I arrived to Puerto Cancun (a fancy complex on the beach but still under construction) early to rack my bike. Yuri, who looked as if she had spent the night in the bulldozer shovel, had dark circles under her eyes and was talking to several some of the swimmers from the Red Cross, trying to calm herself. About to participate in her first triathlon, she kept her cool with a ton of class.Little by little, they started to arrive: the experienced, those who were looking to qualify, the newbies.
In the marking, my arms were elegantly painted with my numbers: 28. These became a sort of tattoo afterwards. Since I didn’t put on any sunscreen beforehand, I was basically branded, the number in a lighter tone, causing a bit of surprise to those who notice.
The tri start was late in coming. We stood in the wet sand, waiting anxiously for the whistle and when it finally did blow, all I could think was, “And if I don’t do it?” Everyone was splashing about and the inertia pulled me into the water. It was murky and I couldn’t see the bottom. I imagined it being deep when I noticed that the base of the sea wall I was swimming next to was hard to see. Today I had my hair up in a bun, as a suggestion from my swim instructor. “So that you can go faster,” he told me. Even with this vague advantage, I still was nowhere near feeling like Michael Phelps as I was being left behind. Upon rounding the first sea wall, I felt my swim cap slide back. My goggles will hold it on, I thought.
“Modified crawl every ten strokes,” my lifeguard friend had told me. I lifted my head out of the water every now and so often to see where I was. We had to swim an “M” around two sea walls and upon round the wall, the buoy was a lot farther off than I thought and I lost sight of it frequently.
At least I don’t have to worry about swimming to Cuba this time.
When I finally got to the end of the swim, I heard people shouting my name. I fell in the sargasso, betrayed by the wet sand that had turned into a thick goop underneath the plants. I took off my goggles to find that I had lost my cap.
With wet hair dripping over my face, falling and, apparently, having the largest group of people cheering me on, I wasn’t exactly the spitting image of grace. I looked more like a wet St. Bernard.
“Here comes the last two athletes!” I heard the announcer shout into the microphone as I ran up to my bike. Cool. I wasn’t the last one out of the water.
I arrive to T1 was a little bit more practice. A water bottle to wash the sand off my sandy feet. A towel to dry them. First shoe. Second shoe. Jersey with pinned-on bib number. Helmet. Sunglasses. Unrack bike.
This was one of those moments when I thanked my mountain biking experience. The terrain was gravelly in certain sections due to the construction. I took it all in stride. There was a woman who was on a road bike and whose face was as red as her suit. She had her helmet on at an angle, sitting further back on her head as if it were a baseball cap, her hair askew and pasted to her face.If suffering had a representative image, this woman would win hands down.
Upon finishing my second lap, the leaders were already returning to the racks to pick up their bikes. By this time, I was able to pass up two people (one of them being Suffering Woman) on the bike but those same two passed me up in the run. I ran calmly, knowing that there was no hurry. I wasn’t going to break any records; I had no sponsors on my back. The only record I beat was my own: I arrived second to last, one place better than last time.
But something got my hide:
Suffering passed me up.
There is a marvelous movie called “The World’s Fastest Indian” with Sir Anthony Hopkins. It’s the true story of Burt Munro, a New Zealander who, at his 60 some-odd years of age, went to make his dream come true in running his streamline, sub-1000 cc motorcycle on the salt flats of Bonneville, Utah. At the beginning of the movie, there is a shot of a shelf filled with pistons, pieces that he himself had made and, for one reason or another, didn’t work. Witnesses to his hundreds of intents at being better.
It was a part of his offering to the God of Speed, on his search for the piece that will make him faster.
I also search for the piece that will make me faster.
If there is an element that I identify with, I would say it was the wind.
If there was an animal that I loved, I would say it would be a bird of prey, like a hawk.
And just like that, I found my totem.
In my solitary wanderings (what I call my training sessions), I sometimes see a hawk far away, drawing circles in the air. In my mind, it lands on a tree that is on top of a hill, which I see only as a tiny dot on the horizon. And it waits for me. Sometimes, it seems so far away that I’m not even sure that I’m moving towards it but I trust that if my feet are moving, the distance between the hawk and I is closing.
I want to be fast. Make me fast.
If I make it to that tree where that hawk is, I’ll know I am.
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