Plateued w/r to race results. My main metric. I’m a “natural” > 4-4.5W/kg rider. From 2016 till 2018 this got up to ~ 5 W/kg (weight was a major factor). I did not expect this to grow further. I would have thought things like durability and repeatability improve with my consistent volume. Nope.
Yes mostly Z1 and Z2. However, '16-'18 was a lot of spring racing. Shorter XCM and some GFs down in Italy. Quite intense. I was never able to replicate this in training. However, I’ve not really paid attention to how I rode in 16-17. Just rode a lot. This guilt of riding to fast when riding slow started later. In '19 I stopped doing these early intense races and I noticed this right ways. XCM racing, dealing with those hard starts. However, even for the 5-12h races, lacking sharpness. And of course in '20 everything got even worse.
20-21 lots of Z2 at LT1. could move LT1 to 280W at 71kg. However, this did not translate at all to faster racing in 6-12h events or a right-shift of the PD-curve. Quite the opposite, everything > LT1 really sucks now. When you race XCM competitively you have to go fast in the first hours, there is no constant noodling around LT1. Even in very long events.