OK, what's the scenario

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Eric Reid AeroFit | Instagram Portfolio
Aerodynamic Retul Bike Fitting

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I qualified for kona 3 days before I left Australia for a 6 month cycle touring holiday. I'm in France mainly for 13 weeks then my visa expires so I will travel to San Diego for 3 weeks.here I will get my time trial bike and do 3 weeks training then travel to kona for 2 weeks before the race. After the race I will ship my tt bike home and continue with cycle holiday.

Run training is fine - it's actually better than home as I can run on hills/mountains - as I have my running gear and do it in the morning. Swimming will be once a week - that will have to do.

I'm on a Mtb bike, semi slicks, lugging around 35-40kg of gear. I have stages power meter. I am doing some races on hire bike - IM nice after 3 weeks and will do alpe d'heuz in two weeks.
My girlfriend is not nearly as strong as me ,and we ride together a lot during the day. I can make high intensity efforts on the climbs and wait at the top. With gear I ride at around 15kph average and we ride from 3hours to 7hours a day. Well do around 25-30 hours per week mostly for 3 months before I head to San Diego. We have be climbing 500 - 1500 metres most days though this will stop sop as we possibly go somewhere flat. Occasionally like yesterday I get to leave my gear off the bike and ride myself - 1hr up the tdf finish to risoul yesterday

On the long rided with gear average power is often around 150 watts, normalised 180-200 watts - ftp of 340.

My guess is your FTP will fall off a bit while you're touring France, but you'll have more than enough of a base to be ready for Kona pretty quick. For what it's worth, I think FTP is a great predictor of cycling performance for most distances, but when you get as long as IM, it becomes less important. Sounds like you're probably doing some low end tempo efforts on the long climbs, and that will give you plenty of muscular endurance. The hardest thing for you will probably be riding in the aerobars for 4.5-5 hours, since you will have been out of them for so long. Just spend some time down on them when you get back, maybe retest your FTP, and practice a new race pace a lot to see where you're at.

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Tim Russell, Pro Triathlete

Instagram- @timbikerun

You can easily intersperse hard efforts and intervals and still stay with your GF. Either do them before and after your route, or during... do an interval, ride back to her, repeat.

Yes, I can do Fartlek intervals okay - what I'm looking for is how easy I can ride at a high volume that will develop the aerobic system

It's certainly not how I would train if I would want to race at my best at Kona this fall. But it is something I would do if I would want to race at my best 8-12 months from now.

Is there a way you can increase the weekly volume some weeks? 25hrs at very low intensity is not really that much cycling volume for somebody racing IM but given that you are touring you have the ability to really get some good volume in. Why not challenge yourself to ride as much as you can for a couple days? You could incorporate some weeks where you focus on volume and ride significantly more than 25hrs and other weeks where you ride less but add some intensity maybe at the pool, running, or also on the bike.

With your low intensity touring I'd incorporate some intervals at the opposite end of the spectrum. 1-3min intervals of very high intensity as these efforts allow crucial stress that benefits your racing and at the same time the short duration allows you to recover relatively quickly. No need to tax your body with longer intervals if you are touring. Integrating this is a must if you want to race well at Kona. You can't just go touring for this long and then start intervals when you get to SD this close prior to Kona. Also keep in mind that you will be switching bikes. I would not start my first ride in SD with the focus on high intensity but use the first 1-2 sessions to get used to the TT position.

Also, be aware that you must incorporate recovery days and maybe even a recovery week. Once you are overreached it can take some time to bounce back.

If all you want to do is finish a century ride and eat pastries, than intensity is not important. However, if the goal is to become stronger and faster on the bike, a training plan that only has high volume and low intensity riding is a waste of time. While you do your easy long rides while looking at a fancy display that tells you ftp and watt/kg, the guy without the power meter who is suffering and riding hard is going to out power you.

So I got paranoid about loosing form and did 20 mins hard today as a check as part of 4hr ride (no camping gear today). I was already sore from the last few days riding and especially running. Was an all time high 20 mins leading into a pretty solid 90 mins. I only decided to do the 20 mins after seeing my power for 10 mins was way higher than expected.

I don't really care about that guy - I'm no where near a winning time but would like to achieve my own goal

Little things. Lower pressure in tires to make it harder. Do intervals draging a brake.