It doesn't have to be a run, just by the by, as you mentioned with the jumprope thing. Every morning I do 15-20 minutes of agility/speed drills on an agility ladder, and that works well for me (partially because it's less impact, and I have a bad knee, like a lot of lifters).

I also recently tried a routine called the Tabata program or something like that -

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/m...20/ai_n6011850
http://www.t-nation.com/findArticle....4-046-training

There's a couple articles about it (ignore all the junk on the second one). If anyone who reads that sees a glaring problem with that training style, then I guess that's my bad - but having tried it I'm inclined to say it works pretty well. Just a few thoughts on alternatives to straight-up running.