Zach Stinson says he was 50 miles into the cycling portion when a truck pulled in front of him, leaving him covered in blood for the remainder of the race.<\/p>\n
NOCATEE, Fla. \u2014 One Ironman athlete was a little more than sore Sunday after completing the 140.6-mile journey.<\/p>\n
A triathlete from Orlando says he was hit by a truck in the middle of the course, but managed to power through to the finish line.<\/p>\n
“You have to always plan to know things aren’t going to go your way,” Zach Stinson said.<\/p>\n
Stinson knew he’d hit some obstacles on his 140.6-mile Ironman trek through Jacksonville and Ponte Vedra Beach, but he certainly wasn’t planning on getting hit by a truck.<\/p>\n
“Honestly, most of what happened was the shock of it,” Stinson said.<\/p>\n
Stinson says the truck pulled out in front of him about 50 miles into the bicycle portion along Nocatee Parkway, leaving him with a gash on his forehead that needed to be sewn up.<\/p>\n
In the moment, he had to make a call: could he get back on his bike to go another 62 miles, then run a marathon?<\/p>\n
“Totally dazed, but physically I could compete, so I made the decision to do it,” Stinson said.<\/p>\n
He says the worst part was knowing his wife and daughter were miles ahead to cheer him on and would be shocked when they saw him.<\/p>\n
“I saw them, and they were absolutely not okay with me continuing,” Stinson said. “I promised them I was okay and I’d plan to go to the ER after I was done.”<\/p>\n
Stinson managed to finish the Ironman in about 11 hours, and he says his collision wasn’t the only rough moment he’s hoping will factor into planning for the next Ironman.<\/p>\n
“I saw another cyclist get hit while I was cycling, so I know there’s at least me and another,” Stinson said. “I think if you are just investigating where patterns were, then you can identify sources of issues you can correct.”<\/p>\n
Jacksonville City Council Member Raul Arias was on the course with Stinson and had his own scary encounter.<\/p>\n
“On mile number three, a car almost hit me where I had to veer off and head into the Chevy car dealership,” Arias said. “I was inches away from actually getting hit and probably disqualifying my race, too.”<\/p>\n
Arias says he heard route suggestions from several athletes on the course he wants to bring to the table, but he doesn’t want to lose sight of the positive impact the race had on the city.<\/p>\n
He says his family members stopped by an ice cream shop in Riverside while waiting for him to finish…<\/p>\n
“She said hey, this has been one of the best days of her business’s life,” said Arias. “It shows this is a good thing for our city, it’s just, we need to hammer it down. I think the bike component, that’s the one piece we need to figure out for it to be a perfect race.”<\/p>\n
Stinson says this was his third Ironman, and if he goes for another, he may look for closed courses in the future.<\/p>\n
“It does make you rethink everything, but yeah, I think I’ll be back out there,” said Stinson.<\/p>\n
Stinson’s crash happened in the St. Johns County portion of the race, and St. Johns County Fire Rescue reports it had 13 calls with five people taken to the hospital on the St. Johns County portion of the race, plus one vehicle vs. cyclist crash, of course.<\/p>\n
Those numbers will likely come up when St. Johns County leaders meet Tuesday to debrief on the traffic and safety impacts.<\/p>\n
As for Jacksonville, Arias said the Ironman team will be back in a few weeks to talk with city leaders, where they can explore route alternatives.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Zach Stinson says he was 50 miles into the cycling portion when a truck pulled in front of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":274803,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[116,118,117],"class_list":["post-274802","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville-headlines","tag-jacksonville-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274802","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=274802"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274802\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/274803"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=274802"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=274802"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=274802"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}