Teenagers and the HIM distance - seeking advice.
Hi all-
Looking for a bit of advice from da haus.
I have a teenager son triathlete, who turns 16 next January.
We have been talking about his plans for 2011 a little bit. When he was 14, he did the Sprint/Olympic thing. (Best Oly time that year 2:20). When he was 15, he focused on ITU style racing with USAT. His local sprint distance non-draft races typically had him winning the under-18 crowd and unofficially on the podium up through the age 24 crowd.
Now, for next year, he knows (a) he's not competitive with the best of the ITU-style guys who are insanely fast, and (b) he ages up into the 16-19 age group, so that kills him further. Spending all the money to send him to USAT Nationals would be an exercise in participation. That's not a bad thing, but he's told me what he really wants to do instead is a 70.3 distance race.
I've looked into it, and there are a number of non-WTC races within a reasonable drive that admit 15-17 year olds. (The minimum for WTC is 18.) There are a couple that appear to fit into our summer calendar.
So my question to da haus is the wisdom of this.
A bit of information about him:
- He's a varsity HS swimmer, and did the swim leg of a HIM last summer in ~30 min. It was a post-peak one-off thing for both him and me, where I rode the bike and he swam and ran.
- He just finished a season where he simultaneously played club soccer and ran varsity cross country. He plays 90 minutes of most of his soccer matches and broke 17 min this year, i.e., endurance is not an issue for him.
- At that same HIM last year, he ran 1:32, having not run more than ~8 miles on any given day during the summer. (After all, he was focusing on sprint-type distances for the ITU-style races.)
- He can dust my ass riding his bike uphill, but at least as of last year, I beat him on long steady state rides on flats.
I'm 99% sure he would have no trouble finishing the race. (Well, at least no more trouble than anyone else!) He has adequate support training during the summer, given summer swimming infrastructure, cross-country guys who run all summer, and a few younger bikers (and me).
But I grew up with the "don't make your kids do ridiculously long races or training until they're a certain age" thing. Emotionally I'd like to let him do it, and he is pretty firm about wanting to do it. But I don't want to have him do something stupid, so I'm just trying to run it by some other folks who "understand" the whole ultra endurance thing.
Thanks for any feedback,
William
Comments
If he looks at this much more as a hobby and is moving away from ITU-style because he doesn't want the competitive pressure than by all means let him do what he will enjoy the most.
Just remind him the the elite 70.3/IM guys typicaly come from a ITU background or a single sport background first. Eitherway, most of them got fast first an then when far later.
Yes, my primary worry is about injury, though I am aware of how to minimize some of those risks (e.g., I'd let him do a half way before I'd let him do a marathon). And yes, I am completely aware of the path of the ITU to longer, single sport to triathlon, fast-then-far paths that are so common to the top long distance folks. (e.g., Crowie, Macca)
His preference for next year about the ITU stuff is not the competitive pressure per se; it's that he has a pretty sensible vision that he's going to be "just another guy" at that level. Two other factors clearly come into play: (a) he has always been strongly motivated to be the precocious kid; (b) he knows that the one strength he has that is of real state/regional quality is his endurance. I think it would be better that he knows he has that in his pocket and tries to get as fast as he can...but I also want him to pursue his passion and stay excited about it. But it's easy for me to be coldly rational Dad. That said, I'd rather see him stay excited about participating than get all frustrated and stop caring about it.
I have considered that one solution is to have him train as if he were doing Oly distances (e.g., like EN Outseason), with just a short (4-6 week?) HIM buildup...not unlike what RnP advise for many of us...then go back to sprint/Oly after the race, which would be mid-July.
He knows he is going to make a living with his brain, not his body. But like every kid wants to be a fireman (or whatever) at a certain age, he wants to go to Kona. In fact, it was he who got me into triathlon in the first place. But he also knows it's going to be a "serious hobby" for him, not a living.
To really train with the fast triathlon guys would mean a MAJOR family commitment - Ames is too small for there to be that group in triathlon. It would be different if we were in Chicago or Minneapolis. The fast guys here are the single-sport guys. So, no matter what we do, it's a bit of a cobble-together job.
Wm
My opinoin, if you were to look at the yards he swims in HS Varisty (we swam 4K+ a day, 6 days a week) and then look at the mileage he runs in Cross Country in a week and then compare that to a typical HIM training plan. I doubt you'll see much difference in total training time. The only difference is the HIM plan would be spread out over Swim, Bike, and Run. A HIM plan is manageable in 10hrs a week, we swam at least that many hours a week.I'm sure they run 40 miles a week.
A HIM training plan MIGHT be a step down in training. Huge difference running 13.1 to 26.2 and the training are worlds apart. I would not recommend 26.2 that young but I don't see the problem with HIM if he is excited about it. I was a huge pain in the butt in HS and didn't get excited about much. I say go for it, just watch the training load.
And be prepared for him to eat you out of house and home.
I'm going to agree with Hayes. Sounds like his workload now is already similar, and I think that a HIM is a good goal. With you being around to guide him on how to train smartly for the race I think it's an achievable distance for an athletic teenager. But I would definitely make sure that he understands and sticks with pacing strategies and the like to make sure that he's not doing too much or going too hard since at the longer distance it is possible for it to take a toll. I don't necessarily agree with the idea that doing something long is going to cause damage, but I do think that the naïveté of youth can be damaging if you don't set up the parameters. And he's already done 2 legs, to me it sounds like he's ready to do the whole thing.
He will be beating you before you know it