Punishment Pass

Front of the Giro Ride coming over the Danziger bridge Saturday or Sunday morning.

It was another fairly routine riding week for me. We seem to be rapidly getting into summer mode now, and I have been arriving back home pretty well soaked in sweat. Even so, it's not yet as hot as it will be later on in the summer, and I've yet to resort to freezing those huge waterbottles in preparation for the weekend rides. I did re-stock on Hammergel and Scratch, though, and have been adding a scoop of Scratch electrolytes to one waterbottle pretty regularly now, partially for the actual electrolytes, but also just because the taste helps me drink more. Even with that I'm still a pound or two low after the longer rides, so a bit dehydrated for sure.

There was a big group for the Friday morning ride.

This week's Friendly Friday ride had a particularly big group so I guess the earlier sunrise and warmer weather is pulling in a few more riders. We are finally at that time of the year when I can comfortably leave home without a headlight by about 6:15. I am still using a headlight on its lowest setting when I ride out to meet the levee group for 6 am, but I can usually turn it off shortly after the ride starts.

Saturday's Giro Ride seemed fairly easy this week, as a few of the usual workhorses were absent. We are still taking the alternate route down France Road and Almonaster, and I guess that will continue for at least another two or three weeks until they get the Seabrook bridge repaired. After Saturday's Giro I drove out to the Tour de La road course to check it out and re-mark the turns. We took the dog along for the drive to see how he'd handle a longer drive, which fortunately turned out fine. The road course looked no worse than usual. There were lots of fairly recent asphalt patches on almost all of the roads, so I guess the parish did a little road maintenance some time last year. There were only a couple of actual potholes that could cause problems, so I marked those with white road marking paint that may or may not still be there by the time the race happens. Of course the one or two mile stretch along Sunlight Road, between that sharp left-hand turn where we had a crash last year and the next turn at the Sunlight Baptist Church, is still all broken up in a way that I can't really fix myself. Basically it needs to be completely re-surfaced, so all I can do is warn the riders about it. Otherwise the course looked OK. I didn't check the time trial course, but will need to re-mark that finish line at some point soon.

The Sunday Giro heads out along Lakeshore Drive

Saturday afternoon the weather forecast for Sunday morning was looking pretty bad with a high chance of rain all morning, but when I got up Sunday the radar was clear and the rain chances were really low so I went ahead and headed out to Starbucks for the Giro. Turnout was predictably a bit low, but we had a big enough group on hand regardless. There seemed to be a slight chance of rain around 10:00 but we are always back well before then. Things were going along just fine until the front of the group didn't make the left turn from Almonaster onto Michoud like we'd done the prior two times and instead continued on Almonaster, which meant we'd have to negotiate those dangerously angled railroad tracks near the end. Just as we got there and riders, including myself, were weaving all over the place in order to cross the tracks at a safer angle the warning bell went off and the railroad crossing arms started coming down - basically right on top of me. I had to duck to slip under on of them as it was coming down. At the turnaround where some people sprint it out for the actual finish line while others turn around early and stop under the tree those of us who hadn't turned early had a bit of a surprise. I usually turn around around 200 meters from the end where there's a turn lane by the fire station. When I did I could see that the riders who had turned around early were already riding back.  A couple of us had to make a pretty decent effort to get up to that group before the pace started to rise, but most of the riders who had sprinted were basically left behind. I knew that was going to piss them off, as well it should have. It was two or three miles later when they came sprinting past the group on the right - clearly a punishment pass - and the group I was with never really made an effort to go with them. That was pretty much the last we saw of them. Although things had gotten pretty fast for a while on the way out, the ride back was relatively easy.