I hope that I can post soon to this thread!
Last week I did 42 minutes indoors at 397 W avg with Kolie Moores test protocol, TTE is at about 42-45 minutes (50 if my life would depend on it). Power meter in the smart trainer reads inline with the power meter spiders on my other bikes. Body weight with all fluid retention from hard workouts was 85 kilos in the time of the test. Just had two weeks of threshold intervals and long Z2 rides before this as I had my off season so I have very good start for the training season. I try to do a threshold block which will last to Christmas, but I assume that I will get my FTP during winter to 405-410 W. I think my 5 min max is now at 500 W.
I try to chase that high W/kg with just doing quality training and eating healthy so that I recover well. I am a former strength athlete so I have still a lot of upper body muscle mass to lose, but my body fat % is quite ok as veins and muscles are somewhat defined already. I think that a couple of kilos of body fat will get burnt during training this winter as I train 15 to 20 hours per week on “on-weeks”. Last winter I lost 15 kilos as I was 98 kilos (FTP at maybe 360 W) when I began structured training after being just riding hard for fun a couple of years. So I assume that it wouldn’t be smart to just try to get the weight down as the power has been increasing very well all the time. I race gravel and I haven’t lost any races in the uphills yet. I have more to work in race starts and technical parts as sketchy downhills.
I think the best bet will still be to work on power. So far it has been fun to chase groups during races and don’t get as tired as others.