All The Gear, No Idea: How To Bond With Your Teen
by Catherine Evans
There’s nothing quite like a shared challenge to bring parent and child closer together. Especially if that challenge involves techsuits, dodgy bikes, falling-to-bits trainers and a healthy dollop of public humiliation. My daughter and I are doing the Thorpe Park Sprint Triathlon on Sunday 29th June 2025. Like most self-respecting teenagers, she’s glued to her phone and to Netflix, so how did I manage to rope her in? Just because I happened to mention that you get a free ticket to the theme park afterwards, something she’s been nagging me about for ages.
The event has been going since 2015. It became part of the British Triathlon Major Events Programme, and is a qualifier for the European Age Group Championships, so we theme park enthusiasts will be running alongside some serious athletes. For about ten seconds, that is, then all we will see is dust. Around 1000 competitors turn up to the race, not including marshals and spectators, so we’re expecting a day of chaos, starting at a ridiculous 7am, consisting of a 750m swim, a 20km bike ride and a 5k run. We have three hours to finish. Doubtless we will need every second of that time.
Our training has been … patchy, to say the least. We talk about it a lot, and then end up arguing over what to watch on telly. When push comes to shove, the prelim to training consists of the following exchange: Me: “Fancy coming for a training run?” Her: “No thanks.” Our strategy consists of optimism, denial, and a vague belief that she has youth on her side while fear is on mine. The really good news is that thinking about exercise supposedly has much the same effect on you as actually doing it, so on this basis, we’ll be just fine.
We’re both comfortable with the idea of the swim. We’ve been open water swimming at Bray Lake in Maidenhead and at Queensford Lake in Oxfordshire, comfortably covering 1000m, well in excess of the required distance. We’ve even managed to drag the rest of the family with us. Swimming in the open air with a bunch of fellow water nuts that come in all ages, shapes and sizes, all in our bright swimming hats and neon floats: truly it’s a wonderful way to spend a Sunday morning.
I’m terrified of the bike ride: the last time I was on a bike was in the Jurassic era. My daughter is relaxed about the cycling, but can’t imagine running 5k. She’s a netball player, and is used to short sharp bursts of activity rather than half an hour of repetitive locomotion. Oh well, I reassured her. We could always walk. As long as we get to the finish on time!
Our matching techsuits arrived via eBay. These are figure hugging lycra one piece affairs that cheerfully showcase every lump and bump, complete with padded bums for cycling comfort. The entire triathlon is completed in the same outfit; you get on your bike soaking wet, the special wicking fabric drying as you pedal and subsequently run. That’s the theory anyway. Neither of us have actually practiced all three events together. We may get a very rude awakening on the day. We have been told that organisation is key to successful transfer from swim to bike to run. You have to get all your things lined up, so you exit the water, put on your socks and trainers, your cycling helmet, gulp some water and go for it. Dedicated triathletes work hard on their transfers, thinking out every step in advance as that’s how you shave your time down. The serious cyclists have sleek futuristic machines that would not be out of place in Blade Runner!
My bike has a shopping basket (mercifully removable!) and her little folding number is more Sex and the City. I doubt that we’re going to strike fear into the heart of our competitors.
What we lack in fitness and training, we make up for in enthusiasm. Up to a point. She’s dead enthusiastic about the rollercoasters. I’m enthusiastic about not doing my back in.
I’m sustained by the belief that doing something together, i.e. something ridiculous and a bit scary is the ultimate bonding experience. It gets us out of the doom loop of school runs, laundry lectures and the hell of ‘have you done your homework?’ There's nothing like shared suffering and humiliation to create lifelong memories. Will we win? Haha. Of course not! Will we finish? Definitely! (Fingers crossed) Will I collapse in a heap while she sprints for the rollercoasters? Undoubtedly. We’ll probably suffer a bit, but hopefully we’ll have a laugh along the way. Ultimately, I’m showing her that I’m willing to make a complete ass of myself just to spend a bit of time with her. I hope that’s her enduring takeaway from the day, although I suspect she’ll be far more impressed by the rollercoasters.
