Jackson Renton turned 5 years old June 14. He completed his first triathlon just six weeks later.
Renton was the youngest of 124 children ages 5 to 13 who raced in the 13th annual Wilmington Family YMCA’s kids’ triathlon. The event started and finished at the YMCA and the swim, bike and run distances varied depending on the child’s age.
At 8 a.m. Saturday morning, the first group of kids jumped into the facility’s newly reopened six-lane pool to start the swim leg. Parents lined the side of the pool, cheering and holding signs. Renton and the other 5-year-olds swam one length of the pool while the older age groups swam up to eight lengths.
The kids climbed out of the pool and ran barefoot to the nearby soccer field, which served as the transition area. Each child sprinted over to his or her bike and began yanking on socks and buckling bike helmets. Five- and 6-year-olds were allowed assistance from their parents in the transition area, but Bailey Strom said her 5-year-old son Bret did nearly everything by himself.
“I just kind of followed along … and made sure he didn’t put anything on backwards or anything like that,” she said.
Volunteers stood nearby to provide further assistance, but many of the kids appeared determined to complete the race independently.
“There was this one little boy who was going out on his bike,” volunteer Kylee Maarshalk said. “I was like, ‘Do you want to put on shoes?’ And he was like, ‘Nope, I got this.’”
A number of the participants practiced the transitions the weekend before, Maarshalk said, during a clinic hosted by the YMCA’s kids’ tri club but open to all children.
“The pool wasn’t open yet so they had water balloons and a hose and just splashed the kids so they would be wet, and then had them practice going from [the pool] to this [transition] area, finding their square, putting their stuff on and coming out,” she said.
The bike ride meandered through the Forest Hills neighborhood. The youngest kids biked one mile and the oldest completed three miles, passing clusters of cheering parents along the way.
The younger racers’ parents ran alongside their children, keeping pace as the kids clattered along on training wheels. Renton didn’t have training wheels, though, so his father Patrick Renton had to sprint to keep up with his son.
The children dropped their bikes back in the transition area and took off on foot, making another loop into the Forest Hills neighborhood. YMCA swim team member Thomas Teeters, 13, hit the finish line first with a final time of 32:12.
Swim coach Annie Sullivan said most of the participants were either on the YMCA swim team or in the kids’ tri club. Kids’ tri programs allow the entire family to get involved in the sport, Patrick Renton added; nearly two-thirds of the participants had a sibling in the race and many of the parents cheering them on are triathletes themselves, he said.
He said his daughter, 7-year-old Ella Renton, has now completed six triathlons, but the YMCA kids’ tri, with its professional production by SetUp Events, is the one she looks forward to all summer.
“They get marked, they’ve got timing chips. … This is the one that makes them feel like, ‘Oh, we’re racing like mommy and daddy.’”
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