I haven\'t had much Net access lately and haven\'t seen much of this thread. Both of my sons have been on Lydiard programs through their high school and college years.
What we do is use the \"off\" times of the year, summer and December/early January to get ready for the \"on\" times. Mostly they do distance work and then a couple hill sessions each week come August. Once they\'re at school and under their coaches\' control they do whatever their teams do. Arthur was never fussed about the particulars of rep work. What we try to do is have them as fit as possible for the races and faster training they\'ll do in season but NEVER adding any other hard work to what their teams do. We have found that their high school team seems to run less mileage than they need so both of them kept a long Sunday run in the mix and some double sessions during the week.
It\'s one thing to add some comfortable runs and another to add more hard training especially when you\'re racing a lot.
To your original question, use the time until you start the program to get in some miles, hilly ones if you\'ve got them and to do some light leg turnover work.