Friday, September 19, 2008

Second place

Barring any technical mishaps on anybody's part, it is looking like I
will be placing second behind jess.
Man I am working for this second place finish, and I will be proud of
taking the silver after the events of this ride earlier on. A crash, a
thrown belt at speed, a missed checkpoint due to getting lost without
gps in the desert.
Even after all of that, I am back within 75 points of jess, and I am
proud of that fact. Jess is a great rider, and came very prepared with
a great bike and a setup with a very long range gas capacity. I am
having to get gas atvthe gas station and fill up from my 1 gallon can
in the topcase when I can't find a station. That takes time. Getting
lost tryingvto fund gas today meantvthat I lost 8 minutes to jess today.
Maroy continues to be like the mummy in a spooky movie, where it just
keeps coming at you at a steady pace while you run and then freak out
and run more, but you know if you stop at all he will be on top of you
in minutes.
That keeps the pressure on once I have passed him each day. I catch
up, then feel the steady pressure to stay out in front all day,
knowing he and jess are bearing down on me.
Stupidest thing I did today involved flooring it to get through a
train crossing, nowhere near the train, as the gates lowered. I passed
a car IN the train crossing and I only did it because jess was like
right behind me.
After all that, One train engine went through. ONE. It held jess up
like 1 minute. I was hoping for the 40 minute, 3 mile long train to
come through.
It was really fun cruising through the twisties with jess, until I
kept pushing to get some minutes in front of jess, and he backed off,
because he can at this point. I can't.
Super fun day.
One more. One more.

1 comment:

libby said...

Since tomorrow is the last day and you haven't taken me up on my offer to read to you from my "Abnormal Psychology" textbook, I will just flip to any old page and give you an exerpt:

"Competition can have both beneficial and detrimental effects. Many evolutionary biologists view inter-species and intra-species competition as the driving force of adaptation and ultimately, evolution.

On the negative side, competition can cause injury to the organisms involved, and drain valuable resources and energy. Human competition can be expensive. It can lead to the compromising of ethical standards in order to gain an advantage."

One more little COMPLETELY RANDOM bit:

"The tendency toward extreme, unhealthy competition has been termed hypercompetitive. This concept originated in Karen Horney's theories on neurosis, specifically the highly aggressive personality type which is characterized as "moving against people." In her view, some people have a need to compete and win at any cost as a means of maintaining their self-worth. These individuals are likely to turn any activity into a competition, and they will feel threatened if they find themselves losing. Researchers have found that men and women who score high on the trait of hypercompetitiveness are more narcissistic and less psychologically healthy than those who score low on the trait [7]. Hypercompetitive individuals generally believe that "winning isn't everything; it's the only thing"."

Huh.