Why?
Training for an Ironman, especially your first, can be very consuming, often bordering on obsessive. So our method is to trick you into believing you're not training for Ironman Wisconsin until June 16th. Of course, as you move from fun event to fun event you absolutely are building your Ironman fitness, but you're doing so in a manner that conserves your head for when you'll really need to begin to engage it—12 weeks out from your race.
Volume is Not the Goal
Since you already have your calendar out, let's focus on how to manage a training week. You're going to divide your week into Weekday Training Hours and Weekend Training Hours.
Weekday Training Hours
If you're like 95 percent of the age groupers we coach, the hours you have available to train during the week are relatively fixed and are determined by real-world constraints and commitments: your job, family, commute, your own personal training logistics, etc.
More: Considering an Ironman? What You Need to Know to Finish Your First 140.6
For this reason, you don't try to flex, or increase, your weekday training hours across your season. These hours remain relatively fixed. Your Wednesday morning run, for example, is always 45 minutes, because 45 minutes works for you. It's repeatable, week after week, month after month. And so it's locked at 45 minutes, and you manage the details within that fixed 45-minute run.
Weekend Training Hours
Your weekend hours, by contrast, are slightly more flexible and you likely have more of them—you can apply bigger chunks of time to your training on a Saturday or Sunday than to a weekday.
Despite that, however, you're still going to keep your weekend training hours relatively fixed up until your IOD. Your weekend training hours must fit within the box your life says is repeatable, sustainable, and with a low mental and lifestyle cost, week after week.
More: How to Train for Your First Ironman
And so your Saturday ride 16 to 20 weeks out from Ironman Wisconsin is two hours, or three hours, or maybe even only ninety minutes, not because of some train-ey, train-ey reason, or because a spreadsheet says so, but because this is a number that is repeatable, sustainable, and carries a low mental and lifestyle cost. You simply keep the volume fixed and manage the details within that fixed volume.
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