Fit Family

The podium has been reached

Well, I finally did it. I stepped onto my first triathlon podium this past weekend. And, I had some company, thanks to the speed and determination of my daughter Amanda. Together, we captured the top honors at a local event known as the Splash-’n-Dash: a 150-meter swim followed by a 1 mile run. As parent-child team, you must compete side-by-side…and that we did.

Still not a strong swimmer yet, Amanda lost steam about 75 meters into the race, but held on strong to the finish. Although pooped, she popped herself right out of the pool just as the other competitors were wrapping up their swim.

She was in race mode and we ran over to T1 and I watched as she gamely tried to put socks on wet feet and then cram her toes into tied running shoes that had not been loosened. My fault for not catching that. I decided to go sockless since it was only a mile to see how my feet would hold up as a test for the upcoming Rage triathlon.

While we were trying to shove Amanda’s feet in her shoes, our competitors entered T1. We were losing valuable time.

Finally, we got her shoes on and we were out the chute and started down the trail for the run around Sunset Pond. At this point, the lead was ours to lose.

About two minutes in, I noticed that we had company behind us and they were making ground. I told Amanda, "Look, this is ours to lose at this point. They’re gaining on us so we need to pick it up a bit."

Now, it’s only fair to tell you at this point of the story that there were only two teams. While the local park & rec folks had high hopes for the third annual event, only two families showed up. Even though we were racing against a family of three (dad, mom and an older boy), I’ll be God-damned if we’re coming in last with such a short field.

We kept our pace up and had our "show" sprint to the finish line for the cameras. We put a little over four minutes between us and the other team so I’ll call it a good win…and a lot of fire in the belly of my daughter for the next race. Plus, I have a feeling we’ll see the other family again and, with everyone’s family honor at stake, I’m sure we’ll have some good competition in the future.

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