matthew_deaner

My son just turned 10, and I bought him a Giant TCR2 x-small frame. He had been wanting a road bike for a while and was thrilled. Now, we have a dilemma. He's a strong little guy but tires easily, and he has a huge ego that I'm having trouble reigning in... He wants to go on rides that are far above his level. Where I live (Spencer, IN) there is nothing but hills, some of them very steep. All rides are somewhat difficult. There is a huge, organized bike ride, The Hilly Hundred, that rides 1-mile from my house every year - just to give you an idea of the terrain. My son wanted to ride in the Hilly Hundred this year - and I refused to sign him up.

Anyway - back to the problem - how do I tell him to start out small without making him feel bad? Yesterday, he wanted to ride my training ride; it's 23.5 miles and about 1,500 feet of climbing. We made it, but it took 2-hours and our average speed was about 10-mph. He walked up some of the hills. I don't want him to keep this up because he will start to see his bike as an instrument of pain. But if I tell him that he needs to take shorter rides I'll crush his fragile ego. Any thoughts?

masiman

Hard to say what would work to encourage him to keep riding.

If he has the bug, then he may be focusing on the fact that he can ride 23.5 miles rather than he had to walk part way. He may be excited to do it faster next time.

Most suggestions that anyone will give will focus on giving him enough of what he needs to keep the fire going. If that's doing rides with you, shorter rides or even independence to do rides on his own. You'll need to find ways to give that to him.

Now that he has done 23.5 miles, maybe let him decide what ride he wants to do. If you have worries that he will give up and become frustrated with riding after failing, maybe you can put some stipulations on what he has to do if he can not finish. Something like a promise to do "x" number of rides with you over the next month.

He did a decent length ride with you for those 23.5 miles. Praise him for the accomplishment. He may open up and let you know how he felt about it and where his head is with riding.

Good Luck. Write back in a few months to say how the riding is going.

PS I am surprised he wanted a road bike. Most kids want a mountain bike.

Marylandnewbie

I'm going to suggest a long talk with him about how that 23 miles went and how he performed. First from his perspective -- try to find out if he is totally focused on how far he went or if he is dwelling on the amount he had to walk. And then from your perspective.

If he is thrilled with the distance, then you need to address how well it went. You can share your concerns that it could be too far and work with him on a training schedule to build up to 23 miles and beyond. Or repackage it to formulate a training program to see if he can speed up. Either way will give you a great opportunity to build good biking techniques with your son as his skills and strength improve.

If he is focused on how much he had to walk, then you need to be encouraging and work out a reasonable, gradual training program to help him increase distance and later speed. In this situation, plan shorter rides to places he might want to go -- particularly places he might not think about biking to (amusement park, restaurant, etc.) I think a search in this forum will turn up other suggestions.

My son is 9+ and he has been really psyched about some of the longer rides we have done as a family, even when he has been exhausted by them. We have been lucky enough to use rail trails and towpaths to do some longer easy rides that have let him build up miles to boast about. We have done a couple of road rides which also went well, but he's still a little young to ride on roads and allow Dad to be comfortable!

The other thing I've come to realize is that almost every ride may be preceded by some bike adjustment since the little rug rats grow constantly! On a couple of rides I didn't realize the seat needed to come up until part way into the ride so we had some discomfort issues. We are still not very fast, but doing family rides and modest tours certainly beats playing video games.

Good luck with your fledgling rider and let us know how it goes.

tuolumne

Let him ride as far as he wants, whenever he wants (with you of course). If he needs to walk that's OK. I can remember being 10 and having trouble getting home...my dad would grab my handlebar and pull me along for a ways. It sounds like the thread title is off...he's already into cycling. Let him learn what his own limitations are rather than defining them yourself. Personally, I'd ride that century with him even if it took 15 hours. Good luck.

DiRt DeViL

For me it's hard to give advice but I'll share what I've learned with my kid. He started riding at 4, by 5 he was already racing on the mtb kids league; now at 10 he races road, track and mtb.

I asked coaches and trainers about training tips/pointers for kids, the consensus was to keep it fun and try not to pass the 2hr mark on rides. Off course hydration and feeding are important but they concured that over 2hr on a bike for a kid is really pushing his physical capacity. Also a HRM is key, I was told that they shouldn't go over 80% of their capacity.

I have to admit that we usually ride road/dirt for abour 1hr but once in a while we'll do a 25mi road ride or a ~3hr mtb ride. That keeps him motivated and challenged because he trains for the long rides with dad and for racing.

As the others said, talk with him and explain the good and bad of the long grinding rides and if possible mix with easy joy rides.

Focus on the positive and keep him riding, walking on a climb is nothing to be shamed about.

atbman

[QUOTE=matthew_deaner]

Anyway - back to the problem - how do I tell him to start out small without making him feel bad? Yesterday, he wanted to ride my training ride; it's 23.5 miles and about 1,500 feet of climbing. We made it, but it took 2-hours and our average speed was about 10-mph. He walked up some of the hills.

Did he see it as an instrument of pain? If he didn't let him go on it again.

Also, if everywhere locally is hilly, make sure that either his chainrings or his rear sprockets give him a suitably low bottom gear or two. This will give him a sense of achievement when he finally rides up those hills. The descents will be his reward for getting up without getting off and, if his ego is a little fragile, doing this will help boost it.

It's the wrong time of year, perhaps, but try breaking up the ride with a game or two - frisbee or whatever. Find out what trees or other local plant/animal life are on the route and reward him for identifying 'n' of them - bribery is not to be sneezed at. Vary that by devising a treasure hunt to get him to pay attention to his surroundings - bribery ditto.

I've been coaching kids for about 10 years now and I am still astonished at what even youngsters like yours can achieve, like 70 mile charity rides (notas hilly as yours tho').

Aim at developing his skills. You can set out slalom course on a field, park or local carpark using bottles, small cones or even just stones. Find out what time he can do with a straight line slalom of 7 obstacles, say, 6' apart and set a target of that minus 5 secs. When he can do that, reduce the gaps by 6" and aim at the same target time and so on. Vary it by making it a zigzag slalom of set dimensions and repeat the exercise. Then be really nasty and make him do it one-handed - including his "weak" hand

Find a grass bank and do the zigzag along it to develop his ability to ride off road. Rig up a limbo bar using some plastic waste pipe (15mm overflow pipe for the horizontal bar) and see how low a height he can get under. If you can get hold of some offcuts of mains gas pipe from 12" to 24", bolt a plank to them for a seesaw (sorry, teeter totter) or make one some other way.

If you don't know what a cyclo-cross dismount is, find out and teach him to do it on both sides.

Get him to pick a bottle up off an upturned bucket and put it down again 3 times on the trot. Then challenge him to do it off an upturned washing up bowl. Then be really nasty and get him to do it off the ground. The final test is to pick up a bunch of keys (really, really nasty).

Then there are trackstands 10secs, 15 secs, 20 secs, etc. (don't forget the bribery), riding no-handed.

If there are any other kids around his age, get their parents involved and run the above as competitions. Including putting a number of the exercises as an obstacle course with penalty points for missing out or failing to do some of them.

Mark out a simple "archery"-type set of target rings on the ground and get him to throw a beanbag or somesuch, trying to get a "bullseye".

Intersperse all these with some rides with his new, lower gears and prepare to be humiliated in 4-5 years (or less)

That's when you take a coaching qualification

Good luck

matthew_deaner

Thanks to all for the advice... I am going to save all these responses. Without this help, I am sure my son was heading toward getting burned out.

I had a talk with him about previous rides that he struggled through (there were several, with the example I mentioned in my previous post being the most difficult). He said that he regretted going on the longer rides after they were over. But he said that he wants to go on some of the organized rides that I go on - so I think that he is trying to prove his "worthiness" to me. Part of the problem is that my son hates staying home while I go off and ride on the weekends with friends or groups. I think another problem is that maybe I am not giving him the kind of encouragement he needs at this point, so he feels like he needs to earn my praise and respect by laying down some serious miles.

So I will follow the advice given here to make his cycling more enjoyable. I am going to:
1. Get him a heart rate monitor. I use one of these and consider it an essential training tool... I wonder why I didn't think of getting him one?
2. My son said that he wanted to "ride faster and longer." He also said he wants to race. I don't know about the racing part, but we did agree to stick to a simple training program. We are going to try to ride on a schedule, and I will not hesitate to choose a route for him instead of letting him pick the nastiest route. The schedule will include mostly fun rides to fun destinations, but there will occasionally be a longer ride (not over 20-mi, at least at first) that will be a bit of a grind for him.
3. No rides over 2-hours.
4. I need to make it clear to him that walking on hills is not a problem. I have a phobia of doing this, and I think he picked it up from me.
5. The cycling skill builders are all excellent ideas. Right now, he is a wobbly and dangerous rider around me - I would not consider allowing him to ride with a group. I guess it's not too early to start building skills and group riding etiquette.
6. The suggestion concerning appropriate gearing is spot-on. He is riding a double with a 12-25 cassette. This config is fine for me but I think he'd benefit from a 12-27 cassette or maybe even a triple. There are hills here with a 20% grade.
7. Most importantly - I need to be positive and offer more encouragement. I can't expect him to take on some of the hills around here without walking this early in his riding "career". I get impatient and I try not to show it but I think he knows what I am thinking.

Anyway, thanks again to all for the help. My son thanks you too!

DiRt DeViL

Great strategy, at the end you both will benefit from it.

Do you have riding buddies that wouldn't mind having him around? That will help him with group riding, etiquette and drafting.

The idea of a triple isn't a bad one, also consider a compact. My son's bike came with a triple and was replaced with a 50/34 compact before taking the bike out of the shop, the next step is to replace the mechs with the "right" ones. Keep in mind that if you go triple you'll have to replace mechs and controls, the front mech has to be triple compatible and the rear long cage.

Here's my son in last Sunday's action, he did road and mtb the same day.





Good luck and keep us posted.

matthew_deaner

[QUOTE=DiRt DeViL]
Do you have riding buddies that wouldn't mind having him around? That will help him with group riding, etiquette and drafting.

All of my riding friends like to ride hard and probably wouldn't want to ride with him. They don't like to be slowed down... Hopefully, when my son gets that teenage burst of testosterone he'll still want to hang out with his dad and do some harder rides with my friends and other groups. There is one possibility - the Bloomington Bicycle Club has "nice-n-easy" rides on most Sundays. I've never gone on one of these - they cater mainly to senior citizens and are usually shorter than 20-miles. I'll get some opinions of other club riders as to whether it'd be a good idea to take him at this point.

Thanks for the info concerning the mechanical swaps needed to accommodate a triple. I had no idea so many parts needed changed. It would be very expensive to change the front and rear shiftgear and shift levers. Looks like the compact crank is the way to go. I'll try to get one on e-bay.

Great pix of your son! You must be proud of him. I'll have to get some photos of my little guy to post.

DiRt DeViL

I can consider myself lucky on the sense that my kid is accepted on my group and treated like another one of the boys. It's obious that he can't keep the pace of the others (all grown up) but I just stay with him and ride at his pace. Also my neigboor (riding buddy) enjoys riding with him (when he tags along or take him out for a ride) and praises him during and after the ride.

I may be replacing the mechs on my kid bike and have the OEM cransket, if you decide to go triple I can help out with parts (PM me if interested) even thou he's better off with a compact (50/34 or 36) and junior gearing (25-14), if he wants to race that will be the restricted gearing so pays off to get used to it early.

Good luck.

atbman

Just googled Indiana cycling and came up with https://www.indianafind.com/Sports_an...ubs/index.html
There's also the Indiana Bicycling Coalition.

On of the other advantages of doing a lot of skills stuff is that it will give him something else to focus on and the speed with which he will learn new skills is a reinforcement in itself and will increase his enthusiasm.

Did I mention getting lengths of different dia. waste/drain pipes, drilling a hole in each end and nailing (big nails) or tent pegging them to the ground for bunnyhop/rolling over obstacles practice? If I didn't, use lengths of different dia. waste/drain pipes.....

A couple of planks and several pallets will also provide hourse of endless fun and bandaids. The pallets can be reinforced with some plywood - cover ply with some chicken wire for additional grip. You can also overlap the pallets so that they provide practice in riding over very bumpy ground. Get him to ride onto pallets without plank, first a single pallet, then two, then three...

PS I take it that IN isIndiana?

Brandy

I'm keeping my eye on this thread. My eight year old son has relentlessly begged for a road bike since I started riding and I finally bought him one that he will be getting for Christmas. I'm interested to see how it goes...like your son, he wants to do group rides with me, but I think I will start him out on the river trail until he gets some bike handling skills under his belt. If he's doing well, I'm considering one of the shorter options at the Tour de Palm Springs in early February of next year. I think that completing an organized ride will do wonders for his confidence so we'll see where he's at then and decide which route (5, 10 or 25 miles) we'll do. Can you see if there are shorter options at the organized rides in your area?

matthew_deaner

Thanks again to all for the advice... here's an update.

My son and I have been riding a training schedule of sorts... we try to ride twice through the week, anywhere from 10-20 miles a ride. And we're doing the "slow" group rides with the Bloomington Bicycle Club. We've been on 5 of them so far. Typical distance for these rides is 20-25 miles with an average speed of 11-12. After the first couple of weeks, he was doing great! In fact, he is stronger than several of the riders that go on these rides. I can't believe how quickly his endurance has built up. Especially since he is small and somewhat frail for his age (he could pass for an 8-year old).

Last Sunday, we rode with the "slow" group to Nashville, IN. The terrain there is really hilly... the whole route seems like it's either uphill or downhill. The ride has about 3200 feet of climbing. He handled it just fine - 50-miles, round trip. He ate a sickening amount of food though... 5 powerbars, a hearshy bar, a small bag of chips, 6-inch meatball sub, and a bowl of soup. And all that was before we got home in time for dinner.

Oh, and, I guess I needen't have worried about my son getting burned out from the difficulty of starting out in the sport... he now loves biking as much as I do, and is really dissappointed when we have to miss a scheduled ride due to weather; etc. He says he wants to race next year - and there is an annual race about 3-miles from where I live. I'll probably enter him in the Citizen class and will tell him that "the important thing is to just finish the race".

masiman

How much attitude adjustment did you have in all this? I am just curious because it "sounded" like you wanted to do your thing and had some frustration with losing some of your independence. I could be way off, just a guess on my part from what you had written.

It seems you two have made an extremely positive turnaround. You sound much more proud and involved with his riding than in your first notes. All of that sounds very positive. I am super happy that you all have something you can share that hopefully will continue through his upcoming turbulent years.

Maybe you'll inspire someone else from your experience. Best of luck with your continued riding and the upcoming race.

cyclezealot

I suspect pushing sports is no different than pushing on other adult activity on kids. Just like the criticisms for parents over pushing beauty pagent training on young girls. The question is , do the kids really want this. If so, kid's interest in cycling is just like any other untrained athlete. Muscles must adopt and become stronger. BUt, young children have even less of a basis. I'd ride with the son on training rides, specificallly suited to his needs.

matthew_deaner

Well... I guess you're right. I was glad that my son wanted to start road biking - but it required a lot of patience to ride with him. I did feel like I lost some independence when he started riding... but I understood that this was a selfish line of thought and that my obligation as a father was to nurture his interest in what may become a healthy lifetime activity. So I think my attitude has changed somewhat... I now see my son as more of a riding buddy than an anchor. I had some mixed feelings at first, but now I'm glad he became interested in road biking at such a young age.

I hope he stays with it and continues to enjoy it. I know he'll probably leave the sport temporarily when he is a teenager but I think that he'll return later in his life.

matthew_deaner

Just to clarify - I never "pushed" cycling onto my son. He was interested in it because he knew how much I enjoyed it - and he felt like he was missing out. He begged me for a road bike to get into the sport. The beauty pagent anology just doesn't apply to our situation.

masiman

Cool. I had a similar attitude adjustment situation but mine was more of a pushing one. It was similar in that I had to make an adjustment when he did not react the way I wanted him to. I convinced my oldest to try out for wrestling. It is in our family, plus his coordination and strength/weight ratio are really good. He started last season ~1/3 of the way through it. Despite that, he only lost one match and that was the championship match. I was really proud of him and excited for next year. Apparently I was more excited than he was. The season was rolling around this year and I mentioned to him that it would be starting in a few weeks. He said he did not want to do it. I was so frustrated, I was thinking of ways to punish him. It took a few days for me to calm down and realize that despite his great gifts, he may not be a wrestler at heart. There is no way you can participate in that sport unless you enjoy it. Alot of time and physical sacrifice to get manhandled into submission is not everyone's idea of fun. I backed off. After a few weeks and an "it is genuinely up to you attitude", I mentioned it again. He went last week and says he wants to do it. I am glad, but not ecstatic. And that is good. He may continue with it or drop it. I am just glad to be able to experience this time with him.

atbman

Been catching up on this thread. Congrats on his continued enthusiasm.

One useful site is the British Schools Cycling Association one, www.bsca.org.uk. If you search the site forTrix awards, you will find a useful set of skills goals for him to aim atgoing from bronze to gold. Bronze is basic bike handling stuff, silver is based round offroad/cyclo-cross techniques and gold? I can teach it but can't do it - too old, too slow and definitely too chicken.

If he does master bronze and silver - and it sounds as tho' he'd eat them, you can design slightly more advanced versions of the ones he's already mastered. For example, once he's learned to slalom thro a line of small obstacles/stones/small bottles, etc., shorten the distance and then get him to ride it with his front wheel going round one side of the obstacle and his rear wheel on the other side. Cyclocross dismounts can be done on both sides of the bike, as can scooting standing on one pedal.

Get him to ride along a narrow plank, then cut it in half lengthways and repeat until he can ride along a matchstick. Get a legnth of hosepipe and see if he can ride alongside, lift the front wheel over it and then the rear - then do the same to get back on the original side.

If you ride much offroad, look for increasingly difficult technical challenges along a familiar route, but graduate the difficulty very gradually and carefully. Be prepared to be humiliated in the near future if you do.

Keep us posted, tho' the first time he beats you, feel free to keep it quiet.

Rick G

Cool thread.
My daughter and 13 yro stepson love riding with me.My little girl wants a roadie really bad.She has a little Trek mtn bike that she just loves but wants a roadie cause she wants to ride farther faster.
The 13 yro just loves to ride.has done 17 miles on his own.5 of that was a gravel road.I think he would be a great roadie.
Dirt Devil,your son looks like he is doing great!I had lost track of you for a while.I was always trying to see how he has been doing.
Any way good luck to all of you.

DiRt DeViL

Matthew, great to see that you gained a ridding buddy and that now both of you enjoy riding together; awesome!!!

Rick, I've been lurking here from time to time but haven't posted any updates so far.

Update: My son was signed by a team, he's the youngest but the team manager says that he has potential and that's why he wants to work with him (he's an UCI intercontinental coach). He got his uniform on Saturday and was stoked.

In terms of training he's only doing 15km per training session. They change the type of ride on every session, 2 weeks ago the went for climbs, this past week was cadence. I take him out Tuesday and Thursdays as part of his training focusing on cadence and keeping the 15km limit on mind but we almost always go a bit farther and Saturday is for team training; he doesn't ride with the team during the week because their training area is far from home and with schoolwork and normal stuff is very hard to take him to those sessions.

The track season starts this next Sunday and will have meets 2 times a month until March, then the road and mtb seasons start. He finished 2006 6th overall in mtb (didn't race the whole season due to schedule conflicts) and 2nd overall in track and road.

Rick G

Wow that is cool.I knew about some conflicts from a previous post.Sounds like you have quite the cycleist on your hands.
My daughter and stepson both love riding.So does my 4 yro.I am having to get him a new bike cause he has finnally outgrown the little cheapy that we bought.
I wish that all of you could expeiriance working with kids and bikes.There is not much else like it in the whole world.

DiRt DeViL

101% agree, it's an awesome feeling and at least for me is very rewarding to see your kid give it all and have fun while at it.

atbman

Another comment on training: kids aren't just small adults and can have different physiological responses.

For example, they don't deal with heat as well as we do and their thirst response may not be quick enough to ensure that they hydrate enough.

Pre-puberty, they don't process lactate easily. Also much of their improvement response to training is neurological rather than muscular. In other words, they won't develop muscle mass at the same proportionate rate as adults, but they do improve their neurological efficiency so that they can recruit more muscle fibres for the given activity. At this stage they are still laying down their nerological pathways.

If he does get into the Citizen races you mentioned earlier, your best approach is little and often. I don't know if anyone on this site has esxperience of coaching youngsters using a HR monitor, but I suspect that it might be overkill, tho' it could be good psychologically.

Watch out for growth spurts. He may be going great guns, but rumour is that children often grow several inches overnight. If this happens, his performances may deteriorate vis-a-vis some of the other kids he rides against. Be prepared for this and make sure that he understands that this can happen

Finally, a bit of boring old fart's advice (I don't suppose you need it): things go wrong, crashes and mechanicals happen, bad days occur and sometimes he might not feel like pushing himself. He's still the same great (naturally) kid. Even if he drives you mad, he's still the same great kid.

Enjoy his enjoyment and encourage him thro' the bad days.

end of B.O.F's advice

DynamicD74

I'm just gonna wait for the thread that you start in about 3 years...."My Son is riding off and leaving me in his dust! Help!" LOL! Sounds like he's doing great!