7 of 36 weeks

I've been making small adjustments to my Ironman training schedule over the last 6 weeks and I feel like that I have pretty good system...so far.
I bought a magnetic dry erase calendar and after a few weeks of trial and error, I think I'll just write out my workouts one week at a time. The top line is my scheduled training times that I will try to acheive over the course of the week. My workouts are designated solely by time, for example, Tuesday 2/14 looked like this;

B: 1:05 min
R: 40min

It's pretty simple (just how I like it) really, but I think I need to keep as simple as possible otherwise I'll burn out mentally as well as physically. Now the line below the scheduled times are the "real" times that I trained. So below the scheduled training day of Tuesday 2/14 looks like this;

B: 1:05 min
R: 42 min

I'll try and stay as close to the scheduled time as possible and although my schedule doesn't note it, I do have specific workouts for each of the designated days. I keep those in my "trapper keeper". Some days have speedwork for the runs or drills for the swim and others have long easy rides on the bike. So I keep this handy and refer to it each morning (or the night before). I'm trying not to look to far ahead, but when I right out the scheduled times on the dry erase board, I make mental notes of the workouts; easy swims, TT on the bike, etc.)

Every Sunday, after my Sunday scheduled workout, I get my "trapper keeper" and flip to the next weeks workouts. I study it over and adjust the workouts to my "life" schedule. The tricky part are the days I it has a long swim and a long bike scheduled on the same day during the week. Unfortunately, my "life" schedule doesn't allow for that currently, so I have to split those up between 2 mornings.
I'm currently getting up at 4:30am (most days) and I either get to the YMCA by 5am for a swim or I'm riding the bike trainer in my basement. Then during my lunch hour, I can either run, stretch/core, ride the stationary bike, or just take it easy (which is a good thing once in a while).

During the last 7 weeks, I've done as little as 7 1/2 hours a week and up to 10 hours a week. So far it's been manageable, but when the training time reaches the mid to high teens, that will change.

As for the number of yards swimming, miles biking, and miles running, well, I document those on dailymile.com. If you don't have a website to document your workouts, check it out.

Later