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Research
As Grace fell off her bike and collapsed onto the grassy verge in a state of near-exhaustion, she glanced at her watch. When her eyesight stopped wavering she felt a momentary rush of excitement: it was her best time yet.
She climbed up onto the nearest picnic table and sat gasping for air as her racing heart began to slow. Eight minutes and fifty-five seconds. It was an honourable attempt, but nowhere near enough. Jason reckoned he’d broken eight-thirty (‘although I was guessing from the clock because I forgot to start the timer’), but she had looked at Mike Anderson’s i********: in the library yesterday, and he was boasting that he expected to break seven minutes. His thighs had never felt more powerful, he said, his butt like a piston engine ready to propel him to race an
