Flying by at the 70.3 Cancun Ironman
There is something amazing about the way things work. You can be doing your same old routine and something always manages to find its way into your life to make you realize that perhaps, you aren’t doing the same thing you always do.
I say this because today was a day like any other, except for the fact that it was the 2008 70.3 Ironman here in Cancun. I was going to wake up at the buttcrack of dawn to ride down to the track and sit out the race, watching friends who were competing. This would have happened had it not been for two tiny details:
1. I failed to wake at 3:30 to leave at 4:30 and 2. I woke at 6:20 to the ringing of my cell phone.
A Triathlete Zips by in the 2008 Cancun 70.3 Ironman, Turning a Head
It was a friend, the one who was supposed to ride with me. He was just getting back from a party and wanted to work off the hang over/sleepiness. I wasn’t sure if I wanted such a huge responsiblity as having the life of my friend (whose physical ability in this particular moment I doubted) on my conscience. But we agreed on meeting a my house and riding out from there.
I normally don’t take the highway to enter the Hotel Zone, where the competition was, but my friend insisted it was shorter. So we went along and entered the HZ from the other side, avoiding the 25 kms before the beginning of the race. We came precisely to where the athletes were just passing by on their bikes. Road blocks prevented cars to come in that side as bikes of all types zipped by. I stood in the sun, on the side of the plastic road blocks that had been set up while my friend (the smart one, as it turns out; my face is now a tonality of baked lobster), on the other side of the road, in the shade.
Returning from the 90 Kms in the 2008 70.3 Cancun Ironman
As the competitors zipped by, some with their full rims whirling, I heard a sound of something like a scratch. One man in a blue jersey looked down at his tire.
“Fuck!” he said.
He pulled over to my side of the road and in the grass, started to unscrew the axel set on his back tire. Once unscrewed and the brake undone, he pulled at the tire, which wouldn’t let go because the chain wasn’t free of the freewheel.
He looked angry. I watched, wanting to help but didn’t wanted to get screamed at so I stood aside. He looked up and around, maybe looking for salvation, a fully inflated wheel to fall out of the sky. But the tire slid off easily and he managed to slip out the popped culprit and slide in a new inner tube. And as he struggled with the tire, trying to get it on the frame, I decided the hell with getting yelled at.
I approached him.
“Do you want me to hold that straight for you?”
“That’d be great,” he said. “Thank you.”
And as I held the frame straight, I saw that he was having trouble with putting the wheel in the drop. I held the frame steady and tried to keep the situation calm and under control. The tire slipped into its place when he realized that he had lost the spring in his axel set.
“I don’t know what it does,” he said. I did. It keeps the screw tight so that the cap doesn’t fall off. My friends later told me that it really isn’t necessary for roadies. I believe since there aren’t tons of bumps in the road, there is less of a chance that the cap will fly off, ultimately ending in I what I originally believed was going to happen to this man: the wheel flying off. I was a bit scared but I decided that it wasn’t the smartest thing to do to put this worry in his head: I just prayed there were no bumps.
He stood up and said something that I never expected:
“Thank you for saving my life.”
I was a little shocked.
“I really didn’t do anything.”
“You did. You saved my life. What’s your name?”
“Fumiko.”
“Thank you very much, Fumiko.”
“Good luck,” I had said.
And with that, he streaked off.
I stood there for a bit, awe-striken. Had I come from the other direction, I would have never had experienced the above. The fact that he got a flat right in the area where we were (and there was no other civvie around, cheering on the competitors, for miles) was perhaps fate. I also write this to get rid of a nagging guilt on my conscience for not telling this athlete what I knew. I am well aware that I could have written this in the most favorable light but in the end, I know that wouldn’t go well with me.
I found out later that Mr. Axel Set zipped by on to to the finish line.
Nothing happened to him. Someone up there answered my prayer.
Abram Waving as He Runs the Last Leg of the 2008 70.3 Cancun Ironman
My friend says it was my bad vibes that caused him to get a flat right there. He jokes and realizes that he has done so after I gave him a dirty look, which implied a subsequent ass kicking.
Whatever it was, I was left moved by the event.
And so starts my search: if anyone knows who this man is, one who competed in the bike leg of the 2008 70.3 Ironman on an orange Quintana Roo, tell him that he made my day.
Thanks.
UPDATE: I just found out what the spring in the axel set does: it just separates the drop from the wheel so it maintains a set space (and it’s easier) to put the wheel in. Whew…all that worry for nothing….
UPDATE No. 2: I’ve found out who Mr. Axel Set is but since it is against the rules for people outside the event to help out, I’ve opted to omit his name.
