Giving it a go at the Weetbix Kids Tryathlon

This year Noah decided he'd pair up with a friend from school to race as a team in the Weetbix Kids Tryathlon (doing the swim whilst his friend did the bike and then they ran the running leg together). Not that he wouldn't have been capable of doing the whole thing since the bike is probably his strongest discipline but it was a really good introduction for him to see what an organised event is like.

The Weetbix Kids Tryathlon is a nation-wide event held over a number of weekends throughout the country at different venues, and there were approximately 2,200 kids from all over Wellington competing (in fact the event had completely sold out!) and despite the weather looking decidedly dodgy - it was pouring at 6am which forced the organisers to shorten the older kids section to try and beat the heavy rain forecast again in the afternoon - for the few hours that the event was on the sun actually shone!

Mark and Noah headed off bright and early at 7am to the event which was held at Kilbirnie Park with his team-mate and family early whilst Mylo and I leisurely made our ways around the bays (stopping in for a takeaway coffee on the way - how sleepy I look in the shot below - definitely needed that coffee!) and arrived there at the leisurely time of 10am just in time to see Noah's swim in the pool.

Mark had given him the heads up that we were inside watching so he managed to pick us out in the bleachers across the other side of the pool and we gave him lots of encouraging waves and thumbs up signals while he waited for his race to start.

Despite looking like organised chaos there were a good number of instructors in the pool  helping the kids get through the course - handing out flutter boards for those kids who struggled with the depth of the pool. Noah did a great job of the 100m swim - switching to backstroke for a lot of it - which as well as being his best stroke he found was much easier to prevent getting kicked in the face and made it easier not to get completely splashed. He ran out for transition to tag his team mate and get changed ready for the 1.4 km run.

 Weetbix official photo of Noah in transition

In the meantime, we were waiting at the run finish line and eventually met up with Mark, who then went to grab a coffee and meet up with Noah's team-mate's dad. By this stage we'd moved over near to the start of running course to see if we could see them running which turned out to be a crucial error  - as by this stage they must have already been well ahead of this point - in hindsight we should have stayed put in sight of the finish line as it meant we missed their run altogether.

Thank goodness the Weetbix official photographer captured this for us!

After about twenty or more minutes of watching other kids streaming past to the finish and a couple of trips by Mark to look around for the boys, we decided that they MUST have already finished and be somewhere around the venue - think 2,200 kids plus families and you can imagine the chaos. Anyway, not long after this Mylo and I headed over to the 'lost kids' tent and Mylo spotted Noah and his friend sitting down waiting for us!

We were somewhat gutted to have missed his run and I was worried that Noah might have been nervous that we couldn't find him (knowing he has a history of having a fear of being left places which stems from an incident of getting locked in the toilet at a holiday programme when he was five) but he was just fine since he was with his buddy, it was actually his idea to head on over to the 'lost kids' tent when we hadn't managed to connect with him straight away at the finish line, which was good thinking Batman!

So a great outing for his first multi-sport event and even better he sounds keen to do it again next year! It was also great to run into and catch up with so many other families we knew from our various workplaces over the years, as well as families from school, church and sports teams - it almost felt as if everyone we knew in Wellington was there!