Went all out on 100m this morning (Page 4)

Not intending to take anything away from your great swim, but it's also likely easier to swim well in OWS as a FOP swimmer among the fish. 

Once you get to MOP, and even BOP, there's a lot more chaos, body contact, bad people to draft off of, and other significant limiters that you run into less often if you're off to the front. I've gone painfully from BBBOP to a bit slower than you are (took me 5 years of hard work though!) and it's night and day how much smoother it is to swim off the front surrounded by capable swimmers than it is to get stuck in the mob in the middle and back. 

I am a 20:00 1500m SCM swimmer - 20:00.7 to be exact, not that I'm bitter  That puts me at or very near the front of just about every local race.  The two local sprints that I did this year I was first out of the water.  I did a HIM last weekend and was 13th of 483 out of the water.  When I did IMMT two years ago I was 14th of 2200+ out of the water.  (not saying this to brag, just to give you a reference)

OP, your 21:30 1500 will place you quite high in most races, the 41/800+ that you referenced sounds about right to me, especially if you are comfortable in open water.

Generally I am in the pool 2-3 times per week.  For me, two is ok to maintain things, three is best for staying sharp and strong.  If I was you, I would stop doing that 1500m swim every week and turn that into a workout with sets.  It will be a better use of your time in the pool IMO.  If you want to do the 1500 TT once a month or so to monitor progress, that's fine.  I think you mentioned a January HIM (Bone Island?).  I would try to get in 3 swims per week (if it doesn't take away from your bike training) and do those shorter hard intervals for the next couple of months and then as you get closer to the race, start doing some longer intervals of 300s to 500s.  

And work the bike hard!  Like Marc said, I've gone from an average cyclist to a fairly strong one (by triathlete standards at least...) over the last couple of years but it takes a lot of hard focused work.  

Do you need to do all those runs as bricks?  Can you split up am/pm?  You're seeing progress on your Sat workout, but you're mostly wasting training time (not a complete waste of course, but certainly very sub-optimal).  If you prefer to keep it 'quirky & fun', that's fine.  If you want to be more competitive, find fun in the work you should be doing to achieve that.  To do so, you need more hard biking.  And a weekly 1500m straight swim isn't doing enough for your swim for the time it occupies (far better to tack it onto the bike ride).  That's where I'd start looking to adjust your weekly plan.

I wouldn't maintain your current volume.  I'd add biking and bag the 1500m TT swim.  And if you dread the run-only day, do it with a swim. 

Sunday - 45-50+ mile bike
Monday - 2,700m swim + 3mi run
Tuesday - 22 mile bike intervals
Wednesday - 2,700m swim + 7 mile run (easy-moderate)
Thursday - 20 mile bike intervals + 3 mile run
Friday - 2,700m swim
Saturday - 30-40mi bike, mod-hard + 6 mile run

Not intending to take anything away from your great swim, but it's also likely easier to swim well in OWS as a FOP swimmer among the fish. 

Once you get to MOP, and even BOP, there's a lot more chaos, body contact, bad people to draft off of, and other significant limiters that you run into less often if you're off to the front.  

For the runs, you can do any, all, or none of them as bricks.

On the bike intervals, you want to mix it up.  Some intervals that are longer and some that are shorter.  Some really hard, some just hard.  Generally, on longer intervals, you want relatively short rest periods.  Think of those as if you were doing something like a 20 x 100 swim workout, but you don't need so many breaks on the bike (because 'form' is not much of an issue).  So, you could do 2 x 20 min with 2-5' rest between as a good threshold-type workout.  Try to keep your power steady through the whole 40'.  On shorter/harder intervals, you want more rest relative to the work period.  You can do something like 6 x 4' with equal rest, which is a good VO2max-type workout.  Again, try to keep your output steady through all 24'.  The key is to accumulate the work, so there are many ways you can play with the intervals to keep things interesting.

One way to approach would be to do about 40' of work on one of those days at a little below 'threshold' (which would be the max power output you could sustain for a full hour).  Then alternate weeks of doing another threshold-type effort and a VO2max-type effort workout on the other day.  Again, there are many ways to structure this.  The underlying principle is simple (do the work), but you need to figure out how you recover (physically & mentally) to see how much of this work you can handle week in and week out.  And how to balance it with the rest of your training and life.

For the runs, you can do any, all, or none of them as bricks.

On the bike intervals, you want to mix it up.  Some intervals that are longer and some that are shorter.  Some really hard, some just hard.  Generally, on longer intervals, you want relatively short rest periods.  Think of those as if you were doing something like a 20 x 100 swim workout, but you don't need so many breaks on the bike (because 'form' is not much of an issue).  So, you could do 2 x 20 min with 2-5' rest between as a good threshold-type workout.  Try to keep your power steady through the whole 40'.  On shorter/harder intervals, you want more rest relative to the work period.  You can do something like 6 x 4' with equal rest, which is a good VO2max-type workout.  Again, try to keep your output steady through all 24'.  The key is to accumulate the work, so there are many ways you can play with the intervals to keep things interesting.

One way to approach would be to do about 40' of work on one of those days at a little below 'threshold' (which would be the max power output you could sustain for a full hour).  Then alternate weeks of doing another threshold-type effort and a VO2max-type effort workout on the other day.  Again, there are many ways to structure this.  The underlying principle is simple (do the work), but you need to figure out how you recover (physically & mentally) to see how much of this work you can handle week in and week out.  And how to balance it with the rest of your training and life.

Take a look at the times that John posted earlier and see how well that matches up. "1 mile" isn't necessarily that relevant, but that these are probably taking you 2:25-2:45 or so at those speeds is. I'd try to find something a little longer if possible. Like in the 3-5 minute range (hence the previous 6 x 4' suggestion). It is ok to set these up as a distance, but do watch the time that it takes as that is the important part. Having a set spot to do intervals like that can be helpful so long as it's something that is consistent and fairly repeatable. Taking a few seconds longer or shorter isn't really *that* big of a deal, so long as the duration still stays about what you intended at that effort.

Also, do you have anywhere where you can go at least like 3 miles and maybe up to 7 or so? That's about what the bigger intervals would be. What do you have assist in determining effort? Haven't seen power at all, so probably not. But heart rate? Effort also matters in executing these well. Fortunately you'll be able to improve just by doing any of this just by going hard, but you will want to figure out more specifics on how hard to go eventually. The speed can kind of work if the conditions are similar. At least similar on the day so you can tell if you're pacing steady throughout the workout. From day to day it's tough to ask though as wind makes a big difference. 22.5-25 mph is a rather big difference in power output for me if the conditions were identical. Pacing would not have been that steady. But wind changes can easily make that much difference with a steady power output.

And as for how hard, the shorter intervals (a few minutes long), turn yourself inside out on them. These are well above the pace of any tri. The bigger ones aren't quite that hard, but are still going to burn quite a bit. Try to manage at least what you do in a sprint tri. Hard enough that you'll want to be done before time is up. This is just a starting point, you'll learn how to define more as you go and what works better for you.