Wilmington Race Weekend

Osmond reports on his 2nd place finish in Lake Placid, New York:
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The Wilmington Race weekend occurs early in June each year near Lake Placid, NY. This was the 7th running of the Wilmington road race. In addition to the road race, they included a circuit race on the Saturday to appease the riders whom do not like to climb...

This was the second time I made it to Wilmington to race. The circuit race was dominated by 2 teams (CCB Racing and Dealer.com). The break took off with 6 riders in the first 5km and I was helpless to watch it go up the road as I had just made a big effort to get in the previous break. I settled into a mode of following some strong attacks go and bridge up to them in the hopes we could form a chase group. I accomplished this and rode with 4 others to finish 8th overall in the end. The top 7 finishers were all from the 2 teams I mentioned above.

The road race is much more challenging with tons of climbing on it followed by a 3km climb up to the finish. My goal was to make it to the break and hopefully finish on the podium. I made the break 2km in the race with 6 others. I know I am good at the long distance break, but no Dealer.com riders made the break so I was wary that we would be brought back. This did not happen and in fact another CCB rider bridged to us making 3 of them out of 7. One of their riders dropped of and we were down to 6 again.


I was climbing well and knew I needed to be efficient about my energy output so I could put up a battle at the end. With 30km to go of 139km, the CCB rider attacked hard and I bridged up to him, then came his teammate making it 2 against one. I knew this was not good. They took turns attacking me and I responded 5 times.

The last response sent my legs into full spasm and I had to hide it from them in the hopes they would not notice. I could not sit on my saddle. Helpless I watched the 6th attack go away. I was thinking how the frig am I going to even finish this thing.

Thankfully my acting convinced my breakaway partner and we rode steady to the final climb. By this time, my legs were good with sustained efforts, but no accelerations so I just hit the climb and went at my pace and was able to slowly burn him off to come in 2nd.