OK, so this year is going to be the big one for me, leading to my first IM, and for the first time I'm going to get serious about organising my training. The 3 'A' races for the year,

sprint, end of april, (brunei)
1/2 Iron August (new hampshire)
IMNZ March 2006. (New zealand)

plus a couple of olys in may and june locally and whatever else I can find after september that's in reasonable distance.

So, I'm reading the books and trying to plan out a yearly/monthly/weekly plan to achieve this properly. Reading Triathlon Training Bible, it seems that once you pick an hourly training volume, you pretty much stick to that throughout the different base/build/peak periods. Other training programs such as Don Fink's tend to ramp up the volume gradually during the process.

What do you think is a good way to do this. As my races increase in size during the year, it would make sense to me to gradually increase the volume accordingly. However, for each individual period of training for an event the weekly hours stay the same in TTB and I'm not sure if that's a good idea.

Before I get everything cut and dried, I'd appreciate some experienced opinions on how best to set up my training hours as I go through the year. I have about 20 hours a week available for training.

Thanks,

Justin.