From my perspective since I am so light my W/kg is almost meaningless in my area where it is rolling terrain of mostly 2-5 min climbs of 5-7%.
As far as rider type, I started out with mtb riding, xco racing but this past season I raced XCO, Road, gravel and CX. I would say I probably enjoy road and CX the most and in terms of what I have an aptitude for it may be road, although I have had higher finishes in XCO, some of the races, I dislike that the features push you to risk injury if you want to finish well, I like that in CX there is a technical challenge but if you crash you just slide out in the mud, in XCO its like I’m gonna go over this bank or skid off of this bridge into a rocky riverbed below or hit those trees if I mess this up.
Looking at the last road race of the year I finished 7th because I was in the back of the pack when the front of the pack made ‘selection’ attacks I bridged to the front group after the first attack and drug too other racers up with me on my wheel but they attacked again as soon as I caught on and I couldn’t hold on or bridge again and the guys I drug up with me on the first bridge couldn’t either. I still ended up finishing ahead of everyone that didn’t make the front group selection but looking at those that stayed in the front group (whose weight is maybe within 10kg of mine) they hit ~750W with each ‘attack’ which is still >3x my current FTP. If I had of been smarter in terms of where I was in the pack (not in the back) I may have made the selection, so it was both race smarts and lack of power.
Last year it terms of training I did Plan Builder starting late April (when I joined TR) to target a XCO A race in late June and an A race Road Race in September.
I have done some crit and circuit road races but find I don’t enjoy them as much as open road racing or XCO, CX, gravel. I’m not great and carrying speed through the corners (in road I generally move to the front to lead through the corners so that the pack doesn’t have a chance to split and drop me there) so crits just seem like they hit my current weaknesses on the road in terms of skill and fitness.
As far as consistency, I’m really hoping to maintain that 6h or > this year with 3-3.5h of LV planbuilder intensity work and making up the difference with Z2 or Z2/Z1 work depending on fatigue (Gibbs -1 seems like a good way to get my hours/volume in even if I’m pretty fatigued, although I recognize with it being a lot of sub-Z2 its less productive). If I do this I will do >40h more of volume over the course of the year (272 to 312), likely more as I start riding outside more as I can see myself doing 8-10 hours some weeks.
I fuel every workout and race at 50-90g of carbs per hour, I think only one really hot XCO race this past season I struggled with this a bit, it seemed like the heat+intensity was making it hard for my GI system to absorb things and started to feel nauseous/burpy.
After I finish the last week of Trad Base LV Block III this week I’m not sure yet if I want to start Plan Builder which I expect will kick me into SSB LV or if I want to do a bit of an off week of endurance work first with no intensity as the final week of TB LV III did have a Threshold session and I have done harder/longer Endurance sessions for the rest of the workouts to get my >6h ( Fletcher, Virginia, Virginia try to target ~0.65 IF workouts). So may do a week of Townsend x4 to get 6h but with a more significant TSS drop than what I will get this week ( 240 vs ~303 this week) given my highest TSS week of this plan has been only 351 and I haven’t taken any week off the bike completely this fall/winter.