Ignoring blanks when determing longest run

Yesterday I posted a question on how to determine the longest run of any one digit in a row of figures.
Many responses gave me the desired outcome.
I have since discovered that there may be a gap in my row of data, which I would like to ignore completely.
With the attachment I have included one of the solutions given to me, and was wondering if I can somehow include 'ignore blank' cell and continue to count if that happens.
So in the example the number occurring mostly in a row is 8 and the number of times is actually 6 if I could ignore the blank.

with helper columns
=MAX(FREQUENCY(IF(V3:AK3=W3:AL3,COLUMN(V3:AK3)),IF(V3:AK3<>W3:AL3,COLUMN(V3:AK3))))+1