This is what I have been doing for 3 years:
-XC training, every Wednesday an interval workout. Saturday long runs, Mondays are a medium long run, 20 minutes more than recovery days, but 20 minutes less than a long run. We do 60-70 miles at 6000 ft elevation at a pretty slow pace by college standards (7:30-8:00 pace)
In indoor season, we keep this cycle. For the past few years, my coach has kept the long distance guys out of indoor just to train all winter (in the snow, cold, wind) and we may race once or twice.
To kick off our outdoor season, we race a 7k in March on the roads. We hardly hit the track and rarely do speed.
When I was in high school, I had a tremendous amount of speed. Not anything Let's Run worthy or something followed by flotrack, but since college, I noticed that I work a lot harder during strides than I used to.
Here's the thing, I have been doing college distance (3k to 10 XC) with no big rewards. I have two years left and I want to transition into middle distance 800/1500. I've basically been doing base training for 3 years and I can count on one hand how many true speed workouts I've done since starting college (around the 200's at 30 second pace speed ballpark).
I have more base fitness than the MD guys, but it's hard to compete with dudes who have been running 1:54 for two years when I haven't even hit that pace for 30 seconds in a workout. How the #%$@ do I get my leg speed to a pretty good turnover before outdoor season? Is it a matter of doing 8-10 strides every day? The MD guys currently don't work nearly as hard as I do in the XC season and have poor dedication, but come track season, they dominate their respective distances.
Any advice to anything, workouts, weight room, etc. that wont peak me to early for regionals/nationals XC?