Filipe Rodriguez and his 10 year old daughter Maria did the Ötillö race in Engadin, Switzerland.
The race was a great 75 min experience! It was my suggestion but she had great memories from Ångaloppet a few years ago and wanted to try another race.
I had to talk to the Ötillö staff as the minimum age is 12 for an Ötillö race.
We are also registered to Utö Experience, just need to work out the travel as she will be in school. After today, Maria is even more keen to go, particularly as it is in Sweden (we used to live in Sweden and all miss it so much).
My biggest concern was the shock of the cold water in the first swim and how stress could lead to Maria not breathing properly and further increase her stress level. This concern turned out to be unneccesary! The water was not that cold and her surf suit covered her well. Maria got cold in her hands and feet after the second swim but we just accelerated in the run afterwards to warm up.
My advice to other parents is to take it very easy before the event, we hardly spoke about Engadin before last night and kids deal with stress in different manners, so I noticed the more we spoke the more nervous she was getting.
Taking race day as a normal day which happens to have some swims and runs in the morning ended up being the best attitude to mitigate stress on Maria.
I did notice she was anxious with all racers around and at that moment, questions come up, some of them I did not have answers for. But having family there to distract and talking to other racers distracted her… after the start, all anxiety was gone and we could just enjoy!
Another advice, start Swimrun in familiar, friendly territory, Ångaloppet is the best with its typical Swedish environment and lots of other families doing smaller races. After such race, parents may plan for an Ötillö or any other race which is less family oriented because the child has already been introduced to the sport and will most likely have very friendly memories of it.
