Thanks to Gavin for his generous donation (the first I've gotten through the website). In answer to his questions; I'm training with Piranha Tri Club here in Dublin, so I'm following their core training and working to a 20 week training plan which I cobbled together from information at Triathlon Ireland, TriNewbies and Begginer Triathlete, as well as advice from other people who've done Triathlons before.

I train (bike, run) using a Polar F6 heart-rate monitor. This is a fairly basic model available widely on eBay and in Argos. The HRM is basically a chest-strap which picks up my heartbeat and then sends the data to a wrist watch. The watch records the data, and gives me min-max heart rate zones for an effective training session. This has been really good in helping me make sure I don't hurt myself while training. The inclination is to go at it like a bull in a china shop, but the heart rate monitor keeps me from overdoing it.

The swimming training is all coached, and usually consists of a 200m warm-up, and then a series of drills taken in 25m/50m sections. A typical hour at the moment is probably 800-900m, and it feels *way* longer than that. For the first few months the coaching focuses on technique, and then moves onto more advanced endurance, time-improvement. My focus is obviously just getting to a level of fitness and technique where 1500m isn't a problem (at the moment it definitely is).

Anyway, I hope they're decent answers. My back is still very sore, but hopefully some physio therapy in the next few days will help me with that.