Seeing as how I've been riding hard since very early in the season, my legs are now feeling totally burned out. I guess. I am excited however with my accomplishments this year, having gone from Cat 5 to Cat 3 and therefore am obviously looking forward to next year and plan on doing things right. So far I haven't trained with any sort of structure. Just rode hard a lot with different groups. Hammerfest rides served as intense interval training with surges whereas social group rides served as recovery. But now, I need more structure. Starting with the off season.

How am I supposed to taper off exactly? Naturally my mileage is already decreased due to daylight and so have the speeds. Am I supposed to ONLY ride easy now for a while? Or still go hard once or twice a week with intervals and hills? Take weeks off? Weight training and skiing are part of my winter plans. Meanwhile should I be going easy only on trainer or doing intervals all the way until base mileage?

I'm looking at the kurt kinetic road machine trainer but also the travel trac inertial rollers with resistance settings. Ideally I'd get both...

Thanks in advance.

Look in this recent thread:
https://www.bikeforums.net/showthread...on-quot-period

Adding a little info, Contador won't "touch his bike" until November. But most of us don't ride like Contador.

Thank you!! That's great info!