Happy to have a plan

Saturday: Yoga, swim 1,000

Sunday: Run/walk 4 miles, weights

I've spent some time this weekend doing training research, and think I've come up with a plan. I really like the free ironman training program at trifuel.com, but I had a few concerns:

1. There's a ton of swimming (up to four days a week!) that I don't necessarily need.
2. Everything is done by time and heart rate rather than distance, so if I remain very, very slow, then I might not get in the distance that's intended.
3. There's no time for yoga, which I really think I want to keep up.
4. The taper is only two weeks and (to me at least) looks like too much work too close to the race.
5. My job is going to create a handful of three- or four-day periods where I can't work out at all.

So the plan I came up with is to start the 36-week program 40 weeks out. That gives me one extra week to taper, one extra week to add on distance to my long ride and/or run, and two weeks of buffer to add random rest days when work gets crazy. I'll stick to swimming once or twice a week, but maybe double up the swims to get in the full week's yardage. And I'll take the time freed up by swimming less often to do yoga about twice a week.

I'm 42 weeks out from the race right now, so I'm thinking I might back off on my training a bit for the next two weeks (and hit a ton of yoga classes instead) so that I can start fresh and raring to go.