Getting Consistent (ramble, ramble thoughts)

I've had the last 3 weeks off doing basically whatever I want to do and now I need to get back to some consistent but easy plan.

I'm going to spend the next 6 weeks doing short/easy workouts just to get back to training.  Plans are:

Run at least 30 minutes each day

Bike up to an hour 3 days a week

Swim at least 4 days a week.

That should take me into the second week of January where I will still have a few weeks before I get serious on the bike again.  By then I will have decided what to do with my running plan.  Right now I'm leaning towards a Daniels type plan and I'll be a few weeks ahead so that if anything happens I'll be able to back it down for a week and recover.

I would like to get back to bigger run milage like I did last year.  Then I started running a lot in early November and was running 50 to 55 miles a week.  It will take me more than 6 weeks from now to get there so I don't hurt myself.  Realistically I will be able to hold that volume of running until late February/early March when it should be warm enough to ride outside again.  When that happens I'll bring my running volume down to 40 miles a week.

I'm still really undecided on my swimming.  I want to swim faster but the return on the time invested is low compared to running.  I can see myself swimming 4 days a week for a while which normally gets me some improvement but in order to get much better I'm going to need 5 days and some instruction.  I don't know if I'm capable of doing that while running a lot again.

Since I'm planning on going to USAT Nationals swimming is a bigger part of that race.  The best I've done in an Olympic distance race is a 2:10 and I need to go under 2:05 to have a shot at making Team USA.  I think with good swim training I could drop a minute off of my 1500 time and with good run training I could drop 2 minutes off of my 10K time.  That still leaves me 2 minutes short of my goal as I don't think I can ride much faster than a 59 minute 40K and still be able to run effectively afterwards.

Looking at the results from last year 20th place went 2:05, I think 2014 will be faster but just using that as a target I'm probably need to go something like:

22 swim

59 bike

42 run

1:30 in transitions

That is the best that I think I could realistically go in the best possible circumstances.

What do I need to get there:

Swim:  I need consistent training, I'm probably already there but if I got better that would take some tension off of the other sports.

Bike:  I'm already capable of that speed on a flat course.  I've done 1:00:30 at Maumee Bay in 2012 and I'm a stronger biker now than I was then.  Still I will need to be consistent in bike training and not able to slack off.

Run:  This is where I need the most work but have the most room for improvement.  The best I've run in an Olympic distance triathlon is a 43:30 a few years ago, recently a 44:00.  That means the run would have to go from a 7:05 mile to a 6:46 mile or a drop of ~:20 per mile.  Last year I ran a low 20 min 5K so that indicates I was a little better runner but still have a lot of work to do.