I had a Discord issue just prior to the start and somehow totally missed to ramp before the gun! Whoops! Settled into a paced 4w/kg chase to be in the second group on the road. The front selection was made early with around 7 WBR up there in the 20 or so riders, a couple of riders in no-mans-land and then the chase group where I was. My teammate Derek was quite prominent in the group and I knew he was great on hills so we rolled a few strong turns between us. Our group around 20 riders but nobody really putting any efforts in to chase down the riders in front. A teammate (Tomer) got stuck chasing the front group and dropped back to us easily joining the group. I clipped off the front a couple of times as well as driving the pace, it was the same couple of strong riders closing any gaps and sat towards the front, so as expected Box was going to cause quite a selection with these riders so determined to stick with them.
The first time up Derek dove off the front, as the group splintered quite quickly I stuck with the couple of riders behind him as they gradually reeled him in. By the top our group of 5 who had made the selection had around 30s on any remaining chasers of our previous group (which contained poor Tomer!). After a big effort on the ramp over the top of box to group things up I sat in for the descent, even managing to hold wheels in aero tuck for some of it.
The next lap went well, our small group maintaining 2 minutes to the front group and around 1 minute to the chasers. Most riders rolling turns but I did experience a couple of dropouts similar to last week (losing all riders & any draft effect) meaning I had to chase back on. Once I actually dropped 5s when distracted typing and emptied myself to chase as one of the others had upped the pace. Whoops!
Second time up Box Derek and I pushed the pace as the 2 strongest riders of our group had clipped off the front by a couple of seconds a short distance before. We easily closed them down and caught them, playing a game of cat and mouse for a few minutes before the fatigue caught up with Derek and he began to ease up/drop back. I stuck with the other 2 riders (we'd lost the other at the bottom) making them do all the work and hoping Derek would recover and make it back up. When we hit the final ramp Derek was nearly 30s down so the decision had been made for me - stick with these guys and try to beat them in the sprint. I managed to get aero again on the descent and an Irish rider and I managed to somehow drop the other guy (a Dutch rider).
Through the tunnels after Box the Dutch rider put in a supreme effort and actually caught us but it became obvious he hadn't got much left as he left me and Irish to do all the work. When we got to the escalators even though I was watching for it, Irish managed to put in a huge effort and a 3-4s gap to me over the top. The Dutch rider was dropped like a stone but with the fatigue in my legs I couldn't find anything to chase Irish. I told myself to save it for the sprint and to go super long but with 0.3 miles to go Irish had 8s on me and was pushing some strong 4-5w/kg numbers, my 6-7w/kg effort barely making any difference so I eased up a little knowing I couldn't catch him. I had 20s over the chasing Dutch rider so rolled through the finish fairly easily in 15th place. Coming 13th in CVR.
