Seasonal training adjustments

Firstly, what times of year are the short course and long course seasons? We only have one long course pool in the province, and there are no masters meets there, so it doesn't affect me much but I'm curious. The masters meet season here basically ends with Nationals in late May, but a friend of mine in Florida has a whole slew of meets coming up. Is there generally an off season without many meets or do meets generally occur year round? Secondly, how do people vary their training during the year? We have no meets here from late May to early November so I'm looking at open water swims and improving my butterfly technique. I guess I'm wondering what I can be working on now that will benefit me when the meets start back up in the fall. I think the long distance training I did last summer for the open water swims gave me a good aerobic base. On the other hand, conditioning effects seem to fade surprisingly rapidly, is there any point in building/maintaining conditioning this far in advance of next season? Is there a generally accepted amount of time it takes to get in peak condition? Or at least as peak condition as one can get swimming 5-7 hours/week. Would it make sense to concentrate more on technique improvements (I know, one should do that always) on the theory that technique will survive a break better than conditioning? On the other hand, it is hard to train butterfly without being in pretty good condition :) Anyway, any and all thoughts on any of the above are welcome!