I switch my focus to the weakest link during the winter, but bring it back to a balance during the season. My opinion is that to be competitive, you have to be somewhat efficient in all disciplines.

Just my two cents.

I gear all of my training pretty heavily towards the bike. I think that, as an age grouper, you can have a mediocre swim or run and still have a good race. Not so with the bike. If it goes poorly you are in bad shape. Besides, improving your bike not only leads to a faster bike time, which is roughly half an oly distance race, it improve your run by allowing you to run closer to your true running potential. I think it makes the most sense to train like a mad man on the bike and then, on race day, focus on a solid swim, a killer bike, and then cruise on home with a relaxed but fast run.

And, to answer your question, I have found that you can get very competitive as an age grouper on the bike with 4-5 1 hour interval sessions a week where you are riding in zone 5. 2x20s. 5x5s. 3x8s. That sorts of stuff. Best of luck!

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“Give a man a fish and feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and feed him for a lifetime. Teach a man to cycle and he will realize fishing is stupid and boring.”
¯ Desmond Tutu

That's basically what I was leaning towards. Spending most of my week on the bike with limited hours seems to be the most bang for your buck. Then, I'll just slide in swimming and running to stay adept at it. From what I've read, biking seems to translate more to running than vice-versa anyways.

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"Do or do not. There is no try." - Yoda
Twitter: @I_Tri_In_Mordor

In general, if you have been training for a few years, your performance will plateau. So you have to do more to get better. This is why novice athletes who train 2-3x per week per sport can still make big gains but more experienced athletes do not. To improve, the latter need to focus on a single sport in order to fit in 5-6 workouts per week for that sport. Hence, many in the off-season do a single-sport focus and drastically curtail training the other two sports.

Ideally you'd focus on cycling, because as others have mentioned, it makes the biggest impact on your overall triathlon performance. However, weather and darkness during winter can impede an effective bike focus - it is difficult to make big gains on the bike while solely doing trainer workouts. In such cases, it is best to save a bike focus for the spring/summer. If you aren't limited by weather or darkness, then get out and ride!

You only need ~6 weeks of dedicated training to achieve a sustainable improvement. Yes, you'll detrain if you reduce your training load, but a little maintenance work can go a long way.

I have two kids now and a demanding job, so I have to be efficient. In 2011, I trained for Boston in the spring and then cycling only in the summer. I did a sprint tri in the summer and came 2nd overall. No swim or run for 3 months prior to the race. Just a monster bike split (relative to me, anyway). I am a former competitive swimmer so I don't need to train for the swim, although I'd like to...sigh.

The #1 determinate, especially for long course racing but not exclusively, on how you finish up overall and in your AG is your run split, not your bike split.

The other fallacy mentioned is that biking a ton doesn't allow you to run closer to your true run potential. Biking smart is one part of the equation. The other is run fitness. If your run fitness is low, no matter how much you bike, you are going to run slower then if your run fitness was high.

You can't outrun your run fitness. No one runs a 36 b/c they bike a ton when they are in 40 shape unless the course is really short.

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Brian Stover USAT LII
Accelerate3 Coaching
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After trying a mountain bike race a couple of weeks ago, it was driven home again that you can't really compete with single-sport folks when you train in multiple sports. And, as desert dude has said, running is king. I was never faster in tri than when I was averaging better than 50 mpw running.
You don't improve at something you don't train, so you will not be a better triathlete if you don't work at all three sports. As a runner-cyclist without any swim skill at all, I can tell you it is possible to compete in smaller races for the overall and much larger races in your age group while having a glaring weakness (swimming for me) but you will rarely to never win. There is almost always somebody that will have skill in all three sports that will beat you.
Single-sport focuses will not make you a better overall triathlete by themselves.
Chad

You may be right. I know nothing about long course racing, and the run obviously becomes a much bigger deal when you move up to the 70.3 distance. However, as an age grouer with limited time, a family, job, doing only Oly distance races, I've found that pouring the vast majority of my time into the bike has worked very well.

Doing this has allowed me to shave huge amounts of time off my bike time, and, amazingly, I've found that my run has improved over the past year even though I'm only running on average 1-2 day a week, which one of those runs being a 15 minute brick. For me at least, there has definetely been a fitness carryover from my heavy biking load to the run. I agree, however, that this probably wouldn't work if I were interested in doing long course racing.

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“Give a man a fish and feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and feed him for a lifetime. Teach a man to cycle and he will realize fishing is stupid and boring.”
¯ Desmond Tutu

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
this
the bike is there to set up your run. Overbike and your race is cooked.

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How much were you biking and swimming when you were going 50 mi/wk on the run??? Do you think the extra running helped your bike??? I used to know an ex-D3 runner/ex-HS swimmer who ran 70 mi/wk, rode maybe 100, and swam about 20,000 yd/wk, and he was consistently top 3 overall in regional OD races. His comment was "if you're running a lot, you really don't need to bike that much..."

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"Anyone can be who they want to be IF they have the HUNGER and the DRIVE."