Just to give you an idea I am a sophomore girl in high school. This past cross country season was my first season doing long distance running. I'd gone into the season having almost no long distance running experience as I spent the two previous track seasons leading up to the xc season sprinting. During the season I'd run about 20-25 miles per week. My best time for the season was 25:30 and I had a disappointing end to the season with a time of 28:07 at the state championship. I did have an ankle injury at the time, but I still think my poor time had something to do with the lack of running I was doing. After cross country, I took probably 2/3 weeks off until the winter track season, I went back into winter track doing about the same amount of mileage. Now it is spring track season and I haven't stopped running since the start of winter track, I'd say I still have been running 25 mpw at the most. Usually the longest run I do is 5 1/2 miles, I can do that run with an average of 8:45 per mile. I understand to be able to take a lot off of my 5k time I will need to really increase my weekly mileage, but what I'm wondering is that will I have to be running longer runs at a certain time per mile? I feel that if I tried to attempt a 10(+) mile run now, it'd end up being slow, would that be less beneficial than going on more faster, shorter runs/doing doubles? Basically I'm asking what I'd need to do to greatly improve by next cross country season (I'm planning on continuing to run throughout the summer as well). Thank you!