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Ultimately the bike has to be fit for purpose, not very good if the frame or a wheel cracks after a few rides. So the answer is "as light as it needs to be but no lighter".
Road not MTB: my mate obsessed about bike weight, had a lot (and I mean a lot) of disposable income, so would buy the lightest bike he could. Unfortunately he wasn't exactly svelte, probably in the 90-100kg range, and he'd crack the frames.
The other night when riding home I caught up with a rider just as we were going through the village, from there it's 2Km uphill at about 8% gradient. I was on a Croix de Fer, he was on a carbon road bike. I matched him until about 50 metres from the top of the first long ramp when the elastic snapped, 500 metres later he'd put over 100 metres into me. He was probably 10-15kg lighter than me as well 😳
The other night when riding home I caught up with a rider just as we were going through the village, from there it's 2Km uphill at about 8% gradient. I was on a Croix de Fer, he was on a carbon road bike. I matched him until about 50 metres from the top of the first long ramp when the elastic snapped, 500 metres later he'd put over 100 metres into me. He was probably 10-15kg lighter than me as well
In reality, he saw you on your heavy cross bike, had a bit of a play letting you stick on his wheel and then when the time was right, he opened the briefcase of hurt and dropped you like a stone.
Quite possibly 😀 though it was dark and I was mostly just behind him. It was a good workout though (trying) to keep up.
I was on a Croix de Fer, he was on a carbon road bike
He was probably 10-15kg lighter than me as well
And which of those two* aspects do you think had more effect ?
*assuming of course you were both equally powerful, he might just have been stronger or fitter than you anyway.
He might have been a lot younger as well!
It will have been a mixture, most likely in the proportion of body and bike weight differences. I'm pretty certain I could have held him (at that pace) if I'd been on my carbon road bike as I've been up that road much quicker on that.
Often it's being pushed that gets you the quickest times - a couple of years ago I went for a ride with two pretty quick riders. After an hour of me blowing out of every orifice whilst they chatted we got to the climb out of the Dale. In trying to match them my Strava PB on that segment went from 9m20secs to 6m34secs! I've not been within 30 seconds since then.
I don't know if I agree with heavier wheels roll longer... the heavier rim will have more angular momentum and inertia so will slow down more quickly, no?
I currently have i23s with schwalbe super gravity things on and they defo do not roll faster than when they had exo maxxis highrollers on.
Best place to save weight therefore is in your wheels and especially rims and tyres, with tyres usually being the heavier of the two components (unless you're already running lightweight tyres).