When workouts are missed, due to illness, business travel, family obligations, etc - and not a simple matter of rescheduling - it is best to not try and 'make up' those workouts. I certainly shuffle workouts around within the week to accomodate the dynamic life that we all lead.
But, What happens if miss several workouts for whatever reason and then try and double or triple up workouts from the previous week into the current week - the least that happens is that you have less than quality workouts because not enough recovery time and that can then manifest itself into overtraining - or worse yet injury. :eek:
It is very hard for me to have a w/o in my log that is not marked as completed, but it is best for going forward.

what do you mean "huge bike"? I must be dumb:(

got it thanks---and I SUCK on the bike :(
Barely skated by under 7 hrs in Canada. Doing much more riding this time around.

Find a competent coach.

A few other observations....

SPEED AND INTERVAL WORK
I know a lot of excellent IM training programs and coaches use anerobic speed sessions to boost performance. Certainly, when you plateau in your base building, speed work can give you the nudge you need to have a breakthrough. I did some speed work towards the later 2 months for my IM training, but not a lot, maybe a half a dozen run and bike sessions with interval work or a long session in a Zone 3-4 HR. Definately helps, but sometimes I think they are overdone to the detriment of base. Long base also has the benefir of keeping you lean, and lean is good entering your A race. Want to keep wieght off your bike or run, take it off of you.

BRICKS
Waaay overdone by too many. Yes, it is very important to be able to effectively run off the bike and practicing that has benefits to condition your musculature to adapt to that work load. I also know a lot of plans and coaches recomend runs' following all long rides. I think that's ok when kept very short, but I hear a lot of folks who go for hour long runs after 3hour plus bikes and I think that's a mistake. That's the point where the stress we put on ourselves doesn't build fitness, it ends up hindering our perfomance, especially when combineds with insufficient recovery time..

REST DAYS
One day per week, and no you can't go swim. :)

1. Follow and trust your plan - ideally a coached/online coached for the beg/int

2. It is better to rest than to do anything hurt and a missed workout is exactly that. Move on.

3. Eat what you train with - no brainer - but we have all got sucked up into trying something cool or questioning our nutrition prior to race day.

4. Eat
5. Eat
6. Did I say eat

7. Enjoy your surroundings - its a great mental relaxation to take in the views on your rides even for a moment to forget about the pain of climbing Richter pass.

8. Race your race - what works for others may not work for you.

9. Quality not quantity in your workouts - have a purpose not just slogging thru miles.

10. Have fun or you'll have a short career.

I really like some of these recommendations and lessons people have learned. Keep'em coming.

Hmmmmm, I think what I've learned has varied greatly by race distance.

Sprint: Gotta train fast to go fast. Training for a sprint with lots of long slow distance doesn't help much. Hills, intervals, etc. are all great work for a sprint race. Also, I don't worry too much about nutrition/hydration in a sprint. Make sure I'm tanked up ahead of time, have a good drink mix on the bike and I don't stop at all in the run. Small fiddly details are important in a sprint, like laying out your transition area and making sure you've practiced every bit of it.

Olympic: I think Olympics are the toughest races to pace yourself for, so working on pacing, especially on the bike is crucial to having a good Oly race. You've got to go out fairly hard, but it's got to be a pace you can sustain for the course of a race that can go 2+ hours. Also brick work becomes more important because you have to sustain the run for longer than just a couple of miles.

Half-Iron: This is my favorite distance because it feels kindof relaxed after the shorter races, yet it's not so long as to be a slog at the end like the IM. Nutrition really comes into play for HIM, so training your nutrition plan is huge. Transition isn't quite the frantic paced thing that it is in shorter races and I take my time (within reason) to make sure I'm comfortable (socks are on straight and all that). There's no substitute for the long bike days once you get up to HIM and IM distance. The swim isn't all that much more than an Oly so I don't do anything special to train for that.

IM: I think the hardest thing to hit for the IM just right is to train long enough, but not too long. Finding that line between trained up and overtrained gets tougher as the distance gets longer, and the balancing point will be different for each person. I've found that you really have to pay attention to your body, especially as you get up into the high-mileage weeks before taper. Lots of long biking is the key to having a happy IM race, I'm convinced. And I personally think IMs take longer to prepare for than many people believe. Yes, you can do one with a 20 week training plan, but I see a lot of people suffering through the last few hours of an IM and I think (barring injury or other extenuating circumstances) that a lot of that could be alleviated not by higher-mileage training but by a training plan that covers a longer timeframe with more time for base.

With IM, I think it's important to use your long bikes and runs to really practice how you're going to race. This can include mental discipline, nutrition, pacing, etc. For instance, I took a thermos of hot chicken broth and two cans of defizzed coke in my car and parked it at a local park. Went on my long bike ride, then came back and ran a few 1-mile loops past my car, stopping at each mile to drink either chicken broth or defizzed coke. I learned what I could tolerate, and that gave me an advantage at the IM because I didn't have to guess at what would work and what wouldn't.

Especially for IM distance, I do not underestimate having a mental plan in place. I won't retype it all, but my mental prep for IM is summed up here: http://ironmom.blogspot.com/2006/11/practice-success-someone-recently-asked.html

I think for me, the hardest thing is that I typically race Sprint, Oly, and HIM in a season. Trying to prepare for different distances is hard because what you need for one isn't what you need to be doing for another.