Training for multiple events

Hi.  This is my first year of triathlons as well.  My "end" goal is a HIM which is in a few weeks.  Basically from May to August I did one sprint a month- which by the way, I don't regret one bit, each one was a learning experience!  I would use the Olympic training plan as a guide and modify slightly around your sprints.  Give yourself 2-3 days of light training before, maybe take a day off or so following.  Yes, your training for the Olympic may be slightly interrupted, but hey, you're still new, so I don't think extra rest would really be a bad thing! Better safe than sorry, you don't want to end up injured.  If you can, I would work it so the recovery weeks fall the week leading up to your sprints (assuming your plan has recovery weeks).  This is what I may consider doing.

First off, make sure you give your body sufficient time to recover after the races and also during a normal training week. Most likely, this means 1 day completely off and one lighter day per week. After the race, take a day off making sure you rehydrate, refuel, stretch and if at all possible schedule a massage.

In terms of the two distances... you will need speed for both, so you probably want to keep intervals in your schedule (from the sprint training plan), yet you need endurance, so you want to keep some over the longer training sessions from the Oly as well. This means that when you go hard, you will go short and very hard (too hard for Oly only training), and when you go long, you will go much slower, but longer (which will be too long and slow for Sprint only training). It's just no way around it, you will have to compromise.... either you get reasonably good at both, or you dedicate your training and classify one race as you A race (highest priority) and the other as your B race (want to do well, but not expecting to place super high).

Thanks for all the great tips... I'll definitely look for that book which I have already heard is a very good book, but haven't got around to finding it yet.

As for the interval training, can someone explain that to me? At the moment I am following my training plans by exercising for the allocated time, but not yet doing anything specific during each session.... just going for a run or bike or swim to make up the minutes... I'm still a little overweight so any exercise is good exercise but trying to increase speed is something that I would like to do.

Also, if any of you are planning on doing any races in / around Victoria (AUS) let me know as I would love to meet, chat and discuss your tri stories!!

Cheers! 

I'm not going to add anything useful here, but I did want to say I love your little avatar picture.