Ironman as told by a 5 year old

Is “Ironman” a superhero? Is it a race? If you’re a five year old that’s a tough call. It really could be both, let’s be honest.

We try to have intelligent conversations with our kids at dinner – it rarely works, but we do put in the effort. (There’s no medal for that by the way, but there SOOOOO should be). Talking about triathlon does come up frequently. And in my kid’s defense, there IS a superhero named Ironman, so I can see the confusion.

Last night we were talking about Ironman at dinner – the triathlon – after we cleared up the confusion of which one we were really discussing. My five year old says something like this to me… If you do an Ironman triathlon you will get medals and money! I told him…well, if you’re the first 3 finishers you get the big prizes but if you finish after the top three you get a high-5 and maybe a t-shirt. I’m not sure if that’s even really true, but I was trying to get him to understand that it’s not about the prize/money/etc and that only the super fast get medals – he thinks that every event earns you a medal, because most of what I participate in offer finisher medals. Not all, but many of them.

After about 2 minutes of thinking about what I had told him, he tells me: that’s a lot of work for a high-5.

Truer words have never been said!