Team Sarcoma's Most "Senior" Member Wins Two Golds in Florida State Finals

By Allan Duhm

Along the pathway to riding in RAAM, our team members are still participating in other competitions, as long as they do not conflict too much with RAAM preparation. To that end as our most "senior" team member, I participated in the Florida State Finals of the Senior games, Recumbent Division Time Trials. Many of you know me better as Diesel on the Bacchetta forum. I qualified for the finals by racing the Senior Games in Sebring (Highlands County Games) as the only recumbent at those games.

The state finals were held in my home town of Lakeland, FL so I had the slight advantage of having ridden the TT courses. Having followed the directions of Team Sarcoma Coach Jim Verheul in the weeks leading up to the finals on Saturday, I felt as prepared as I could be, and fortunately my results showed. With times of 7:31 in the 5K and 15:21 in the 10K I was able to out pace the second place rider in my 60-64 age group. Only one other bent rider in all classifications, 10 years my junior, posted slightly faster times. That was my second goal, to post the best times of the day overall, but it was not to be.

There was yet another challenge to winning the races. In the spirit of sticking with a task until it's complete (much like the RAAM race) I had to hang around after the second race and all racers were gone, to get race officials to pull up the times and discover I had won the 10K race which they had mistakenly awarded to another rider. My times in both races got lost for some reason, but the officials dug into their files, found my recorded times and indeed admitted I had won that race by nearly a half minute. Apologies were accepted, no harm no foul, and the officials even dug out and presented my gold medal to me at the back of the packed up U-Haul truck!

A highlight of the day was to meet several Bacchetta riders I'd never met before and that was as much a thrill as winning. It's always great to meet members of the Hive. You B riders over 50 in all states, I hope you'll check and see if your state offers a bent division. Officials were amazed at the number we had participating this year. Let's keep our recognition and status growing and glowing! Proud to represent all bent riders, and especially the B-hive, Team Bacchetta, and Team RAAM Sarcoma Powered by Bacchetta Bikes.

By the way, another new bicycle has been added to the Team Sarcoma Raffle by Coventry Cycle Works of Portland, OR. Check out how to enter the raffle and also our new donor's web site.