very slight) downhill sections. I’d tell him not to brake and he’d tell me to “Stop bossing me”. Lovely. We finished up the bike leg with no problems. He definitely could have gone faster if he had wanted to, but I was super happy that he was able to complete the whole distance without issue.

T2 was much easier as we were able to leave his shoes on and just had to take off his helmet and go. There was some initial confusion as to where his bike should go (I thought where we started from, and he thought in the middle of the rows, kind of in the way). Since I wasn’t allowed in the transition area, he went with his idea and just parked his bike in the middle. Luckily, since he started the swim last, most of the bikes had already come back so he didn’t stop anyone else from getting their bike in. Next race we’re going to work on transitions.

He shot out of T2 hellbent on sprinting the final 1k. This lasted about 200-300 yards, which was, coincidentally, just past his Cheerleading section (made up of my mom, dad and sister and Shelley and her mom and dad), at which point we took a break. The remaining part of the run would be a combination of walking, running, and jogging, with a few “stop bossing me”s thrown in for good measure.

About 150-200m from the end I led him towards he finish telling him he had to run through the finish, he was too close to stop.

Afterwards, he was super happy and grabbed his medal and some hard-earned Gatorade.

He finished the race in 35:48, with splits of 4:02 for the swim, 22:56 for the bike (but the way they had the mats set up, this time includes both T1 and T2), and 8:47 for the run. Following in his dad’s footsteps, his swim place was 60th, bike place was 64th and his run place was 40th, which brought him up to 35th place. I think he will be a much better swimmer than I am, and if he stops braking on the bike, his bike time will come down. I am looking forward to watching him train and race in the future.

The rest of the weekend, whenever he wanted anything, the requests would start out, “since I am a triathlete, I think I should get X”.

My personal favorite quote of the weekend was: “If we go out to get ice cream, everyone should get a regular amount, but you know, since I am a triathlete, I should probably get more.”

Tags: Christopher, Race Reports, Triathlon //