First of all, the books: I had to run errands in town today, and since I had a little time, I decided to wander into one of the several used bookstores in my town. This particular one has a lot of really cheap slightly damaged and remaindered books for sale; they had a bunch for only $1, so I spent quite a bit of time looking through those. Unfortunately, most of them weren’t the kind of book I wanted to read, but I did find two.
I came home with Elaine Scarry’s book Resisting Representation; since I enjoyed her book On Beauty and Being Just so much last summer, I snapped it up. This one is about “the complicated problems of representation in diverse literary and cultural genres,” according to Amazon. I also found a small collection of Katherine Mansfield’s stories called The Garden Party and other Stories. I read good things about her in Francine Prose’s book, and have heard so much about her because of Virginia Woolf, and I enjoyed “At the Bay,” which I read for A Curious Singularity, so I’m happy about this one.
But on to the race. Today wasn’t so good. I dropped out somewhere around lap 15 or 16 out of 25, although I was dropping out in good company; Hobgoblin and a couple other teammates didn’t make it to the end either. Today’s race was a points race, which means that instead of the usual format, where whoever crosses the finish line on the last lap wins, there are laps designated as points laps. This means that whoever wins those laps (or the top 2 people or 5 people or whatever the race organizer decides) gets points, and the person with the most points from all the points laps wins. What that means is that every lap that can earn somebody points is a sprint, so it can be a lot of hard work.
And the way it worked today is that laps 14-25 were all points laps, so every single one was a sprint. It was too fast for me. It’s not so bad if there are breaks between the points laps so everybody can have time to recover, but with no break, it was just too much. Oh, well — there’s always next time.
Of Books and Bicycles 
Oh, the Scarry book sounds interesting. Too bad about the race. I wonder why the race people decided to do all the points laps in a bunch like that?
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That sounds like hard racing! At least you weren’t the only one to drop out. I have become interested lately in Katherine Mansfield, too.
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that race sounds rough! I’m always interested in how long the racing season seems to be for bikers…it seems really long which must feel exhausting some days and exhilirating others.
I just ordered a bunch of books from amazon including two I’ve read about on blogs – can’t wait to get the order in!
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The more I keep up with Gene’s training for the May race in Florida the more I am learning about the bike world. In my most humble and amateurish opinion, some races can and are brutal. I admire your reserve as well as the Hobgoblin’s…
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I almost bought that Scarry – I think I should go back and get it! Don’t think twice about the race, Dorothy. I think you’re marvellous just for having the guts to take part in these things! And it’ll make your next success all the sweeter.
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Stefanie, maybe they do it because they are mean 🙂 I think they try to vary things to keep them interesting — the points races seem to be different every time.
Danielle — yes, I always feel better if I’m not the slowest one! I’m glad you’ll be reading Mansfield too.
Courtney, enjoy your books! Yeah, the season is long and I do tend to get burnt out at the end. I’m hoping as I get better and stronger that I can put off the burn-out longer.
Edd, thank you! The cycling world is an interesting one to be involved in, isn’t it?
Litlove, thank you, and you’re right — doing poorly means I have lots of room to get better!
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