I started riding again in February after an 18 year layoff. I am thinking about racing and wonder where my fitness might be in relation to cat 4/5 or Masters (45+). I’m 47 and weigh 152. Thanks to my Garmin and Ascent I can isolate parts of rides and use the calculator at
http://www.kreuzotter.de/english/espeed.htm to estimate the watts. I picked hill climbs since I don’t know wind speed and at least that reduces the air resistance impact.
So…climbing Ebbets pass a couple of weeks ago I averaged 200 watts for 46 minutes and 197 climbing Monitor at the end of the next day (55 minutes). Both of these climbs were in the middle of longer days and below LT threshold. I think I would do better in race conditions. I also looked at a couple of shorter climbs and was in the 240-260 watt range for 5 to 15 minutes with good efforts closer to my LT.
So it looks like I can pretty consistently and comfortably hold 2.9 w/Kg for an hour or so, and 3.75 for shorter efforts. Race craft, tactics and ability to handle accelerations aside (right, all the major stuff!) is this a reasonable fitness level to start from?