24 Hours of Sebring

Got Salmonella?

Who ran over the plant?

Visited the local BMX track on Friday

The race started on Saturday morning at 6:30 am. Not really being a person who has legs in the morning I decided to take it slowly at the start and hope to pick up the pace a bit later after the good ole pistons had received their proper warmup. So I took the three laps around the race track pretty easy.

After the intial three laps the route took us through the countryside of Sebring for an 89 mile out and back. I began to pick the pace up a bit as I continued to warm. Good thing my body was beginning to warm up as the air temp certainly wasn't rising at any record setting speeds. I ended up finishing the first 100 miles in a personal best time of 5 hours 21 minutes.

Once done with the first 100 I joined the other speed demons on the short loop which consisted of an 11 mile circle around Sebring. The last 3-4 miles of which were blazing fast! Good thing as the first 7 or so miles were into a strong head/cross wind which found many a rider, including myself, struggling to keep pace.

JB (top) and I (bottom) finishing our respective short route laps

After the first 12 hours, the race then took us away from the short loop and back onto the raceway for the remainder of the time. This is when I went over the 200 mile mark. As night fell it became harder and harder to remain awake on the bike. Around midnight or so I became so sleepy it began to scare me a bit. After taking out a few reflectors along the course, I pulled into the pits got off the bike and went to the car for a nice 45 minute nap. Feeling the opposite of rejuvenated, I got back onto the bike and started to ride once again.

Sometime soon after my knees began to ache and I could feel my stomach starting to become upset. I was only able to ride a couple laps at a time before needing to come into the pits and get off the bike for a few minutes. Those few minutes felt like a few seconds and I was back out there.

About the 22 and half hour mark, it began to rain quite hard. At that time, I decided to end my race as I was having a hard time controlling my body temp and my knees had been screaming at me for the past few hours to stop. I ended up winning my age class with a total of 304.8 miles. JB took third in his with an impressive 353.8 miles! Way to go JB!

Want to say thanks to JB for all the pre-race advice. And the biggest thanks goes out to my Dad and Kyle for working the pits for me once again. I know it could not have been easy sitting there in the cold for so long but you did a great job of keeping me fueled! Maybe next time I won't waste it ;-P

More photos can be found here