Somewhere around 1800 miles into the PCT, The Barracuda decided that he wanted to triathlon. Well, okay...
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| He did 20 mile days on his heavy-as-all-get-out stainless steel little Schwinn Gremlin. Lord only knows what he will be doing in clipless pedals with his new carbon fiber Felt! I'm already exhausted. |
It has taken months, a whole lot of research, and a bit of help from our tax return, but we finally found a kid's triathlon bike. After a 3 hour professional fitting, it's now his. I've called the pediatric sports therapist (whose children I'm putting through Harvard at this point), and training has begun.
We hit the pool for two hour sessions twice a week to work on his freestyle. We run the other three days. He rides for continuous half hour intervals four times a day to practice form, endurance, and shifting. We work on breathing technique and meditation for 20 minutes every morning to calm his lungs, his heart rate, and find "flow".
At this point I don't think it would be possible for us to stop homeschooling. There just wouldn't be time. Luckily, he can peddle while we do English and Latin. I can speak Spanish to him while we work on swimming form. We can calculate mileage, heart rate, intervals, and race dynamics for math.
I remind myself that every day we are training for the summits later this summer, and the Appalachian Trail in a couple years. I remind myself that top colleges are now focusing on both academics and significant life pursuits. I remind myself that the primary goal of a parent is to support their children in becoming individuals. All of these thoughts bombard me as I hear, "Mom?!" and crawl deeper into the warmth of the covers to escape running. They come back again before I jump into the freezing cold pool water (why can't they just heat that water, I mean seriously!). On the plus side, my abs are thanking me.
2 thoughts:
I'm constantly in awe of the two of you!
Do you read Penelope Trunk's homeschool blog. You might not love all of it, but she write a lot about what colleges are looking for and how homeschooled kids have a big advantage (she also writes about why you shouldn't send your kids to college, but that's another story :) http://homeschooling.penelopetrunk.com/
Hey Mel, I check in with her off and on every week or so. I'm not as radical of an unschooler as she is, partly because The Barracuda likes structure, and partly because our family puts less emphasis on the business world as a life pursuit. In general, we like being well rounded and slightly frown on specialization.
The Barracuda currently wants to go to college, but only as far as an AA at this point. He considers 4 year degrees or more to be "pointless time-sucks." He wants to travel and teach science to support himself being a naturalist. We'll see if that changes as he gets older.
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