9 up was hard, and I struggled with how surgy it was. The team was mens vets - and ended up being 6 fast people, 3 slower. I was the fastest of the slower bunch, and I started in the middle - the other 2 started at the back and were scuppered when the guy in front of them had chain issues at the start. He got on, they didn't complete the first lap (2.5 miles).
I did 2 short pulls on the first lap, and spent the rest of my race hanging onto the back of the line and waving people in front of me. I'd have probably found it easier keeping my place in the line, but if I'd dropped the wheel while doing that then the whole group would have had to wait. I lasted until about 3/4 of the way through the third lap and then just fell off the back without enough power to get back on (as did the guy who had the chain issues). The remaining 5 did 24.11, which is a reasonable time on that course, especially as we didn't do any team training at all .
Obviously it's a bit disappointing to get dropped, though it wasn't entirely unexpected. On the plus side, I did really good power numbers (16.5 minutes with a normalised of 282W off an FTP of 246W). That's a power PR for 12 -17 minutes. I spent almost half of the whole 17 minutes over threshold, including a massive 37% in the anaerobic zone!