What's the expected temp at race time?

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Mid 60s to low 70s on average.

If it's Olympic distance or longer, I try to keep my power the same the entire race including ascending and descending. That means I'm getting passed A LOT going up hills, but instead of coasting down I'm pedaling just as hard as I was ascending. The small time benefit you receive by hammering up the hills is usually lost during the run when those "matches" you burned come back to haunt you. The only caveat is if the descent is extremely long and steep and I know I'll spin-out/coast down, I'll add that lost effort into the ascent knowing that I'll be able to recover during the descent.

At higher speeds, I think it would be beneficial for you to calculate how much power gets turned into speed.

As you increase in speed, the power required to go faster increases. This is obvious. But how how much power per mph is required downhill vs flat?

Is that even a factor? Obviously this depends on the steepness of the hill, but maybe worth looking into.

It's generally faster to go a little harder up the hill than down, maybe +/- 10 to 20%.

Just keep riding your watts on hills keep it pancake flat

Sure, if you want to have a shitty run afterwards. By all means.

You will almost certainly amazed after your first ride with a power meter. By that I mean that you will notice quite how much you push harder on hills. The power meter will help you hold back a bit on climbs much better than heart rate.

With not much time to get used to racing with power, I'd have 30s power, and average power on display right next to heart rate to give you something you know about alongside your new best friend.

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Developing aero, fit and other fun stuff at Red is Faster

Either effort or power would be fine.
Power is more accurate and predictable but you personally may not want to be chained to the data too much. If it was me I would just aim to ride at 90-95% of FTP.
Pacing by efforts perhaps the route to the most enjoyable experience (i.e. just getting on your bike and riding) but it requires a lot of practice to get right and from your post it sounds like it's something that you haven't got the hang of quite yet.

I would avoid pacing based on speed if there is a lot of climbing, it's amazing how slow you actually need to go on some inclines in order to stay in the right power zone. For example, 12mph on an incline may feel "slow" but you might actually be well above threshold.

He said a LITTLE harder on the hills, not a LOT harder. You can go somewhat harder on the hills and not kill your run. How much depends on the distance. Folks without a power meter may not realize that they're going to L5-6 on every hill even in an IM and that can definitely kill your run.

I've tried the "isopower" thing and frankly, I'd like to see the power files of folks that claim they can do this on hilly terrain because I sure don't see it on the files I've looked at. I just don't get why you'd put out the same power on the downhills as the climbs when there's so little to gain and it's so hard to actually do. My power meter shows me that generally hitting anything more than L3 on downhills is a waste of energy unless it's a short standalone TT. Going by PE, a L4 effort on the uphill seems equivalent to a high L2-low L3 effort on the downhill to me, so I wonder how many "isopower" folks are actually using a power meter. Now a false flat downhill is another matter but I don't really count those as downhills, just slightly downward flats. But I do have three decades of experience as a roadie and I know I can safely go at a moderately higher power on the uphills and still run OK. If you've paid good attention to your aerodynamics you're flying past everyone on the downhills at an L3 effort anyway, at least that's my experience. (Then again, I can fly past many triathletes on a downhill in a resting tuck while they pedal away in their aero position.) YMMV.

Perhaps a bigger factor in an Olympic distance where you don't want to spend much time above FTP, but for longer distances going a little harder should be manageable. Rappstar was climbing about 15% over AP when he won Ironman Canada so it works OK for some.