Triathlon - Training "do you taper off for off season?"

Just curious what others do for the off season. i myself have been in training mode for 10 months now and october 18th looks to be my last tri for this year. I plan to run some 10k's this winter. I am hoping to do possibly an olympic tri at some point next year and i think for myself i am going to continue to train as usual all winter long for the most part. I feel I will need to if I want to be able to compete in a longer tri.

I just change up my training work on base stuff. This winter I will do some running... a lot of spin classes, and a LOT of swimming. No races means I don't ahve to worry about my arms or legs being dead for a weekend.

However I tend to get sick a lot during the winter as well, so that screws up my weeks sometimes, and some weeks (like this past one, and probably this week) I can't train at all :(

Be careful not to get burned out so that when it's time to really start training for that Olympic next year, you are not in the training mode b/c you've been going non-stop. It's good to take a off a little bit.....that doesn't mean to stop swimming/running/biking, but use those workouts to work on technique.

good advise, typically i am always trying to refine my technique especially in swimming. running is my weak point so i plan to use winter to get stronger there.