Alex Dowsett said that the sixth stage of the Tour Of Britain was the hardest of his life.
Dowsett was in the break all day and finished second to take over the lead of the race from Michael Kwiatkowski by thirty seconds with two stages left.
"I'm in the form of my life but that was the hardest day of my life," admitted Dowsett afterwards. "It was into a headwind most of the day and once I got into the break I was actually a bit hacked with myself to be honest because I had always thought I might have a good time-trial on Sunday and I was leaving a lot out there on the road. I thought I thought I might have given too much.
"But then the gap went up to seven minutes and I thought, that's getting quite big. Then it went to eight minutes, nine minutes, and finally topped out at a bit over nine minutes. That's when I really started digging in and a bit later I sort of made an agreement with Mathias that he could win the stage as it looked like there was a good chance of taking yellow.
"It was a risk I was willing to take. And he gave me absolute everything, I couldn't have done it without him and Tom at Madison probably had one of the hardest days of his life, he gave everything he could and I'm grateful to him and Roger Hammond in the car for his advice with his local knowledge, telling us exactly what was coming up. I was very grateful for that.
"For the last 100-kilometres, I was more or less flat out. I was buckling in the last 5-kilometres and I was relying heavily on Matthias. Before the Commonwealths, I was doubting myself a lot. So this is more proof to me that I'm able to compete at this level.
"It was also great to see all my family at the finish, it was a complete surprise, I didn't expect to see any of them until the finish in Brighton. It was some day."