Besides the energy conserving tips, I think this is the best advice. I would not be concerning yourself with the specificity of the exact effort 5 months away from your ‘A-event’. Put in the hard work between now & then and all of the gains (or weight loss) that you make will reduce the amplitude of those harder efforts. Not sure race simulations are your best bet right now.
For me, I’d use every time I got dropped or unable to ride on the front as motivation to suffer through the carpathian peak +3 or Kaiser and then come ride time, change your mindset to tell yourself that you’ve put the work in, that you have the fitness, you belong here and you’ve suffered through worse.
What does plan builder spit out for you? There should be some decent training simulations in short power build and rolling road race / crit?