Family Fitness Magazine

Some Dads dream of their first father-and-son fishing trip or watching their first football match together. For me, I’d always imagined taking Robby to his first triathlon.

That day came along last year at the ‘Eton SuperSprint’ triathlon. Robby’s Mum was taking part in the adult race later in the day, but first was Robby’s ‘Scootathon’! His course was a three hundred metre loop of scooter, then bike, then run.

When we’d first mentioned it, Robby had been really excited about giving it a go. So for the last 3 weekends we’d had fun doing practice sessions at the park, and he’d insisted on scooting everywhere during the weekdays!
Before the race I took Robby to the start and together we worked out what he had to do. Then suddenly the parents had to clear the area, and it was just him and the other 5-6 year olds listening to the race director’s instructions. He wasn’t a bit nervous (unlike most of the parents watching), just big smiles.

A bit of jostling for position and they were off! The scooter stage went well (although crashing into the grass verge set Robby back a little!). Then a bit of a frantic moment when he couldn’t find his bike. But everything worked out OK, and he was onto the run and being cheered home through the finish arch.

I’m not sure who was more excited during the race itself, but for the rest of the day we were going over what had happened again and again.

It was clear Robby was proud of his achievement when he wanted to take his race T shirt to the school ‘show and tell’ to let his friends know what he’d done! Dave, Robbys Dad