The Plan starts here

 

And good grief, it's looking like quite some plan. Still, start as you mean to go on and all. It's based on rate of perceived exertion (RPE), i.e. things like "moderate" and "speed" rather than a specific pace, so I can ease into it if needed. But all the half-Ironman plans in the book are based on nine sessions a week - I haven't been doing that many lately so I will see how it goes and if necessary start from 2 sessions in each discipline and work up to 3 over the first few weeks.

The thing that's really tricky to fit in is weekday bike rides before the clocks go forward. The bikes in the gym are hugely uncomfortable. Heading out before work means I meet people rat-running on the country lanes. I could go in to work on my road bike and then head out at lunchtime but then it's hard to carry things to the office. But if it's for intervals and building up speed/strength then I reckon training on my everyday bike won't hurt, for one session a week. It may also work out that I just do these sessions on my one day off a week, on my road bike, from home. The second (steady) weekday bike session I will convert to a gym session for core strength.

Anyway, one step at a time. This week's plan looks like this:

Mon: Swim mixed intervals (1300m total) and steady run (35 min)
Tue: Bike 'power intervals' (short sharp speed bursts, within 50 min ride)
Wed: Swim moderate intervals (1400m total) and fartlek run (35 min inc. sprints) / or rest
Thurs: Gym
Fri: Swim long intervals (1500m total) and steady run (45 min)
Sat: rest
Sun: Steady bike (1h15)

Let's see what happens...

Photo: Feb 20 (Day 51): To Do List by dmachiavello, on Flickr