On Turtles and A Pair of Wings: Chronicle Fumikense of the 2nd 43.190 Km. Time Trial Competition on the Route of the Cenotes, Quintana Roo (January 30, 2011)

When I was a kid, my dad always used to criticize me for being indecisive. I couldn't make a decision without taking a good 10 or 15 minutes. He yelled at me all the time for taking so much time at everything.

He used to call me "turtle" for being so slow. Always.

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Saturday night, 10 hours before the 2^nd 43 Km Time Trial, I've just arrived from Playa del Carmen with a bit of uncertainty of how to arrive to the competition and whether I was going to do it or not. I was already feeling a little put out: I can't find a ride there, I haven't trained, I haven't slept much.

9:50 p.m.: my cell phone starts ringing.

9:51 p.m.: a text has just chimed in.

9:52 p.m.: my cell phone is ringing again.

9:53 p.m.: another text chimes in.

I checked my cell phone: all of the above was from Genaro.

9:56 p.m.: I called Mr. Tortero (aka Genaro) who answered with a pleasant word or two (why the fuck aren't you picking up your phone?).

By 10 p.m., I had a ride.

But I was still plagued by uncertainty. I thought that if I didn't get up in time, I wouldn't go. That's it. Destiny, however, had a different plan in mind and at 3:45 a.m., I woke to someone singing "La Historia Entre Tus Dedos" (The Story Between Your Fingers) by Gianluca Grignani. Around the corner, the neighbors decided to have a concert at full blast and the party had woken me up.

The meeting time was at 5:00 a.m. at the Oxxo Convenience Store and while we waited for Erica, we watched people leaving a party. There was even a couple with a man (who got out of the car to buy some beer) scarcely dressed in some precariously clinging jeans and a pair of flip flops, who had clearly come (quite literally) from a party of sorts with the driver of the car. By 5:30 a.m., I had my bike taken apart and loaded in Erica's truck, on the road to the competition. 

Getting out of the car at the Route of the Cenotes, however, felt like a very bad idea. The cold air wrapped windy arms around us, leaving us to hate the unprotective lycra that we all wore.

Tents were put together. Bikes were adjusted. Competitors were checking each other out with a critical eye.

One by one, the competitors started off. According to the list, I was going to start first in my category.

At 7:30, I was called. The six women in my category lined up, one after the other, waiting the five minutes between our category and the men’s road tire-mountain bike category.

On the minute, Memo kept announcing the time left for my start. The countdown was making me nervous. I promised Martha and the others that I would try my best not to crap a purple Twinkie in the road.

‘I am so lying,’ I thought. ‘I’m going to leave a cake THIS BIG, I am so frickin’ nervous.’

“You’ve got 30 seconds,” Memo said. I took a sip of water. My throat became dry all of a sudden.

And then, his voice again:

“Ten.” Concentrate.

“Nine.” This is just a bike ride.

“Eight.” Clipped in.

“Seven.” Clipped foot up for more force.

“Six.” Where are you?

“Five.” Here.

“Four.” What time is it?

“Three.” Now.

“Two.” What are you?

“One.” This moment.

With a rebel cry, I was out the gate. 

The first half, I’ll do at a comfortable pace. The third fourth, I’m going to kick it up a notch. The last bit, I’m going to give it all I’ve got.

Let’s see if I can last.

I heard Marilupe’s voice in my head:

“Don’t get frustrated,” sang her voice in her Pueblan accent, “but when I did this ride in the car, it seemed to take forever.”

Today, forever is 43.190 kilometers long.

A few clicks from Leona Vicario, I saw the first mountain bikers returning. I saw how they fought against the wind and I mentally prepared myself to not tire myself out too soon. I have to distribute my energy intelligently.

I was passing a massive hole dug out of the ground, the perfect place to find a dead body in full state of decomposition, when I went past the curve. Up ahead, I saw the bridge into Leona.

I observed the bridge and saw how it rose above the green of the jungle and I could only think of four-letter words, in particular, one that started with “f” and ended horizontally. I rode up and arrived to Leona, the people doing a very good job of indicating where we should go.

Time to head back.

On top of the bridge again, a tremendously beautiful panoramic view opened up before me and the road curved like in those landscapes where a long road disappears between hills, going towards some unknown destination. Call it home, the finish line or the place where you want to be and towards which each action of every day takes you one step closer.

I have a destination and there isn’t a force strong enough to throw me off.

It begins now.

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Martha was the second to leave behind me and I didn’t want to turn around to see if she was coming. I have to focus on me and continue. I felt my legs push me forward.

Some five kilometers from the finish line, I felt the wind push back, especially in the curves before the finish. I hit the first curve, thinking that I was close.

No. There is a straight leg and another curve. I got to the end of the leg and turned, thinking this has to be the one.

That wasn’t it either. Shit. Where is the finish line?

After the fourth curve, I saw the tent and the finish line.

My chain clicked into gear as I gunned it.

Time to bring it home.

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And even when Alberto, who never took his eyes off his laptop, smiled when he announced that I, the poster girl of the competition, was now the winner of her category, something even more profound happened minutes later.

Someone tapped my shoulder: it was local pro triathlete Alejandra Gutierrez, the overall winner of the competition, first place in women’s tri bikes.

She hugged me and congratulated me. 

We’ve never been introduced. I don’t really know her but I confess that I have been following her progress for a long time. I’ve seen her in the triathlons I’ve done and I’ve always admired her speed. And I had always wanted to congratulate her for the fantastic job she’s done and for setting an example for the rest of us.

And I’d have to say that her congratulation was nicest part of winning.

First place in my category. Second place overall.

This turtle can fly.

On Father's Day: V Open Water Marathon in Bacalar, Quintana Roo 2010

Writing keeps me honest because you can say whatever you want to a person but when I reflect on what is happening to me, my written words are always faithful witnesses of my wanderings. The words I say are ink on the wind, something that I cannot hold in my hands.

The Spanish word for "remember" is "recordar", which comes from the Latin recordis, which means "to pass by the heart again".

And I want to remember.

The trip to Bacalar was baptized by Dami as "six hours with Fumi in a bus to go for a swim". Imagine a bus that picks up fare at every corner but instead of every corner, imagine it traveling 80 miles down the highway and you've got a pretty good picture of our ride: stopping on the highway in the middle of nowhere to pick up fare; stopping at every house in every little town; weaving in and out of streets off the highway. We arrived dead tired, about ready to eat even the pot of the pasta that Sonia had prepared for us.

Early that next day, we got marked and got ready. A couple of minutes before the start, I was growing nervous. I grabbed Yadira's hand before we jumped into the water.

I have to do this. I have to do this.

The horn.

I felt the water and concentrated on my rhythm. Sighting the second buoy was difficult as I fought against a slight current. When I arrived, where there were a ton of people a while ago, now there was only a man swimming with me. My clavicles felt weird, a slight pressure that I had never felt before. It was like a soothing massage at first which later turned into a dull pain.

When I finally arrived to the finish line to do my second lap, there were people who were just finishing lap 2.

And I felt embarrassed.

The people who were taking note of the competitor numbers written on the arms of the swimmers saw that, instead of going towards the finishers mat, I went onto Lap 2.

"Look, she's going onto her second lap," I imagined them saying. And as I passed the people who had come to root us on, I remembered something.

When I had told my father that I had done a 70.3 Ironman, the first words out of his mouth were, "And what didn't you do to come in first?" I had just swam 1.2 miles, biked 55 and ran a half marathon.

Why didn't you come in first?

As if finishing wasn't enough. I had to win. As if I wasn't good enough. As if all the training, the sacrifice and the suffering wasn't worth it simply because I didn't come in first place.

Son of a bitch. Fucking son of a bitch.

I repeated that phrase in my head like a mantra as a tear threatened to escape. And as I swam to the first buoy, I knew that I had to show him that I could do it. And more importantly, I had to show myself what I was capable of. I thought about all the hurtful things that my father had ever said to me. I remembered the humiliating punishments during my childhood and adolescence, when it came to me that it was Father's Day, the day we celebrate those men who give us their love and, sometimes, their blood.

And then it hit me.

Like that woman who did an Ironman six months after having fought off and conquered cancer, I remembered that I am not my circumstances. I am not my sickness. I am not my father. The Republic of Fumiko is a democracy of one and I decide when enough is enough.

And that is how I came to my choice.

Deep down, I believe that my father is good person who can be mean, for all the callus things he has said, but I understand that through that, he has given me the elements to be the person that I am. To fight for me and value what I am. That I can decide what to do with all his negativity. That he loves me and I, him. That I call the shots as to how far I want his perception to affect me and to accept that I can never change him. That there is nothing to forgive because at the end of the day, if there is no offense, there is no need for an apology.

My shoulders have been hurting for a while now and I knew that I would swim until my arms fell off my body. And when a kayaker asked me if I was alright, I just lifted my fist out of the water and pointed my thumb to the sky.

I didn't know how to find the words when Dami asked me, upon arriving to the finish line, how it went. An avalanche of emotions was let loose inside of me when I answered.

"Hard," I had said.

"Why?" Memo asked.

That answer was also lost on me.

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Sunday, July 20, 2010: Today I did my first competition of the year. Perhaps I didn't get the result I was originally hoping for.

Instead, what I do know is that I got a lot more.

Happy Father's Day.

To Arrive: The Regional Triathlon 2009, Cancun

This is triathlon #3.

I’ve been running more, putting in more speed work, going out to run at night.

I bought a road bike, one that rides like it can cut butter: smooth, effortless gear shifting and responds to my legs. I bought it one week before this tri which meant me doing this as cold turkey as it gets. A roadie friend of mine told me that it takes a while to get used to a road bike.

I had one week to find out.

I convinced myself that it wasn’t that bad. A friend registered for a tri in Valle de Bravo but was training on a mountain bike up until then. The Tuesday before the event, he bought his road bike. Wednesday, he took it out for all of ten minutes to ride. Thursday, it was packed and ready to go. Saturday, he did the tri.

It was enough to say that the bike was his worst event and suffered wholeheartedly.

I was praying that a couple of hours of experience would give me an advantage.

The day of the triathlon: the organizers has told us to arrive later to give a chance to the younger athletes to start first. Kids from Tabasco, Chiapas, Yucatan and Quintana Roo were all there, competing when I arrived. And as the sun fell like lead, some who were waiting pulled out markers and marked their arms and legs with their bib numbers.

My pesky nerves were attacking me all week, especially when I considered the swim. I convinced myself that it was a training session, nothing more. For others, however, it wasn’t that simple. The Friday before the event, Claudia told me that she still had to find a bike. She’s an excellent swimmer but I contemplated her words. It meant maintaining your cadence in the blazing sun for 20 kilometers (about 12 miles) on a bike that was not hers, after swimming nearly half a mile, to go and run about 3 miles. I didn’t know how to break it to her so I just kept quiet. Fernando, however, had already done a triathlon (the Turkey Triathlon) but hadn’t trained too much and was a bit nervous. A marathoner and an excellent swimmer, I knew that he would pull through.

Standing in front of the ocean, the sun produced diamonds of light on the surface of the water. The men got together first and were the first heat to start. As I watched them leave, the women started to gather at the starting line. I took a deep breath and knew that today, the sea is mine.

The whistle.

I was still running through the water when others were already facedown in the water, swimming. I allowed them to get a little further away before I started swimming as well.

For the first time in the swim, I was swimming neck and neck with two other women for the first 200 meters. I, who swore that no one could be slower, found two others who were just as slow. I didn’t know them but it could have been their first time doing an ocean swim.

In the first buoy, I turned and lost them completely. The modified crawl became my favorite stroke. That’s because every now and so often, I would lift my head out of the water to see where I was. The murkiness of the water set my mind at ease and helped me concentrate.

I got to the beach and Aline, a judge and a friend, called out “34:20.” The time it took me to swim the half mile. Slower than hell. As I ran to T1, I turned to see that there were two people still in the water behind me.

Now for the moment of truth. I mounted my new baby. My Cannondale. It was so wonderfully sweet and giving that I was able to pass up five people. This being that I had a Camelbak on, due to the fact that I didn’t have bottle cages. I even raced a man ahead of me, trying to sprint as if we were Armstrong and Indurain.

I said “as if.”

Then came the problem: in the transition, I couldn’t find my things underneath the bike rack. I walk up and down for a couple of minutes, trying to find them. I spot them under someone else’s bike, who just so happened to park on top of my goggles and towel. I shoved the bike aside and I started to change. Meanwhile, the guy I raced at the end of the bike is already heading out towards the run.

I start to run.

Five minutes later, I’m praying to the high heavens to have them end the run segment.

Now would be nice.

My body felt heavy and I imagine that the little sprint wasn’t without its consequences. My heels didn’t want to kick up anymore and I knew it was going to be an agonizing while that followed.
And like last time, people started to pass me up. I didn’t care anymore. All I wanted was to finish. Nothing on my body was Harting but I felt I was now a sack of rocks.

But I continued.

About half a mile to the finish line, I saw a group of kids on their bikes. They were the same ones who were competing in the morning and now that they were finished, they were riding home in the other direction. They passed me up, rooting me on, telling me that I was close to finishing. I saw their youthful faces, fresh and smiling, filled with hope, and happy to have finished and competed.

That amazed me.

And like last time, people started to pass me up. But I didn’t care anymore. I wanted it all to end. Nothing in my body was in pain but I just felt like a sack of rocks.

And I kept at it.

A little less than a mile from the finish line, I saw a group of kids (who looked like they were in high school) riding towards me. They were the same kids who I had seen in the morning. They passed me up, rooting me on, telling me that I was close. I saw their youthful faces, fresh and smiley, filled with hope, happy to have finished and to have competed. And that struck me.

Maybe one day, one of these kids will grow up to be an Olympic hopeful, representing Mexico. Maybe they’ll become such a great athlete that they’ll win the Panamerican Games. The World Cup. The Olympics. And have the hopes of an entire nation behind them, wanting to be like them. Like Olympic silver medal sprinter Ana Guevara. Like a PWGA women’s champion, Lorena Ochoa.

Or maybe they’ll become scientists that discover the cure for cancer. Or a Nobel Prize writer.

And they were rooting me on.

I just saw the future of a nation ride by me on two wheels.

Maybe I was endorphin overloading but I was so moved that I almost burst into tears. Seeing the finish line up ahead cut me off short and I dried my face.

I can’t run with my nose clogged.

This time, there was no awards ceremony. This time, there were a lot of mad people who were ticked off that the registration fees didn’t cover, even remotely, the same perks as in the previous triathlon. There wasn’t a lot of proper organization and there was a whole mess of angry words. And as the finishing times were put down in pen and paper instead of digitally with a chip and a modem, I watch as a pelican soared over the sea and the light of the setting sun cast shades of pink and red. I remembered the faces of those young triathletes and decided that regardless of everything that happened, today, there is nothing more beautiful than a triathlon.

Calluses: The Quintana Roo Statewide Triathlon 2009

In a sudden decision, I was considered to compete in the Statewide Triathlon in Cancun with only a week’s worth of notice. This time, I was not besieged with sensations of nausea, dizziness, lack of appetite. This time, I was not pregnant, about ready to give birth to a triathlon. This time, I did not even feel the need to think if some benevolent doctor would do me the favor of removing my digestive system before the competition.

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.