I accidentally deleted a reply when I went to edit it and saw a typoe.
I think you guys may be discounting the fitness and leg strength I had from rowing. In fact, I suspect most of my W/kg gains have been weight loss and adaptations to cycling from rowing, rather than improvements in fitness. I’ll give specifics to show what i mean. In 2020 at age 39 and approx 180lbs, I had Concept2 times of 6:40.X (never got under 6:40 
) for 2000m and slightly over 36:30 for 10000m. While these are not world class, they are pretty competitive. One thing to note is that indoor rowing times are independent of weight - the more power you put into the machine, the faster it goes. Most high-level rowers are 6’4 or taller and well over 200lbs. Concept2 has a weight-adjustment calculator to help lighter people compare themselves with people who are rowing size, and it suggests my 10000m time was “worth” about 33:30. If you look at the Concept2 ranking database for 2022, 33:30 would have been around the 5th fastest verified time in the world. Obviously the weight-adjustment needs to be taken with several handfuls of large salt grains, but it does suggest my aerobic rowing fitness may have been at or near world class.
kpedal - I don’t think 5.5W/kg is realistic for me as I don’t have the training time necessary. I’m hoping to get about 400 hrs in for this offseason+season, and I’ve started to learn/research cycling training. Thanks for the note about the intensity trap; I’d definitely been doing a large proportion of intensity. I do want to make small improvements before next season as I plan to race some gravel/XC.