base miles now, sufferfest on the trainer over the winter. there are lots of books about building training plans (friel, carmichael) and there are lots of places to buy plans (trainingpeaks, sufferfest, carmichael). essentially they mostly say to do a couple of interval sessions and a couple of longer steady-state sessions per week.

get a heart rate monitor to go with the trainer.

www.thesufferfest.com

reducing the spare tire is going to need attention to diet, you can't do it with exercise alone. sorry. lots of web sites to help track calories - loseit, myfitday, sparkpeople.