Libby Trickett’s First Birthday Wish For Little Poppy

Teams of two to six [children aged 5-15], tackle 3km of wild and wacky obstacles courses around Australia, dubbed the ‘Tough Mudder for families’.

The next event in the Little Big Dash series is in Melbourne on September 25, and forms part of Sanitarium’s long-standing mission to help Australian families improve their health and wellbeing and ensure they get physically active outdoors.

We caught up with Libby for her thoughts on why families need to get on board – and to reflect on the swimming star’s first year as a mum to little Poppy.

You’re about to celebrate Poppy’s first birthday [on August 31]. How’s the first year gone for you?

I can’t believe we survived! It was challenging for a lot of it. Probably the first 7-8 months I found it very difficult and there wasn’t a lot of sleep happening. But the past couple of months have been a real joy and I’m really loving getting to know her and evolving our relationship.

Is she an active wee thing? Does she love the water like her mum?

We call her Hurricane Poppy. She’s a little firecracker with tonnes of energy! She absolutely loves to get into everything and loves to be active – I swear she never sits still! Luckily for us, she seems to love the water at this point, which is great.

What’s your plan to make sure she grows up to be as active and as healthy as mum? 

I just want to show her how much fun being active can be! I hope she gets a lot of joy from moving her body and she’s happy and healthy because of that.

Why were you so keen to work with Sanitarium on this campaign?

I believe it’s so important to encourage kids to be healthy and active! It’s so easy in our modern society to be lazy or get distracted or caught up with technology so we need to make being physical, fun and engaging! What better way than an obstacle course and what better way to model healthy behaviour than by getting mum and dad involved?!

Do you think Aussie kids have got lazier and unhealthier since you were growing up?

I think as a society we have things a lot easier than previous generations.. Obviously cars, computers and all of those sorts of things contribute at least in part to our tendency to be inactive. But I don’t believe that’s the natural state for most kids! We just need to give them different ideas of how to have fun using our bodies!

How can we make sure they grow up as healthy as possible? What’s the secret?

I believe we need to model healthy behaviours to our kids. If we want them to be active and eat good food then what better way is there then to show them? If we don’t want them to be lazy then we need to get off our butts first!