Training Dilemma

My bike commute is 11.5 miles so during my long training weeks, I bike to work and include that in my training time. As I’ve probably mentioned before, this works out to about a two hour ride total. This makes it somewhat challenging to get the right amount of swimming and running training in because it takes me exactly the same amount of time to get home whether I ride my bike or take public transportation.

As I enter the 13 hour workout week next week, if I ride every day, that’s 10 hours ride off the bat, leaving three hours to split between swimming and running. But if I decide not to bike to work, I’m still facing that two hour hole in my day commuting. Once my training runs enter the two and three hour range, I’m looking at getting home at 8 or 9 at night, which is a drag because I like to be in bed by around 8:30, which gives me about 30 minutes or so to read before I fall asleep.

In addition to this, if I do bike commute, then how on earth will I get a long bike ride in on the weekends? I suppose I could take a longer route home, but this still doesn’t make time for swimming and biking.

If it were an option, I’d move closer to work, but the real estate market is telling me I may never be able to sell my place.I won’t truly know if this training method is ineffective until my half in September. I’m looking to top out training at twenty hours, which should be plenty of preparation. I’m very curious to see if I just blow the race or come out okay. I’m leaning towards the latter just because nailing the bike is so key to overall time.