Needed training time or speed for each category of racer What type of training time or average speeds are needed to qualify for each category of racer? I realize that it can varry based on a hilly or flat route so lets assume a time trial of 40km that's relatively flat. 

An example might be:

Cat 2 = 20+ hours a week of training and an average speed of 40km/hour on the time trial.

I'm not sure where to set my goals for my first racing season and figured a good place to start was to see where I fit already with training time and speed.
Speed is very difficult to use as a measure due to the fact that the measurements have to occur in an uncontrolled environment. Power, on the other hand is great because it's unaffected by the environment - it's a pure measure of what you're capable of doing at that moment on the bike.

A lot of power data has been collected by awesome folks like Andy Coggan who coaches racers of all different categories. One of the key measurements that folks use is W/kg in this analysis. 

So a much better number for comparison would be 4.44 W/kg for functional threshold power (FTP) (average power over 1 hour) for the median Cat 2 racer. For the purposes of comparison, to win the Tour de France requires >6.4 W/kg FTP.

Here's a link to Andy's excellent article about power profiling where he talks not just about FTP, but what your power profiles should be for different durations (eg 5s, 1min, 5min). 

Here's a direct link to a spreadsheet where he lays out what the numbers are for riders of different categories. 

I highly recommend buying a copy of Andy and Hunter Allen's book: Training and Racing with a Power Meter, 2nd Ed:

http://www.amazon.com/Training-Racing-Power-Meter-Hunter/dp/1934030554/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1286482928&amp;sr=8-1