Friday, November 20, 2009

On Taking a Break: Chronicle on the 1st (All Terrain) Triathlon of Xel –Ha 2009

In the midst of the imminent arrival of Hurricane/Tropical Storm Ida, the torrential rains and the heavy doubt that the event would take place, the very first edition of the Xel-Ha Triathlon was held, as planned.

The one major difference of this triathlon as opposed to all the local ones that I've done before was that bike racking took place one day prior to the event. The rain fell during the ride from Cancun to Xel-Ha, falling with such force as that seemed to foretell what was to come that next day. I had brought with me, however, a sense of tranquility and perhaps a little worry. I've been on a break for about a week and a half due to fluid in my knee, a direct result of a training session that consisted of a 1.2 mile swim and a 68 mile bike ride, and an indirect result of having done the 70.3 Ironman.

Talk about a major training session....

With the climate and my knee, I felt the weight of my anxiety of not having trained.

But I'll do it. Whatever it takes.

The weather was surprisingly good on the day of the competition, considering. I left my bootleg CD booth (which poses, at times, as a triathlon transition) and went with Carlos to the swim start.

This has to be one of the coolest swim starts I've ever done. It was from the Floating Bridge at the mouth of the inlet into Xel-Ha. The bridge itself has to be a good 65 meters long and it sits right on the water. Its planks were connected in such a way that when the waves would crash on the rocks at the mouth of the inlet, the bridge slithered this way and that. The overcast sky lent a grey light to the water, which splashed rather violently on the rocks.

I almost crapped purple Twinkies. This was a little scary.

So now a peculiar problem had arisen: the swim start was definitely a dive start. How many times will I have to thank my crazy swim instructor? All those times when he would be falling to pieces from laughing so much, watching us make honest attempts at graceful dives and failing miserably. We looked like pancakes landing from a flip in the pan. We practiced and practiced so that we didn't look like Christmas turkeys in mid-dive.

The minutes passed and one by one, the heats started. There were several Christmas turkeys in the other heats and when my category was up, we walked down the bridge as if we had all hit every single bar on the Hotel Zone in Cancun the night before. Some sat on the bridge, not feeling up to diving.

I stayed on my feet.

I know how to do this.

The start.

I dove into the green waters and swam towards the cove. Aline, my diving instructor, would have been proud.

The moment I touched the water, however, I knew I was in trouble. My breathing was going too fast for this stage of the competition and my shoulders felt tired. I calmed myself down and reminded myself that I can do this, as I watched the fish and little jellyfish swim below me. Even when I got stuck in the first buoy (two other swimmers closed me off and I couldn't swim anywhere else), I was able to break free without breaking my stride nor panicking.

Leaving the water, it was some 300 meters to the transition. I took off my goggles and cap and fixed my hair into a pony tail, as I ran to T1.

The good thing about being a slow swimmer is that in the T1, you can find your bike really easily.

I flew on my bike and passed up tons of people. I even pressured a guy in a skeleton jersey, who kept racing me, keeping me on my toes.

After the 10 k mark, Boney dusted me.

Damn him...

I remembered my knees on the run. Particularly when I was running up what seemed to be a 30 degree incline up the bridge which crossed over the highway. My knees popped and tweeked as if I were a robot, springs and screws falling all over the place. On the other side of the highway, there was a dirt road and because it had rained the night before, there were mud puddles at various points of the track.

In that moment, several athletes were coming back from the loop. Among them was Ruben Grande.

Ruben is a local triathlete who has done triathlons all over the world. He did the 70.3 Ironman that I did and his next challenge is the Cozumel Ironman. Apart from all the amazing feats he has achieved (among them, various Ironmans under his belt), there is one thing that makes him even more special:

Ruben is missing part of his right leg, from the knee down.

As I ran, I thought about everything that he had to confront to get here. About everything people could have said and did to him.

I know this country. I've lived 13 damn good years here. I'm pretty much as Mexican as they come. And I also know this society and the people. I hear the voice of the woman saying to her daughter who wants to lose weight: "Why are you going to yoga classes if you aren't even going to keep it up?" I see my talented friend who rejects an offer to go on a musical tour through Germany because he doesn't want leave his girlfriend alone. The same girlfriend with whom he broke up with some time after. I hear the voices telling children not to jump/climb/play/touch because they can hurt themselves. Don't risk it, they say. You're safer if you just stay where you are.

"You see? You couldn't do it. How are you going to do anything with a leg missing?"

I see the uncomfortable stares of blatant curiosity at the leg that Ruben is missing.

Don't do anything. They are going to hurt you. You're going to hurt yourself.

What hurts are the jokes that they probably made about little Ruben when he was a boy, behind his back.

I detest the discrimination.

Despite all this, he's a triathlete.

He's an Ironman.

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A year ago, in the Cancun 70.3 Ironman, there was a man who had a sign that read:

"Today, No One Quits."
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There were people who suffered during the triathlon. But it was that pinch of tenacity that took those legs to the finish line. We all have battles. We all have problems. We all have someone who doesn't believe in us and believes in our premature failure. What they don't know is that we need to fail in order to be great. We need to fall to learn how not to fall again. We have to arrive in last place in order to savor and understand what bridging that gap to first place feels like. That it's all about the journey.

Today, no one quits. Today, no one takes a break.

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