That's an awesome time for a first Ironman, definitely get a power meter and trainer road that should put you in the right direction.

+1

Game changer

This time of year is probably best used as "tempo time". Lots of hours at 80-85% of FTP and possibly add a weight program for strength.

Once you get a few months out from the start of the season, it is time to focus more on FTP work. 2x20 is the standard here.

As per the above, if you don't have any experience with building a longer term bike training plan structure and you can afford it (it's pretty cheap, but that's all relative I guess) that will give you some good gains, and after a while you'll learn enough to be able to structure your own workouts.


There are a couple of popular approaches, the sweet spot training through winter and then more focus on threshold/VO2 work closer to the event as grumpier mike has listed. The other is a reverse approach, where you do your threshold/VO2 work earlier then transition to sweet spot training as your event comes closer.

My advice would be that the best approach depends on what type of races you are targeting. If you are targeting Olympic then GM's approach would be best. If you are targeting long course then I would do the reverse approach. Typically as you get closer to your event your workouts should become more specific to the demands of the event.

For guidance, some general workouts I use consistently (assuming you have a power meter):

VO2: 6 x 4min @ 120% FTP. 4 min rest in Z2 between intervals and Z2 to warm up/cool down for an hour.

Threshold: 1) Z2 warm up, 2x15 min over/unders (2min @ 97%FTP/1min @ 105% FTP) with 15 min @ Z2 recovery between, Z2 cool down, 1 hour total. 2) Z2 warm up, 3 x 15 @ 100% FTP, 10 min @ Z2 recovery between, Z2 warm down. 1.5 hours total
Sweet Spot: Z2 warm up, 3 x 20 @ 90% FTP, 5 min @ Z2 recovery between, Z2 cool down, 1.5 hours total.

In terms of structure, if you are doing a sweet spot block I would get 3 of the sweet spot rides above a week, plus a longer 3-4 hour ride. If doing threshold/VO2 I usually do the 1.5 hour workout every week, then alternate between the other two. My third trainer ride is all Z2, plus an outdoor ride of 3-4 hours. Note that the outdoor rides aren't an easy roll around, they will typically include hills at or just under threshold