Who Could Win A Rabbit

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Turtledove tries out for the school's track team.

Chapters (1)

Comments ( 8 )

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Tavi4

Tavi4 #1 · Sep 1st, 2015 · · ·

Topping story.

Csquared08

Csquared08 #2 · Sep 1st, 2015 · · ·

Before I say anything about furlongs vs meters, or using horse times vs human times, I just wanna point out that this

"Amazing time, fatass! We'll win state for sure with you on the team."

is exactly the kind of guy you don't want on the team. I mean, sure, it's one thing to be running along and go, "My god, that one guy on the team is so slow." It's another to run by the guy and make fun of him. And at least in my experience (4 years of running cross country+track and in the middle of my first season coaching cross country), that level of blatant rudeness is incredibly rare.

Beyond that, I'm not fond of the use of horse times or furlongs simply because we have human times and distances people are familiar with. I had to go look up how long a furlong was, and then I spent a good deal of time wondering if 1:03.8 was a good time for a horse. I get that there are very real differences between horse races and human races, but the familiarity of human races does make for easier reading.

With all of that said, I did like the story. I appreciated that she didn't actually win, but still felt like she did simply because she finished the race when she really didn't want to.

Honeycomb

Honeycomb #3 · Sep 2nd, 2015 · · ·

6382028

My experience is less. I, uh, "managed" the track team senior year of high school for a required P.E. credit.

Our boys won state! Almost entirely due to the efforts of exactly one member of the team. A tall, lean Native American who was amazing, and knew it. He entered like eight events, set records for long jumps, sprints, relays, etc. Scored like half the team's points by himself.

But he was such a jackass. Our coach was a real old dyed-in-the-wool southern Baptist, but even he turned a blind eye to this kid's BS because he was so frickin' good.

Csquared08