Pass Christian; Change of Plan

Looking out at the Gulf

It was some time around mid-week that Charles suggested organizing a little ad hoc ride out of Pass Christian with Steve Martin and maybe some of the other Gulf Coast regulars. It had been years since I'd done a ride around there, so I tentatively planned on attending the Saturday 60-miler. 

The week had been another routine series of sweaty August weekday group rides, and I was looking forward to something a little different, so Friday evening I told Candy I'd be taking the car over to Mississippi for a ride. Earlier that day I'd gotten a message from Lisa about doing another northshore ride on Saturday, but I had to respond that I was already committed to Pass Christian. She said that maybe she and Brett would just do their own thing. As I made the hour's drive over to Pass Christian I figured the plan would be a pretty chill 60 miles with a small group with maybe one or two brief fast segments. I hadn't bothered to put on the race wheels or add electrolyte to a water bottle, but did bring a little flask of Hammergel just in case. Arriving at the War Memorial Park start location a bit early, I noted a few people already there, including Peter Stephens, and Blake Thompson. 

Hmmmm. Could get kind of interesting, I thought. Then Brett and Lisa showed up.  

Hmmmm. Could get kind of hurty, I thought. This might require a change of plans.

I had no idea where I was going.

With Pat, Steve Martin, Al Jordan, and Charlie Davis, it was looking like we'd have a group of around nine or ten. Just as we were about to roll out, though, Steve Johnson arrived late with his new Basso, so we waited a few minutes as he rushed to get his act together. I had uploaded the route from Ridewithgps since I was entirely unfamiliar with where we'd be going, so as we clipped in, I started navigation and didn't give it a second thought. As it turned out, something about the downloaded route was royally screwed up. My Garmin kept showing a right turn ahead at a certain number of miles, but as we rode the number of miles was increasing rather than decreasing. The map itself looked fine, but the turn warnings were somehow backwards or something. It drove me crazy the rest of the ride.

So anyway, after a few miles the pace started to ramp up, led largely by Blake and Brett, I think, and I made the quick decision to take only very short pulls. You know, just in case. I knew it wasn't going to be getting any slower, and was pretty sure it was going to just get faster and faster. Almost from the start Charlie was struggling, and we waited for him and one or two others who had stayed with him at a couple of the first intersections, but after that he was left to his own devices. Still early in the ride, Blake took this long, long fast pull on a nice shady rolling road that really put most of us on the rivet. Things were already coming apart, and to make matters worse, Blake's effort seemed to have flicked Brett's "race mode" switch to the "on" position. At one point a gap opened up ahead with Brett, Blake, Lisa, and Steve J up the road. It wasn't an attack or anything, so the gap wasn't expanding at an alarming rate or anything, so I went around a couple of people and started a long effort to bridge up to them. Just as I was about to catch, I saw Steve come off the front and drop back, so I aimed for his wheel. Unfortunately, he was already on the edge and blew up, leaving me in the wind again. Up ahead I saw Lisa getting gapped off, so at least I knew it wasn't just me! A mile or two later there was an intersection where we quickly regrouped. After that turn we continued on, with the speed ranging from 23 to 30 until we got to the promised store stop at around mile 40 with the rest of the group rolling in a couple of minutes later. By then it was getting pretty warm, but I still had more than enough water left to make it the rest of the way in. Steve offered me some of the Gatorade he'd just bought, so I poured a little bit of it into my water bottle on the assumption that I could probably use a little electrolyte replacement.

The last 20 miles continued at about the same pace, and the group again split at some point. Up front it was Brett, Lisa, Blake, Steve J and me, I think. Then at a left turn, Blake went straight for some reason, I think to take a shorter route back, so after a while it was mostly just Lisa, Brett, Steve and me. I was still feeling pretty good, but of course I had been taking short pulls all day. When Lisa kind of punched it on one of the little bridges a few miles from the end, we lost Steve, but a couple of miles later we were close enough to town that we slowed down for the last bit.

So although it turned out to be a faster ride than I'd been planning, and was much faster than some of the other people in the group had been expecting, I really enjoyed the mostly steady hard effort and was glad I'd been able to hang on the whole way.

The Sunday Giro rolls out along Marconi

On Sunday I did the Giro Ride, which was of course hot but not super-hard or anything, at least from my vantage point safely nestled in the draft. You might call it a "Recovery Giro."

Meanwhile, back at home, Candy's recovery from her hip replacement is practically complete. I think she walked three miles on Sunday. Tulane starts classes this week, three's a Saints game in the Superdome tonight, and while COVID cases locally have definitely levelled off, there are a lot of mixed messages about the pandemic right now. The CDC just gave full approval to the Pfizer vaccine (the one I had), which means a number of places are going to start requiring vaccination of their employees and/or students. On the other hand, there's a football game in the dome tonight and the requirement for getting in is proof of vaccination or a negative COVID test within 72 hours, neither of which means the person next to you won't be spewing out delta variant viruses with every drunken cheer. Better than nothing, I guess, and at least there will be some money changing hands and tax revenue.

Coming up we have a race weekend in Mississippi on the 11th and 12th, with Six Gap two weeks later. I guess I'll be doing both. The following weekend is NOMA to NOMA, which is a 150-mile gran fondo around Lake Pontchartrain, which is a day of misery that I will likely be skipping.