Meyerton Cycle Challenge

No major races this weekend, so I headed to Meyerton for one of their 'Mass Start' events. All licensed riders start together and it is usually a fast and furious affair.
One of the primary goals for the race today was to give Lynette Burger an opportunity to race at the speed and intensity she will be encountering at World Champs. I was keen to see how she would go.
None of the big pro teams were present, but some of the U23 guys were there - notably CycleLab Academy. Plenty of other riders from teams like Liqui-Moly, Club 100 etc. Some of the Wadeville Steel vets were there as well.
The wind was blowing really hard and conditions were not very pleasant, just what is needed to prepare for Dome2Dome next weekend.
The start was fast, with CycleLab putting in all the major attacks. I tried to go in a move early, but the Lab rider with me did not want to contribute for some reason. Finally one of the Lab riders got away and built a reasonable gap. More attacks followed until 3 riders went across to him. I couldn't really see what was happening, but eventually there were only 2 Lab riders off the front, and the gap was around 1min.
With the main goal of the race being training - I did a lot of work on the front, along with Wadeville Steel, a Liqui-Moly rider, Donovan Jackson from Club100, and every now and then one of the other riders in the bunch.
By the time we reached the turnaround point, the group had been reduced to about 12 to 15 riders, including 2 Lab riders. The out leg of the race had a wind from behind, so at the turnaround, the wind come from the front and I thought that the Lab riders in the break were going to struggle to stay away.
We continued rolling through, with Lynette doing plenty work. The gap stayed fairly constant with nobody committing 100% to the chase given that the 2 Lab riders in the chase group were sitting in comfortably. With no team in the chase, nobody wanted to do all the work for the other individual riders.
About 10km out, Lynette attacked and went with one of the Lab riders. Surprisingly, he did not want to contribute to the move so it broke down quite quickly.
From my side I just kept pushing hard to try bring the break back. Eventually one of the riders in the break popped, but the other rider managed to hold off the bunch and take a well deserved win!
Looking at the power numbers, I was very satisfied. I doubt whether I would have had the motivation to ride for 2 hours at an IF of 0.93 had I gone training on my own. I'm still about 20w off where I'd like to be, but a normalised power of 316w for 2 hours was not too bad.
Well done to Lynette, she stayed in the front bunch the whole way, and did her fair share of work on the front as well! Great preparation for Worlds!