Summer Training

So I came across this article in Running Times magazine, and although it's written for high school cross country training, there are a lot of elements that can be more broadly applied. The article focuses on how to train in the summer to have a good fall running season. Being that most of us are gearing up for late summer / early fall races, mid-summer is mostly about putting in the time (and not getting injured) in the hopes that it will pay off when it's a little cooler and less humid out. The article suggests that there are 4 elements that should be included in your training schedule in order to race well later:

• General Strength and Mobility (GSM) helps keep you injury-free by strengthening key muscles and increasing range of motion. Unfortunately for us, the article specifically suggests doing lunges (dangit).
• Increased Volume / Long Runs to build a good base. Ok, being that most of us are long out of high school and have trained for half marathons and marathons, I'm going to go ahead and say that we don't need to increase our running volume mid-summer. Therefore, I am going to modify their suggestion to "throw a double digit distance run in every once and a while to maintain endurance". Also, you could experiment with increasing the volume of cross training activities (like swimming and cycling) to mimic this effect and maintain muscle balance.
• Fartlek / Interval / Tempo Runs (I added the later 2) increases your lactic threshold, which allows you to run faster for longer. The article suggests that many runners go out too hard on the first few intervals of a fartlek run, leaving them fatigued for the later intervals. And, apparently wisdom does not come with age, as I think many of us are guilty of doing this during track workouts and/or tempo runs. Also, SK usually builds in the "running while fatigued" phenomenon by having us run faster throughout a set (aka start at 5K pace and work to 3K pace).
• Something You Want to Improve so you're better at it (duh). When you're not racing all of the time, you have a day or two more than usual to train. So, being that we somehow manage to fit a track, tempo, and long day in when we are racing, we can keep these and add a "random stuff" day in place of a race (sweet... banking training... I like it).