Beginner question! Bike? Run?

First, Congrats on your new hobbie! Triathlon is a great sport for "just staying in shape" and you'll find a whole community of fellow athletes.

I would highly recommend (as others have already said) stick with finishing the C25K! Add in an occasional easy bike ride or swim for fun but not to train hard. 6 months is plenty of time to train for a sprint. From the sounds of things you could probably finish one a lot sooner than that if you wanted to. Maybe you could do one just to finish in the spring and then try to improve on that time closer to next fall... just a thought.

The biggest problem almost every triathlete has faced is doing too much too soon. It takes years to build up your body to handle serious racing and training. Just have fun at least for the first year. Avoid injury at all cost! I can't tell you the number of times I was running a sub 20 minute 5K in training but then kept pushing too hard and had to sit out for 6 weeks or so and lost fitness

Be the MOST careful with run training as it causes the most jarring! Swimming and biking you are safer to push things after you have established a base.

With 6 months + to go I would recommend using this early time to not only complete the run program but also lose weight if you need to, establish excellent flexibility which will pay off huge down the road, work on eating healthy 95% of the time with some "cheat" days where you can eat junk food, and work on form! Too often people develop bad form in any sport and then have to go back to the basics to re-learn proper form.

Good luck! Your going to love triathlons!

There are lots of races in North Texas between September and November. What distance and type of race (pool swim vs. open water) are you looking for?

Good advice here about finishing C25K. I wouldn't think an easy spin each week would hurt... it might just shake out the legs. Key word "easy". Also, if you have access to a cold pool (ice bath), I highly recommend it for sore legs and joints.

yes, this is good advice. Recently I started to enjoy too))

If you have all the distances down for the most part, there's no reason to not start on all of them now.
Some workouts even do bricks where you bike for a bit and then run. Two birds with one stone.

Seems like you have plenty of time to finish the programs you have started. Doing all 3 will help gain fitness quicker.