Help me simplify my training?

I've been where you are, and so I completely understand what you are asking. First of all, you should keep in mind that riding a century is not as daunting as it seems. If you regularly ride 40+ miles, you won't have any trouble getting ready for a century in 6 months. You don't need any fancy equipment. I have ridden centuries on hybrid bikes before - no problem if the bikes fits well.

If you re-read your original post, I think that you will see that you have actually described a reasonable training plan. Basically, get out and ride as much as possible. If you can ride 5days a week, you are ahead of the game! Your focus should be on increasing your distance by adding about 10% to your mileage each week. On days when you can't do a long ride, adding intensity to a shorter ride is a good idea. Intervals are great for building speed. Since you are mostly training for distance, however, and not for a sprint, I would suggest doing longer intervals (5min on, 5 min recovery) as many times as you can tolerate before throwing up!!! Just kidding - sort of.

You definitely don't need fancy equipment to do a century. I think you really only need a heart rate monitor for serious training for races. Heart rate monitors are nifty though since it gives you additional data to play with, just don't be alarmed if your heart rate isn't where you want it to be though, since you don't want to be a "slave" to your equipment.

Anyways you don't want to continuously keep increasing your mileage every week, or else you'll burn out. You should probably schedule your training so that you increase every week for 4 weeks, then the next week you decrease your mileage to where you were 2 weeks before, then repeat.

For things like endurance you can probably afford to do increases of about 10%/week, but no more. Since you're already going 44 miles on the weekend, you can go ahead and add 4 miles instead of two, just remember to cut back your mileage once a month, then repeat the cycle.It helps to cut back once a month and work your way up again in a two steps forward, one steps back manner (or four steps forward, two steps back, etc.) since it gives you a psychological boost, as well as time to think about your form, nutrition, and hydration, since you won't have to think about mileage.

Fancy stuff aside, the most important thing to keep in mind is consistency. You need to rest often but make sure you don't take too much time off. When you take too much time off, you'll go back to cycling thinking you need to "make up time" when that only leads to overtraining...when you take time off, the only way to get back to where you were is to increase slowly and consistently again. So just make sure you keep your training consistent.

I think since you can already do 44 miles and it's only February, I'd say it'll be pretty easy to do 100 by the time of September. I think it'll be a good idea to do a few long distance charity rides before then to get a feel for what it's like.I'd say that for century training maybe even 5 days might be excessive. You can probably get the same results with 4 days/week and feel fresher as well.

Don't forget to get some practice riding in a group. From your post is looks like you're training alone. The 'mob effect' of a riding in a century can be a huge benefit in terms of drafting as well as motivation, but that benefit goes away if you're not comfortable riding in a group.
Good luck,
Bryan