Jetta, I found a good tri training programme for beginners on Tri Newbies Online. They have one to prepare for an olympic distance tri, and one to prepare for a sprint tri, both over 11 weeks. I sort of mashed them together to create something that suited my specific needs, and was fortunate enough to have a triathlon guy at my new gym check it out. He made one or two suggestions for changes, but mostly was quite impressed with the programme.

I'm sure a lot of people here would be able to either confirm or correct me on some basic points I worked around, but here is the foundation:

1. One day reasonably hard, one day easy, six days a week.
2. Three weeks training, one 'off' week (recovery week) where I still train, but very easy - e.g. walk instead of run, swim 1/3 less distance than usual, train only five as opposed to the usual six days.
3. I do:
- a long cycle on a Sunday (as that's my day off from the kids etc, my husband gets Saturdays and usually either goes hiking or rock climbing - god, we sound so cool and impressive but we're really not)
- Strength training on Mondays
- Run and swim on Tuesdays
- Bike and strength on Wednesdays
- Swim and WALK on Thursdays, will turn to a brick session from week six.
- Swim on Fridays
Saturdays are off days.

The gym guy said that was pretty balanced, I don't know what others would think.