Kids - How far do you cycle with yours?

[jamin100]

My son's been doing regular club rides for the past 2 years (he's 13 now) these are usually around 35 miles at an average pace of 13mph with a decent amount of climbing. He's also started racing cyclocross in in the autum / winter and also does track sessions, sometimes a few times a week.

Now, at 13 I can confidently take him out on a 30 mile ride with over 2000ft of climbing and he can hold a 14/15 mph average easily. Its getting to the point i'm worried he'll be faster than me REAL SOON! He's built like a whippet, so I may need to start making his bike heavier somehow.

Anyway, we're doing his first sportive on Sunday and have opted for the 100km route with 4000ft of climbing so will see how he gets on..
tbh, im scared of being dropped.

 

[LeetleGreyCells]

My son's been doing regular club rides for the past 2 years (he's 13 now) these are usually around 35 miles at an average pace of 13mph with a decent amount of climbing. He's also started racing cyclocross in in the autum / winter and also does track sessions, sometimes a few times a week.

Now, at 13 I can confidently take him out on a 30 mile ride with over 2000ft of climbing and he can hold a 14/15 mph average easily. Its getting to the point i'm worried he'll be faster than me REAL SOON! He's built like a whippet, so I may need to start making his bike heavier somehow.

Anyway, we're doing his first sportive on Sunday and have opted for the 100km route with 4000ft of climbing so will see how he gets on..
tbh, im scared of being dropped.

That’s very impressive. Good luck on Sunday. And by the sounds of it, I’d start thinking up excuses now...

 

[BrumJim]

My son (5 1/2) went on a quick 6.5 mile ride with me on Monday, with only one stop. He needs an ice cream to motivate himself. Which gives me an excuse to have one too.

 

[LeetleGreyCells]

Our maximum to date with 10- and 7-year-old is 16.5 miles. Motivation is key though. Our rides inevitably end with an ice cream. Bribery, that’s the way to go with kids!

 

[Heltor Chasca]

75km from east of Utrecht into Rotterdam with my nearly 9 year old and 16 year old daughters last week.

They were fine. Tears of pride from me.

One of our club mile eaters did a 130km Audax with his 7 year old (I think he’s 7) on his own little Isla Bike.

 

[LeetleGreyCells]

75km from east of Utrecht into Rotterdam with my nearly 9 year old and 16 year old daughters last week.

They were fine. Tears of pride from me.

One of our club mile eaters did a 130km Audax with his 7 year old (I think he’s 7) on his own little Isla Bike.

Hmmm... extends distance for tomorrow’s ride...

 

[youngoldbloke]

Grandaughters aged 10 and 11 completed the C2C - Whitehaven to Tynemouth - 145 miles in 3 days, with their dad, a few weeks ago.

 

[User76022]

My 9 year old is comfortable with about 15 miles. My 5 year old manages about 7 miles although his personal record is just shy of 10 miles.

How hard do I push them? Not at all. I don't want it to become a workout for them. It should be fun. No time constraints. No distance targets. As many breaks as they need. Stop to look at things, detour to try things like daft stunts or whatever. I usually plan a cafe stop if we're going to be out for more than an hour.

My personal rules when riding with others, whether it's my kids or my wife or any of my friends are...

1. Ride at the pace of the slowest member of the group

1. (yes there are 2 rule 1s), always focus on and emphasise the positive. Don't even acknowledge any negatives. For example, if we only do half a mile because my youngest's legs are tired, there'll be some comment about how fast he rode or how he's really coming on with his bike control.

 

[froze]

I think it depends on the child. My first two were daughters and none took any interest in riding or anything else physical, except my oldest did like swimming. My oldest grew up to have 3 grandkids, the oldest is now 11 and he likes to ride with me, but I can't always take him riding because the kids don't live with their grandparents, and the kids parents have their own thing going on which eats time, so we only ride maybe a couple of dozen times during the summer, which the furthest he has gone so far is 11 miles, this last summer we took a short distance bike camping trip to a local campground and spend the night then rode back, but that place is only 7 miles from our home, but it gave him a taste of what I do when I do short tours. He wants to ride more but he can't ride at his house because the roads are too dangerous for a boy of 11 to be riding on by himself, and he's too inexperienced for that sort of riding as well, plus he has to keep his bike at our home anyways. So time will tell if the oldest will be a rider, or maybe one of the others.

You can't push them that usually backfires, but a few like to be pushed, it's a trial and error to find out what kind of child you have. But pushing is different then forcing, you can push with lots of praising, awards etc, but negative pushing will almost always fail.

Sometime ago I read on the internet were a father and his two twin 9 year old daughters were camping touring from California to New Mexico! And those two girls were fast for 9 year olds and had the cadence thing down, so they must have been riding for awhile and frequently. They carried some of the lighter stuff, dad carried the bulk of the camping stuff. They were averaging 20 to 30 miles a day! But the video they did the kids looked really happy to be doing what they were doing! I think that's unusual in today's society of electronics and video games...but I can't recall ever hearing of kids that young doing that before the era of electronics. The kids each had their own bikes by the way.

 

[User76022]

You can't push them that usually backfires, but a few like to be pushed, it's a trial and error to find out what kind of child you have. But pushing is different then forcing, you can push with lots of praising, awards etc, but negative pushing will almost always fail.

Yep. This applies to everything. Not just cycling. Absolutely everything.

 

[youngoldbloke]

There is an 11 year old who regularly rides on our club leisure rides (along with his father). Up to 30/35 miles, no problem. He tends to be the first up the hills - better power to weight ratio than most of us

 

[LeetleGreyCells]

My son and I are just sat in the car waiting for the rest of the group to arrive before we set off on a 20-miler (my son’s first). My daughter decided not to come which is fine as she rides often with us and in CX races anyway.

My son doesn’t know it’s 20 miles and I won’t tell him until we finish. He’ll be riding with other kids in which case he won’t notice how far we go. He never has before...

 

[Sniper68]

My son(11) has been riding on the road with me since he was 8.He rode a 30 and 40 Hilly miles in Provence at 8 1/2.He now regularly rides 30miles+ around here(hilly) with both me and his CC and is now getting to the stage where he beats me up the steep climbs He's been Closed Circuit/Crit racing for almost 3 years and starting Cyclo-cross racing again Sunday.He's. been on a drop barred bike 3 years.
My only issue is he's getting older,stronger and faster........ and I'm getting older and slower
Every child is different though as some of his CC mates are really fast racing but either don't ride distances or blow at about 15 miles.

 

[Hicky]

Two sons, one 15 and one 10. The 10y/o rode a balance bike at about 15 months and progressed onto a normal bike minus stabilisers at 3 yrs and 4 months. By the age of four he'd ride 3-4 miles no drama. He's a strong confident cyclist but as he gets older he's developing into a more rugby type build. At 8 he'd cover 20 canal type miles no probs as long as he's fuelled or motivated ie iced cream.
The 15y/o learned to ride at 7ish, now he's on his bike almost everyday and a very strong whippet shape. Annoyingly fit but without the appreciation of it (he's very similar to how I used to be(thanks middle age!)). As a young kid I'd struggle taking him over 2 miles as he wouldn't want to know.

They're all different, as long as they enjoy it then appreciate the time with them is my view.

 

[TheDoctor]

With the grandsprogs (9 and 11), the furthest so far is a 10 mile round trip.
There may have been a playground involved. And a pub