Florida 500 Race-> One more race in the books this year. Did the Florid…
Florida 500 Race-> One more race in the books this year. Did the Florida500 533 miles from Jacksonville to Key West. Managed to stay under the 30 hours with 29 hrs and 46 minutes. Not happy about my performance and no excuses count. Ok I had to deal with two main obstacles. First bad one that got me mentally distracted was a crash at about mile 285. It was just dark and I had traffic to deal with. So I stayed in the bike lane trying to stay far enough from the passing car. Unfortunately the sand on the bike lane in that curve was not visible to me so I slipped and hit the ground at 19-20 mph. Took me a while to finally get up. Two people stopped while the driver next to me thought its better to keep going. Was in bad pain on shoulder, ribs as well as some pain on elbow and knee. However with help of two people I did get up and checked the bike. It was ridable so I thanked them and told them no more help needed and I keep going. Unfortunately to me it had a bit of mental disturbance effect. I feared another crash and slowed down a lot. Worked on my confidence and heck yes worked on finding a way to avoid the pain. Issue with that was … the last 250 miles no option to reach to my nutrition prepared for it in the rear jersey pockets. Used coca cola on stops at gas stations to get some energy back into me. Again it's not an acceptable excuse to me since I know I should have managed it better. Will work more on mental preparation for such situations. I was able to manage pace better again starting around mile 420-430. Thats why it's not an accaptable excuse. Ok not for me about me as a racer 🤪😉 And second disturbance was that 11 miles before finish the rear tire blew up in loud bang. So … quick decision was to push hard and keep going. Funny thing the guys at finish line could hear me coming early enough 🤣😂🤣. If only looking at regular bikes I finished 3rd overall. Incl recumbent bikes its 4th overall for self-supported racing. Learned a few lessons and will do better with self-support in future.
