Three thoughts.

First, once you're fit then back to back days work well. When I'm trying to ride well I'd race Sunday, do a hard group ride Monday, race Tuesday, and race Wednesday. I'd do a short ride Saturday and repeat. This worked pretty well for me over the years (except in the old days I'd do a group ride Wed instead of race), most recently in 2009.

Second, if you really want to ride better on Sunday then Saturday should be easy. Many riders find a 30-90 minute ride, easy, with maybe an effort or two, will help loosen the legs for the following day while not fatiguing them. You should end the ride wanting to ride more. I personally find that 30 minutes works fine for me. My typical training rides are 1-2 hours long, and 3 hours is kind of long for me, and I do 60-90 minute races. Even when I did a lot of back to back hard days I focused on Sunday. Therefore the day before was easy, sometimes as little as 15 minutes of spinning and climbing off the bike just aching to go super hard because I felt so good.

The schedule thing is an incremental improvement though, a minor one. It won't affect your power to weight ratio too much, it won't help you dramatically on the hills. For something more substantial you need something that transforms you.

Third, the transformation - lose the weight first. It's the legal way of doping for us normal more-than-4%-bodyfat people. Instead of working on gaining power/endurance you make it so you need much less of it. "Install lightness", I think Colin Chapman said that about his race cars. You can have a 4800 lbs car that does 0-60 in 3.5 seconds but you need a massively powerful engine. Or you can get a econobox engine, drop it into a 1200 lbs car, and do the same thing.

It's a huge, huge, huge, huge struggle. I understand. The only time I have been able to stick to a diet is when I didn't ride due to my first ever serious injury. I was off the bike for basically 3 months. I lost almost 30 lbs from my end-of-season weight, about 40-45 lbs off my winter weight, all due to a strict diet (my wife called me "militant"). I lost power across the board, basically 10% from everything, yet I rode much better the following year.

To put things in perspective some comparisons and some numbers.
1. I am 5'7" and went from 190-ish in the spring of 2009 to 155 in the spring of 2010. I hadn't seen sub-160 since 1999.
2. I was so good on hills I dragged my brake going up the short hill in the Bethel Spring Series (I promote it but I also race in it). I didn't want to reveal my newly found power/weight ratio because I was afraid that I'd be accused of doping. Seriously. I ended up winning the Series, winning two field sprints (one for the outright win) on the way.
3. I've been actively racing since 1983. My best year was 1992, at about 135-140 lbs. I never managed a Cat 2 upgrade and I really tried for about 10 years, giving up in maybe 2001 or so. In 2010, in May, I was in danger of being forcibly upgraded to Cat 2 due to my consistently high performances. I immediately started working for teammates so I could finish the year as a 3. I upgraded in Aug 2010.
4. In 2011 the Missus and I tried to have kids. I eased back on training because I didn't want to "sacrifice" all my training when we had a baby. No baby but I gained 10-15 lbs. At the end of 2011 I downgraded to Cat 3.
5. By 2012 I was 175 again. I struggled at Bethel. Instead of dragging the brakes on the hill I was losing ground. I didn't win a single race. I was consistently annihilated in the field sprint. I couldn't finish races during the season that I got money in during the 2010 season.

Even more dramatic - in 2003 I was over 215 lbs - my mom just died of cancer, I'd been spending a lot of time with her, and I was riding every week to two weeks. I managed to win the 2002 Cat 3 CT Crit gold medal after 9 days of rest - I did a short warm up to loosen my legs and then went and did the race. I hadn't ridden for something like 11 days before that one day of training 9 days before the race.

Anyway after my mom died I started riding more consistently. I promised her, before she slipped away, that I'd win the Bethel Spring Series and the Cat 3 CT Crit gold medal for her "afterward", meaning after she died. I got shelled in my first Bethel of 2004, at about 200 lbs, on the third lap, about 4 minutes into the race. I was about 190 by the last week there and won a field sprint. In 2005, at about 175 lbs, I won the Series. In 2006, at about the same weight, I won the Cat 3 CT Gold medal (video not as illustrative of the race due to narrow angle lens).

I've seen the whole range of weights, and in the last few years I've seen a huge fluctuation of weight. The most important thing is to lose weight. I lost about 2 lbs a week when dieting as hard as I dared (1800 cal/day). Sometimes I had to eat 400-600 cal at night to get up to 1800 cal - I didn't want my body to go into starvation mode where my metabolism basically shuts down. I felt fatigued anyway. I could barely ride for 30-60 minutes at a time. I felt cold. But that drastic weight loss leveled off and I could keep it there for a whole year. Only because I totally stopped with the calorie tracking did I gain weight again - 1500-2500 calorie dinners will do that. One of my standard dinners out was, to my horror, about 3500 calories (rack of ribs, calamari, bread, and a few Cokes).

So lose the weight first. In two months you can lose about 15-18 lbs (2 lbs a week, 7-9 weeks, short yourself 500 cal a day and do a little bit of exercise to keep your metabolism going). If you continue to lose weight, getting down 20-25 lbs, even 30 lbs, you'll transform yourself as a rider. Go out to your gas grill. Pick up a full tank. It's 38 lbs. Imagine losing that weight. Even an empty tank weighs 16-18 lbs. Pick one up. Imagine carrying it up every hill. It's crazy how much extra weight we carry around.

It's okay to sacrifice a month or three of hard riding if when you return you're that much better. It's totally worth it. Lose that grill tank. It makes riding so much more fun. Most of us aren't pros, we don't get paid based on our riding performance. Life goes on and being significantly lighter in April will be crazy good. You simply will not believe the transformation.

Having said that I've only managed to get from about 181 peak last fall to about 171 in January. Now, after 3 weeks of the flu, and weighing myself kind of "off cycle", I'm about 175. I hope to be under 170 for March 3rd (4 weeks so just 1 lbs a week loss; 2 lbs a week and I'd be in the mid 160s), the first Bethel race for this year.

Good luck, I hope this helps.
cdr