Monts du Vaucluse - Cyclosportive

First sportive of the season and my best ever sportive finish, 14th out of 350.
These things really are harder than road races. The reason is that you have the French equivalent of Elites, Cat 1's, 2's, 3's, 4's and everyone else all lumped into one big group of anything from 200 - 9000 riders.
Anyway, the weather forecast was atrocious and on arrival at the HQ in Villars near Apt we found the route had been cut short from 140km to 125km and the biggest climb of the day had been taken out. Nevertheless, 2200m of climbing and a very very strong SE wind made for a hard day.
Once again the Scott/Velo 101 team went off strong sending riders up the road almost immediately. They were pushing about 2-3kmh above everyone else's comfort zone so by the time we reached the foot of the Col de Murs many were blowing just to keep with the front group. About 6 got away, I was dropped and managed to hang on to the second peleton of about 20 riders.
The next big climb, the 9km Cote St Hubert near Sault was a struggle, any gradients over 7% and I was the one at the back on the elastic! Not nice. The long descent to Sault came and 4 of us got a 20s gap but into the wind up to St Christol we were clawed back.
Then a long descent to Apt then the sign arriveé 5km. I decided I didn't fancy the bunch sprint through the narrow streets of Villars so launched myself off the front. Unfortunately, after riding most of the last 5km alone with a gap of about 10s, I died near the line and lost 6 places and a top 10 placement! Finished 14th, not sure about time but close to 3.5 hours.