Thats wild, very similar starting point, I wasn’t off the couch at the start of this year but started cycling again (mtb) in July 2020. Got a road bike in 2021, got a trainer December 2021, first FTP was Dec 19th on Rouvy (20 min test) 168w, started Trainer Road April 17th 2022, 1st Ramp test was 175w. Am now at a AI FTP of 217 watts, I can feel the gains but its not enough even though at my weight it puts me at 3.84 w/kg a FTP of 217 doesn’t get you very far. As I am so small (56.5kg) I’m not sure if a 300 watt FTP is realistic for me but even 250 watts would put me around 4.4 w/kg, which would at least make me pretty fast uphill.
I am time crunched and while I was more consistent this year and doing structured training for the first time my hourly total was only 272 hours compared to 2021 291 hours but all unstructured.
This year I am shooting for a minimum of 6 hours per week, which should see me break 300 hours this year. I’m in the Trad Base LV plan now but will start an adaptive plan targeting my races in late February or early March. Would like to stick to low volume (generally 3 1-hour workouts per week ranging in intensity from endurance to anaerobic) and add in 3 to 5 hours of Z2 rides on top, minimum of 1 extra 3 hour endurance ride was able to do Broken Hand, with the flu, the day after Pioneer -1 this week, so feel thats realistic. Hopefully with time can work my way up to adding in something like Crows Nest, Chowchilla or Lyell while still being able to hit the intensity of the TR workouts.