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Mickie_Cricket
I genuinely think this 'the tension builds' stuff is a kind of mass psychosis. It's Milan-San Remo, it's a Monument, so it must be good, if only we knew why. It must be the hours or racing where nothing happens, lets call that building tension. You can go out and pay an illicit visit to the Vicar's wife, come back and you've missed nothing but, oh, the tension. Or, rationally, nothing can or will happen till the last 30 or 40 k, everyone knows that, it's always like that, so the tension is all in your head. It's not building to that, it's just getting the best part of 300k out of the way. True, riders get tired during those hours but you can't see that, it has no effect until the first hills.
And then there's the great variety of how it will be won - attacks on the hill might work, if not then a mad chase down hill and some sort of sprint. Oh and it's a race you can win by fitting a dropper post.
It's an enjoyable 15 or 20 minutes which no one in their right mind would invent if it didn't exist and only gets a pass because of tradition.