I've read many posts on this site to the effect that training for marathons, road bike races and other non-triathlon events that use tri skills doesn't really work well for improving tri times.

I'm curious what others think of that as I'm currently planning on doing a marathon in January 04 and a 135 mile major elevation gain single day bike race in July 04 and still want to do Wildflower and at least one other Oly or Sprint race next summer. I'm thinking that overloading the running for a few months and overloading the cycling for a few months might be a nice mental break from trying to balance all three and maybe will give me a chance to break through some barriers in those sports.

Like many of you, I am in that subclass of triathletes who will win an award the day they have a division for "parents with demanding day jobs," and have to fight for each and every minute of workout time that I get. I just find myself wondering sometimes if I took all ten of those hours in a week and spent them on the bike or on the run whether it might make a difference that get me over the plateaus that I'm hitting in my tris.