If you look at the Triathlon Base plans, we have the Sprint Tri Base phase at 4 weeks, Olympic at 6 weeks, Half Distance at 8, and Full Distance at 12 weeks for just the Base phase. This just reflects the minimum amount of time we think triathletes should dedicate to their Base training to be successful in their chosen discipline; you can knock out a Sprint Tri pretty quickly off the couch, but a Full Distance Tri takes a significant amount more time commitment and work to build the necessary base to do well.
Recognizing this poster, he is noticing the same thing as me. When trying to use the run and swim workouts from an oly plan but the bike workouts from ssb, whatever build, then the xco specialty to create an off-road plan can get a bit tricky.
The oly plans have 3 weeks on 1 week easy then 2 weeks on. They don’t match the format of most of the other plans. It’s not really about a time commitment, it’s about following a typical progression.