Steve uttered an annoyed grunt and pulled off the trail. “My seat,” he said. “It slipped.” Instinctively, I pulled over to take a look. He gave me a funny a look, gave the seat a quick shove, and hopped back on. Moments later, another annoyed grunt, followed by another trailside stop. “I need to get out my wrench.” Again, I pulled over and stopped.

Nothing unusual here — one guy waiting while his buddy addressed a mechanical problem on his mountain bike. Except that we were in a race. “Go on!” Steve yelled. “You’re in second place!”

We were about a third of the way through Sunday’s Huck-A-Buck mountain bike race at Lake Crabtree when Steve Rodgers hit a tree root. He bounced on the back of his seat, causing the front to tilt — and stick — painfully skyward. There were five of us competing in the Cat 2 Men’s 50+ category: Two were somewhere behind us, Peter Hollis was well ahead. Barring the heart attack someone at the start advised us not to have in the 100-degree heat (the mercury at RDU would hit 102 an hour after we were done), Peter had a lock on first place. Steve had hung with him for a while, then drifted back. I had slowly drifted forward and had been riding behind Steve for 15 minutes or so when his seat rebelled.

When I mention this side of my life to others, I’m careful to avoid saying that I race mountain bikes; rather, that I ride in mountain bike races. I have made the podium three times in my mountain biking career; all three times I have also come in last. (Translation for those of you annoyed by brain teasers: There was no one to come in behind me.) I’m competitive, but mostly against myself. At the time of Steve’s seat mishap, I was beginning to realize how hot it was; the fact that I was hanging with Steve, who is legitimately familiar with the podium, was more than I had hoped for at the Huck-A-Buck. When he stopped, it seemed natural to stop with him. And then his perplexed look and admonition to go on.

When Andy Schleck’s chain dropped as he attacked in the Pyrenees during Stage 15 of Le Tour de France, Alberto Contador was skewered for taking advantage of the situation and, it was speculated, taking an insurmountable lead in cycling’s premier event. For while the yellow jersey is one of the grandest prizes in sport and the competition for it is unparalleled, cycling has a curious subsystem of gentlemen’s agreements that eclipse battle. One of them is not to take advantage of a competitor’s mechanical misfortune. That in itself seems curious because isn’t having your bike in top operating condition as important as having your physical self likewise prepared? And if dumb luck intervenes and an external force causes a breakdown, well, isn’t dumb luck as critical to the outcome of a sporting event as skill and sweat? (Just ask Lance Armstrong, who’s seven years of good luck came back to bite him on his goodbye tour.) Further, in the case of Andy Schleck, it’s debatable whether his dropped chain resulted from a mechanical malfunction or human error. Video of the mishap has undergone more scrutiny than the Zapruder tape; none other than Lennard Zinn, the Zen master of wrenching, suggests that improper shifting may have been to blame. Regardless, was Contador wrong to take advantage? Should a wide receiver racing toward the end zone stop if the cornerback in hot pursuit trips over a shoelace that comes untied? Where do you draw the line between healthy competition and something beyond?

So, I continued. At first, with a twinge of guilt. I was happy riding with Steve, content to take 3rd place if I could hang on. Guilty, and then …

I quickly warmed to the notion of standing just below Peter on the podium. (Figuratively, for there is no  formality of an actual podium at the Huck-A-Buck.) Despite the heat, despite being low on water on a miserably hot day, I picked up the pace. Periodically, I would hear someone coming up from behind. Assuming it was Steve, I picked up the pace even more, only to be passed (lapped, for the sake of accuracy) by a Cat 1 expert racer. Steve wasn’t able to fix his seat issue and had to ride the last two-thirds of the race with his seat jabbing into his … him. I crossed the finish in 1 hour, 43 minutes and 41 seconds; Steve was three minutes behind.

Bikes break, racers crash, slower riders sneak in and grab the glory. In the world of competitive mountain bike racing, mine was a legitimate second place finish, with all the congratulations and recognition (in this case, a rain poncho and a set of collapsable bike fenders) that go with it. In road cycling, the finish would have been tainted, my move perhaps viewed as crass and unsportsmanlike. When I mention to anyone who seems vaguely interested (breathing qualifies) that I finished second, I’m quick to include the asterisk that Steve had a mechanical.

That detail may disappear from my account as time passes.

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Find the complete results of Sunday’s Huck-A-Buck here.