At some point when you were a kid, you were probably told that you had to wait until the end of the meal to have dessert.
So now, I’ll admit that sometimes I sneak a couple of bites of something sweet if it’s within reach before I even start eating. (I highly recommend it.)
There are plenty of people who ride bikes and, when they finish riding—whether it’s a casual ride or a sporting event—have a couple of beers. Some have more than a couple.
I think you can see where I’m going with this.
This time, there was an urban Enduro event in Guanajuato, the city where I live, with four special stages.
I’ve heard the advice many times: if you want to perform well, you need to fuel during a race. And considering this event took place in the very heart of Mexico, it would have been almost offensive if that fuel hadn’t been tacos.
So buckle up. Or maybe loosen the belt. Depends.
Come with me to an event where, much like those baseball challenges where you have a beer and a hot dog for every inning, this time, for every successfully completed special stage, I’ll have a drink and a taco with salsa to add some flavor to the adventure.
There are only four special stages, so maybe four beers isn’t that many. I don’t know.
Right before the start, we’ll warm up the engines with one. Cheers.
The defining feature of this event is that every special stage takes place in alleyways, inside a living, breathing city.
Guanajuato was born from mining, and its urban development never exactly followed a strict plan. That chaos has become the perfect canvas for something that feels less like a concrete jungle and more like a spontaneous trail system made of pink quarry stone and brick, threading its way between century-old and even two-century-old houses.
At two o’clock on Saturday afternoon, in front of the Main Garden and the Juárez Theatre, the main event got underway.
Racing in Mexico in the afternoon is all about catching that side light, chasing golden hour, and, of course, getting good light for the awards ceremony.
As a resident of Guanajuato, I’m not going to lie: the start of Special Stage One was just a few meters from my bicycle repair shop. The middle section passed by my brother’s house, and the lowest section ran right in front of the place where I decided to open my first outdoor-sports shop.
I mention this because I was particularly excited.
Nobody knew better than I did where those precious seconds we all chase when racing might be hiding.
One minute and eleven seconds were enough to finish the stage and start with the first taco: al pastor, with red salsa and a Modelo Especial, straight from the can and ice cold.
It was time to push the bike toward the next alleyway. I say “push” because, strangely enough, in this Enduro event, unlike the EWS, there is no overall time, and the transfer time doesn’t count toward the result. So most of the riders looking for a good result use downhill bikes to deal with the brutality of the alleyway stairs, even if that means sacrificing the lightness of a bike that is friendlier to pedaling.
Special Stage Two is the shortest of the event: just 48 seconds from start to finish.
In this particular alley, I like to imagine there are no stairs, and that every slight descent or bump is more like a section of pump track.
In my opinion, this is the wildest stage of the entire event.
And also the most fun.
And...
[drumroll]
At the bottom is one of the best taco spots for daytime eating. Because in Mexico, there are taco spots for the day and taco spots for the night.
I had a rib taco with plenty of cilantro, lime, and green salsa. A couple of sips of horchata, and the Modelo accompanied me through the traverse toward the next special stage.
And this is where I have to stop.
Because the truth is that at 2:45 on that Saturday afternoon, while the event was supposedly happening, I was in a hospital. And instead of eating tacos, I had been fasting for more than 24 hours. Instead of accumulating vertical meters, I was accumulating X-rays. Nine had been taken by that point: head, neck, upper back, lower back, left hand, and left foot. I had also taken an ambulance ride to another hospital for a CT scan.
I crashed during practice.
In my alley.
Where I thought I had an advantage.
And I hit my back harder than I ever had before. I had barely left the ground when I already knew it was going to hurt. After two consecutive impacts, I grabbed onto a nearby railing because my feet started tingling, and I didn’t think that was a particularly good sign. What felt to me like half an hour, in reality, it was only three minutes, I managed, with great effort, to move toward a nearby wall. And there, next to a new friend, I passed out.
I blacked out.
So yes, the taco story sounded pretty good.
But the story about a spinal injury looks a lot more like the nightmare every mountain biker has had at some point.
And that second story could have been the truth this time. I got an L3 transverse process fracture.
Fortunately, I can walk.
Today, on the fifth day after the incident, the symptoms of the contusion seem almost nonexistent.
And maybe that’s why I want this report to be more than a story about an event I couldn’t finish. I want it to be a love letter to the instinct to push our own limits a little farther.
That’s always been the way.
The best World Cup racers push their own limits into places that seem impossible to most of us.
And me, racing in a category very far removed from true world-class elite level, I’ve tried to do the same.
I think everyone who rides bikes does, in their own way.
We push.
We brake later.
We look for a faster line.
We try to jump a little farther.
We try to discover just how far we can go.
As far as you can, push your own limits too.
But do it as far as you are capable of going.
And above all, let’s be grateful that we can walk.
That we can feel.
That we can get back on a bike.
Not all races end at the finish line.
Sometimes they end in the ER.
And that’s when you realize that crossing the finish line is, in itself, a privilege.
Cheers.
