Once again Thank you.
please forgive horrible grammar and spelling errors that may occur here as I’m dictating this on my phone on a break.
@bobw
Plan builder has me on the general build right now.
I started back in September. I am slightly more consistent with outside riding than it shows I am not very consistent about using Strava.
November and December are exceptions to that I am just as inconsistent there as it looks like there are very few rides that did not get recorded maybe only one or two a week.
The reason I’m trying to find some tenuous connection with reality is competition. I am a fairly competitive individual and knowing that I am bad at something drives me to improve without harming my self esteem.
@iamholland
I said I would volunteer hoping to skip the lottery so what the plan builder says is going to happen the few days before the event probably will not. I hope to spend maybe 45 minutes to an hour doing some endurance with short sprints and VO2 efforts on the last bit of the course for my lead-up taper workouts and just a nice endurance ride with a couple of sprints maybe half an hour the day before once again right at the end of the course.
I am 40 years old and this is the very first time I’ve been competitive in athletics. My general race plan is actually to just develop a high level of whatever my FTP is as an actual deliverable sustainable effort and hold on to that like grim death. I think the dirt roads here are actually worse as far as surface conditions and we got a lot more up and down so now that someone has reminded me …that I could just look at what the past race results were… to see what kind of time I needed to be able to do on this surface…
I have no plans to try for a sudden Sprint finish, use sneaky tactics to win, because I’m just frankly not going to have any skills to do that. If I could I would. 
I’m going to be really really satisfied just to get to go… I know I will finish, I have ridden further than a hundred miles in hilly terrain on The paved trails here so a DNF for anything but a mechanical is not an issue. After that it’s the satisfaction of doing the best I could and I’m trying to make that the best it can be.
@bobw
It’s amusement value the strava ftp, virtual power, real world rubber rolling along thing.
And as far as my imaginary power meter goes I’m in Northwest Arkansas I can’t find any flat land. I found a 3% section of mnt magazine that took me 20 minutes to climb. And then I just adjusted the rolling resistance on my trainer until what I felt was the same effort going in was getting the numbers that I was told I was making going up that hill.
then I did an FTP test to have an actual assessment of my current capabilities to base exercise off of.
I do want to know how I rate against others but the whole Strava FTP virtual power thing is just a laugh.