18.5 weeks to go

Ironman Arizona training is in full swing now.  I'm in my second week of a 20 week Ironman training plan purchased from Endurance Nation.

The typical week looks like this:

Monday - Swim
Tuesday - Interval Run
Wednesday - Interval Bike + Run (Brick)
Thursday - Swim, Long Run
Friday - Swim
Saturday - Long Bike
Sunday - Bike + Run (Brick)

Then every 4 weeks, there's a testing week to check progress and establish new pace and power numbers.

So today for example, I have a 1hr bike interval session with a 30 minute run off the bike.  I do the weekly bike interval sessions on my CompuTrainer so I can set the exact interval difficulty and duration

Last week I completed a 1.5k swim on Monday
Half-mile hill intervals (running) on Tuesday
1.5k swim and 17miles of interval work on the bike on Wednesday
1.5k swim and 80min run on Thursday
Friday was a rest day for me (which is why I added the extra swim on Wed)
68 mile ride on Saturday
and a 30 mile ride followed by a 10k run on Sunday.

The volume is still relatively low (about 11hrs for week 1), but the intensity is pretty high.  Those interval workouts are especially killer.

I'm capturing all of my run and bike workouts on my Garmin 310xt.  By capturing all of my bike and run data, I'm able to see a Training Stress Score (TSS) for those workouts.  The TSS is calculated by Training Peaks Software and basically factors in the intensity and duration of a run or bike and assigns a score.  As my fitness increases, I adjust my baseline numbers in TrainingPeaks so the Intensity Factor (IF) is adjusted.  As the weeks progress, I need to go faster or farther in order to earn the same number of TSS points.  

I'm looking forward to the first testing week so I can gauge my progress.