Discussion: well done!

that's a good solid pace

Thanks! I need to hear some mean advice too, about how slow I am and how I should be going harder and faster already. I have some races coming up that will show me how I'm doing against other people.

Law and Order (my left and right legs respectively) feel so good on the bike, I'm happy that its time for speed workouts. This session was actually long stretches (10min) of 22mph average intervals (you gotta love sea level) with slower recovery in between.

I think I'm coming up with some training strategies/tactics that are in addition to the conventional ones. I playing with the idea that endurance-type distances require different types of training from shorter distances (duh) and the effectiveness of any workout is determined by how much it correlates to the pattern of the planned "race", of course, it all sort of approaches a single point on the horizon anyway I suppose.

With the short races, you'll be less penalized for not having put time in on the bike (a half ironman is a short race to me, but is really a long race).
Yesterday, I googled on athlinks.com a former male friend of mine. He used to always kick my ass when we went running and he always dropped me on bike rides.
I beat him at Wildflower by half an hour - and his ironman times NEVER seem to be any faster than 12-13 hrs - the 12 hr was at Florida. He's been at this stuff for several years.
So, his approach did NOT work for ironman.
You haven't put in the volume yet that causes the fatigue that makes it difficult to do short course and long course at the same time.
So, take advantage of this progression to do what you can for the short races, but don't really hang your ego on them, unless you do well (the pollyanna principle).
After May - try to get those hours on the bike. That is the single most important thing for ironman.
I do believe that the long hourse, where you are always a bit fatigued (but not overtrained)- are what make a good ironman time.
some of it might be related to a shift in the %fat you burn at a given energy expenditure. I think that having chronically lowish levels of glycogen doesn't make for good short course training, but is somehow helpful for ironman.